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Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (6th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
SwiftStack [EOL]
Ranking in File and Object Storage
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 2.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SwiftStack [EOL] is 1.5%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Tarik Tnbouh - PeerSpot reviewer
May 23, 2024
Helped us to digitalize the administration and apply our strategy very fast
We normally use it to create servers and manage them. We use four nodes. We have one cluster with four nodes for our production servers, Active Directory, etc Nutanix Unified Storage has helped us digitalize. Our mission is to digitalize the administration in Morocco. It has helped us to apply…
JG
Feb 22, 2021
We are able to dynamically grow storage at a lower cost
The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap. With some of the hierarchy, old management storage policies, I would like to be able to move data between different types of storage policies. One of the things that has come up before was being able to do distributed erasure coding. Right now, erasure coding is only supported locally redundant. Products, like Scality, support the ability using multiple rings to do erasure coding that's globally redundant.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate its storage licensing model, as it offers flexibility."
"The solution is very easy to manage."
"We can utilize mixed storage block-sized objects and combine various databases within a unified interface."
"The customer service executives of all Nutanix products are active and responsive."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is easy to use. New employees are able to come up to speed fairly quickly with regard to the day-to-day administration processes."
"The aspect of the product that I like the most is its simplicity."
"The solution is stable and extremely easy to calibrate."
"The integration with Prism Central makes it a lot easier to manage, so we just have a single pane of glass location that we can go to. We do not have a separate admin console or anything that we have to use."
"In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware."
"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product."
"SwiftStack is also quite flexible when it comes to hardware. It depends, of course, on the use case and the kind of hardware you want to buy. But you have quite a bit of choice in hardware. The SwiftStack software itself does not impose anything on you."
"The scalability is phenomenal. It seems infinite, as long as you put enough storage in place, add enough nodes."
"It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."
"The most valuable feature is its versatility. We use 1space and we can use it for almost anything: for our cloud service, for backups of VMs."
"The graphs are most valuable. They have a lot of graphs and reports that you can run to see what's happening in the background to configure OpenStack Swift."
"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."
 

Cons

"When it comes to Nutanix Files, one thing that would be great is a slightly easier way of managing snapshots and restore points, especially when a third party is involved."
"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 interface is not logical. It should be a little simpler."
"The product needs to work a bit more on its ransomware detection capabilities."
"The solution's monitoring and security features could be improved."
"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."
"What's missing in Nutanix Files Storage is the support for multiple intranets or VLANs on the same file from different networks and network devices."
"Allowing the use of the Gflag compromises the integrity of the Nutanix system and its established standards."
"[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key."
"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."
"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS."
"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."
"At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like."
"The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap."
"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."
"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface. There are a lot of options available on the GUI which might be better organized or compartmentalized. There are times when you are going through the user interface and you have to look around for where the setting may be. A little bit more attention to the organization of the user interface would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is fair."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price."
"It is not too high for what we are using."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, making it a solution offering a price range that is in the middle."
"The product has an annual licensing fee."
"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."
"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."
"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."
"We are able to dynamically grow storage at a lower cost. We can repurpose hardware and buy commodity hardware. There is a huge cost savings, on average $100,000 a year compared to traditional storage for what we have at our size."
"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."
"It's pricey for us because we're a nonprofit. I'm not privy to any amount or cost, but I have been told that it is pricey. There are no costs in addition to the licensing fees, and it seems to come with the support."
"COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."
"All in, with hardware and everything else - and I hate to say a dollar amount because it's been awhile since I computed it - I know I'm under the $300 to $500 per terabyte mark. I call that my "all in" price, which has replications built in and protections built in."
"The pricing model is great and makes sense. We have talked about how to get into more of a frequent billing cycle than once a year. That would be an interesting concept to add into the product, having the ability to have monthly billing instead of having to do a one-year licensing renewal. However, the way the license works by charging for storage consumed is definitely what makes them the most competitive."
"We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
30%
Manufacturing Company
6%
University
3%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
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.
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Also Known As

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
No data available
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. SwiftStack [EOL] and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.
801,634 professionals have used our research since 2012.