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KVM vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.5
KVM users save $20,000 monthly due to its open-source nature, eliminating license fees and offering cost-effective virtualization.
Sentiment score
7.0
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers cost savings, efficiency, and scalability, reducing expenses by up to 30% annually for users.
KVM definitely saves costs since it is open-source and does not obligate us to pay for licenses as necessary with other virtualization solutions.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.7
KVM relies on community support; effectiveness varies, with some preferring paid options like Red Hat for dedicated assistance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's support is highly praised for quick, skilled, and effective assistance, deemed worth the cost by users.
Paid support is also obtainable from companies like Red Hat for more critical issues.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
KVM offers high scalability for enterprise environments, leveraging Linux kernel architecture, though rapid expansion may challenge larger companies.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers seamless scalability, easy expansion, and adaptability, making it ideal for enterprises despite cost considerations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
KVM is generally stable and reliable, though occasional issues arise during I/O tasks or hardware changes, requiring careful handling.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is praised for its stability, reliability, minimal downtime, and efficient support, making it a dependable platform.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
 

Room For Improvement

KVM needs user interface improvements, better networking, enhanced tools, platform compatibility, optimized resources, and improved support and documentation.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in pricing transparency, setup, performance, integrations, automation, licensing, and system compatibility.
In comparison to VMware, which offers a more balanced set of management features, KVM could improve in terms of user-friendly tooling.
We hope Nutanix can integrate inside our current license module.
 

Setup Cost

KVM is a cost-effective, open-source virtualization platform often preferred over VMware, with affordable support options enhancing its appeal.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides cost-effective licensing options with free hypervisor, reducing TCO compared to traditional systems.
Compared to VMware and Microsoft, KVM offers better pricing and licensing options.
The pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
 

Valuable Features

KVM excels in performance, scalability, ease of management, and security, offering seamless Linux integration and cost-effective virtualization.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance, ease of use, scalability, and cost efficiency, benefiting smaller IT teams.
The most valuable feature of KVM is its superior real-time performance, which results in lower latency compared to alternatives like VMware and Microsoft.
The replication method between Nutanix clusters is a valuable feature.
 

Categories and Ranking

KVM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (4th)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
197
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), HCI (3rd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

KVM and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. KVM is designed for Server Virtualization Software and holds a mindshare of 10.5%, down 12.5% compared to last year.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 8.3% mindshare, down 8.8% since last year.
Server Virtualization Software
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Lan Tuong - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful to manage the virtual environments
The most valuable features of KVM for us are the console, which allows us to build or clone VMs quickly, and the ability to take snapshots and recreate new VMs rapidly. That's one of the things we love about KVM. The built-in management console, Auto KVM, is the most valuable tool for managing our virtual environments. We use it most to create and fire up new VMs or clone them for customers based on requests. The migration tools have worked quite well for us. We're moving from an Oracle Solaris platform for KVM logical domains, upgrading, and using KVM from Red Hat. It's slightly different but very similar to Oracle Unbreakable Linux, which is basically a clone of Red Hat. Oracle's console is easier to use than Red Hat's, though.
MahendraPanchotiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates
Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface. While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members. We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX. Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product. Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs. We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix. Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform. Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10. Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
36%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Why KVM??? Help please!
KVM scales better, orchestration better, performs better and supports a wider range of hardware and, also, you can implement at ZERO cost and with a very powerful web interface for management, from...
Why KVM??? Help please!
Small support team, small cluster, low core count, use VMware products Large support team, large clusters with many cores, use KVM. KVM scales better, orchestration better, performs better and supp...
Why KVM??? Help please!
Far from being an expert, my opinion is that the positive sides of KVM are: Lower costs and open-source which gives the abilities to customize it according to the specific needs of each customer.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MediaWiki, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Commons
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
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