Nutanix Database Service Reviews

It's a cost-effective database and Unix solution.

It helps in automating things and in reducing costs. Overall, it is helping improve the productivity of the team. We have eliminated traditional tasks, such as manual backups, manual restorations, as well as manual scripting that we used to run. Now there is automated scripting and a large level of automation that we have put in place with the Nutanix DBaaS.

When it comes to reducing downtime it has given us good reliability. We can patch the databases without much downtime, so that has had a big impact. We also have the snapshot backups available and that has also improved on downtime. However, there is still a lot of migration happening. Once we have it in use as a full-blown solution, I think the benefits will be greater.

Our availability standards have risen to at least 99 percent. Previously, with the other platforms, it was 95 or 96 percent; there was more downtime.

Also, with this stable platform, the number of incidents has decreased. Our problem management has improved a lot, as there have been no recurring incidents. We are still further consolidating it, but even now, it has helped us free up IT staff. We have been able to do away with at least two different platforms. The skill sets that we required for both, for 24/7 support, were immense. That has come down significantly and we have reduced 25 percent of the staff.

This is a very well-integrated setup that has made an immense difference. With individual estates, what happens is that there are too many dependencies on multiple people. If a major incident happens, you need to call an application and a database person. Here, it is an application plus the Nutanix person, that's it.

One of the most valuable aspects is the operations perspective. The features are suitable, especially on the database side, as our operations and upgrades on databases have improved a lot. You can also allocate storage to it easily.

The data analytics are also good along with the data reporting. We report certain IT data on a weekly and monthly basis, and it helps a lot with that, giving us consistent data.

It is also a single platform, all in one place, and that is the reason we went for this solution. Earlier, we had multiple platforms, the database and the OS, but this is a single platform that helps us with what we are doing.

Overall, it is easy to use, but up-scaling was important. We are well-versed in virtualization, Oracle Databases, et cetera, but even when Nutanix DBaaS was a new product for us it was still very effective.

There is room for improvement in the automation. It is customizable and we can create our own solutions, but if there were a central repository of automation scripts that we could use, that would be good.

Secondly, the graphical user interfaces could be much more user-friendly. They are already user-friendly, but they could be simpler so that we do not need L3 staff to handle them. If they were simpler, we could also have some command center or L1/L1.5 associates do some housekeeping activities on it.

Also, something we are not very clear on with Nutanix is whether it is also integrable with cloud platforms like Azure and AWS. Right now, we are using it more for traditional infrastructure. But tomorrow, if we have other components, can we also get a hybrid view? That is something that we need to look at.

It's important to have a hybrid cloud environment. At any point in time, you're going to have on-premises and different public cloud environments in use and, at times, a hyper-converged infrastructure. A hybrid environment offering is something that would work well in the future.

We have been supporting it for the last one and a half to two years. We did a PoC with it and then we started using it for one of the customers that we support.

It is a really stable product.

It is scalable.

We are planning to use another Nutanix product for our end-user computing space where we would use virtualization. We are doing away with the legacy middleware and legacy integrations and moving to more hyper-converged infrastructure solutions.

The technical support is effective. The tickets we raise with them are addressed within the SLA that we have. There are two types of tickets: one is informational, and they have a good knowledge base as well, and the other is a priority ticket and they handle them in a timely way.

The knowledge base could be strengthened. Also, more L3 teams would be useful.

Neutral

Prior to using Nutanix, our virtualization layer was VMware. On top of it, we had our OS and the database. Now, we have been able to eliminate the OS database and have it under one platform.

We switched because of the amount of overhead we used to have. Linux would go out of support and we would have to upgrade it. That meant we also had to upgrade the hardware. Now, we have this appliance over the existing hardware and that has helped us in eliminating costs.

We were involved in the proof of concept as well as the final deployment of the solution. We did need assistance from Nutanix at the time. It was a collaboration. The setup was complex because it involved working with a new set of technologies and because the ways you work with Nutanix, as a product, were very new for us. We did not have too many case studies or references. But now, after having used it for some time, the teams are comfortable with it.

Our current model is 90 to 95 percent on-prem. We are not into cloud. Going forward, we will have to move into cloud. We have two data centers and the Nutanix environment is set up in primary and secondary modes across them. All the applications that the business users use are pointing to the infrastructure that is present in these two data centers. The estate would be about 2,000 servers.

The deployment was done in phases. The PoC took about a month's time to see the results. We divided the next stage, going into non-production first, and then we took the corresponding non-production environments to production. It took us at least three to four months overall.

The deployment included project managers, two or three architects, and a team of around 10 to 12 associates.

Our IT department, a team of around 12 to 14 people, actively uses and supports the platform. If there are any releases with certain additional features, there is maintenance required, but that doesn't necessarily require downtime or impact services. It is easy to upgrade the solution. You test it out in the dev environments and then do a release in the production environment.

In house team

Our business case includes a return on investment. In terms of what we expected, we are not there yet, but we have achieved 65 percent of what we intended to do. We thought that, out of a few million, we would save X amount. On that, we have achieved 65 percent. Probably, if we leverage the estate for all our environments, the ROI will be better.

The pricing is competitive.

We also looked at an HPE platform at the time, but from a cost perspective, Nutanix was ahead.

I would recommend this product for any medium to large enterprise. It's not that relevant for a small enterprise because of the cost.

With the enhancements and the features that have been added in the new releases, it's getting much, much better.

Nutanix Era is used for multiple databases where there are a lot of compliance requirements, including backdated restore points for applications. This is particularly useful when the application team needs to be restored quickly. In normal scenarios, this setup would take a day. With Era, it takes minutes. Additionally, the solution simplifies the deployment of various supported databases for UAT service, easing the workload for infrastructure and database teams.

Nutanix Era significantly reduces operational overheads for the IT infrastructure team, backup team, and application team.

Nutanix Era effectively reduces operational overheads by streamlining the application team's implementation of multiple environments. The solution provides databases for audit or analytics services, which are crucial in operations. It supports fast database cloning, enabling quick responses from the application team for product launches without accessing production databases. Proper use reduces errors from infrastructure teams and improves time to market efficiently.

Era should be compatible with various environments, such as VMware and Red Hat, to be hypervisor agnostic. Due to increasing adoption among enterprise clients, integration with Kubernetes platforms is also needed. Furthermore, the product can benefit from improving its understanding of architectural setup and communicating its limitations to users and partners.

I have been working with Nutanix Era for more than four years.

With Nutanix on-premise, I rate the stability as eight out of ten. However, for hybrid platforms, I would rate it lower due to limited functionality.

Scalability is an inherent function of Nutanix Era and works well both on-cloud and on-premise, deserving a high mark.

Technical support from Nutanix has room for improvement. There seems to be a lack of understanding of system limitations and architectural specifics, resulting in deployment challenges.

Neutral

The initial setup of Nutanix Era is straightforward, maintaining Nutanix's reputation for simplicity and ease of installation.

The pricing for Nutanix products is on the higher side, and more flexibility in the licensing model, such as a GB-based license, would likely increase adoption.

I rate Nutanix Era five out of ten. The core-based licensing model is restrictive, and I would recommend that consideration is given to use-case-based license models to improve adoption. I have recommended Nutanix Era to others after increasing awareness of its functional limitations and support challenges.

We propose this solution to our customers to integrate part of their databases into Nutanix Database Service to manage and provision the database.

Management and provision are the most important features of Nutanix Database Service.

The solution can increase its database compatibility and backup options.

I have been using Nutanix Database Service for one year.

Nutanix Database Service is a stable solution.

I rate the solution’s stability ten out of ten.

Our customers for Nutanix Database Service are small and medium-sized businesses.

The solution can be deployed in two days.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten.

My customers don't use the solution's automation features. DB as a service solution is new to my customers, who don't know the solution. Our goal is to increase the knowledge of our customers.

I would recommend the solution to other users because it's a new solution that has more functionalities. It's similar to a cloud solution but can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud according to the customer's needs. With this solution, the customer can recreate a cloud environment in their private cloud, and it's really interesting.

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

At my company, I use Nutanix Database Service to set up and version machines, install and configure precomputed machines, and establish connections between databases and application services.

The most valuable features of Nutanix are its robust infrastructure management tools, including a powerful firewall, analytics for system performance, and convenient automation. 

There is room for improvement in the pricing structure, especially given the complexity of our business model involving multiple data centers and a variety of services. While the user-friendly GUI and branded plug-ins for HPI solutions make management easier, there is still a need for simpler operational tasks.

I have been using Nutanix Database Service for two years.

Nutanix's stability is excellent. It has consistently performed well over time, supporting multiple operating systems without any significant issues. It aligns smoothly with our company's varied use cases. I would rate the stability as an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability as an eight out of ten.

My experience with Nutanix technical support has been great Whenever I have contacted them directly, there have been no issues, and the support provided regarding mechanics has been very effective. I would rate the support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with various products from different vendors before Nutanix, including Cisco's UCS, IBM's Internet, and HPE servers. When choosing Nutanix over other solutions, the decision was based on the HCI features, especially for edge computing with one to three nodes.

The initial setup was incredibly quick and straightforward. It took just a matter of minutes to deploy and prepare Nutanix for usage.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Database Service as an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for managing SQL databases within an organization. It facilitates tasks such as creating clones of production databases for various purposes, including software development and reporting. These clones provide a sandbox environment for development teams to work on without impacting the production database. Additionally, they serve as data sources for reporting functions, ensuring that analytical processes can be conducted without disrupting the primary operational database.

The solution allows quick setting up of new development environments and ensures the use of the storage more efficiently. It manages to create new clients to be utilized for development or reporting.

We have been experiencing significant performance issues with Nutanix Database Service, primarily due to our many clients. While the product is designed to scale effectively, we have encountered performance limitations when handling many clients. These limitations have impacted our business operations, highlighting the need for further optimization and improvement.

We are also overwhelmed with the quality of technical support associated with the product.

I have been using Nutanix Database Service as a reseller for two years.

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

Nutanix Database Service offers scalability, but there are limitations regarding the number of clones created due to hardware resource constraints. This can pose a challenge as the hardware may not have sufficient CPU resources to support extensive cloning. 

I rate the solution’s scalability a three out of ten.

Nutanix has really good technical support capability. However, they were not very helpful in resolving performance issues associated with this product or providing a suitable conclusion on problem resolution.

Neutral

The solution is easy to deploy. We have three or four people to support deployment.

Nutanix provided a couple of different licensing options. They were pretty flexible in how we could structure the licensing. Initially, it was a bit confusing, but their flexibility made up for it.

There are quite a few competitive products out there that offer similar features. I could say that Nutanix performed very well when competing against these other products regarding feature sets; Nutanix came out on top. 

Nutanix Database Service requires significant hardware resources to perform.

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

The primary use cases for our clients are storage and data management.

What I like about this solution is that it's more reliable compared to other solutions.

The downside of this solution is that it's more expensive than its competitors. 

The other thing is that the scalability part of this solution should be improved.

I have been working with this solution for about four years.

I would rate the scalability of this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the technical support of this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Neutral

My impression is that the initial setup process is a bit complicated but manageable. It's a good product and it's easy to manage. The deployment time depends on the amount of data the client is gonna be storing. 

Usually, it will take one or two people to carry out the deployment.

I would rate this setup process an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

My impression is that this solution is really expensive. The licensing is based on a yearly basis since a monthly basis is hard to maintain.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one o 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

When there are multiple teams, there are frequent new requests for copies of production databases. The load is usually on the DB team to create and maintain the copies. We can optimize the process and make it more efficient using the solution. It is one of the main benefits.

We have seen an improvement in the platform management. The effort required to manage a cluster is reduced. It is our main benefit. The skill level needed to manage a Nutanix cluster is less than that of a vSAN cluster. We can have a less expensive resource managing a Nutanix cluster.

The solution enables us to speed up the creation of new instances. A DBA might take a day or two to do it, but the solution can help us do it in half an hour. The snapshot feature is useful.

The tool cannot be sold without a Nutanix platform. There is a dependency. We can sell the product only to a Nutanix customer. Convincing a customer to choose Nutanix is a huge project. It might take two years. We faced some performance issues with Nutanix. Nutanix has limitations. We worked with the support team to overcome the limitations.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The support is pretty good.

Positive

The initial setup is complex. Moving a database to Nutanix and convincing the stakeholders takes time. Validating the business case and realizing the benefits is a very time-consuming process.

The tool is expensive. We need to work more on the business case. It's not a solution for everyone. It has its own niche market. The product is available as a bundle.

I recommend the solution to medium and large enterprises. It makes sense if a customer has multiple instances and has internal dev teams. It will not make any sense if it's just a production database. The product is suitable if an organization has a CI/CD pipeline to develop new functionality. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The primary use case is to switch different phases of development, for example, to testing, prediction, etc., which are all quite easy to execute. It's an easy way to switch to one type of development and to use testing and prediction on cloning VM. 

Overall, the solution is very good. It's easy to use and simple to handle many actions, such as VM cloning, testing, and prediction.

The management of the solution needs to be improved.

The solution needs better backup support, especially with Amazon Media. 

The solution needs to improve compatibility with other back-ups and products.

We've been using the solution since the TA version. It's been about a year and a half.

The solution is very stable. We haven't experienced any bugs or glitches. I don't have anything bad to say about it. It's a very stable product.

I would say that the solution can be scalable. If you run it, for example, on Nutanix, it's quite scalable. However, if you use it with another infrastructure solution, it may not be scalable anymore.

Our company's clients are medium to large enterprises. The solution wouldn't be suitable for small companies.

While there aren't too many users on the solution itself (usually there are only two or maybe three), it's indirectly a useful product for many users. It accelerates the time to market of the application, for example. It's useful for many users but it's only used by a few people in the organization.

I've never used the technical support offered by the product so I can't speak to any experience I've had. I don't think it's bad, but, like other products, because I don't use it myself, I can't rate it.

The solution is really easy to set up. Users get good results with the tool they use to deploy the solution and to run it. It's really helpful.

It takes about 30 minutes for an organization to deploy.

I don't recall the cost of the product or the term life of the contracts. I'm not involved with handling the pricing of the solution.

We're reseller partners, and we sell various solutions to our customers.

We only set up the solution for our customers; it's our customers that choose the deployment model they want to work with.

If others are considering implementing the solution, I'd advise that the first check the availability and compatibility of the product against their existing systems and infrastructure.

I'd rate the solution quite high, at about nine out of ten.