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Nutanix AHV Virtualization vs VMware ESXi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

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
5.0
Nutanix AHV Virtualization offers significant ROI by reducing costs, saving time, and optimizing resources, with 45% cost savings.
Sentiment score
4.7
VMware ESXi boosts efficiency and eases management, but rising costs lead to interest in more cost-effective alternatives.
We find a 100% return on investment with Nutanix AHV Virtualization, so there's no question about it.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Nutanix AHV Virtualization's 24/7 support is praised for quick problem resolution, knowledgeable staff, and strong interoperability with vendors.
Sentiment score
6.9
VMware ESXi support is generally praised for expertise, despite mixed response times and quality post-Broadcom transition.
Their engineers are excellent and provide great supportability.
They provide prompt and quality responses.
We are getting the correct support personnel, who help us sort out our issues, so the support is very nice.
I rate the technical support from VMware as nine or ten out of ten.
In the last three or four years, we did not require any support from VMware engineers, indicating its high reliability.
Customer service and support are good; they are reachable, and at times remote support suffices.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Nutanix AHV Virtualization is highly scalable and flexible, ideal for medium to large enterprises, but may be costly for smaller businesses.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware ESXi is praised for its vertical scalability and management efficiency, despite challenges in horizontal scalability and licensing.
We can scale our systems easily without any downtime, making it a highly effective solution for dynamic environments.
Nutanix AHV Virtualization is very scalable; however, I might be underutilizing its capabilities.
Nutanix AHV Virtualization is very much scalable, and we can scale up to 32 nodes easily, which is a huge size.
The solution is scalable, allowing us to scale up or down regardless of infrastructure size.
vCenter Server can manage up to 1,000 ESXi servers within a single UI interface, allowing extensive deployment and management capabilities.
My customers are highly satisfied with its scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix AHV is highly stable, well-integrated, and user-rated, with occasional update issues but strong performance overall.
Sentiment score
8.3
VMware ESXi is highly stable and dependable, often rated 8-10, with minimal issues and effective recent updates.
The solution is very stable.
Issues such as patch delays and the OVF format challenge affect its stability rating.
Upgrades and updates occur without any downtime, so it is 100% stable.
ESXi is stable, and our business operations depend on it year after year.
Stability rates a perfect 10.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix AHV requires enhanced support, improved GUI, better cloud integration, affordability, documentation, and advancements in AI and database capabilities.
Users are concerned about VMware ESXi's pricing, support, and complexities post-Broadcom, desiring simpler licensing and improvements.
This delay in patching creates risk, especially for government projects that require timely updates.
These menus often show options like host, memory, and disk, however, they fail to provide insight into what's happening.
Using Lenovo hardware seems problematic with Nutanix AHV Virtualization, which demands careful consideration during updates.
Providing a mobile application for remote access to ESXi servers would be beneficial.
It's not cost-effective for small users and creates a gap for alternatives, while favoring larger clients.
The cost of VMware ESXi is very high, especially after the acquisition by Broadcom, which led to price increases.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix AHV offers cost-effective virtualization with no license fees, competitive pricing, and annual support, suitable for enterprises.
Enterprise evaluators find VMware ESXi pricing high, with complex licensing and costs exceeding competitors, challenging smaller users' budgets.
This has been advantageous as it does not require additional licensing costs for the hypervisor, contributing to overall cost savings.
Other solutions like Citrix and VMware have seen a significant price increase, whereas Nutanix hasn't increased as dramatically.
The pricing was reasonable compared to other competitors, though the storage was expensive.
The product is very cost-effective, though not fixed, as pricing tends to fluctuate over time.
The solution is moderately priced, not exactly cheap yet not overly expensive either.
The pricing is expensive, with the cost for customers ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix AHV Virtualization offers efficient, scalable management with user-friendly features, strong automation, cost-effectiveness, and seamless cloud integration.
VMware ESXi provides cost-effective server consolidation, seamless migrations, high availability, resource optimization, and centralized management with strong compatibility.
It is easier to manage than VMware in some ways, providing a good level of interaction.
Using Nutanix AHV Virtualization in a single management pane is very important to me, as it allows us to see everything related to our hardware, software, servers, and VMs from one console.
The technology behind the backups is very efficient, enabling a reliable virtual environment.
Its capability to move virtual machines to physical machines is very efficient for our live environment.
As a level one or bare metal hypervisor, its unmatched scalability depends on underlying hardware, capable of managing large numbers of physical servers with one management platform.
vMotion is a daily used technology that allows us to have machines distributed across different sites while maintaining redundancy between the sites.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix AHV Virtualization
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware ESXi
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Nutanix AHV Virtualization is 7.6%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware ESXi is 1.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix AHV Virtualization7.6%
VMware ESXi1.7%
Other90.7%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

TAIYAB HASAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided seamless virtualization and centralized control with strong security and reliable performance
I find almost every feature of Nutanix AHV Virtualization useful, as it's a very nice HCI solution from Nutanix. AHV is their native product, so it's very integrated with all the hardware they provide. Integration is very nice with the baseline hardware. We are using all built-in security features of Nutanix AHV Virtualization, which include encryption. It is very effective in protecting our VMs, and it is very secure. The impact of AHV, such as micro-segmentation, is very effective for us and it's working as per our requirements. We are very happy with the features. Role-Based Access is also a very nice feature for us to define to whom to give admin access and to whom to give read-only access. This kind of authentication helps us distribute tasks within the teams. Using Nutanix AHV Virtualization in a single management pane is very important to me, as it allows us to see everything related to our hardware, software, servers, and VMs from one console. We can reach everything from this one console, which provides a nice inside view for our software, hardware applications, server details, issues, alerts, or any unwanted activity. We are using the non-disruptive operations feature because Nutanix AHV Virtualization is in our production environment, and this feature helps us perform any activity without any downtime.
Ion Boni - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved daily operations and provides solid performance but recent licensing changes have created challenges
Licensing has become a major issue. The new subscription-based licensing model is problematic. They have dropped all the support services for small partners and cut all small partners. The last two years have been challenging - after building stability, we received an email announcing they dropped the current model. It used to be cost-efficient. Now, when compared with Red Hat OpenStack, it is more expensive, but our knowledge and client awareness is with VMware ESXi. At this moment, we still prefer VMware ESXi.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

How does Nutanix AHV compare with VMware vSphere?
To understand which is better - Nutanix AHV or VMware vSphere - you need to do a product comparison. Both products support hypervisors. However, Nutanix supports some of the most popular ones and m...
What do you like most about Nutanix AHV Virtualization?
Integration is the most valuable feature of the product.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix AHV Virtualization?
Compared to the competition, the pricing for Nutanix AHV Virtualization is reasonable. Other solutions like Citrix and VMware have seen a significant price increase, whereas Nutanix hasn't increase...
What do you like most about VMware ESXi?
My customers are satisfied with the solution’s performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware ESXi?
VMware ESXi is extremely expensive now compared to a few years ago. It's a core-based license now. We have bought VCF for about more than 2,000 cores. It's not a user-based license, and when you co...
What needs improvement with VMware ESXi?
Licensing has become a major issue. The new subscription-based licensing model is problematic. They have dropped all the support services for small partners and cut all small partners. The last two...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
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Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix AHV Virtualization vs. VMware ESXi and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.