Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

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.

We are hosting many companies' IT. We provide IT services for our customers.

In terms of its version, I am not a system owner, so I don't know, but I guess we are regularly updating to the latest version.

Its low maintenance is a key feature. It is easy to install, upgrade, and scale by adding more blocks. 

Compute analysis is really easy. It takes hours instead of days.

The self-service side of the product needs to be improved. We should be able to add two-factor authentication and more security layers to it.

We would also like more tiering of the storage if that's possible.

The company has been using it for about two years.

Its stability and performance depend on what kind of hardware you put in the nodes. Its performance is average. It doesn't have high performance on the storage side, but it is good enough for mainstream users.

It is really scalable. It is too easy to scale. We have around three people who use it right now.

We didn't have any issues that we had to escalate to their technical support.

We are using Hyper-V with Storage Spaces Direct. I don't know if it can be called hyper-converged, but it is almost hyper-converged. VMware with vSAN is also hyper-converged, but we're using it without the NSX module, so it is not a software-defined network. It is semi hyper-converged for me. As compared to these two, Nutanix is easier to use and easier to manage. It is more complex to get VMware and Hyper-V up and running than Nutanix.

It was really straightforward. We were up and running in hours. It was really easy.

Its deployment was handled internally.

Its licensing model is easy, but the bad thing is that we need to pay for the whole capacity at once. With VMware vSAN, we only have to pay for the capacity that we are using, which is not the case with Nutanix. So, we have more overhead for the licensing cost with Nutanix.

I would advise talking to Nutanix to get the right hardware from the start and only buying certified hardware. You can use the Nutanix capacity planning information that exists to get the right sizing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

We run our primary data center on Nutanix. We run an on-prem Exchange environment along with multiple application servers. We have about 200 VMs and about 20TB of raw storage on the appliance.

Simplified management: It provides us more time to work on other tasks. We were able to replace two SANs and two blade centers with a single 2U Nutanix appliance.

Simplified storage management. Therefore, we do not have to rely on others to manage storage, which removes wait times in getting tasks done.

Extra features should not be so expensive. We would love to be able to use or even just try some of the extra features without having to buy them. Buying those features is just as expensive as buying vSphere licenses, so the cost savings is nullified.

• Overall performance of the platform
• Scalability
• Ease of implementation
• Management GUI Prism

On storage side, these features are very useful:

• Deduplication
• Compression
• Erasure coding
• Snapshots
• Asynchronous replication.

The One-Click upgrades are awesome and work well.

The standardized system check using NCC (Nutanix Cluster Check) performs over 150 checks to determine potential issues.

AFS and ABS are just great!!

Green datacenter: Significant reduction in time provisioning as well as daily administration and management activities.

Hyper-converged: Storage, compute, and network are all in a single dashboard.

• More 10GB physical ports
• CVM resource requirement/consumption

Four years.

Nutanix Professional Services personnel are awesome. They make deployment seem so easy.

Not yet.

Scalability is very flexible as far as a compute or storage need is concerned.

Customer service personnel are very knowledgeable and work real hard to determine the root cause and provide a permanent solution, not a band aid approach.

A nine out of a possible 10.

I switched from my previous solution to Nutanix, because this is my first hyper-converged solution.

Very straightforward.

We implemented through Nutanix Professional Services.

ROI was seen as soon as we went live with the system. it has lower hardware maintenance costs and less power consumption,

Pricing and licensing are definitely not cheap, but not bad either.

SimpliVity and FlashStack.

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.

The primary use case is for software-defined storage, central storage, virtualization, and hyper-converged infrastructures.

Also, for an on-premises cloud experience.

What I like the most are the high-availability and scalability.

I am comfortable with all of the features.

In the next release, I would like better and more competitive pricing.

I have been using this solution since 2016, almost four years.

We are using the latest version.

It's a stable product.

It's a scalable product.

We have many deployments; one of them has approximately 1000 employees. Some have 30 employees, and others that I have implemented have 500 users.

Technical support is very cooperative, and wonderful in their support.

Previously, I did not use another similar solution.

The initial setup was straightforward and it took a few hours to deploy.

I am an integrator and completed the installation myself.

The licensing costs are a bit expensive but when you compare the features, it's reasonable.

I would recommend this solution to others and I will continue to integrate this solution into the future.

I would rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS solution a nine out of ten.

I won't be able to disclose anything with regards to our client's contractual agreements in terms of what we have done or not, at their premises, or even if it's on the hybrid model. I'm not even allowed to disclose the name of our clients without their prior approval, so I can't really get into primary use cases.

One of the most valuable features is that it can be applied at any scale. 

The value you get for the price is quite good.

It's difficult to discuss what is lacking on the solution. We would have to do a proper analysis because not every client has the same requirements. 

Based on our experience up until now, even the clients, when they are looking for a proper platform, have already identified Nutanix as being the one solution that would be the most relevant to them. We would need to get into a more detailed analysis in terms of what features or benefits the clients are looking for to see if there is something lacking. 

We would need to look at scalability, or reduced latency, and stuff like that. There are so many elements that are implemented for each client. As well, there may be specific areas that the client wanted to be improved. However, from our perspective, we don't see any glaring holes in the product.

The initial setup does need a team with experience with it in order to execute it correctly. It's not easy.

Some clients find the solution's cost to be too high.

I haven't been using the solution for too long. I've only been using it for 18 months, so just over a year or so.

I can't speak to the stability of the solution. I'd have to discuss this aspect with my team. We do provide support and may have some recommendations in relation to that, however, at this moment, I can't really comment.

The scalability of the solution is great. If you are a large company or an enterprise, you should be able to scale it well.

We actually provide technical support to our clients. Our technical team has the training, and we're able to provide guidance and clarification on our end in terms of problems or issue son the solution.

The initial setup is not straightforward. On our team, for example, we had to get to know Nutanix extremely well before we could master it. Only then would we be able to prepare the solution for different clients. If you have knowledge of the solution, the setup will be much easier. Still, it's complex.

I'm not sure how long the average deployment takes.

However, the project may not just include Nutanix. There may be other interventions that have to happen simultaneously. Typically, a project from end to end may take about three months to complete.

Some clients think the solution is quite expensive.

In terms of advice I could give to those considering the solution, I'll say this: it all depends on what they're looking for and what their ultimate objectives are. They need to clarify that internally before landing on Nutanix.  

At the same time, anyone going for hyper-converged should do so, as it's the future. Once a company decides on a solution like Nutanix, they expect to reap the benefits. Even before going with their decision, they need to know what it offers and how it will work to help them achieve their goals.

At the end of the day, it's all about our clients being more effective and efficient in their daily work or with their end clients. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

They're still evolving and we are not yet in a situation where we must interact fully. Some people will definitely come and tell you Nutanix is very, very expensive. However, expensive with regards to what? Or expensive compared to what? It's all about what you get out of it, and what kind of returns you're expecting. This is where Nutanix can make a difference.

Our primary use case of this solution is that it helped me solve all of my use cases. I can create an integrative private cloud in a data center, create a hybrid cloud, public cloud, and near-site data recording. For example, there are lots of sites that do not have the data there so I can create data because Nutanix also has got it stored on the nodes. So it takes care of storage on the nodes. I can build storage on the nodes, compute them, give the clients who already have a small data center within themselves but they do not have it externally. By using storage on the nodes in Nutanix I can give them the external.  

From a performance perspective, I have not had any issue as of now and from a latency and performance position, it has done quite well. Also no issues.

One of the benefits this solution has had for my organization is the space consumption. Space consumption was reduced by approximately 40% because if I had gone with another kind of traditional, or open world solution, then I would have not saved my floor space. Another way it has benefited my organization is because of the energy consumption. Currently, energy consumption has been saved by around 30% to 40%. Plus the number of IOPS has increased,  I'm getting the highest IOPS in Nutanix. I had situations where I got applications that depend on public IP, RAM, and LAN. In both cases, I have some very efficient data that, more or less, in terms of resource requirement, I don't need resources for.

On-demand scaling is the most valuable feature, I can keep on scaling on-demand. Secondly, Nutanix allows me to create my own configuration. I can create my own configuration and I can get all of it as per my configuration. Number three is that in Nutanix if I do three or four nodes if I look at the traditional environment I have to really figure out the wave concept. Connect wave one, wave two, wave six, wave five. In Nutanix I don't have any of these issues. Lastly, deduplication. Deduplication and erasure coding.

As of now, Acropolis and VMware cannot talk to each other. Until we have some kind of interface, it would be much better for Nutanix if they built an interface which can talk. Otherwise, if I have a VMware stack and I already have a Nutanix stack, I can create containers, I create clusters on VMware, I create clusters on Nutanix. All of these clusters cannot talk to each other. Then it has to be then subverted as a parallel execution. What happens then is that I have to work in two different environments within my data center. Practically, they are two different data centers but physically and logically, they are one. If they cannot talk to each other that creates a lot of issues. That is something which Nutanix has to develop. For example, Oracle is using a function called GoldenGate. They have a feature called GoldenGate which allows them to talk to various different environments which must really help.

Nutanix will be there for the long run because if you look at it, Nutanix is not into the hardware business. Nutanix is mainly into the software business. For any business which is running on a hardware business, stability is a little difficult because hardware keeps on changing but since Nutanix is only into the software, and they only sell the hardware, I guess it is on Super Micro. They have greater stability than anyone else because they are purely into the software medium.

Nutanix's scalability is better than anyone else. The only area where Nutanix still lags in terms of scalability is the storage on the nodes. For example, Nutanix has to make its scalability, in terms of storage on the nodes for 100% ACI-based storage on the nodes, as of now it cannot go more than interact in a single bracket. Cannot go more than, up to one petabyte usable storage. If you look at other windows, they can go up to 2 petabytes, 2.5 petabytes and I think Nutanix has to look into that aspect. Many times, whoever buys the Nutanix solution, buys a high compute and storage or they buy only storage with low compute. So only storage with low compute really helps in terms of storing offline databases or storing unstructured databases. For example, when there was a lot of unstructured data coming in into my data center, two different centers, and two different cameras. All of this unstructured data I can store into storage-only nodes. Nutanix cannot go more than to 900 to 800 GB interact when I'm storing on the nodes. Then the customers are forced to look for a solution which can give better storage options than Nutanix. 

Their technical support is really good. They have been very helpful.

We wanted to have a data center of our own. I did a lot of research into Nutanix, spent around 77 hours, and presented a report. In government what happens is that anybody can go and buy a solution but keeping it maintained and sustained for a longer period is extremely challenging in government because people keep on changing because there are a lot of transfers. People keep on switching from one department to another department. They are not technically savvy. These are the two challenges. From a long term sustainability perspective I have to see whether will I be able to manage this entire infrastructure. Third was cost. I distributed my comparative study in three different areas and then sub areas in terms of technology, resources, training, scalability, and all that stuff. Finally, we found Nutanix is the best solution and that's how we went ahead with this solution.

The initial setup was not complex at all. It was very simple. I was monitoring the entire racking, stacking, cabling and all of that stuff. I was there while my team was doing that and we had, every day, two to three meetings while doing that and I learned that it's quite simple but it's not easy. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. If they develop the interoperability then it would make it a ten. 

I would advise someone considering this solution to not look at the market share. Look at the technical aspects in terms of the long term sustainability like licensing issues, easy scalability, hardware infrastructure, and storage compute. It should help in saving your OpEx costs in terms of floor space, energy, power consumption, and energy. Also look at latency IOPS and availability and if you can train your associates easily in the support aspect.