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Hyperconverged specialist with Nutanix & CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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It provides a distributed storage fabric and setup was simple.

What is most valuable?

  • Distributed storage fabric

How has it helped my organization?

We don’t need to be SAN or virtualization experts J

What needs improvement?

  • Manage virtualization layer with Hyper-V

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for three years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is 10/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used DataCore, but scaling it is too difficult.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was too simple. Our datacenter was on in two hours.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing and licensing is so correct compared with other solutions.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have not evaluate other options because for the past three years, Nutanix has been the leader in hyperconverged solutions.

What other advice do I have?

Choose Nutanix for the simplicity and performance ahead of other products.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a reseller of Nutanix products.
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Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod

Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/

I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned and congruent to the organization’s data architecture and business plans.

The announcement of Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant on Integrated Systems (read hyper convergence) has put Nutanix as the leader of the pack as of August 2015. Clearly, many of us get caught up because it is the “greatest feeling in the world”. However, this faux feeling is not reality because there are many factors that made the pack leaders in the Magic Quadrant (MQ).

First of all, the MQ is about market perception. There is no doubt that the pack leaders in the Leaders Quadrant have earned their right to be there. Each company’s revenue, market share, gross margin, company’s profitability have helped put each as leaders in the pack. However, it is also measured by branding, marketing, market perception and acceptance and other intangible factors.

Secondly, VMware EVO: Rail has split the market when EMC has 3 HC solutions in VCE, ScaleIO and EVO: Rail. Cisco wanted to do their own HC piece in Whiptail (between the 2014 MQ and 2015 MQ reports), and closed down Whiptail when their new CEO came on board. NetApp chose EVO: Rail and also has the ever popular FlexPod. That is why you see that in this latest MQ report, NetApp and Cisco are interpreted independently whereas in last year’s report, it was Cisco/NetApp. Market forces changed, and perception changed.

The most glaring gap of the Gartner MQ is, it does not measure how good each technology is against the competitors, and therefore, boxes like Nutanix and Simplivity, and also the motley crew of so-called EVO:Rail partners, are simply betting on how good they pitch to get into the MQ Leaders Quadrant as part of their agenda.

It is not common that a vendor would do a bake-off against a competitor because one might fall flat on his/her face if they lose the bake-off. Recently we witnessed the big shouting match between Nutanix and VMware, each trying to out-boast the other with claims and counter claims of how good their performance was. Here is VMware’s Chuck Hollis’ piece and here is Nutanix’s piece (part 4 anyway). It was hounding the blogosphere with so much *bleep* that it felt like a game of Kabaddi. (Look up the game of Kabaddi).

The dare, double-dare and triple-dare went on for a few weeks between VMware and Nutanix until Storage Review, an online “independent” storage articles and news aggregator, probably got sick of this undignified spat. Storage Review ran the Nutanix’s tests (and blogged about it) and came up with some unexpected results. Nutanix got disillusioned and started to dictate what should be in the performance tests and went through some “innocent” and “hilarious” acts to justify the results. You can read about them here. Page 2 of that article started the “We ask you not to …” comments to Storage Review, which I thought was really funny.

That’s just it. The Hyper Converged vendors spend a lot of the resource and marketing on hypping up performance, and little of everything else. It is true that storage performance is needed for 25-30% of the active data. However, in any organization, we know very well that 70-75% of the data in the entire data lifecycle is non-active, Tier-3 or archived data. Hyper Converged systems and platforms ignore this passive data space. They do not play with inactive data landscape because the $/GB or $/TB is too expensive.

Furthermore, if we look at the entire HC thingy more close, it is just Software-Defined because it is just a wonderful piece of proprietary software running on an ODM (original design manufacturer) x86 platform. EMC VSPEX is rumoured to be running on the Quanta systems and Nutanix on Supermicro. Why do we need to pay a premium price for a piece of whitebox hardware?

We must overcome the hype and read beyond the messages that vendors, partners who tend to oversell their technology. We must look at what is required in our business, in our operations and look at our data requirements. I constantly share that we must look at our data landscape and use the 7 points that I always use to consider a technology – Availability, Performance, Protection, Accessibility, Management, Security and Compliance. Is the HC technology and the solution relevant to your organization’s business?

So, if you want to Hyper Converged, please Hyper Converge responsibly. Your data landscape architecture will thank you for it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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it_user307227 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user307227Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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Brian - I think your analogy of buying a car is perfect..... for the average driver. I run all season tires on 2 of my 3 vehicles - they perform *adequately* in *most* conditions. However, when I want to drive in harsh conditions, or at a higher performance level, I equip my car with tires that are designed for the conditions. Thus while I happily drive in the blizzard, I pass the GLKs, the Jeeps, etc., because my winter tires are designed for the cold and the snow, while they are sitting in the ditch spinning with their OEM tires.

I'd like to thank you for pointing out that Nutanix is geared to the "get in and drive" consumer, rather than those who know and understand their processing needs. For those of us who still need a higher performing system, we will continue to assess, design, and implement systems that meet and exceed those needs.

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it_user234747 - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Manager - Cloud, Automation & DevOps at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
I like the linear scaling of performance.

Originally posted at vcdx133.com.

This post provides a Tech101 breakdown of the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform. If you have heard the buzz-words “Nutanix”, “Web-Scale” and “Hyper-Convergence” and want to learn more about it, this post is for you.

The Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform (VCP) is a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure solution. Termed the “iPhone” of infrastructure, what is the big deal?

Short answer: Ease of use, fast deployment, linear scaling of performance with capacity and richness of product features.

Why should you care? If you live in the world of monolithic and vertically scaled storage, you may have experienced the initial, massive cost of purchasing your storage solution with a 5 year ROI. Then comes the honey-moon period where you experience amazing performance as workloads are moved to the new array. Well before the 5 year ROI mark, you will probably experience performance degradation as the capacity of the array is consumed. Which then initiates discussions with your storage vendor about how you need to spend another boatload of money adding additional controllers, SSDs and disks to the array.

Furthermore, think about how long it takes for the storage team, the server team and the network team to agree on a particular design for a project and the time it takes to order, deliver, install, configure and test that solution. Have you ever asked yourself, “There must be an easier way to do this?”

Enter Hyper-Convergence, where you can now buy individual blocks of infrastructure at an entry price and quickly scale-out your solution (performance and capacity) one unit at a time as you grow.

What is it? Nutanix has taken the “Web-Scale” infrastructure model of Google and Facebook and made it available to the Enterprise. You buy a Nutanix Block (rack mounted chassis) that contains Nutanix Nodes (hosts), storage, power and cooling. This creates a Nutanix Cluster (Software-Defined Storage), which are comprised of Controller Virtual Machines (CVM).

How does it work? The Controller Virtual Machines connect directly to the physical SCSI Controllers on each node (Pass-Through mode) and the CVMs are configured to create a “Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) Cluster” (storage pool) via the 10GbE network. All of the pooled storage is classified as local or remote from the point of view of each CVM and VM data is protected based upon a Replication Factor (RF) policy of two or three, which replaces the concept of RAID. RF-2 means a local and remote copy is maintained and RF-3, a local and two remote copies of said data.

Where is the magic? Since each node has its own Controller VM, SSDs and HDDs, NDFS can provide linear scaling of capacity and performance for locally stored data. When a CVM goes down, a remote CVM will takeover serving data I/O to the local hypervisor. When the local CVM comes online, it resumes service. This fundamental concept is what allows Nutanix to provide a “rolling upgrade” of the Nutanix Operating System (NOS). What is the caveat? During periods of CVM failure, local workloads that access remotely stored data will experience degraded performance until the local CVM is restored.

The major components of the Nutanix VCP solution are:

  • Nutanix Node – a single host with CPU, RAM, SCSI Controller and Network that resides in a Nutanix Block
  • Nutanix Block – rack mounted chassis that contains nodes, storage, power and fans
  • Prism – User Interface and APIs
  • Prism Central – aggregator of separate Prism Clusters to a single UI
  • Cluster Virtual Machine – Software-Defined Storage that supports NFS, iSCSI or SMB3
  • CVM operating system is known as “NOS” – Nutanix Operating System
  • CVM file system is known as “NDFS” – Nutanix Distributed File System
  • Hypervisor – VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM supported
  • OEM Hardware – Supermicro and Dell with PCIe SSD and HDD
  • Licencing – Starter, Pro & Ultimate

It comes in a number of OEM Hardware flavours (Dell and Supermicro) with the following uses:

  • ROBO, Test & Development – NX-1000, Dell XC 720xd A5
  • EUC/VDI – NX-3000, NX-7000 (GPU & PCoIP Offload), Dell XC 720xd B5/B7
  • Compute Intensive – NX-3000, Dell XC 720xd B7
  • Data Intensive – NX-8000, Dell XC 720xd C5/C7
  • Business Critical & Mission Critical Apps – NX-9000 (All Flash)

The major features of the Nutanix Operating System (current version NOS 4.1):

  • One-Click Upgrades of NOS and Hypervisor (rolling upgrade)
  • Data Protection Cloud Connect (to AWS)
  • Data At Rest Encryption
  • Metro Availability (<5ms RTT)
  • Deduplication
  • Compression
  • Data Tiering
  • Snapshots and Clones
  • Advanced Data Protection

Alternatives

  • Server-Side Flash-Cache Acceleration – VMware vFRC, PernixData FVP, EMC XtremSF/XtremCache, etc.
  • Converged Infrastructure Solutions – NetApp FlexPod, VCE vBlock, HP ConvergedSystem, Dell, etc.
  • Other Hyper-Converged solutions – VMware EVO:Rail, Maxta, SimpliVity OmniCube, Scale Computing, Pivot3, etc.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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OE
Enterprise Solutions Executive (AWS Certified Solutions Architect) at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
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Simple to manage, excellent support, and highly reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis AOS are ease of management, hyper-convergence platform, and it has robust operations."
  • "There are other services that Nutanix has that could be improved, but I'm not very familiar with the other services of Nutanix, such as Era and Flow. However, they seem a bit hard for us to implement and integrate with the Nutanix Acropolis AOS and other Nutanix tools. We would not dare to implement those other Nutanix solutions into Nutanix Acropolis AOS right now. The implementation of that tool could be the problem, I am a bit hesitant to implement the other tools into Nutanix Acropolis AOS."

What is our primary use case?

We are a cloud provider and we are giving cloud services via Nutanix Acropolis AOS, such as core virtual services. This is why we implemented Nutanix Acropolis AOS into our data center.

How has it helped my organization?

Nutanix Acropolis AOS has improved our organization because of the ease of management. We don't have to deal with any other solutions besides Nutanix Acropolis AOS. If it was a three-tiered architecture, we would have to struggle with the HBA cards from the upgrade, storage area, networks, switches, and other hardware. We only need to deal with the physical servers and the Nutanix on top of it. This is why it's very easy to manage, and that is saving us a lot of time for our technical operations.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis AOS are ease of management, hyper-convergence platform, and it has robust operations.

What needs improvement?

There are other services that Nutanix has that could be improved, but I'm not very familiar with the other services of Nutanix, such as Era and Flow. However, they seem a bit hard for us to implement and integrate with the Nutanix Acropolis AOS and other Nutanix tools. We would not dare to implement those other Nutanix solutions into Nutanix Acropolis AOS right now. The implementation of that tool could be the problem, I am a bit hesitant to implement the other tools into Nutanix Acropolis AOS.

Nutanix could integrate all of its solutions into one package to allow one implementation, such as Nutanix Acropolis AOS and the other related ecosystem solutions. You should be able to integrate them all in one step. The current method is to first install Nutanix Acropolis AOS then you need to install Prism, Era, and Flow. I would like to see a setup that implements all of those Nutanix tools at once.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is very high. We have only had one or two problems in our cluster over the past two years. The problems that we did have were solved very quickly by Nutanix and by our technical service engineers together. I would say that it's robust and problem-free.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In our cluster, we have more than 50 servers and as the cluster gets larger, there are some stability issues sometimes, but they are not critical. They can improve on the scalability because when one or two servers are down in our cluster, Nutanix Acropolis AOS struggles to balance the load to the other server clusters and it can take some time. In the time it is attempting to balance the clusters some of our customers are affected by the delay problem. It is not critical, but it could be made better to avoid this in the future.

We have approximately 16 people that are using this solution in my company on a daily basis.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very good, they solved some problems we had and they worked with our team well.

The team from Nutanix focuses on the problem and they don't let us go before the problem has been solved. They are very interested in problematic cases and their resolutions.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used VMware and Hyper-V. We have different customers using these other solutions.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is straightforward. The whole process took no more than one day.

We have added a couple of servers each month onto our platform and it's very straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We have a department in my company that handles the implementation and maintenance of Nutanix Acropolis AOS. We have 15 technicians but we only have two that handle this solution.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment because it's a robust platform. We do not have to deal with Nutanix Acropolis AOS related problems every day or from time to time. It gives a return on investment within a year or two.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

When we purchase a new physical server or a couple of physical servers into our cluster, we always purchase it with Nutanix licensing. We are receiving the license from Nutanix directly and not from the vendor. In the way we're dealing, with the licenses it is a bit costly for us but as the company is getting larger, day by day or year by year, those licensing costs become lower each time for us. We are purchasing the licenses for three years for some of our clusters and for some others for five-year licenses and the licenses are still costly. We have good discounts for the licenses, but it is still expensive.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to those wanting to implement Nutanix Acropolis AOS is to know the solution well before they do the implementation. They will have to receive some training about Nutanix Acropolis AOS. It's not easy to implement, but once you get used to it, it is very easy to do the implementation in the later phases. I would recommend people to get the training it is important.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Civil Engineer at gieco
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Data service tool used effectively for SAP S/4HANA

What is our primary use case?

We mainly use SAP S/4HANA as well as the domain controller and file servers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a very stable solution. 

How are customer service and support?

The support for this solution is really good. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward and we completed it with a Nutanix partner. The installation took four hours.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The standard version of this solution is free but we are using a paid version which is billed annually. Previously with another soltion, we needed to purchase SAN storage to accommodate the storage needs which was expensive. With Nutanix, we saved a lot of money due to that new technology.

 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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JN
Sr. Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems, Ltd.
Real User
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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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it_user1066050 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Pre-Sales Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
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Scalability is perfect and configuration is easy and flexible
Pros and Cons
  • "The configuration is easy, and it's flexible."
  • "In terms of the IT different categories, I would like for the governing sections to be able to use it in the IT department. If they can have something like a one view management portal or software similar to VMware that would be an added value."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use the solution for virtualization.

How has it helped my organization?

Now that we have virtualization, with its simple configuration and installation, I can run the different platforms on it.

What is most valuable?

The configuration is easy and it's flexible.

What needs improvement?

In terms of the IT different categories, I would like for the governing sections to be able to use it in the IT department. If they can have something like a one view management portal or software similar to VMware that would be an added value.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is about 70% stable. I haven't had any major problems with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is perfect.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate technical support a 7 out of 10. They're fine. There aren't many resources for that here in Saudi Arabia. We need more resources.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used VMware and we switched to Nutanix because sometimes it's cheaper for the environment, the company, and also for the customer.

How was the initial setup?

I'd say the initial setup falls somewhere in the middle. It's not that complex, but it's not easier than the others, for example. Deployment took a couple of hours.

What about the implementation team?

We have our own consultants that helped with the implementation.

What other advice do I have?

It's easy for your IT department, manager, or director. The simplicity of it is good. I would rate this solution at 8.5 out of 10. I would rate it a 10 if support was increased in Saudi Arabia and the pricing was more competitive.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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it_user692262 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ingegnere it senior at a tech services company
Consultant
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​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.
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April 2025
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