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Nutanix AHV Virtualization vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
6.3
Nutanix AHV Virtualization reduces costs by 45%, enhances performance, and improves agility with 30% less downtime in three years.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere reduces costs by improving server efficiency, management, and resource use, offering quick financial returns despite initial investment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.7
Nutanix AHV Virtualization is acclaimed for its responsive, knowledgeable 24/7 support, with generally positive feedback despite occasional response delays.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSphere customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, with occasional issues in timeliness and engineer quality variability.
They provide prompt and quality responses.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
My team solves most tickets, needing support only about once or twice a year.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Nutanix AHV Virtualization offers efficient scalability, easily expanding resources for diverse environments, making it ideal for growing businesses.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere is scalable and adaptable, efficiently managing large deployments and increasing workloads, though licensing and compatibility are challenges.
We can scale our systems easily without any downtime, making it a highly effective solution for dynamic environments.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
It is a highly scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Nutanix AHV is praised for stability, reliability, seamless virtual management, proactive support, and integration with Nutanix infrastructure.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere is praised for stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and issues mainly due to hardware or misconfigurations.
The solution is very stable.
Issues such as patch delays and the OVF format challenge affect its stability rating.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix AHV requires improved integration, interface optimization, better documentation, disaster recovery, automation, Linux support, and competitive pricing.
VMware vSphere users highlight complex management, high licensing costs, and desire improvements in fault tolerance, UI, and support.
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.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix AHV provides cost-effective virtualization with no hypervisor fees, though additional licenses and high initial prices may apply.
VMware vSphere offers robust features and stability but is often criticized for its complex and expensive pricing and licensing.
This has been advantageous as it does not require additional licensing costs for the hypervisor, contributing to overall cost savings.
The pricing was reasonable compared to other competitors, though the storage was expensive.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix AHV excels in user-friendliness, cost-efficiency, scalability, flexible management, and robust data protection, enhancing virtual environment operations.
VMware vSphere enhances server virtualization with seamless VM migration, resource efficiency, scalability, and robust management for cost-effective infrastructure optimization.
The technology behind the backups is very efficient, enabling a reliable virtual environment.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The vSphere application is free and very useful, ensuring effective management and improvement in operations.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix AHV Virtualization
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSphere
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
453
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Nutanix AHV Virtualization is 8.6%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 17.8%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Mithun Nidiyenga - PeerSpot reviewer
Achieves seamless upgrades and cost efficiency while managing virtualization
One issue we encountered is with third-party vendors who provide customized images in OVF format, a VMware virtualization format. When we customize these images for Nutanix AHV, some vendors refuse to support them, stating they've been altered. Another area for improvement is in the patching process. Nutanix releases product patches every three months, while the underlying systems like the backend operating system receive weekly updates, causing a gap. This delay in patching creates risk, especially for government projects that require timely updates.
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
Nutanix offers a lower price compared to other solutions. This has been advantageous as it does not require additional licensing costs for the hypervisor, contributing to overall cost savings.
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix AHV Virtualization vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,194 professionals have used our research since 2012.