Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and VxRail compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure category. NCI is generally considered to have the upper hand due to its feature richness and flexibility, while VxRail benefits from its integration with VMware tools, offering enhanced performance and management ease.
Features: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance I/O, ease of administration, and scalability. Its distributed file system with data protection and storage auto-tiering provides high redundancy and high IOPS, suitable for traffic-intense applications. It reduces complexity and supports multiple hypervisors for virtualization flexibility. VxRail is recognized for its integrated storage and streamlined management, benefiting from close VMware integration. This enhances its performance and ease of management, with quick installation and strong automation capabilities.
Room for Improvement: Nutanix users desire better integration with external storage networks and site-to-site replication improvements. Enhanced interoperability in multi-cloud environments and advancements in software-defined networking are requested. VxRail users express concerns about its high pricing and complex licensing, and they seek improved integration with cloud services and simplified update processes. NCI should focus on enhancing external integrations, while VxRail needs to address cost competitiveness and licensing transparency.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NCI is frequently deployed in both hybrid and private cloud environments, thanks to its ease of management and unified platform. Nutanix customer service receives high praise for being responsive and technically proficient. VxRail is typically used in on-premises and hybrid cloud setups and benefits from tight VMware integration. VxRail's customer service is noted for effectively supporting complex infrastructures. NCI is recognized for its advanced cloud operability, while VxRail excels in VMware-tied environments.
Pricing and ROI: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is perceived as expensive, but users find the total cost of ownership justifiable, especially when leveraging its free hypervisor, AHV. Its subscription model is flexible yet demands careful cost management. VxRail is considered costly, benefiting from robust VMware licensing, which adds perceived value but requires additional investments as capacities scale. Both platforms provide substantial ROI by reducing operational burdens, with NCI favorably positioned for diverse workload management and VxRail praised for its integrated VMware ecosystem.
A key area for improvement for VMware would be response time.
The scalability is excellent.
There are limitations, such as the inability to upgrade from a single to dual CPU in certain configurations.
It is a very stable and mature product, with centralized management and upgrades being perfect for us.
The product is very stable, and I rate its stability as nine out of ten.
It requires a very clean environment to proceed without issues.
The major issue with VxRail is the razoring process, which can only be performed by Dell.
Previously, the cost was higher, however, recent changes in VMware pricing have reduced it.
The cost varies for us as a large company because we receive special offers from Dell.
Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.
Another benefit is the fully automated upgrade process, which is completed with just one click through the VxRail Manager.
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:
Outside of these categories, NCI also offers other capabilities:
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:
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Benefits
The product offers various benefits to users who utilize its capacities. Some of these include:
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.
VxRail is a hyper-converged appliance based on VMware virtual SAN Software and is jointly engineered and built with VMware, for VMware, to enhance Vmware. VxRail software-defined architecture simplifies compute, storage, virtualization, and management. It will safeguard performance, reliability, and flexibility across your organization with a broad range of workloads and applications from business-critical to next-gen. With VxRail, you are covered.
VxRail is a single turn-key appliance that is a validated, fully integrated, pre-configured, pre-tested solution and offers non-disruptive scaling. Every node includes compute storage and IO. All-flash configurations can contain between 12-28 cores per node. The storage capacity options run from 7.6 TB to 19TB with either 256 GB or 512GB of memory. Hybrid appliances may have 6-20 cores per node, 3.6 TB to 10 TB of storage capacity, and 24GB to 256 GB of memory.
VxRail offers high availability fail-over, an active/active stretch cluster, and VSan Kernal integration. VxRail is a power-edged server with APIs built on automation. There are over 15 million different combinations of hardware available with VxRail. VxRail provides a simple, cost-effective solution that solves a large range of use cases. Additionally, you also get a mixed workloads automated system that is backed with fully automated system updates, and complete end-to-end lifecycle management all in a single two-rack appliance.
VxRail is a value-added suitable solution for distributed small to mid-sized enterprises, remote offices, private clouds, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). You choose the deployment option that best suits your organizational needs, from appliance to integrated rack offerings, with or without networking, and it will be delivered to you, ready to deploy out-of-box.
If you know VMware, you know VxRail.
VxRail Features and Benefits
Reviews from Real Users
VxRail is an all-in-one solution: "You don't have to worry too much about the hardware and you don't have to work on integrating a storage device. We instead have this as an all-in-one solution and everything is available as a box."
VxRail is remarkable: “The cover points feature in VxRail is remarkable. It's unique. It has an intervention failover system as well as an automatic failover system, reaching clusters existing in VxRail…”
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