Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

My primary use case is to deliver cloud services. This is for our cloud infrastructure. Nutanix is deployed on-premises, but I have six locations that I manage remotely, so it's like they're cloud-based. 

Nutanix has improved my company because it's 100% stable and the simplicity of management is amazing. It's my favorite product. We set it up here in Israel, then remote technicians in Africa just plug in the cables, start it up, and everything is running.

One of the most valuable features is the One-Click Upgrade. When I need to update the system, I do it with one click. This product is amazing because everything is easy to manage, from network management to snapshots. 

Nutanix needs to improve network features like Passthrough – SR-IOV. It could be improved by supporting SR-IOV, if they had that support, I would not have needed to implement the VMWare vSAN.

SR-IOV give the ability for a VM to use the physical NIC as its own NIC with all the network featuers on that NIC.

I have been using this solution for five years. 

This solution is very stable. I'm 100% satisfied with the stability. 

For maintenance, one person is enough. If you're looking at an IT environment, the same person who does the Active Directory can manage Nutanix as well. You don't need to hire a person who specializes in Nutanix. 

The scalability of this solution is linear. We have already done two or three scales in two of our locations. We just send two nodes to each location, they connect it, we run Auto-discover, and boom, it's configured. 

At my company, there are many people using our cloud products running on Nutanix. In Ghana there are more than 10,000 users; in Uganda, it's around 30,000 people; in Israel, it's about 200 people; but in London, there are around 20 million people using it. Because we provide cloud services to mobile network operators, each mobile network operator has millions of users and to manage the traffic, we use Nutanix. 

Currently, we have five clusters, twenty-four nodes, and we have plans to increase next year. 

I have a direct phone number that I call and someone immediately answers—you can't get better support than this. I've never needed real support, only clarification on how to use it better. For example, we wanted to do an upgrade and we were on an old version in one of the clusters, so we contacted them for guidance. There were a few steps on the upgrade, so we asked to make sure we were doing it correctly. We got an immediate answer, ran the upgrade, and everything was okay. Their support is great. 

The initial setup is very simple. You turn on the servers, enter the IP configuration, and that's it. You're good to go. The whole deployment—fixing the cables, mounting the equipment under the rack, setting up the cluster—is simple and once the equipment is plugged in, it's up in 15 minutes. 

I implemented through an in-house team. I didn't need any external support. For deployment, I did it all by myself five years ago, but today there are two people to manage the full IT. These two people also run Nutanix. 

I'm a telecom, so I don't see a direct ROI on the IT. I use Nutanix to run a product that brings me money, so the return on investment takes a few months. For example, I have to buy a server (VMware), pay out, I run some virtual machines to run the product, and from that income I calculate ROI. It's not regular IT, so you can't compare it with other scenarios. 

I purchase a license for this product every five years. At the beginning of our work, we purchased the Ultimate edition that included everything. Over the years, they developed some features that require licenses, like Nutanix Flow. But we keep purchasing our five-year license with all the features included. 

I use VMware vSAN as well. I outsourced a team of five to help me configure the servers. I'm not sure if it's better or not because we just started the new cluster of VMware vSAN, but I needed to pay for their knowledge. One product that we are implementing requires the use of VMware. That one product is the reason why we implemented VMware. 

I would rate Nutanix Acropolis a ten out of ten. It's an amazing product. If you are looking into implementing Nutanix, I recommend going to their website (my.nutanix.com) and enjoying the information there. 

As a systems integrator we use Nutanix on a daily basis since 2013 as our main, strategic and only infrastructure solution for virtualization and it's our related storage component. We can offer most use cases today on Nutanix including VDI, server virtualization, big data and mission critical.

As a system integrator, Nutanix offers a highly standardized solution that can be deployed in a timely fashion compared to legacy three-tier, generation one converged, and most competing hyper-converged solutions. This allows us to move quickly with a small team of architects, and implementation specialists for large projects.

Some years ago when we started working with Nutanix the solution was essentially a stable, user-friendly, hyper-converged solution offering a less future-rich version of what is now called the distributed storage fabric. This is what competing solutions typically offer today and for many customers, it isn't easy to understand the added value (I would argue they should in fact be a requirement) Nutanix offers today in comparison to other approaches.

Over the years Nutanix has added lots of enterprise functionality like deduplication, compression, erasure coding, snapshots, (a)-sync replication and so on. While they are very useful, scale extremely well on Nutanix and offer VM granular configuration (if you don't care about granularity do it cluster wide by default). It is other, maybe less obvious features or I should say design principles which should interest most customers a lot:

Upgradeable with a single click

This was introduced a while ago, I believe around version 4 of the product. At first, it was mainly used to upgrade the Nutanix software (Acropolis OS or AOS) but today we use it for pretty much anything from the hypervisor to the system BIOS, and the disk firmware and also to upgrade sub-components of the Acropolis OS. There is, for example, a standardized system check (around 150 checks) called NCC (Nutanix Cluster Check) which can be upgraded throughout the cluster with a single click independent of AOS. The one-click process also allows you to use a granular hypervisor upgrade such as an ESXi offline bundle (could be a patch release). The Nutanix cluster will then take care of the rolling reboot, vMotion etc. to happen in a fully hyper-converged fashion (e.g. don't reboot multiple nodes at the same time). If you think how this compares to a traditional three-tier architecture (including converged generation 1) you do have a much simpler and well-tested workflow which is what you use by default. And yes it does automatic prechecks and also ensures what you are updating is on the Nutanix compatibility matrix. It is also worth mentioning that upgrading AOS (the complete Nutanix software layer) doesn't require a host reboot since it isn't part of the hypervisor but installed as a VSA (regular VM). It also doesn't require any VMs to migrate away from the node/host during and after the upgrade (I love that fact since bigger clusters tend to have some hiccups when using vMotion and other similar techniques especially if you have 100 VMs on a host) not to mention the network impact.

Linearly scalable

Nutanix has several unique capabilities to ensure linear scalability. The key ingredients are data locality, a fully distributed metadata layer as well as granular data management. The first is important especially when you grow your cluster. It is true that 10G networks offer very low latency but the overhead will count towards every single read IO so you should consider the sum of them (and there are a lot of read IOs you get out of every single Nutanix node!). If you look at what development is currently ongoing in the field of persistent flash storage you will see that the network overhead will only become more important going forward. 

The second key point is the fully distributed metadata database. Every node holds a part of the database (the metadata belonging to its current local data for the most part and replica information from other nodes). All metadata is stored on at least three nodes for redundancy (each node writes to its neighbor nodes in a ring structure, there are no metadata master nodes). No matter how many nodes your cluster holds (or will hold) there is always a defined number of nodes (three or five) involved when a metadata update is performed (a lookup/read is typically local). I like to describe this architecture using Big O notation where in this case you can think of it as O(n) and since there are no master nodes there aren't any bottlenecks at scale. The last key point is the fact that Nutanix acts as an object storage (you work with so-called Vdisks) but the objects are split into small pieces (called extends) and distributed throughout the cluster with one copy residing on the local node and each replica residing on other cluster nodes. If your VM writes three blocks to its virtual disk they will all end up on the local SSD and the replicas (for redundancy) will be spread out in the cluster for fast replication (they can go to three different nodes in the cluster avoiding hot spots). If you move your VM to another node, data locality (for read access) will automatically be built again (of course only for the extends your VM currently uses). You might now think that you don't want to migrate that extends from the previous to the now local node but if you think about the fact that the extent will have to be fetched anyhow then why not save it locally and serve it directly from the local SSD going forward instead of discarding it and reading it over the network every single time. This is possible because the data structure is very granular. If you would have to migrate the whole Vdisk (e.g. VMDK) because this is the way your storage layer saves its underlying data then you simply wouldn't do it (imagine vSphere DRS migrates your VMs around and your cluster would need to constantly migrate the whole VMDK(s)). If you wonder how this all matters when a rebuild (disk failure, node failure) is required then there is good news too! Nutanix immediately starts self-healing (rebuild lost replica extends) whenever a disk or node is lost. During a rebuild, all nodes are potentially used as sources and targets to rebuild the data. Since extends are used (not big objects) data is evenly spread out within the cluster. A bigger cluster will increase the probability of a disk failure but the speed of a rebuild is higher since a bigger cluster has more participating nodes. Furthermore, a rebuild of cold data (on SATA) will happen directly on all remaining SATA drives (doesn't use your SSD tier) within the cluster since Nutanix can directly address all disks (and disk tiers) within the cluster.

Predictable

Thanks to data locality a large portion of your IOs (all reads, can be 70% or more) are served from local disks and therefore only impact the local node. While writes will be replicated for data redundancy they will have second priority over local writes of the destination node(s). This gives you a high degree of predictability and you can plan with a certain amount of VMs per node and you can be confident that this will be reproducible when adding new nodes to the cluster. As I mentioned above, the architecture doesn't read all data constantly over the network and uses metadata master nodes to track where everything is stored. Looking at other hyper-converged architectures you won't get that kind of assurance especially when you scale your infrastructure and the network won't keep up with all read IOs and metadata updates going over the network. With Nutanix a VM can't take over the whole cluster's performance. It will have an influence on other VMs on the local node since they share the local hot tier (SSD) but that's much better compared to today's noisy neighbor and IO blender issues with external storage arrays. If you should have too little local hot storage (SSD) your VMs are allowed to consume remote SSD with secondary priority over the other node's local VMs. This means no more data locality but is better than accessing local SATA instead. Once you move away some VMs or the load on the VM gets smaller you automatically get your data locality back. As described further down Nutanix can tell you exactly how much virtual disk uses local (and possibly remote) data, you get full transparency there as well.

Extremely fast

I think it is known that hyper-converged systems offer very high storage performance. There is not much to add here but to say that it is extremely fast compared to traditional storage arrays. And yes, a full flash Nutanix cluster is as fast (if not faster) than an external full flash storage array with the added benefit that you read from your local SSD and don't have to traverse the network/SAN to get it (that and of course all other hyper-convergence benefits). Performance was the area where Nutanix had the most focus when releasing 4.6 earlier this year. The great flexibility of working with small blocks (extends) rather than the whole object on the storage layer comes at the price of much greater metadata complexity since you need to track all these small entities throughout the cluster. To my understanding, Nutanix invested a great deal of engineering to make their metadata layer extremely efficient to be able to even beat the performance of an object-based implementation. As a partner, we regularly conduct IO tests in our lab and at our customers and it was very impressive to see how all existing customers could benefit from 30-50% better performance by simply applying the latest software (using a one-click upgrade of course).

Intelligent

Since Nutanix has full visibility into every single virtual disk of every single VM it also has lots of ways to optimize how it deals with our data. This is not only the simple random vs sequential way of processing data but it allows to not have one application take over all system performance and let others starve (to name one example). During a support case, we can see all sorts of crazy information (I have a storage background so I can get pretty excited about this) like where exactly your applications consumes their resources (local, remote disks). What block size is used random/sequential, working set size (hot data), and lots more. All with single virtual disk granularity. At some point, they were even thinking of making a tool that would look inside your VM and tell you what files (actually sub-file level) are currently hot because the data is there and just needs to be visualized.

Extensible

If you take a look at the upcoming functionality I wrote about further down you can see just some examples of what is possible due to the very extensible and flexible architecture. Nutanix isn't a typical infrastructure company but is more comparable to how Google, Facebook, and others engineer and build their data centers. Nutanix is a software company following state-of-the-art design patterns and uses modern frameworks. Something I was missing when working with traditional infrastructure. For about a year now they heavily extended what they call the app mobility fabric which comes on top of the distributed storage fabric I mentioned above. This layer allows moving workloads between local hypervisors (currently KVM<->ESXi) and soon between private and public clouds as well. You can for example use KVM-based Acropolis Hypervisor clusters for all your remote offices to get rid of high vSphere licensing costs without losing the main functionality and replicate the VMs to a central vSphere-based cluster. The replicated VMs can then be started on vSphere and Nutanix takes care of the conversion. The hypervisor is a commodity just like your x86 servers.

Visionary

When Nutanix released version 1 of its hyper-converged product in 2011 it was a great idea and a good implementation of the same. Most people in IT didn't however expect that it will become the approach with the highest focus throughout the industry. Today the largest players in IT infrastructure push their hyper-converged products and solutions more than any other and while there are still other less radical approaches (e.g. external all-flash storage), it is foreseeable that they will be less and less important for the big part of IT projects. Nutanix is the leader in the hyper-convergence space but having converged storage within your x86 commodity compute layer is by far not the only thing Nutanix has done since then. Their own included hypervisor is a pretty interesting alternative for all those who don't want to spend lots of dollars on vSphere licenses. While it will not yet suit all of your use cases you might actually be surprised at how much of the functionality vSphere offers today (distributed switch, host profiles, guest customization, HA etc.) you care about is already included out of the box with the added value of greatly reduced complexity (yes I am calling vSphere complex compared to Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor).

Standardized

Since Nutanix is purchased solely as an appliance solution (even though they are only making the software on top). You are always dealing with a pretested, preconfigured solution stack. You do have a choice when it comes to memory, CPU, disk, and GPU and you get to select from three hardware providers (Nutanix directly, DELL, and Lenovo) but they are all predefined options. This allows to guarantee a high level of stability and fast resolution of support cases. As a Nutanix partner this is worth a lot since the experience we get from one customer is valid for any other customer as well. It also allows us to be very efficient and consistent when implementing or expanding the solution since we can put standardized processes in place to reduce possible issues during implementation to a minimum. Once the Nutanix hardware is rack mounted at the customer their software automatically installs the hypervisor of choice (KVM, Hyper-V or ESXi) and configures are necessary variables (IP addresses, DNS, NTP etc.). This is done by the cluster itself, the nodes stage each other over the local network.

And last but not least: With outstanding support

The support we get from Nutanix is easily the best from all vendors we work with. If you open a case you directly speak to an engineer who can help quickly and efficiently. Our customers sometimes open support cases directly (not through us) and so far the feedback was great. One interesting aspect is the VMware support we receive from Nutanix even if the licenses are not sold by them directly. They analyze all ESXi/vCenter logs we send them. If the bug isn't storage related we also open a case with VMware to continue investigating. They do have the possibility to directly engage with VMware by opening a support case directly (Nutanix->VMware) which we saw on multiple occasions. The last case we witnessed was a non-responsive hosted process (vCenter disconnects) where the first log analysis by Nutanix pointed out a possible issue with the Active Directory Integration Service. We then opened a VMware case which was handled politely but after two weeks when there wasn't much progress other than collecting logs and more logs we remembered what the Nutanix engineer suggested and there was our solution. Disabling Active Directory Integration did the trick. I wouldn't say VMware support isn't good as well but we are always glad that Nutanix takes a look at the logs as well because at the end of the day, you are just happy if you can move on and work on other things, not support cases. 

Note: I strongly encourage you to take a look at the Nutanix Bible (nutanixbible.com) where all mentioned aspects and many more are described in great detail.

Nutanix has the potential to replace most of today's traditional storage solutions. These are classic hybrid SAN arrays (dual and multi-controller), NAS Filers, newer All-Flash Arrays as well as any object, big data etc. use cases.

For capacity, it usually comes down to the price for large amounts of data where Nutanix may offer higher-than-needed storage performance at a price point that isn't very attractive. This has been addressed in the first step using storage-only nodes which are essentially intelligent disk shelves (mainly SATA) with their own virtual SDS appliance preinstalled. Storage nodes are managed directly by the Nutanix cluster (the hypervisor isn't visible and no hypervisor license is necessary). While this is going in the right direction, larger storage nodes are needed to better support "cheap, big storage" use cases. For typical big data use cases today's combined compute and storage nodes (plus optionally storage-only nodes) are already a very good fit! 

The Nutanix File Services (Filer with active directory integration) are a very welcomed addition customers get with a simple software upgrade. Currently, this is available as a tech preview to all Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) customers and will soon be released to ESXi as well. This is one example of a service running on top of the Nutanix distributed storage fabric, well integrated with the existing management layer (Prism) offering native scale-out capabilities and One-Click upgrade like everything else. The demand from customers for a built-in filer is big, they are looking to not depend on legacy filer technology any longer. We are looking forward to seeing this technology mature and offer more features over the coming months and years.

Another customer need is to be able to consume Nutanix storage from outside the cluster for other, non-Nutanix workloads. These could include bare metal systems as well as non-supported hypervisors (e.g. Xen Server etc.). This functionality (called Volume Groups) is already implemented and available for use by local VMs (e.g. Windows Failover Cluster Quorum) and will soon be qualified for external access (already working from a technical point of view including MPIO multi-pathing with failover). It will be interesting to see if Nutanix will allow active-active access to such iSCSI LUNs (as opposed to the current active-passive implementation) with the upcoming release(s). Imagine if you upgraded your Nutanix cluster (again this would be a simple One-Click software upgrade) and all of sudden you have a multi-controller, active-active (high-end) storage array. (Please note that I am not a Nutanix employee and that these statements describing possible future functionality are to be understood as speculation from my side which might never become officially available.)

We have been using this solution for three to five years.

We use NCI in the transportation domain. 

The tool is simple, stable, and easy to upgrade. It also requires few resources to manage, which simplifies our work. The solution's ease of upgrading is its valuable feature. AHV, provided by Nutanix, is excellent in performance and ease of use. It's based on an open-source product called KVM, which I also use for other services.

Data protection and disaster recovery features have been beneficial for our work. With these features, we're able to create a high-availability environment where if one node goes down, another one takes over.

NCI's pricing is expensive. 

I have been using the product for six years. 

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate NCI's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has 1500 users. 

The solution's support is excellent.

Positive

The deployment process usually takes around a week, depending on whether you need to migrate your systems to a hypervisor environment. It can be quite easy if you already have that setup, especially with something like VMware.

For me ROI is the tool's stability. 

Reconsidering the licensing packages could reduce the price, especially for companies that may not need all the bells and whistles. Many of the features are based on open-source software, so there's potential to offer more flexible pricing options. Additionally, with the right expertise, companies could potentially create similar environments themselves, reducing the need for extensive support and licensing costs. I rate its pricing a six out of ten. The tool costs around 300,000 dollars per year. 

I rate the tool an eight out of ten. I am exploring new technologies because the market was different when I implemented NCI six years ago. Keeping up with changes is important, so I'm currently evaluating new options. I am looking to KVM. You should use NCI if you can afford it. 

We are an airline company using NCI as a platform for around 20 Windows and Linux servers, including our web and data servers. We have one primary NCI platform and plan to set up another for disaster recovery. However, it's quite expensive, so we have not implemented that yet. 

We migrated all our services from a hypervisor server to NCI. Since implementing NCI, we have had zero downtime. Our servers run 24 hours a day, and we are running various application-based software worldwide. My company plans to set up a disaster recovery system to prepare for possible downtime, so we can immediately shift to our backup system if there is a catastrophic failure. However, we haven't had any issues so far. 

I like NCI's dashboard. If there are any infrastructure issues, we'll get alerts inside the dashboard. NCI provides a single platform for managing all of our databases. We are running SQL and Linux databases. 

The reporting section of the dashboard could be improved to include more detailed reporting about the servers. 

We have used NCI for the last three years.

NCI is stable. If the company continues to innovate and upgrade the product, I expect it will be a robust solution in the future. 

NCI is scalable. We can scale up sufficiently to meet our requirements. 

I rate Nutanix nine out of 10 for support. Nutanix support is robust, and we're completely satisfied. 

Positive

NCI is easy to implement. You can deploy NCI with one or two staff members. That's typically enough to deal with any issues that may arise. We haven't needed any maintenance so far, but the vendor is responsible for replacing or upgrading memory, hard disks, and other hardware. 

We have support from a third-party provider and our reseller. 

NCI is quite expensive compared to other products. It would help us if Nutanix considered affordability when releasing new products. We have an annual license and are considering extending it for another year. 

I rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure eight out of 10. I would recommend NCI to others if they are searching for a new product.

We utilize Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for customers who intend to replace their VMware environment infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers a user-friendly unified platform for managing our databases. Prism Central enables us to oversee multiple systems through a single interface, making it convenient for administrators to learn.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's clustering features aid in minimizing downtime by incorporating redundancy factors, such as the capacity to accommodate a certain number of node failures.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has helped improve our customers' organizations by reducing the cost of ownership in cases where a customer does not want to depend on a VMware environment due to having non-VMware environments that are not supported.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has helped our clients consolidate their applications by migrating from VMware to their platform, which is beneficial. Additionally, there has been an increase in the number of nodes. The consolidation is important for our clients because it is a part of their expansion roadmap.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers a variety of cloud operating models across on-premises environments, which are important for our customers because they reduce their CapEx costs.

The scalability, performance, and licensing model are the most valuable features.

Although Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is adding features that can enhance the solution, there is still room for improvement in terms of functionality. 

The licensing cost could be lower.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for four years.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is stable.

Scaling Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is easy. To scale, we just need to add the node and expand our cluster.

The technical support is good.

Our customers previously used VMware but switched to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure because they desired to consolidate their environment.

Our customers experience a return on investment by consolidating their server storage networks and benefiting from increased performance.

The overall cost depends on the contract of each customer and the discounts they have, but the price for the three-tier architecture can be slightly lower.

The license cost increases based on the log capacity.

I give Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure a seven out of ten.

The reason our customers choose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is that the total cost of ownership is lower compared to implementing a traditional three-tier architecture.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is deployed in one primary location and is easy to maintain.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is a viable alternative to VMware. If the price is suitable for an organization, they can consider implementing this solution.

I have been using Nutanix products, like AOS, HPE, and Prism Central. I am managing a total of seven clusters with Prism Element and one instance with Prism Central.

We did a total deployment to all areas across multiple locations.

My environment is closed. It is not hosted on the internet. It is a dark site. So, if there are any issues, the Nutanix team lacks the ability to remote in because I cannot provide it. 

The Lifecycle Management (LCM) for upgrades is a very fantastic feature that I have observed from Nutanix.

It has centralized management. It is easy for an engineer to manage. More work goes to patching, upgrades, and maintenance. Nutanix is very easy to upgrade. It takes one click. Engineers do not need to spend additional time with Nutanix for upgrades. With one click, it will complete the upgrade and show the results. Other hypervisor solutions are not like this, specifically since you must do all the components one by one.

Nutanix is easy to learn for someone new to the system. It has more flexibility in its handling. If you are familiar with another hypervisor, Nutanix is easy to learn.

There is a cost for us with a Controller VM. For example, if you are purchasing a Nutanix node with 500GB, then 32GB of that node will need to be allocated for Controller VM. Therefore, we need to spend 32GB of RAM for Nutanix, which is not in our production requirements. This is an area that they need to improve.

Most other software comes as an OVF template. These kinds of OVF software templates are only supported in VMware. We technically can customize and use them in Nutanix, but the vendors tell us that there are technical issues that they will not support. So, they either have to improve this or software providers have to provide the proper software for Nutanix supported software.

It is a CentOS-based operating system, but CentOS releases security patches almost every week or every other week. However, Nutanix releases their upgrade at three or four month intervals. According to my organization's SLA, if a critical patch is released during that time, then I need to implement the patches within 30 days. If it is a standard patch, then I need to patch it within 60 days. Since that is my SLA, I cannot meet my SLA for security because Nutanix will not release the upgrade within these 30 days. Between the critical patch release and the Nutanix release, my customers say they are vulnerable and I am accepting the risk while the SLA is breached. Because of this SLA breach, I am rating this solution as eight out of 10.

I have been using it for the last five years.

When we started, it was not that stable. We were facing multiple issues. Now, Nutanix is very stable.

When Nutanix releases their upgrades, I then need to update to the latest upgrade and patch. Once I click the upgrade, it will automatically reboot the AOS one by one. There won't be any service disruption as well.

It is very scalable, especially if you want to expand.

Expansion is very easy. In Nutanix, additional node expansion is very easy. We can spin multiple VMs based on our business requirements very quickly. In this area, it is very good.

There are two engineers managing Nutanix now for four data centers and a lot of customers.

If I am comparing with the other technical support from VMware, the Nutanix server technical support is awesome because they promptly respond. Sometimes, when I call for an engineer, my call will be kept waiting. Other than this, they quickly respond. If the engineers are free, they will attend the call and help us. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

I was using VMware. However, VMware is more costly since Nutanix has cluster and storage management that creates storage free of cost. In the case of VMware, we need to pay the licensing cost for ESXI as well as purchase a separate license for the vSAN for storage consolidation and the HCI configuration. Nutanix is not like that. If you are buying their node, then you only need to pay for the AOS and Prism licensing costs. Cost-wise, Nutanix is very good.

It is very straightforward because there is a foundation option. From the foundation, we mount the devices on the rack and get the network to be connected. That is it. Then, we can use the foundation to configure and push the AOS and the hypervisor. The cluster spins up very quickly. It seems like everything is in a single window. 

Within one day, we can configure a complete cluster. It might not even take a day, but four to five hours to configure it.

Only two people were involved in the deployment. Once it is mounted on the server rack, then it is easy to manage. 

Mounting is a physical activity that took two people. For installation and configuration, we needed only one person. 

AHV is free of cost. If we went for VMware and other hypervisors, we would need to pay for the hypervisor license. Whereas, Nutanix is providing the AHV license for free.

Cost-wise, it is very good. It is like the hypervisor cost is not there. We only need to pay for the system and AOS licenses. 

Updating or configuring the licensing is very easy. We can take the licensed file and use it to update the portal. You download it, then upload it to the cluster. So, the management is very easy.

We only compared VMware and Nutanix, who are the best players in the virtualization area.

We already bought three Lenovo nodes and Nutanix licenses. We are going to expand the solution next month in October.

For most organizations, the first agenda is to look at the cost. If you are comparing Nutanix with any other solutions, Nutanix will be one of the best options. It is very stable now. You can reduce the manpower needed because even a single engineer can manage the maintenance.

Overall, I can rate it as eight out of 10 since there are few limitations.

One of the components that we like about using Nutanix Acropolis AOS is its ability to interact with hardware. You don't have to go into different systems, all your locked files and everything for the hardware is directly available.

Our use cases are for data storage. We use the total Nutanix system in connection with Inuvika. We are busy phasing out all our work stations, where we basically go back to the principle of old bank terminals. When you boot up, you're going into the Inuvika environment, which runs five physical servers on the Nutanix. The accessibility of the performance and upgradeability of the system increase about five-fold where you don't have to upgrade workstation performance, you only add an additional Nutanix server node if you want to increase your performance on your users' workstations. An important feature for me that comes with a hypervisor, as well as the AOS in combination with everything, is the backup redundancy, as well as the encryption component on the server that we use quite extensively. Since we've installed Nutanix our downtime was about 40 minutes to an hour, and that was just to do a memory upgrade on the system.

In terms of how Nutanix Acropolis AOS has improved our organization, for starters, the one major thing that comes up again and again is stability. Our downtime is literally based on hardware upgrades that need to be done. Acropolis is very, very user friendly.

You don't have to physically have a super IT guy to manage the system. You can actually give it to a younger guy to manage and there won't be problems. And if he makes a mistake, it's very, very easy to fall back and sort out the mistake.

The features that I have found most valuable depend on the scenario. The nice thing with the Acropolis design is that in a specific situation where you've got either the problem or you need to adapt quickly in connection with the setup in the environment, they really work through everything. 

The total solution is valuable, you can't split it up. The nice thing with the AOS, as well as basically the entire Nutanix system is that you are not time bound to increase your entire node or service setup. You can add additional nodes as time goes past. It's not like VMware, for example, where it looks like you've got a time period where you have to finish your entire setup, otherwise the upgrades and the newer hardware and that kind of stuff become a problem. Nutanix is very, very backwards compatible, as well as forwards compatible.

In terms of what I would like to see improved, I would say the life cycle management. I don't know if it is because they changed to an LCM from the previous way of upgrading the hardware or software but sometimes it feels that it needs a wizard that says, "Check this, check this," telling you your options. The only thing that's a bit frustrating for me is the life cycle management interface. That's the only thing on the entire system that frustrates me. I'm very, very happy with the other stuff.

We've been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for roughly four years now.

We are currently using the full setup of the system and it's very stable.

We are using the latest version. We update our system on the LTX every time a long sported version comes out and it's very stable.

We are running on-premise. We're running roughly 40 servers on it, which is a combination from Linux, our PBX system, Windows Operating Systems and additional data software that we've built on our own distro's on the system itself.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is very stable.

Since we started it up, the only time that we had any problems on it or downtime, if I can put it that way, was literally to upgrade the memory. That's it.

In the last three years since it's been running, it was peace of mind. We didn't have any problems and even with Nutanix overseas, we had a faulty memory module and the system worked perfectly, and they sent us a new memory module. We sent the old memory module back and that process with Nutanix support was magnificent, zero frustrations.

It is very scalable. We see the scalability in two places. Point number one for scalability, if we need additional hardware by installing an additional node, it's not painful at all. You just put in the node, you tell your Acropolis to find it, integrate it with the system, and everything operates seamlessly. It automatically balances all your virtual machines between all your nodes that you've got at that stage.

Additionally, I used it in our environment a lot as an additional backup for our remote sites. Where we basically have two Nutanix nodes on each remote site and because data in South Africa is very expensive we don't have a lot of bandwidth between our sites. So during the evenings, I replicate everything to our primary server setup that we've got and it works perfectly, no problems.

We have 6,000 units or servers. We are running currently from high performance users right through to just Word and Excel people. We are in the area of 250 users that are running on the system.

Nutanix is at the core of our business. So if the Nutanix falls over, our entire company will go offline.

At this stage it is not necessary to increase usage, but they're talking about opening additional branches, then we will be looking at another two or three nodes within the next two years.

Technical support is excellent.

I'm thinking about the two situations that we had. One was the memory problem that we had, and this guy from America explained in detail everything that he did. How the testing principles worked, how the process operated and he put us in connection with all the correct people. The entire process in that case was extremely streamlined and extremely user friendly. Then our second scenario that we had was in connection with upgrade faults that I made, and they explained what happened and how to fix the problem. So yeah, they are excellent.

The initial setup is straightforward.

In South Africa, we've got this saying for the test principle, keep it straight and simple. That is the principle that I followed with it.

Our deployment took us longer to get all the cabinets prepared for the servers or for the nodes than it actually took to set up the entire Nutanix system. I think it took us about half an hour to 45 minutes since we started, and we started installing our first VM on the system.

In the setup, there are literally two people responsible.

I am the IT manager and we've got my 2IC, and we're the only two that work with the servers on all six primary sites.

We did it through Pinnacle Micro and the guy helped us extremely well and was extremely knowledgeable about the Nutanix product and the systems around it. They were extremely knowledgeable in the Nutanix environment and with the processes and risks that need to be assessed. It was an excellent experience and not only the fact that they actually came out and talked to us, it wasn't all over the telephone.

We were running a stand-alone service originally. So we saved a lot of money on hardware upgrades that we needed to do. We saved a lot of money on energy consumption. As you know, power or electricity in South Africa is getting extremely expensive. We are now running at about 20% of our original power consumption and that also includes cooling the server room, reduction on security (physical security not cyber security). So all those components played a major role in ROI. Except for our hardware upgrades and that kind of stuff, we've saved about 200,000 Rand.

Our license is Rand based. I can't remember because we bought the license with other software as well. We did the licensing and it includes the support and everything over a five year basis.

We previously looked at VMware to build our hyperconverged environment. We started looking at costing and lifetime of products and it was quite shocking from my point of view. Because I feel a server must at least have the ability to run for five to seven years and then have scalability. And the thing with VMware is you've got quite a short shelf life on the setup. Meaning, you've got five years and if your system is not fully built, you start from scratch.

VMware versus Nutanix - number one, the cost is much lower with Nutanix. The hardware needed for operating the system is much cheaper and that played a major role in the choice that we made between Nutanix and VMware. The other major thing is the support that we got from the Pinnacle Micro guys. Actually, that's one of the major points why we made the choice for Nutanix. They were very, very intuitive with your company, they knew what we needed, what possibilities to look at, what risks to assess, that kind of stuff.

Before choosing Nutanix I also played with VMware's ESXi open source setup. I also played with Nutanix's open source setup. When we setup Nutanix, it was a lot more intuitive and a lot more user friendly, versus the setup from VMware, which is not bad either. I'm not saying it's a bad product, don't get me wrong. It's just different.

The biggest lesson I learned from using Nutanix Acropolis AOS was that at the stage when we looked at it, Nutanix was still relatively young - so don't underestimate the underdog.

My advice to anyone considering Nutanix Acropolis AOS is that you won't go wrong. It's an easy, maintainable system, it's user friendly. They designed quite an excellent product and with the support and the knowledge from the guys, you're not going to have problems in setting up a system like Nutanix.

On a scale of one to ten, I would put Nutanix Acropolis AOS in the area of eight to nine.

It is so high because for starters, I have not really had problems with Nutanix at all in the greater picture. We've had one or two incidents, which were mostly from our side, except for the memory situation, which was hardware related and not software related. They were always before the schedule on turnaround time for repairs and getting everything sorted out and repaired and up and running. I know a big thing is that local suppliers play a big role in support of hardware and so forth, but we didn't have any problems right through the bank.

We use Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for VDI, SuperMicro servers, hypervisors, and server utilization. We do have another use case in a production environment.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is an evolution of technology because it simplifies everything. It mitigates the operation risk because you don't have people handling storage, and you don't have to have storage solutions. It makes everything easier for the administrator and the company, not just because of risk but for stability. Our mission-critical applications are doing their best, running on this platform.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is an evolution of technology because it simplifies everything. It mitigates the operation risk because you don't have people handling storage, and you don't have to have storage solutions. It makes everything easier for the administrator and the company, not just because of risk but for stability. Our mission-critical applications are doing their best to run on this platform.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure helped our organization save time and cost. You can save time using this technology because it simplifies everything, including the process and the deployment. When I moved to NCI, I got rid of the SAN infrastructure or the storage network, which was very expensive. As a result, my whole team can do a better job now because they can focus on other things instead of managing the storage network

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's most valuable features are all the cloud facilities or benefits it provides for my data center. Everything that I do in the cloud, I can virtually do in my own data center. NCI provides other benefits like elasticity, upgrading, expanding the cluster, and growing the cluster. Since NCI is non-disruptive, we don't have any downtime when we add new nodes. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's stability and flexibility are just awesome.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's cloud platform management software could be improved so that I can manage my load between the cloud and on-premises.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for five years.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure’s stability is awesome. Stability is one of the things that we appreciate more in Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, as we don't have any downtime with the solution.

In our current environment, where we use NCI, we have seven clusters. Most of them are four to seven nodes, and the one we use for VDI is three nodes.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure’s customer support is great.

Positive

We have seen a return on investment with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure regarding availability, support with response time and knowledge, and peace of mind.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's pricing is higher now. I think Nutanix is trying to make the whole ecosystem look simple.

Before choosing Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, we evaluated other options like Cisco HyperFlex and VxRail VMware. We chose NCI over the others because it is cloud native. Unlike other solutions that bring software from other places and can't handle storage, Nutanix is a whole ecosystem.

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