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.
Co Founder & Chief Operating Officer Executive at S2 Consulting Services
Leader in its technology with no limit to the scalability
Pros and Cons
- "Most beneficial feature is simplicity, ease of use."
- "Compatible with third party hardware, but it's still very limited."
What is most valuable?
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have had a partnership with Nutanix for one year.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
Buyer's Guide
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
We deploy the solution to the customer, and we provide support after deployment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Doubles the number of servers that we manage without having to increase the number of IT personnel managing them
Pros and Cons
- "The management interface of this solution is great."
- "I would have liked it if Nutanix were a hardware as well as a software platform."
What is our primary use case?
We use Nutanix on a daily basis and mainly for virtual server utilization and some VDI.
How has it helped my organization?
Nutanix Acropolis allows us to manage our company with a smaller team of IT technicians. It doubles the number of servers that we manage without having to increase the number of IT personnel managing it. It allows us to build more with less. This would be a great example of why we use Nutanix.
Also, every time we have a new stack or when we need to expand the cluster, it is no hassle. It takes less than five minutes. When we have to upgrade, everything runs automatically, so my team can basically just start an upgrade, go and have a coffee, and three hours later come back to see that everything is finished and upgraded automatically.
We use Nutanix hardware, so we have a single vendor and a single stack for everything, which makes the life cycle management very simple and very forward.
What is most valuable?
The management interface of this solution is great. We really enjoy not being locked into VMware as the app adviser vendor. The latest version of Acropolis has a very handy micro-segmentation feature, which we use very often. Overall, I think the most significant upside is the great support provided by Nutanix.
What needs improvement?
I believe the only things that may need to improve is that the Nutanix Controller VM consumes quite a lot of resources. If that could be reduced, it would be great. Secondly, I would have liked it if Nutanix were a hardware as well as a software platform. I think they are currently progressing into a software only path. I think that, in the near future, their own hardware will be discontinued. I can understand why they're doing it, but I would have preferred them to continue being a one-stop shop for hardware and software alike.
However, so far, for our company, the wish list is completely covered.
For how long have I used the solution?
I am the CEO at a tech services company and we've been using this solution for three years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Nutanix Acropolis is super stable.
We currently have about 900 clusters/users using this program, with only four admins running this environment on a part-time basis. I would say that each Nutanix cluster does not require more than three to four hours of maintenance per month. We plan to increase our usage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I was absolutely amazed by the linear growth and scalability of this solution and it is the best I've ever seen. Every time we need to grow, we simply add another node and in less than two hours, the storage volume gets increased.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is great and that is why we have chosen Nutanix. We have actually chosen Nutanix because of their very high J.D. score, and it's proven to be exactly that: the best support I've ever seen.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have not used any other solutions before. We have tested many other vendors, such as SimpliVity, but we haven't used anything before.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was amazingly fast and very straightforward. The deployment didn't take long because we are currently running four different clusters. Less than a day after the box containing the program was delivered to our offices, the first cluster was up and running.
What about the implementation team?
Our company provide integration services for Nutanix, so we do our own installation, setup, and deployment.
What other advice do I have?
My first advice to others considering using this solution would be to always use the support because they are great. The second advice would be to read the Nutanix Bible, which is quite good. It's an online resource allowing you to understand what Nutanix is all about. The third thing is to always follow the best practices that Nutanix provides. If you follow the correct practices, you are on the fast track.
I rate this a nine and a half out of ten because nothing is ever perfect. But Nutanix comes very close.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IT Infrastructure Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
We increased performance on our software platforms and databases drastically
What is our primary use case?
System stability and performance to ensure a 24/7 operation with fantastic pro-active support. The 1 to many solution will fulfil your DR requirements.
How has it helped my organization?
We increased stability and availability to 99.999%, and increased performance on our software platforms and databases drastically.
What is most valuable?
- Availability
- Scalability
- Performance
- Redundancy
- Excellent Monitoring and Admin Portal
What needs improvement?
There is a hard coded IP in the 192.168.5.x range which comes with Nutanix. This needs to be a variable, not hard coded, as this may clash with customers current IP range.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
A nine out of 10.
Technical Support:
A 10 out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Xen.
How was the initial setup?
It was complex, as we needed to move from a Xen environment to Acropolis. The migration process was not easy.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented through an in-house team and a vendor team. The vendor's expertise was a two out of 10.
What was our ROI?
This is still to be determined.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Even though Nutanix is expensive, it is well worth it!
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Yes, we did look at your traditional hyper-converged solutions.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Ingegnere it senior at a tech services company
The solution's performances and high density was most valuable.
What is most valuable?
The solution's performance and high density are most valuable.
How has it helped my organization?
It was a PoC, so we did not test it in a production system. Rather, we prepared a near identical environment and compared its performance to the customer's old SAN solution (NetApp Fas 3220 with full magnetic disks). This comparison showed us how far this technology went: same storage of the half rack old system and many times faster in response.
What needs improvement?
The hybrid solution we tested showed a big performance reduction after intensive work on the system, due to the caching mechanism that fills the SSDs (typical of low level Hyperconverged appliances).
For how long have I used the solution?
We used this solution for three months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We did not encounter any issues with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not had the opportunity to test its scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
We did not test the technical support in a real situation, but only to ask some configuration questions without an SLA.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
That was the first Hyperconverged system we tested, so we did not switch to this solution from a different solution.
How was the initial setup?
Setup was simple, but we did not prepared the appliance (it was configured by our partner).
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing is good if you choose to use the proprietary OS (which is free).
Pricing is good if your enviroment can take advantage of the Hyperconvergence paradigm.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other solutions.
What other advice do I have?
Hyperconvergence gives a faster implementation than the "standard" solutions, and a high density architecture.
Others should see if their requirements can be fulfilled by this technology. I think it is good in enviroments like business intelligence (data mining and big data analytics).
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Admin at Felda Prodata Systems Sdn Bhd
You can ask for a loaner unit to verify performance and match it to your requirements.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are Prism and Acropolis, as they simplified our jobs and give us the opportunity to lower operational costs without reducing the current day-to-day operation performance.
We are using VMware 3-TIER architecture since 2006. Up until this day we’re still using the architecture until we could not expand the cluster anymore. Thus, we need to find a way to migrate our VM servers before it’s too late. The architecture using old traditional SANS storage and AMD processors platform. We’re stuck with VMware version 5.1 and can’t be upgrade to latest version due to the hardware limitation. Maintaining this architecture is not cheap also, as we need to pay annual maintenance to hardware vendors and VMware. It keeps increasing every year.
Our customers demand more processing power and more storage, and then we came across Nutanix, which could solve all burden that we have.
1. We hosting a lot of SAP wintel apps, and this kind of apps is storage and processor hungry. We keep facing downtime when we hosting the VM servers on our old architecture. When we decide to migrate the VM servers to Nutanix , we no longer facing the issue and no more complaint from our customers.
2. The maintenance contract is lower compared to annual maintenance/support contract that we must pay to VMware and hardware vendors. We will get the ROI back in short time if we move to Nutanix.
3. Can be manage through one single console (PRISM) oppose to SAN switches , SAN , VMware , Hardware consoles on old architecture.
4. We experienced a nightmare in term of support on old architecture, where we need to gather VMware engineer and Hardware vendor to solve an issue, and it takes a long time to solve. Nutanix assure us that they can solve Hypervisor and hardware issues within a single call log.
5. Nutanix offer features like data deduplication on its storage, which are not available on our old SANS storage.
6. We hosted our DC on 3rd party DC (leasing based on square feet), we can decom a lot of old servers (which can fill up the space and increase the rental) when we moved to Nutanix. 3 racks of old servers with SAN storage can be consolidate to one rack (still have a lot of spaces to put Nutanix boxes).
How has it helped my organization?
As opposed to before, the Nutanix platform allows us to pay as we grow instead starting with a large scale. Management seems to like this idea, as it will save us from overspending the budget. We can improve IT utilization and reduce costs by consolidating application infrastructure.
What needs improvement?
We're thinking about hosting SAP HANA on the Nutanix platform, but we are still unsure about the path as SAP still has not certified Nutanix to host SAP HANA yet. Nutanix should make SAP a close partner and certify their product with SAP so that the consumer has a choice to migrate their existing platform to Nutanix platform.
As far as I'm concerned, and we already ran the test on an actual Nutanix box, Nutanix can host the HANA without issue. However, without certification from SAP, it looks like we don’t have a guarantee from SAP itself. That will cause us to question whether we should go with the Nutanix platform.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for about five months, and we just got approval from our management to expand the cluster and buy additional hardware from Nutanix.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far, the operation has gone smoothly without any big issues, although there was a small bug when we tried the one-click update to upgrade all nodes’ firmware. Some nodes did not finish the update. We are resolving it with Nutanix support, so it's fine. It did not impact system uptime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not encountered any scalability issues at all. We can easily scale this platform as we need.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is 9/10; only one call to local support and then if it hasn’t been resolved, a Nutanix engineer will help to resolve either hardware or hypervisor issues. It gives us really good assurance and we can sleep peacefully at night.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we used three-tier architecture, which has lots of points for failure and a lot of consoles need to be attended. It's so tiring and most of the time, we are firefighting to make sure the operation can continue as business as usual. It required a lot of skills and a large sum of money to maintain and to scale, which were painful for us.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward. It takes only one day or less to build up the cluster and provision the virtual machines.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is good for us and just what we are looking for. We can cut off the VMware license and maintenance support, and migrate to Acropolis instead.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated SimpliVity and HPE solutions. Both failed us in term of economical cost and did not offer features that Nutanix has.
What other advice do I have?
You have an option to start small instead of going big at first, which will capitalize your budget. You can ask for a loaner unit from Nutanix to play with; to check and verify their performance and match it to your requirements.
Nutanix treats us well. We can say we are happy with the Nutanix offering.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Stable solution with the best virtual desktop infrastructure, but wee would like to see improvements in regards to deduplication and integrations.
Pros and Cons
- "Nutanix has the best virtual desktop infrastructure."
- "I believe that improvements could be made in regards to the DR in addition to deduplication and integration with others platforms. They also do not offer opportunities for network virtualization so it would be nice to see that in the future."
What is our primary use case?
We provide server consultations and help customers reduce their footprint and begin their FTDC journeys with this solution.
What is most valuable?
Nutanix has the best virtual desktop infrastructure.
What needs improvement?
I believe that improvements could be made in regards to the DR in addition to deduplication and integration with others platforms. They also do not offer opportunities for network virtualization so it would be nice to see that in the future.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Nutanix for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I think this solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability opportunities are great with this solution.
How are customer service and support?
I have not yet required technical support.
How was the initial setup?
I do not have experience with the installation process with Nutanix, but I believe that it would be pretty easy - similar to VMware or SimpliVity.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Nutanix price is high because it bundles all the components into single deals rather than allowing you to select the features that you want/will use.
What other advice do I have?
I live in Sri Lanka, which is a developing country, so the cost is especially high for us.
I would rate this a five out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Lead Engineer at IBS Platformix
It features high performance and availability
Pros and Cons
- "Acropolis' main advantages are high performance and availability."
- "I would like to see Acropolis add the ability to migrate VMs between storage containers. I don't know if they've added this in the latest versions, but I haven't seen it yet. It's mainly about AHV. When we use VMware, we can move between storage containers. In VMware, it's just like regular storage, and we can move it."
What is most valuable?
Acropolis' main advantages are high performance and availability.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see Acropolis add the ability to migrate VMs between storage containers. I don't know if they've added this in the latest versions, but I haven't seen it yet. It's mainly about AHV. When we use VMware, we can move between storage containers. In VMware, it's just like regular storage, and we can move it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Acropolis for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I haven't seen any stability issues.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Acropolis is straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
SonicWall is more expensive than some competing solutions like VxRail and vSAN. That's its main disadvantage
What other advice do I have?
I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS 10 out of 10. I think it's a perfect solution. I can't think of any improvements that could be implemented or disadvantages. My advice is to buy Acropolis, not vSan.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Sr. Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems, Ltd.
Easy to use, simple to manage, and very scalable
Pros and Cons
- "The product is easy to manage."
- "I'm not very technical, so I don't know if there are any features that are really lacking. Our customers seem pleased with it, and I haven't heard of any downsides."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use this solution to deploy to clients. We suggest the best solution for their requirements, which is often Nutanix, and we implement it for them. Each client has different requirements, so each user's primary use might be slightly different.
What is most valuable?
The solution brings a lot of convenience and ease of use for the customer.
The product is easy to manage.
It has easy scalability, which is one of its great advantages. A customer will often look for this feature.
The solution is highly compatible with other platforms.
What needs improvement?
I'm not very technical, so I don't know if there are any features that are really lacking. Our customers seem pleased with it, and I haven't heard of any downsides.
For how long have I used the solution?
I'm not really using the solution. I am a reseller and I sell it to clients who are actually the end-users.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. There aren't bugs or glitches and it doesn't freeze or crash on us. It's reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is very, very good. It's one of the selling points. If a company needs to scale the solution, they can do so easily.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is very good. We don't have any complaints about how they interact with us or our clients.
What about the implementation team?
We have some integrators on our team. We implement the solution for our clients as resellers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm not sure what the pricing on the solution is.
What other advice do I have?
We're a Nutanix reseller.
We would recommend this solution to others. We tend to recommend it often to our clients.
All of our customers rate this solution very high, so I would rate it overall at an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
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Learn More: Questions:
- I am looking to compare Nutanix and VMware vSAN. Which one is better in terms of functionality and management?
- What unique aspects of HCI does Nutanix provide that other HCI solutions do not?
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Hey, great review fellow nutanix user. The controller VM (CVM) has lots of ressources but this is how it works. Every storage request goes through a CVM with cache, deduplication, replication and what not (depends on your feature selection). Reducing the ressources would definitely hamper the solution.
Proper sizing is therefore a must!