Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Sunlight comparison

Nutanix and Sunlight.io are both solutions in the HCI category. Nutanix is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.6, while Sunlight.io is ranked #30. Nutanix holds a 8.3% mindshare in HCI, compared to Sunlight.io’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Nutanix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sunlight.io users who would recommend it.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Read 197 Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) reviews

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6,010 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Sunlight

Read 2 Sunlight reviews

214 Views
101 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Sunlight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure and Sunlight compete in the cloud infrastructure market. NCI has an edge with user satisfaction in pricing and support, while Sunlight attracts due to advanced features.

Features: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers robust scalability, integrated security features, and efficient support for diverse workloads. Sunlight impresses with its lightweight footprint, high-performance capabilities, and edge computing compatibility. NCI focuses on comprehensive ecosystem integration, whereas Sunlight prioritizes performance efficiency with minimal resource consumption.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides a mature deployment process, supported by extensive documentation and responsive customer service, beneficial for enterprises seeking streamlined implementation. Sunlight offers simplified deployment tailored for edge computing but may lack the level of customer support detail that NCI provides. The main difference is NCI's broader support infrastructure compared to Sunlight's targeted deployment focus.

Pricing and ROI: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure generally involves higher upfront costs due to its extensive capabilities and support network, potentially delivering substantial long-term ROI through scalability and resource optimization. Sunlight offers a more cost-effective initial setup, promising rapid ROI through its focus on performance and efficiency at lower operational costs. NCI's proposition leans towards extensive long-term ROI, while Sunlight offers immediate cost benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. Sunlight Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. Sunlight

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Ranking in HCI

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

197

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)

Sunlight

Ranking in HCI

30th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is 8.3%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sunlight is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

Featured Reviews

MahendraPanchotiya

Infrastructure Manager at ER Tech Pros

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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RajeshKANUMURY

Chief Executive Officer at GniYes Inc.

Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support

Sunlight is a scalable solution. It supports on-premises and distributed deployments, as well as public deployments. It has a single pane of management so I can manage all of my VM installations in a distributed manner. It also has a footprint, that allows me to operate on Edge. If for example, you have a retail shop with 2,000 locations and they use a networked point of sale system, or if you are Chipotle and they have so many locations and they have to use a backend system at each location. At the moment, these are all standalone systems that operate with very little connection to the central. We could, however, connect and create a network using Sunlight. We can virtualize and run with Edge thanks to Sunlight. This allows us to operate and obtain high-end computing on Edge for retail. Sunlight is a startup. I am not sure how many users they have, but we have been using it constantly and using the technology to bring in customers.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I definitely find the reduced power consumption very valuable."

"The most valuable features are the RBAC, role-based access control, and the reporting. NCI also provides a single platform, a single pane with a dashboard, to manage the entire infrastructure. We have complete information about overall utilization, performance, and a forecast for our platform in that single pane."

"Karbon is a must-have as it drastically simplifies the deployment of Kubernetes."

"Being able to upgrade our entire cluster with the click of a button during business hours with zero downtime has made managing our infrastructure so easy."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is its software Move, which we use to migrate virtual info from another platform to the Nutanix platform."

"This is a complete, very user-friendly product."

"A lot of features are there, but for us, on the server administration side, creating a clone of the VM is valuable because many times, we have to deploy security patches. For deploying these patches, it helps to have a clone so that if something goes wrong, we can discard that VM and put back the clone VM. That is a very cool feature."

"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is it has centralized management."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pros

"The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."

"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."

Cons

"As far as what could be improved, they have some built-in backup functions already, but any built-in isolation features like vision security features and free LAN features become a security concern."

"The GUI of Nutanix Acropolis AOS could be improved that can be done from the OEM side. It's a very basic stable web browser that they're using. It is not very inclusive."

"When we have issues with the solution, they tend to be around networking."

"One of the very important things that I would like to see in Nutanix, but I'm not sure if it's in the roadmap or not, is to have some kind of caching optimization at remote sites, to build active-active data centers more easily."

"The compatibility and integration of Nutanix Acropolis AOS could be improved. For example, we have a WAF application firewall and it does not work on this solution. Not all the OS's run on AOS. You need to have a newer version of an operating system if you want Nutanix to perfectly run all the different options."

"Nutanix has a complex infrastructure, we have customers that consider VMware instead. Additionally, the performance could be better."

"USB dongle-based licenses do not allow us to directly locate the USB ports on Nutanix."

"Nutanix Acropolis AOS could improve by adding some NAS features, similar to the ones that are available in the NetApp solution."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) cons

"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."

"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing depends on the features needed."

"There is a license required for this solution and my clients usually purchase a two-year license with extended support. The price of the solution could be reduced, it is more expensive than competitors."

"The cost of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is reasonable."

"There are a lot of features included with Nutanix that cost a lot with other companies."

"Its licensing is fine. They provide the flexibility to choose from different options. You can go with the standard plan. You can go with the pro or platinum plan. Generally, our clients go with the pro licenses, but if you go for the platinum license, you get even more capabilities. Their starter license is also quite good."

"The price of the solution is high."

"The one disadvantage is relative, financially Nutanix Acropolis AOS is a little bit more expensive than the old solution."

"The pricing is very competitive when compared with other vendors. As long as Nutanix goes forward with the same price and same type of offering, it will definitely have a large number of customers adopting the same solution very soon."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pricing and cost advice

"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

36%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

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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...

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Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

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Comparisons

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Compared 9% of the time

VMware vSphere vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 6% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

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VMware vSAN vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 5% of the time

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VMware vSAN vs Sunlight

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

February 2025

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report

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HCI

February 2025

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Also Known As

Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis

No data available

Overview

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a top-ranking HCI software, cloud management tool, and Software Defined Storage (SDS) tool that is marketed as the foundation for users' hybrid clouds. It offers a powerful and secure hyperconverged infrastructure to deliver all data and applications at any scale and on any cloud. The solution offers a complete software stack that allows users to unify their hybrid cloud infrastructure.

NCI’s services include computer, storage and network, hypervisors and containers, and deployment in public or in private clouds. The product also comes with built-in resilience, disaster recovery capabilities, self-healing, and high-security capacities. It provides further deployment flexibility through several software and hardware options and platforms. NCI includes a full set of enterprise capabilities. It can also be deployed on a wide range of servers from popular manufacturers.

The capabilities of the product are categorized into three main groups:

AOS storage
Flexible and open compute
Automated and secure networking

Outside of these categories, NCI also offers other capabilities:

Integrated disaster recovery
Full-stack lifecycle management
VMware with Nutanix
Intelligent operations

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Features

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers its customers various features and tools in each of the previously mentioned categories. The available features for users currently include:

High-performance: This set of features utilizes hardware advances such as NVMe and RDMA to accelerate users' most demanding applications with consistent performance. The tools in this feature category work alongside data locality to ensure successful results.
Foolproof resiliency: These Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure features protect data and keep it available by facilitating advanced distributed consistency algorithms. Users can utilize these features to protect their data from issues like bit rot, hardware failures, and even entire site failure.
Flexibility: This set of features allows storage to be sized for the needs of each organization and expanded promptly and easily so that the organization and its data can grow. The features offer flexibility to users in terms of applying storage policies logically on a pre-workload basis, instead of being tied to hardware.
Hypervisor choice: Users can choose from the leading hypervisors - Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi. They can also leverage the built-in hypervisor AHV that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides.
Integrated virtualization: These features offer simplified automation and AHV streamlined operations. The services in this category are optimized for high performance and reliability.
Kubernetes: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to build and deploy cloud-native applications on intelligent distributed infrastructure. Apps can be integrated with cloud-compatible storage and both building and deployment can be achieved within the same platform.
Microsegmentation: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to prevent malware spread and reduce attack surfaces by leveraging machine learning (ML).
Virtual networking: This set of features allows users to easily implement multi-tenancy in their environment or stretch networks across clouds.
Centralized network management: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides organizations with a way to manage networking configurations centrally. Users can utilize it across their human-computer interaction (HCI) environment with simple virtual switch management.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Benefits

The product offers various benefits to users who utilize its capacities. Some of these include:

NCI reduces technology sprawl and frees up technical resources to allow organizations to focus on other activities, potentially reducing costs for the business.
The product allows customers to deploy, scale, and bridge to the public cloud to be able to react in evolving business environments.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure improves data availability while simultaneously protecting it against several kinds of failures and attacks.
The solution offers high-performance, resilient distributed storage for all workloads.
Working alongside Nutanix Cloud Platform, NCI offers simple management of data from one console.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure works by the zero trust philosophy, protecting users' apps and data through specially designed security protocols.

Reviews from Real Users

According to Gerhard J., an IT manager at Q4 Fuel, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI.

A solutions architect at a computer software company describes NCI as a stable, straightforward to set up, and scalable solution.

Nutanix

Sunlight is a complete HCI stack that can be deployed on-premise on standard data center hardware, in AWS and on resource-constrained far-edge devices.

Sunlight.io

Sample Customers

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.

Lavazza, Infraspace

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. Sunlight

January 2025

Free Report: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. Sunlight

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