I would like to see improvements in monitoring parameters, RTO, and access control. Currently, memory utilization does not show as per the actual. This is in pipeline for the next release. The current RPO for DC-DR is high due to the limitation of the replication strategy which will be fixed by next quarter.
We have used this solution for three months.
I did not encounter any issues with stability.
As of now, we haven’t required support, but it is good.
The installation is simple. You can more or less plug and play.
Depends upon what OEM you factor for hardware and the relationship between them. The software license seems to be pretty simple.
We evaluated Cisco HyperFlex and SimpliVity.
You can have optimal results from ROI and the infrastructure deployment perspective if the solution is designed properly. I would suggest that you spell out your requirements clearly before Nutanix starts building the solution.
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.
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:
It comes in a number of OEM Hardware flavours (Dell and Supermicro) with the following uses:
The major features of the Nutanix Operating System (current version NOS 4.1):
Alternatives
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.