Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

It is a universal public cloud. It caters to our current usage of a private cloud. It ensures performance and security, whether on-premises or in a hybrid setup, offering us a cost-effective solution. It has enterprise data services with consolidated storage data protection and disaster recovery. We are also running Microsoft SQL Server on the tool.

The tool facilitated the consolidation of our organization's applications by combining storage and completing configurations. This has enhanced the effectiveness and availability of our applications. Consolidated storage, data protection, disaster recovery, and virtualization contribute to its commendable performance and service delivery.

One valuable aspect is its efficiency as a robust platform. It can also be updated with a single feed. Mainly, there is an ease of managing all processes. It effectively minimizes downtime with features like container management and robust networking capabilities. Additionally, the data recovery process is remarkably fast, enabling us to swiftly retrieve and restore information within a short period.

The latency needs improvement, particularly in terms of storage. The current system has complex storage issues, compounded by legacy infrastructure-blocking incident software. To address this, an enhancement in storage capacity is crucial, which, in turn, would contribute to a decrease in latency.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It’s a stable solution.

The product is scalable. It accommodates around 200 users in my company. One administrator handles the administration part.

In my organization, we used VMware, and when comparing it with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, the latter stands out for its high performance and efficient and robust infrastructure. It provides high-speed live migration capability. We migrated from VMware to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

My team executed the initial setup.

I recommend the solution because it can converge the data center stack, including computing, storage, networking, and installation, all under one umbrella. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We implemented the solution as a reseller for non-critical DBS. Initially, we used it with an Oracle database. For the big customers, we moved forward into automation netting a transformation from the whole stack. We had full automation also for service management operations.

We managed a critical DB where different agents have to interoperate to make it easy for the technicians who are not skilled in IT. With Nutanix, we are able to arrange a fully automatic state that provides only a simple web interface for the technicians. Then we build the system, that integrates all the information automatically without the need for data entry. It helps us make a low code integration without developing much more software which is easier than what we had to do in the past.

We've had a really amazing experience since my organization was able to really, really simplify all orchestration. I'm talking about automation and a precision hybrid cloud. The visualization is excellent. We do not just see the small tip of the iceberg above the water - we see the whole iceberg. 

The simplicity when it comes to building your own automation has been excellent. They provided us with professional services and we were able to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to make automation ourselves. We started from a few workloads and from there we were able to automate a lot in order to reduce total cost.

NCI provides us with a single platform to manage your databases. It is quite difficult to start as you have to know the new logic. You have to understand the environment, to take a deep dive into the different functionality. However, once you have acquired the knowledge, it becomes really easy to move fast and go forward with automation. There’s also very helpful service management.

We started with non-critical DBs and then we transformed our full stack Oracle IDs and IDs based on MongoDB and SQL and other DBs moving across different applications.

NCI's features helped us to reduce downtime. The native solution that we are managing, was in a full redundancy. It was a resilient solution that was provided by Nutanix. 

Nutanix is a software appliance. We have to work with Nutanix to arrange up to the hardware and test for network and security, and then for server storage.

NCI helped our organization consolidate its applications. They make the operation easy for people. People don’t have to be specialized. This is a good advantage.

We built a DB as a Service for a particular telecommunication application to share mobile and WiFi into the server environment. Then, we applied the integrated storage provided by Nutanix to visualize all of the information for the private cellular device. We’ve automatically improved security by moving into an environment where we are able to apply logical security insights to the platform to make decisions and check product information. We use Nutanix to make a container where we can put a cloud and a single person can check to make sure the data is compliant with the data policy of the enterprise. They are brilliant in sales operations and resilience. 

The cost is a pain point.

Nutanix can be a bit complex to understand. There need to be more technicians that can be more specialized and work more closely with the final customer. There needs to be people with more technical skills with Nutanix in the market from countries that aren't just the US and UK.

Sometimes there are language barriers that are hard to overcome.

The stability is very good. In two years, we've had no issues - only drive and hardware issues, not software issues. 

We store the data across four regions for Google Cloud, two regions for our telco cloud, and three regions for our private cloud. We're dealing with eight terabytes of data. 

It's easy to upgrade Nutanix. However, it doesn't start out as easy. If you have complexity, you must be cautious.

It's easy to add storage on demand. 

The solution is extremely scalable. 

Technical support does a good job of supporting Nutanix's cloud infrastructure.

Positive

I also used VMware. It was useful in a consolidation environment. However, Nutanix gives us a boost when it comes to IPaaS convergence.

We've used multiple deployment models. We start with a private cloud and then move to a public cloud. We can make a hybrid solution for final customers. 

I've been involved in implementations as a consultant and also at approval levels.

The initial setup is really complex. However, we expected the complexity. It was clear at the outset that it would be so. However, we started with the right team and took the right steps. While it was complex, there were no surprises. 

We started with non-critical DBs and moved to more critical DBs from there. Critical data stayed with Oracle. The rest was moved and we've moved 60% of the workload so far. We expect to end at the end of 2024.

The solution does require maintenance. We have four people from Nutanix and 12 integrators, then 20 internal people all handling maintenance. 

We have witnessed an ROI when using Nutanix. We've seen a total reduced cost of 30%. If you really apply the rules and build your own architecture using their guidelines, you will achieve even more. 

The licensing is flexible and agile. If you are looking for a small workload, the solution is expensive. However, if you are in a transformation program, they can get you a good deal. They have professional services at the same price level as Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. 

I have been a customer and a reseller. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I would advise others to apply Nutanix to your program for transformation. Nitanix makes transformation easy.

We are primarily using it for software development. 

We use the Nutanix Kubernetes cluster.

We like that it is cloud-based. It allows us to have a cloud-based ecosystem.

It's helped us reduce downtime by 50% approximately. It helps us consolidate our applications. It reduces processing time and administration. We can move faster. We don't have to wait for hours to process. We can do it in a few clicks. 

We were able to eliminate some of our legacy structures. We were using VMware. We are working to move away from it. We also are in the process of migrating other applications over. 

The provisioning is very easy. The live upgrades are useful. There is no need for downtime. It's very easy to manage things. We can reduce a lot of time with infrastructure upgrades.

It's easier to use for beginners.

I only started using the solution a few months ago. So far, I've found error reporting needs work. The reporting feature isn't very good. Sometimes it takes time for data to be reflected in the dashboard.

We'd like to have more Kubernetes information in the dashboard. That kind of dashboard would help.

I've been using the solution for a month.

The solution is stable. 

It's not difficult to add compute or storage on demand. 

We have around 500 people using the solution.

The solution scales well.

Technical support is responsive.

Positive

We previously used VMware. We didn't use a previous cloud solution.

We use all of the major cloud providers. Everyone is moving more towards cloud-based solutions and away from VMware and legacy infrastructure. 

I deployed the solution. It only takes a few minutes to implement. Setting up a cluster may take half a day. 

The solution does not require much maintenance. There might be hardware maintenance.

It's easy to upgrade. We can easily enable updates or do a manual upload via a single click.

We didn't need any assistance in terms of handling the setup. They will support you if you need help.

We have not witnessed an ROI as of yet. There has been a lot of time savings, however. It's faster and less time-consuming from an administration point of view. We can do things in minutes instead of hours or days.

Nutanix is less expensive than VMware, for example. It's economical for a mid-range organization. It's very customer-friendly in terms of support as well. They offer pretty good loyalty to their existing customers. 

The solution is set up as a subscription model. 

We evaluated VMware solutions. It was very expensive compared to Nutanix. Nutanix features are better. We're paying less for more features and functionality.

I'm using the latest version of the solution. 

Compared to a standard SAN solution, its performance is better and it is more feature-rich. Their hypervisor and cloud system is better. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We have a lot of servers. Previously, they used to be physical servers. Managing all those physical servers was difficult. Many times hardware used to fail and there was a disruption of services. After we moved to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, life got a lot easier. We have deployed more than 80 VMs in a cluster.

We have many homegrown applications that we run on Nutanix. We have a customized web portal and applications. They are customized for our business.

Nutanix NCI’s features help our organization reduce downtime. We use RA3 stuff in our clusters. If there is any issue with the hardware, node, or something else, my cluster is up and running. Over these three years, we have probably upgraded the Nutanix software twice or thrice. We had to restart nodes multiple times during this upgrade, and none of our users felt that something was going on. They did not have any issues related to slow response or no response from the applications while we had to shut down one of the nodes, put it into maintenance, apply the patches, bring the node up, and then make it join the cluster. It was smooth.

It has helped with consolidation. Previously, we had more than 40 servers, and now we have only 6 nodes. It is a lot easier to manage these 6 nodes. With the hardware, if something goes wrong, such as the hard disk showing amber, I have to create a ticket, share the logs, and then the engineer will come and check. After that, the part will come. It can come at 2 AM or 4 AM. We have to be physically present. They will shut down the server, take out that hard disk, and replace the hard disk, and then we will have to bring up the service. We have to spend a lot of time.

They have a product for database management called Nutanix Era, but we do not use that. We have not deployed it over here. We primarily use this HCI for making VMs and running web applications and their databases. We have migrated database services but not through the Nutanix Era. We have our own system, so we used that. The purpose of migration was to have a single pane of glass for management. The downtime is less, and the service becomes a smooth service. The users who are using the service are happy.

A lot of features are there, but for us, on the server administration side, creating a clone of the VM is valuable because many times, we have to deploy security patches. For deploying these patches, it helps to have a clone so that if something goes wrong, we can discard that VM and put back the clone VM. That is a very cool feature.

Usually, there are separate administration teams that take care of servers, but in our organization, servers are usually looked after by the application owner. However, the application owners cannot reinstall the software, OS, and other things. That only aligns with the role of the HCI administrator. If these rights can be provided, it will be very easy. Previously, it was there, but after certain updates, we found that they have withdrawn those services. For example, you requested a VM, and based on the business use case, I approved it and gave you a bare-metal server. Now you are the owner of that particular VM, so whatever you need, you should be able to do over there, but currently, you have to request me for the installation of the OS that you need, and I have to do it. It is an overhead for the HCI administrator. If that can be offloaded to the VM owners, that will be much easier for us. I have already shared this feedback with Nutanix.

I have been working with this solution for more than two years.

It is stable. Its reliability is very good. In the last three to four years, we have not faced any outages. It is smooth on the hardware side and the software side.

We first thought of deploying about 40 VMs, and now, we are running more than 80 VMs, so a lot of scalability options are there. If you have a smooth augmentation, all the capabilities are there. 

We have plans to use our present data center for DR. We will build a new DC, and we will be deploying another set of Nutanix clusters over there. 

Their support is very good. Whenever we found any issue, we raised a ticket, and there was always an expert who had discussions with us and helped us. If required, they do a remote session and help us out. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have not worked with any similar solution previously.

In terms of the deployment model, we have an on-prem cloud. In terms of the initial setup, the Nutanix team took care of building the clusters. For such a solution, we create a service request, and they set up the entire cluster. After the cluster is ready, they hand it over to us for creating VMs and migrating applications to those VMs.

Its maintenance is easy. You can do it with a few clicks. There are interfaces, and you need to do checks for those interfaces. You need to look for the long-term support version and follow the procedure. Overall, it is smooth.

For the deployment and initial setup, there is usually one person from Nutanix. From the hardware vendor team, there are usually one or two people, and then there are two people from our side. One is from the software side, and one is from the network side for IP allocations and other related things.

We also evaluated VMware, but at that time, VMware was not mature, and it was not within our requirements. That was the reason why we chose this solution. Another reason was that our technical evaluation team found Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure to be more suitable for our architecture.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure a nine out of ten.

Any single server or one-plus-one server is very difficult to manage if there is hardware failure. But with this solution, the transition is seamless because a 10-plus-one redundancy is built into the system.

With the click of a button, we can migrate the services to other servers. We have never had any downtime and we are a 24/7 operation. Production has continued,

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure also helps us to optimize power utilization and the rack space used in the data center, resulting in overall energy savings.

These were immediate advantages because, eight to 10 years back, this was a new technology. We tried it with our less critical operations, and we slowly introduced more production-critical workloads.

Also, we were using Active Directory and other SQL databases on individual servers. We were able to consolidate them into a single database. That helps with ease of operations and enables taking backups from a single place. We migrated all our standard database structures and we don't need a cluster mechanism because the cluster or failover mechanism is built into the Nutanix architecture.

It gives us a single dashboard to control multiple sites and multiple zones. It helps to do things on a single platform and data sharing is quite easy. The network and the security are easy to manage.

I would like to see more Kubernetes and container-related workflows and multiple cloud-partner management. I would also like to see how they will synergize all these AI/ML functionalities that are available on other platforms. We need to see those intelligent functionalities included.

I've been working with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) for almost eight years.

It's quite stable. We have never had any downtime.

For any on-prem or hybrid solution, it is highly scalable and easy to manage. We expect to increase our usage of NCI.

We used VMware which was helpful for a lot of things, but in terms of the scalability, the main thing was the central storage architecture. That became a bottleneck. Scaling up the storage was a little difficult. When it came to usability and ease of management, we decided to go with Nutanix.

The initial deployment was straightforward. It took less than a week, including doing the application migration. It was quite easy to create an image of the existing bare-metal infrastructure and migrate that image to the new solution. We always did it on a weekend or during a window of downtime at night.

We have it deployed in a single data center and we have under 100 users.

There is minimal maintenance. Upgrading is quite easy. Adding compute or storage on demand is also quite easy because we get a compute-only node or a storage-only node and add the nodes to meet requests for the CPU or storage requirements. These tasks are managed by the IT infrastructure team.

We used a reseller, and we had four or five people involved from IT and database administration.

The primary objective was to reduce downtime. That means we can't assess ROI  in terms of monetary value. It is more an issue of reliability.

It is slightly more expensive compared to a standard, on-prem, bare-metal configuration. There is about a 30 percent overhead there. That is the pricing in the Indian scenario.

The single dashboard is an additional cost option.

VMware is the only competition I can think of.

A standard SAN solution is quite fast in terms of storage, if you size it well, but the main challenge with a SAN solution will be scaling up. If it's not sized and planned well, it will be a big challenge and we would need to invest huge money in the SAN architecture.

It is quite comprehensive, all the toolsets are available, so there aren't many limitations. If you are looking for hybrid or on-prem virtualization, Nutanix is the preferred choice. The things that stand out are the scalability and ease of use. For a CIO, what is relevant is how scalable and reliable the solution is.

We have four Nutanix clusters at different sites and we are using it as our hyper-converged infrastructure solution.

By using more than one cluster, if any node is down, the VMs can be moved to a remaining node, and that helps us to work without any downtime. A node can be moved, online, to another node, which minimizes downtime as much as possible.

Flow Network Security for microsegmentation also helps in maintaining security. For example, we can protect servers with policies between an application server and a database server.

Previously we had our own storage, stand-alone servers, and stand-alone network. For any new project, it would take us at least six months until we could provide a new server. Now, when we have a new product, we can avoid that long wait and provide a server in hours. 

We have also moved all our servers to Nutanix and have been able to eliminate our legacy servers and infrastructure.

And it keeps our IT staff informed by email regarding any error or alert. They log in and get a full view of all our servers, including memory, storage, and CPU usage. It helps our IT staff to be more productive.

The most valuable aspect of Nutanix is the performance of the storage, which is excellent. And controlling compute, storage, the network, and security all together in one box is very efficient for us. It gives us a single platform to manage all our infrastructure.

It's so easy to configure anything on Nutanix. We have had Nutanix for more than five years and all our products are on it. It's really easy to manage them. We can monitor our servers and get notified if there is any issue with a server and correct it before a problem happens.

They need to improve the look and feel of the interface. The functionality is fine, but the appearance could be better.

We have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) for five years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any issues with Nutanix.

It's so easy to scale out or scale in our infrastructure.

If we have any issue, we contact their support and they solve it within the SLA time. They are very helpful and respond to us as soon as possible.

Positive

We had another solution, VxRail. We did a comparison between Dell VxRail and Nutanix and we found that Nutanix is more compatible with our organization.

The initial deployment was easy.

We installed Nutanix in multiple locations: at three sites in Egypt and one in Indonesia. We have the main site and a DR site in Egypt. There are three people on our IT team who administer the four clusters.

We have had to do maintenance on the hard disk two times in the last four years. And upgrading our Nutanix servers takes one click. We have upgraded our firmware and AHV and it is so easy. It's also very easy to add compute and storage. We just click to expand a cluster and add new nodes.

Nutanix has helped us to reduce the cost of the operations in our company.

The price of Nutanix is lower than other products.

My advice is to purchase Nutanix. It will help with your infrastructure.

I use it for the app DB and infra-related services like Active Directory and file servers. And we run our Verint Enterprise Recording application on the platform.

I set things up for my internal customers who are the end-users.

The number of servers we need has been reduced with NCI's performance, and it reduces the space we need and provides energy savings on top of that. The major benefit is the consolidation of all the physical and VMware servers into the Nutanix AHV platform. That's the baseline of the entire application, the core platform. We no longer use our old HPE and Dell servers. The three-tier architecture has been eliminated. NCI has eliminated that complexity and the costs associated with it.

The architecture of Nutanix is the best, and the virtualization we get, out of the box, is an advantage. Also, dedupe and compression are done natively, inside the platform, so there are no additional licenses. That adds value to it.

In addition, it provides us with a single platform, which is pretty user-friendly, to manage our databases. It doesn't take much to manage the console.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for about five years.

It's stable. The design means we get an N+1 architecture for node failures. We haven't had any major downtime until now. We are good with the performance.

We have it deployed in multiple locations. It's a distributed architecture.

Their technical support is good, but they do have third-party system integrators. If you get one who is not that great, you will have problems.

Positive

I have worked with Cisco Hyperflex and HPE Simplivity but they don't have software that is equivalent to what Nutanix has. The others are still developing their software.

And Nutanix is far better than a standard SAN solution because it is an all-in-one solution. The read/write speed is far better than in three-tier architecture.

The initial deployment is pretty straightforward. One person can handle it.

There isn't much downtime due to maintenance. And updates are pretty easy, they're just plug-and-play. It's not complex. Adding compute and storage on demand is not a problem for me because my deployment is on-prem.

The ROI is definitely there, based on the consolidation. It reduces the workload footprint. That's the benefit. There aren't too many servers or storage. Nutanix becomes an all-in-one and enables us to accommodate more workloads because it has built-in dedupe and compression.

If they could further reduce the cost, that would be great. I would like to see the cost be less than the equivalent three-tier architecture.

My advice is to get away from the traditional approach and think in forward terms about an HCI model. Nutanix stays ahead in the market.

I haven't seen any drawbacks that would lead me to suggest any improvements to the functionality of NCI.

Our customer is utilizing Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for a significant project involving VDI and servers.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure runs on an SQL server. Customers utilize it as a private server. However, it cannot be considered a true cloud service since it operates on virtual infrastructure without provisioning orchestration.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides a unified platform for managing databases. We used this platform to install numerous virtual machines, including SEBD, and never encountered any issues.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has helped reduce downtime.

We have migrated various services into Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for our clients.

The administration console, automation, and the first cluster are all valuable features.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure lacks compatibility with certain older processors. When a customer purchases five or six nodes and two or three of them intend to buy two additional nodes, there can be compatibility issues with the hardware configuration.

The price is high and has room for improvement.

The maintenance can be improved.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for ten years.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is stable.

Based on my customers' feedback, the technical support is good.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward, and the deployment is quick, taking only a few days to complete.

All of our clients are satisfied with the returns from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is expensive.

I give Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure an eight out of ten.

Upgrading is easy but modifications can be difficult.