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Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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 Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
4th
Ranking in File and Object Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (6th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
2nd
Ranking in File and Object Storage
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 4.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ceph Storage is 20.3%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Juan-Contreras - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling
It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.
ANDRE VINICIUS HAMERSKI - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers cost-effective scalability through open-source storage integration
Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's benefits stem from the ease of use and management it offers to its users."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward. With a few clicks, you can stand up your storage. It reduces the overall life cycle of deployment within the ecosystem."
"The scalability, ease of use, and technical support are the most valuable features of Nutanix Unified Storage."
"What I found to be the most valuable features were better performance and uptime."
"Unified Storage's centralized management features enable us to accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migrations."
"The most valuable features of the solution are replication and backup and our company needs a tool to help us with disaster recovery and the security of our data."
"From an analytics perspective, the best aspect of Unified Storage is its locality. When you read data, you want to know that you're only reading data from the particular local storage node. It's also critical to access the data as quickly as possible from that. From a business perspective, the most important thing is ease of use. Having a combination of compute and storage makes it much easier to manage."
"What I like most about Nutanix Files Storage is the way it makes copies of the data. The solution also has high availability, which is excellent. Another valuable feature of Nutanix Files Storage is self-service, so users won't have to depend on the IT team much."
"We are using Ceph internal inexpensive disk and data redundancy without spending extra money on external storage."
"What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in. In particular, Red Hat Ceph Storage becomes a single solution for managing the entire environment in terms of the container or the infrastructure, or the worker nodes because it all comes from a single plug."
"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures."
"Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage."
"The setup is very easy, deserving a ten out of ten."
"The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us."
"Red Hat Ceph Storage is a reliable solution, it works well."
"Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud."
 

Cons

"Improving quota policies would be advantageous, particularly by offering the option to implement blocking instead of just issuing warnings."
"The current hardware is not as dense as it could be. In our deployment, we have 2 PB per site, and we have to have 24 nodes. That's a lot of cabling and network ports that we use up. More dense nodes would be better."
"We have issues with software updates occasionally."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Perhaps Unified Storage could be improved by including artificial intelligence to make searches more effective. Also, if someone has access who shouldn't, it could automatically update, so I do not need to physically remove permission. The platform could do it automatically. AI could make it more self-service."
"The feature request I have is for the consistent improvement of how user account permissions are assigned in Nutanix Unified Storage."
"There should be more information. If it gets used more by more people, they will have a bigger community to share ideas. It is still kind of newer. It is not as big as Dell and other companies."
"Security is an area for improvement. When there are vulnerabilities, there needs to be a faster approval process. The solution needs to automatically target the vulnerabilities and not waste too much time."
"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."
"It takes some time to re-balance the storage in case of server failure."
"In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures."
"We have encountered slight integration issues."
"Some documentation is very hard to find."
"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."
"Geo-replication needs improvement. It is a new feature, and not well supported yet."
"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nutanix is priced a bit higher than some of its competitors. A lot of Chinese companies like Huawei are entering the Saudi Arabian market trying to provide similar solutions for a lower price. It offers a good value, especially the support. Nutanix has a highly competent team. The after-sales support is excellent."
"Nutanix Unified Storage pricing is reasonable."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, making it a solution offering a price range that is in the middle."
"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."
"It is not too high for what we are using."
"The solution's pricing is fair."
"While the price may not be the most affordable, I believe it offers good value for the benefits it provides."
"The cost of Nutanix Unified Storage can be prohibitive for some small and medium-sized businesses, making it challenging for them to adopt the product."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"There is no cost for software."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"We never used the paid support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
32%
Educational Organization
26%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?
The high availability of the solution is important to us.
What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?
While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved. There are instances where we needed to consult additional online forums and communities for solutions to particular issues.
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
Ceph
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Dell, DreamHost
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.