Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

We use the solution in a growing industry where the expansion of servers is critical. The expansion power is pretty accomplished. I can add a node or change hardware easily.

The web application on the servers has been a game changer. It was expensive before. It used to be a headache. It used to take weeks if we had a crash. Now, we can fix everything and put everything as it was within hours. 

The management is very easy. You can see everything within a single platform to manage your databases. Everything is there on a single dashboard. 

NCI's features helped our organization reduce downtime greatly. We use it effectively for replication as well. 

The ability to restore within seconds is great. It takes a few seconds to rewind back to a previous marker and have everything up and running again. 

We migrated other services over to Nutanix. For example, we migrated over from Microsoft Hyper-V. This allows us to manage everything from one single platform and to save on licenses. We no longer have to license all of these different types of hardware. 

It's easy to launch on demand if you are using a newer OS. 

The feature that is lacking right now is the backup. It does not have good backup feature tools, like having templates or being able to back up every two or three days. 

I've been using the solution for almost five years.

The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues. 

We have the solution in one central location. Everyone connects to it remotely. the number of end users fluctuates. It could be 200 to 300 users. 

It's very easy to scale. It's the main reason we chose it. It's easy to add nodes and resources. 

They assign you according to the time you call. If I'm calling after hours, I'll be assigned to someone in another country.

Positive

We used to use XenServer, Hyper-V, and vSphere among other solutions. We decided to consolidate everything under one console to save on licensing and having to check multiple places. It makes manageability and the ability to extend easier. 

I was involved with the deployment. There were five people involved. The deployment itself was pretty straightforward. That said, it did take some time. We gradually moved the servers. We kept both operating to make sure everything was running, then moved off the older servers slowly.

In the case of hardware failures, we'd inform the supplier. Otherwise, the software is upgraded every six months. There is very little maintenance required beyond that. 

We did use a reseller to assist us with the initial setup. Our experience with them was very positive. 

We can easily provision servers and add nodes on the fly without shutting down. There are no limitations either, beyond having the proper licensing. It's the easy extension of resources where we see the ROI. 

They were pretty aggressive coming into the market and the solution started as a cheap option, however, the price is now going up as they mature. 

We looked into Simplivity. The main difference was the cost between the two options. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall. 

I'd advise people to try it out. However, ensure that you lock in your price over the next three to five years so that incremental changes do not affect your contract.

We host our healthcare customers’ servers using the solution.

Previously, we used three-tier architecture. Now, we have everything on one platform. With Life Cycle Manager, we do not face any downtime during updates.

HCI and DR are very valuable to us. It is very easy to clone systems using the solution.

The product requires a lot of resources. We have to assign a lot of resources to the servers.

I have been using the solution for the last seven years.

The solution’s stability is excellent.

The product’s scalability is very good.

Whenever we call the support team, there is an SME present on the call. They resolve our issues instantly.

Positive

Previously we used VMware and Hyper-V. We switched the solution because Nutanix’s support is excellent.

The initial setup was straightforward.

A Nutanix engineer was present on-site during the deployment.

We saved money when we moved our cloud servers to on-premise.

The product’s licensing fee is moderately expensive.

My organization is the first company to deploy Nutanix in India. We deployed the solution in Gujarat, Sacramento, and Texas. The solution has beautiful architecture.

Our customers are from the healthcare industry, and they cannot afford to have downtime. With Nutanix’s robust solution, we never face any downtime. Everything we need is available within Nutanix. We do not need to buy any other product.

Previously, most of our workload was on Azure and AWS. Now we have a hybrid setup. We save a lot of money. We use around 4000 VMs in our data center. Upgrading hosts have to be done manually in VMware. Nutanix helps us a lot from a management perspective.

People planning to buy the product should evaluate their expenses in the current infrastructure and understand how much they will save from implementing the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is used for local file management.

Right now there is no downtime as such because it's in high HA mode. I can add different types of VM servers on the fly so it helps to rebuild or launch any application within a short period of time.

The features that I have found most valuable include its HA facility, viability, robustness, flexibility, it's time to go live is very short, and it has a friendly user interface.

As far as what could be improved, they have some built-in backup functions already, but any built-in isolation features like vision security features and free LAN features become a security concern. 

Also a few more backup options and IT security functions to isolate different VMs would be good. Better features would include more on the security side, meaning drill down on the VMs. Also, more on the reporting side for more exclusive reports.

I have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for almost four years.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is a very stable.

Its scalability is very good. We can scale up to our limitations.

Our entire organization uses this solution. I can't give the exact number, but almost all the people are using it.

Deployment and maintenance hardly require only one technical person, who understands networking and the system. One or two people are enough for implementation.

We do have plans to increase the usage. It is a very comfortable and usable solution.

The technical support is very good. The support and response is good from the technical team.

The initial setup is easy. Not complex.

The deployment was within four-five days. Our deployment strategy was that it is the right move from physical to virtual.

The ROI is very good. We'll see an ROI in two-three years only.

The license is almost three to four lakhs per month, I think.

There are some additional operating system licenses. It depends because we are not using a Microsoft license. We are using a Linux based one, so that determines the license cost.

I evaluated some other VMware options, but cost-wise, Nutanix Acropolis AOS was the best deal.

My advice to anyone considering it is to go with the latest solution and latest software and that you can go with any hardware. There are different vendors now, they know all this stuff, but go with the best, most updated solution.

Its uptime is good, its flexibility and scalability are very good.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Nutanix Acropolis AOS an eight.

We use our cluster for three scenarios:

• Virtualized Infrastructure
• Citrix 3D Terminal Services
• Clustered File Server (Windows-based).

Any task with our servers which is painless because the system runs really fast.
Our users are glad to be migrated to Citrix, although giving up the local admin rights there (yes, there are some local admin users still in place), because it performs so well.

• Single click actions is definitely the most important. They were not even aware that they wanted this.
• Performance was the main point for buying it. 
• No virtualization-vendor lock-in is another main point.
• But if you ever had good support, Nutanix Support will overwhelm.

There are various areas, but all points that I could mention are under development and get to you free of charge with another single-click cluster-upgrade.

To name some: Native File-Services are under heavy development and Container Services just came out.

No, also the system does daily self-checks and comes up with warnings. Support can fix this without system downtime. Over time you learn from support sessions to fix thngs yourself. The tool chest (already there inside the Controller-VM) is really impressive.

We had no requirements to scale it yet.

A 10 of 10. Simply that. Responsive, callbacks, top knowledge, easy escalation, and fast connection to development (during our PoC-phase I had a conference with developers in a few days).

Traditional storage on NetApp with ESX-Blades from Dell. We switched because of the simpler setup and easier scalability.

Initial setup was in a half workday. This means the first VM was up and running.
And it would be half on hour without racking and cabling.

We had consultants to guard us through it although we could have done it ourselves. It is good to get things straight initially. Their expertise was well set.

We do not estimate numbers for administration, rack powerage, and such. We use IT to do our business, not vice versa. You get nowhere if you want to measure the street instead of driving on it. But I was quite firm with netapp and the blades and had no huge admin effort. The timely effort for nutanix is even less now.

Setup cost is minor, pricing is quite a bit (we have a 7-node-cluster for about 450K EUR with 2 vGPU-nodes for Citrix) but that includes hardware, software, and support. I would also license Prism Central in Pro Edition because you get capacity planning. This makes sense even for a single cluster setup.

We evaluated the successor models of our former systems. New NetApp Filers and new Blades, but the pricing was similar so we went with the better solution. We never used NetApp Vendor support (we did it ourselves with support from a netapp partner) and Dell Server support was poor (I can google manuals myself). Buying Nutanix includes superior support. You should call Nutanix support if you are doing a ProofofConcept!

Always check compatibility matrix before you upgrade to get a clear view what comes after your upgrade. I recently found that AOS 5.1.4 and 5.1.5 will not let you upgrade to 5.5.x as of now see (https://portal.nutanix.com/#/p... Login Required). 5.6 is your upgrade path if you are on 5.1.4 or 5.1.5.

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 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.

It's an infrastructure product that we mostly use to manage virtual services.

The DR solution in Nutanix has helped us reduce downtime. There are periods of downtime, intentional as well as unintentional, but because we have another site already replicated, our downtime is minimal. The protection policies have the greatest impact in reducing downtime because they help us replicate our data. We're able to do synchronous replication to the remote site and that keeps our machine ready there in case of the need for DR. We just go there and manually power it on.

Nutanix has also helped us free up IT staff. Since I joined this company, I have been the only one managing the solution. Prior to that, there were multiple people involved. The more we move toward Nutanix from vCenter, the more we reduce the number of resources needed. We have freed up almost half of the time we used to need.

There are a lot of things I really like. Perhaps the best part is taking a snapshot of a virtual machine. It's very quick. Another useful part is replication and creating a protection domain: using the protection feature to replicate a machine to a remote site for DR purposes.

I also like Nutanix Flow. It is quite a control mechanism. Other than external firewalls, Nutanix Flow is a good feature to control your traffic and not allow the infra to create two-way contact with any location other than what we specify.

Nutanix Files is also good. It's a little immature but it's still good. I use it more than Windows for files.

And the fact that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers a variety of cloud operating models is also significant for us. Based on the good number of application products that we are using, having multiple options is going to be a benefit for us.

Nutanix Files is a new feature and, as I mentioned, it's immature, although it's a good tool. I have already given this feedback to the engineering team. 

In terms of automation, I know there are ways to do it, but it's not very user-friendly. I've been working for the last three years with Nutanix and I've managed to automate certain things, but it's a somewhat more complex job than it should be. I would like to see more documentation or knowledge base articles. There should also be some pre-built, basic tasks that are shared by Nutanix. That would be helpful. I understand the other side of the picture, that we might hamper production, but some basics that can be shared by Nutanix, for automation, would be good.

There are a lot of things to be worked on. They need to provide more features and certain features that have been released need to be made more mature.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) for three years.

There have been one or two bugs reported in the past one and a half years, but other than that, I don't see any issues with the product. It's quite stable.

It is quite easily scaled.

The user base, the people who are benefiting from the product in our organization, is more than 25,000.

As soon we have issues, we report them and their engineering team comes in and works toward a solution. Their technical support is quite good. There are times when I would rate them a 10 out of 10 because there have been engineers who have very good knowledge and who know what they're doing. Other engineers have also tried to do their best.

Positive

Earlier, we were using VMware on Nutanix hardware, but for the last year we have been using the Nutanix built-in virtualization technology, Nutanix AHV.

The switch to Nutanix was a decision that came completely from senior management. Initially, we were using a different environment, HPE and then VMware, and then we moved to Nutanix plus VMware. We had licenses available from VMware so we didn't switch to AOS and AHV. But gradually, as the licenses for vCenter expired, we moved to Nutanix AHV. Most of our jobs are done using it.

Our deployment is on-prem. There are discussions happening about moving a part to private cloud, but that's future planning. As of now, it's just on-prem. We have it in multiple locations. It started with South Africa, then we added Germany, Italy, and Singapore. So it's now in multiple data centers.

The initial deployment was slow, to be honest. Before the day of deployment, there were a lot of tasks to be done, prerequisites that had to be fulfilled. But on the day of deployment, it went very smoothly.

We started with keeping vCenter in place, so at first, it was just deploying the hardware and getting the foundation set up done. It didn't take much time, although there was a lot of hardware to add. But it didn't take not more than three or four hours for the actual deployment part.

We did a lot of planning, obviously, even before purchasing the solution, regarding how much hardware and how many resources would be required. That was the most important consideration and, in the backend, there was the networking. We wanted to keep everything on the same network. We added the hardware, the engineers helped to deploy and move things so that everything was on the same network. The virtualization technology itself was the same. It wasn't a very difficult task for us to migrate our VMs from the old hardware to Nutanix hardware. We used the basic migration tools, either vMotion or SvMotion of vCenter. At a later stage, we moved to Nutanix virtualization and we're still migrating but we are now using the Nutanix Move tool.

Nutanix Move is one of the very good tools I've come across. I've been using it quite a lot for the last few months.

There were different tracks and technologies involved in the deployment, including the networking and data center guys, and we needed to have somebody from offshore with access to all the infra. Other than the Nutanix engineers, there were not more than seven or eight people on our side. One person was part of the planning, and one or two people from the networking, server, and virtualization teams. I was part of the virtualization and server teams.

We now have one person dedicated in each region to taking care of the solution. We do regular upgrades of the hardware. It has never incurred any downtime because it's always in the cluster. One of the best parts about Nutanix is that it automatically does all the upgrades and firmware one by one, so we don't have to bother about it. We just initiate it and go for a tea break or lunch. I've done it three times and I haven't found any challenges. It's quite easy and very smooth. It shouldn't be made so easy for such an experienced analyst like me. People like me could lose their jobs, that is how easy it is.

We did come across one scenario two years back in which we had to get additional storage. We are using iSCSI technology and it wasn't that difficult from a technical point of view. We had to purchase additional hardware because the demands from those specific applications were quite high.

Pricing is not my area of expertise. But the license is quite clear to me. It's much clearer than what we had with our previous virtualization environment. The licensing is not complex to understand. I have added some hardware recently and we got the licenses added for it. That was quite simple and very straightforward.

Evaluating other products was not my call, that was also for senior management. I was asked to review Nutanix only. Before we started implementing it or the sign-off happened, I did find the product suitable. When something is new in the market, you have to get used to it and you feel uncomfortable. That's normal for everybody and that happened to me. The only differences were that the GUI did not have certain features that were in vCenter, but I think we have everything covered now. There have been improvements while creating the current version of the product.

I have good friends in the field from different organizations because I have more than 12 years of experience. I've been recommending Nutanix to them. I'm not sure about the cost part, but I'm quite sure about the administrative part.

We have a lot of homegrown applications using the solutions within the generation and distribution within the company. These internal teams that develop that software, they are primarily on a different architecture. The ones we use are Java and Oracle with Weblogic as the application server and the other one used is Lan Stack. We have been using this configuration for more than 60 years.

The solution has single-window management, the ability to create VMs and monitor their usage on the fly, and the ability to add more resources if required. There are a lot of tools the solution comes with and the performance is good.

The ability to create clusters faster would be nice to see in a future release.

I have been using the solution for more than one year.

In terms of scalability, adding a number of nodes, I find that it will not be any issues. Upgrades are very easy, I can run compatibly check and then download the upgrades that are available. It is just a mouse click.

I have been quite happy with the support from Nutanix during the past year. They have well-equipped support staff always on the phone when I am in contact. They know my architecture, subjects that are important for me, and the staff is quite conversant with the tool that they use.

The implementation was straightforward and we are currently only using a fixed node cluster. 

The pricing is fair for the package.

In terms of the solution overall, there are positive responses from my side.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a nine out of ten.