Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

The features that are most valuable to our company would be the ease of use and configuration. The Nutanix software automatically balances and vMotions the VMs to other nodes on the cluster as resources are needed. The Nutanix Cassandra intelligently moves around the metadata as needed. it’s practically a set it and leave it product.

Our whole infrastructure is maintained by two people. This is how simple it is to use Nutanix. Hyperconverged is the way of the future.

One thing I would like to eventually see from Nutanix is the ability to install the Nutanix OS on any hardware, making it hardware agnostic instead of depending on their expensive servers. NOS is what makes the whole Nutanix cluster work so well.

Our company has been using Nutanix for a little over two years. We decided to implement the Nutanix solution when we decided to virtualize our entire infrastructure.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Scalability is well thought out as well; you can scale out in every direction.

Nutanix support is second to none, their technical support is very knowledgable as well. Though you do pay a pretty penny for it.

Deployment is simple and does not take much time. As long as your network infrasturuture is set up correctly, creating new LUN containers is just two steps. Adding another block only takes a few clicks as well.

We had a vendor do the initial configuraiton and implementation for us. Everything was very straigthforward. The only thing is if you want to add another block (either because you need more space or more computing power), make sure to downgrade/upgrade your NOS software to the same as your current software, or it will not work.

This was the only hyperconverged solution we considered, simply because they were the most mature solution that we felt was right for our environment.

Everything here is virtual. We have virtual desktops, virtual servers, and two Nutanix clusters. We also use Nutanix files, so we don't have any Windows files here anymore.

The interface is very good. Before we used this solution, we had separate storage and switches, but with the hyper convert, it's all in one. I'm very happy with Nutanix.

The price could be lower.

I have been using Nutanix for eight years.

The solution is very stable.

It's very easy to add additional hosts, so scaling out is very easy with Nutanix.

Customer service and support is very good. We don't need it that much because usually everything works fine, but if there is something, they react very quickly. We also have post enabled, which means that if there is a hardware issue or some other issue, there is a case automatically created and they contact us.

The solution is quite expensive.

I would give this solution 10 out of 10.

I would use Nutanix, especially if you have a virtual desktop infrastructure and you want good, stable performance. Before using this solution, we had performance issues with our virtual desktop environment and now our virtual desktops work very well, as if we were working on laptops or desktops.

I'm an IT manager

The product provides a complete and wonderful package. The best feature is the level of user-friendliness the solution offers, it's a class apart.

I'd like to see an improvement in the notifications because it's not very useful as it is now and it's quite difficult to find out what the problem is when something goes wrong.

I've been using the solution for three years. 

This solution is highly scalable. 

The customer support is very good. 

The initial setup was straightforward. We have over 100 users and their roles are in sales, operations, supply chain and production.

We haven't yet had a return on our investment, we're expecting that sometime this year.

Licensing is on an annual basis. 

I would definitely advise all my peers and anyone working in the same field to at least have a look at this product. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for our clients. 

The solution has a strong foundation.

The support of the infrastructure is very good.

It offers very useful data protection. It's one of the best features. 

We've had very few problems converting this solution with the iOS or virtual iOS. 

The stability is pretty good.

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

When we tried to upgrade the LCM, we had issues around the process. When we refreshed the CVM of VM and restart the upgrade, the CVM would not start again. We needed to see the logs to see if we could figure out what happened and if there was something we could do.

We'd like to see a bit more integration with certain products, for example, Qlik, among others. 

I've been using this solution for five years now. 

I like the level of stability we get. It's a good product in that sense. 

In some cases, the setup could be more simple. However, it's important to view the network process surrounding the customers as this is the first problem we face when we try to implement for the first time. Once you've gotten past the initial process, the other processes are simpler. 

We have two to four people that can implement the solution.

While all versions start as on-premises, and we mostly use on=premises, we do have one deployment on the cloud.

I'd advise potential new users to get a little bit of training before starting.

I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been very good so far in terms of the level of capabilities on offer.

I advise my customers to have a unique management operation center for the three layers. The primary reason is to convert the storage, computation, and hypervisor into one frame. Of course, you have to replicate the data between all the nodes to have redundancy, so you have two or three nodes in case of failure, depending on the resilience you want. I advise my customers to use this kind of technology when they want to focus on their business and don't want to talk about the layers of the subsequent infrastructure that is matched to their business.

The technology has a lot of room for improvement. For example, when they want to segment applications in conjunction with NSX, which VMware uses, Acropolis is not compatible with the competitors. The integration in the security layer is not compatible with NSX for the application segmentation that uses VMware. And the licensing has a lot of room for improvement also.

I've been using Acropolis AOS for about four years.

Acropolis AOS is stable.

This solution works in small companies with 10 users and large enterprises with 100,000. Acropolis can scale vertically and horizontally by adding more CPUs or nodes. It's quite easy to scale, and you have the option to have distributed nodes everywhere around the world that work as one. You can also have a solution for small branch offices with only two nodes for redundancy, and that's good enough to start. You could even deploy it on a ship or a car or whatever unit.

It's quite technical, so IT departments are the main driver of expanding usage. However, it's an easy sell to decision-makers because it tries to abstract the technical things to the business. When a managing director of a company knows about the benefits of this kind of solution, they give the green light and focus their IT department on the technical business requirements, solutions, and innovations layers, instead of managing the technical layers, like network, storage, and computations. 

We have a contract with Nutanix for 24/7 support, and it's excellent. They contact the customers directly when there is a failure or they need to replace a disk. You only take action when you need to evolve the platform, like installing a new model or a patch because you need preventive action. If we need to patch to the latest firmware of the solution, then they call us. However, that's something that is scheduled well ahead of time. For example, we schedule with the customer to install the latest firmware every six months.

I don't have a lot of hands-on experience with Acropolis because I'm a sales executive, but I can say Nutanix solutions are easy to deploy. The only hang-up is compatibility with other solutions like OM, Lenovo, HP, Supermicro, etc., because sometimes the drivers change.

For example, sometimes you could have a different release of the driver that isn't compatible with the latest release of the software, so you need to match the release with the nodes that support the Nutanix software. You could also have problems with the support and matching all the nodes to the software release that makes the work correctly. I've had a lot of problems with customers trying to match the software with the hardware layer. You have to choose the right vendor for the hardware to avoid problems. Otherwise, the setup is straightforward. 

However, you always need someone with technical expertise. We usually handle the deployment ourselves, but we occasionally ask for support when we have to deploy an uncommon configuration, like Oracle. For example, Acropolis has different ways to support Oracle databases, so we sometimes need Nutanix support to configure the Oracle rack.

We only need a small team of around 10 people to deploy and maintain because 

Return on investment happens when the customer realizes relative value. For example, if the customer is comparing cloud computing to an on-premise server, on-premise Nutanix is always going to be more expensive compared to AWS or Azure if you use it in a typical way. You have to consider the hours that the technicians spend maintaining the solution. Also, if the technicians are spending less time, they could start doing things that create more value for the company.

It's not easy to see a return on investment for this kind of solution, but you need to solve this problem at a higher level of management because the IT department is not involved in innovation at the company, so they might feel the solution is doing the job for them.

Also, they might have a personal stake in keeping the solution because they could see a risk to their livelihood if the company decides to switch to the cloud. It's something to sell to the upper management because even the CIO might not see it because they think their position is at risk. These solutions are like a robot that makes everything by themselves. The return on investment is a reduction in the time spent managing the infrastructure, and you could start seeing that time savings in six months to a year.

Many of my customers have issues with Acropolis' licensing model because they are charging the customers based on two things— the CPUs and the capacity in the solid stack disk — and that's a problem. Nutanix's competitors are not licensing that layer, so this is something that they should change. They should abandon this licensing model because it's too complex. Technical support is bundled with the subscription.

I rate Acropolis AOS seven out of 10. 

The most valuable feature is Move, which allows you to migrate virtual machines from VM to AHV.

I've been using this solution for three years.

The stability of this solution is good.

I have no issues with the scalability of this solution.

The technical support is very good.

The initial setup was a little difficult - I used Foundation VM to image the nodes, and it was difficult to use this feature.

Licensing is available on a monthly basis with no additional fees.

I would rate this solution as ten out of ten.

The Cloud version of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is not available in Estonia. We used it for a simple bookkeeping system.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS has improved my organization because it has a fast delivery speed.

The solution is well integrated with other vendors.

The process of migrating from old hardware to new could improve.

I have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for approximately six years.

The solution is stable. On the customer's side, it was perfect, it was running very smooth without any issues.

The solution is being used in a large company and there are approximately 1,000 users using this solution.

I have had some interactions with the technical support from India remotely, and they were quite good and understood what they are doing. It is online support and it was good.

We have used other hyper-converged systems previously but there were some technical issues and the vendor did not take care of the solution well.

The initial setup was not complex. We built it for a five-year period and we will need to replace it with something similar when it is ten years old. It takes approximately one day to implement the solution and then you can use it.

We have one person from the seller side and a second person from the customer side for the deployment and maintenance of the solution. It's covered by Nutanix support too.

The price of the solution is expensive. However, the price to performance is good. The cost for development and installation is very low.

It is very good to have an on-premise cloud system, it works well.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a ten out of ten.

One of the most beneficial features that a customer would get from this solution is simplicity and ease of use. Another major benefit is the simplified licensing, where you can buy based on your needs. The third benefit is definitely since it's a leader in its technology, people have the comfort of depending on that technology for their critical business models.

There are a few improvements needed to make the solution better. There are some limitations on the hard add side when you are planning to add more memory or CPU on a running machine already removing something. That's something that is still lax. 

The second thing is compatibility. Nutanix is compatible with third-party hardware, but it's still very limited, and it's not very flexible on that side. Give people the ability to reuse whatever investment they have down the hardware. The other HCI providers are a bit flexible on that side, so that's a negative side of Nutanix right now.

We have had a partnership with Nutanix for one year.

There is no limit to the scalability of the solution. With Nutanix, when it comes to expanding or scaling up your requirements, be it horizontally scaling up, or even if you have more services, maybe vertical scale-up, it's very, very simple.

The solution takes a few hours to deploy, and we finish it in a three node cluster, within four to five hours. That's maximum.

We deploy the solution to the customer, and we provide support after deployment.

In terms of the solution's licensing, it's quite comprehensive. You have a combination of picking and choosing what exactly you're looking at. Customers can reduce their costs and buy the licensing based on their needs, rather than just buying everything together.

It's about quality as well as commercially. The solution is not cheap. Compared to its competitive market, it is at a higher stake.

The solution is a high-end product. Depending on what you are using it for, it can be very simple. However, if you have a complex environment, you may need to subscribe to a consulting service.

Nutanix gives you good comfort to not only create a private cloud but also gives you the ability to manage the public cloud instances from a single console. Simplicity is very, very important, and I think Nutanix gives you that comfort when you do the right sizing and implementation.

It feels like plug and play like you're adding a mouse or a USB to a laptop. It's that simple.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.