Nutanix Database Service Reviews

I sell this solution to customers. The use case is for database provisioning from the snapshots. We are using the latest version, 2.0.

It's deployed on-premises.

Requests come from the application team, and they need to have yesterday's data to give to the analysis team. We need to restore the databases, which is a time-consuming process. AI has been deployed within Nutanix. It's very easy to provision the machine within minutes of the application orders. They can hand those over and work along with the AI team to get the data available quickly for business analysis.

It should be able to be consumed by other customers because only the enterprise cloud customers are able to buy this software.

From an architecture perspective, Era cannot be deployed onto any other platform apart from Nutanix.

More databases should be integrated quickly. If any VM is running on the Nutanix platform, like Oracle or SQL, and we right click that VM, from there we should be able to add the database into Era rather than go on the no-Era console.

I have been using this solution for more than two years.

It's stable.

It's scalable. The software depends upon Nutanix. If you have the resources, like memory, then it's definitely scalable.

Technical support is slow sometimes. Because the talent is not available in India, sometimes we need to accelerate calls to the US or another region, which takes time.

I would rate technical support two out of five.

Setup is very simple. The amount of time it takes to deploy depends on the requirement. If it's a Microsoft SQL database, it doesn't take more than a day to deploy. 

One person is more than sufficient for deployment and maintenance.

Not everyone can afford it. It's a bit expensive, so the price has to be improved.

I would rate this solution six out of ten.

I use Nutanix to provide managed services for one of the biggest telecom providers. 
We proved managed services to the customer, including the platform and service as well as VM as a service.

It's a vast solution, so it depends on what the customer needs. We provide the Kubernetes cluster, and if you want a particular server, we provide the files. We use Karbon, Era, AHV and Prisim Central. We are also now in the process of testing out the VDI feature as well.

They recently came out with a new version, so there are some new features that I still need to try. So it's hard to say what should be improved. Also, I don't have any essential databases that I'm managing with Era, so I'm not really close to the DBAs and don't know what they need or where there is still room for improvement. The best ones to answer this question are the DBAs because Era is basically designed for the databases. 

I've been using Nutanix Era since 2012, so almost nine years.

Era is a stable solution.

Era is scalable.

I would rate Nutanix technical support eight out of 10. I think they're helpful, but maybe they need more technical staff. Their response was slow once, but that was the only time it happened, so I'm not sure. I don't want to judge them. Maybe I'm wrong.

On the Nutanix side, it's very easy. They can enable a section in seconds or minutes. But on my side, I have some network dependency here and there, it took longer for me. My environment is a little different, so it took me longer. But from Nutanix itself there isn't much to do.

I would rate Nutanix Era eight out of 10. I would recommend it to anyone who is considering it. It has some very good features. It really works with multiple silos in terms of infrastructure, database updates, and migration. So many things are easy with Era. You really don't need to follow the cycle that DBAs usually follow. It's really fast also. It really speeds things up. 

We deploy the solution for companies we work within the areas we cover — like our Minister of Education. They work with a lot of colleges. So we help them to deploy Nutanix in the central data center at the Ministry of Education. The colleges are using the centralized database from their locations as a guest or a cloud entity.  

The most valuable feature in Nutanix Era is that the clients can use it for automatization as well as virtualization.  

There is no extra charge for other things. There is a scaled-down deployment. They get only the features that the client is issued.  

We just started about three or four months back to do deeper explorations of the product. We are in the implementation of it really, and exploration is still on-going. Essentially, customers have just started using this product so we need to wait some time and see what their feedback is going to be like. Generally, before, we were using the Nutanix Acropolis product, which is another hypervisor, and the deployment was okay. This is something new for us, so we are still discovering a lot about this solution. Maybe after six months, we will have more valuable customer feedback about what is missing and what is required to be improved.  

But so far, we already have some issues like patch management which has shown to cause some stability issues. The pricing — which is probably the biggest issue for this product becoming more accepted in the market — probably needs to be re-evaluated because it is too high and customers are resisting the cost. The pricing structure is also much more confusing than it needs to be.  

We have three customers here and they are working with Era. We are the system integrator so we deployed Era over there between three and four months ago depending on the client.  

We don't see any problems with Nutanix so far. It is mostly very stable. But all the cases that usually reveal stability problems are upgrades. If we are upgrading the operating system or doing firmware upgrades and server upgrades, we may experience some stability issues. Sometimes there are stability issues when rebooting the node. These are the kind of things we have come to expect with this product, so it is okay. We are planning accordingly when we have to do upgrades and so far everything is surviving. We get by the temporary issues and move on.  

But we have definitely seen stability issues when we are upgrading the firmware of the servers with virtual machines in Nutanix. Otherwise, Nutanix is stable. The patch manager is the issue. So I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the patch management. Maybe the virtual machine has to be somehow offline when upgrading patches. This is not happening with the VMWare or other hyper-convergent products. It could be improved because they know when these situations occur and they know they need to resolve it.  

Nutanix is good with scalability. There are no issues. Most of the clusters are six nodes, eight nodes, or twelve nodes. We have all kinds of customers in various businesses of various sizes with greatly varying demands. We have telecom customers and we have small customers. Some start with six nodes, some start with four nodes, some start with eight nodes. Different customers all have different variations in configurations. In 2018, we introduced three implementation packages which simplifies things somewhat from our end and in discussing the pricing points with clients. We maintain a 90 percent market coverage. In all, there are around 15 to 17 Nutanix customers and we never had a problem with scaling.  

As a reseller, we carry a lot of products. For about 90 percent of our customers, we are using VMWare and only 5 percent of our customers are using Nutanix. Some customers we have are also using Microsoft Hyper-V. Everything is in clusters. What the customer ends up using depends on the customer's needs and cost of the licensing. A lot of other things could have an impact on the decision-making process on the customer's side.  

The Nutanix product has a lot of wizard-based utility for the installation which does everything. It is well thought out and very nice.  

Right now, most of the things that our clients are using the product for are automatization as well as virtualization. These are the two features that the customers are most interested in.  

The costs for Nutanix Era are subscription-based. It is very expensive. This is one of the reasons why it is not easy to deploy Nutanix as a reseller. This is especially true if clients have their own hyperware like Microsoft Hyper-V or VMWare and can compare the cost of those products.  

But the cost depends on the customers. When you compare Nutanix to VMWare, it is impossible to beat the price because the cost of Nutanix is very high. The pricing is something that should be lower. It is the Nutanix license itself that costs a lot. It is not the hardware, it is the software. The only thing which is stopping Nutanix from being a bigger player in the market is the price of the software.  

They have built a lot of complexity into the licensing as well. Sometimes costs are based on licensing of components, sometimes on the processor, sometimes on the cache, sometimes on the capacity. The licensing is too complex especially compared to something like VMware which is simple processor-based licensing. They have a single price and there is no flaw in the technology which suggests it is not as capable as the Nutanix product.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Nutanix Era as a four or five. Because we have only been using the product for less than five months, we are still doing some evaluations and there is feedback pending from the customer experience. There is too much that we still need to discover. But the pricing and the stability are big problems. I will have to give this product a four.  

We use the solution to save costs and simplify operations.

Currently, we can only patch the operating system for Linux operating systems. It would be helpful if we could patch Windows operating systems with the solution. Also, their tech support's service and response time could be improved.

I have been using the Nutanix Database Service for about two years.

Nutanix Database Service is a stable solution. I rate Nutanix Database Service an eight out of ten for stability because of its service level response time.

Nutanix Database Service is a scalable solution. I rate Nutanix Database Service a nine out of ten for scalability.

Nutanix Database Service’s customer support is very good. I rate their customer support an eight out of ten because of their support turnaround time.

The initial setup of Nutanix Database Service is easy. It takes hours for the deployment of the solution. Two people, including an integrator and project manager, are involved in deploying the solution.

The solution has a good ROI in terms of time and money.

I use the latest version of Nutanix Database Service. Nutanix Database Service requires minimal maintenance, and just one person is required to do it. We absolutely recommend users to use this solution.

When you factor in all the different aspects of the product and compare it to other alternatives, Nutanix Database Service is the best solution.

Overall, I rate Nutanix Database Service a nine out of ten.

We use Nutanix Database Services to maintain the entire life cycle of the database. We use it to back up, clone, upgrade and deploy the database. We're providing the DBA on a multitenant infrastructure, where we can complete database management and deploy the database.

The automation and ease of using the solution are great. It saves us time.

The solution should provide more integration with more databases.

We have been using this solution for about a year and a half. It can be deployed both on-premises and cloud, and we are using the latest version.

It is a stable product.

It is a scalable product.

They have very good technical support and knowledge. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is very straightforward, and it took about one hour to deploy. I personally completed the deployment as a consultant. We have five users using Nutanix Database Services. We only require one staff for deployment and maintenance.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution to others because it saves operation time and day-to-day tasks. This is a big deal because if you're managing a big infrastructure, the operation time is critical, and with the use of Nutanix Database Services, resources can be better utilized.

Nutanix Database Service is a database management solution. If customers have multiple vendors it works well.

The most valuable feature of Nutanix Database Service is the ability to manage multiple vendors.

The solution could improve by providing more support for more vendors.

I have been using Nutanix Database Service for approximately two years.

The solution is stable. However, there can be some glitches.

I rate the stability of Nutanix Database Service an eight out of ten.

Nutanix Database Service is scalable.

The solution is best suited for enterprise companies.

The support from Nutanix Database Service is good. They are helpful and responsive.

I have not used other vendors for our purpose.

The implementation was done by our central team.

The price of the solution is expensive.

I rate the price of Nutanix Database Service a six out of ten.

I rate Nutanix Database Service an eight out of ten.

This is a very useful solution for database management. 

This solution could be improved by integrating with more database providers. 

I have used this solution for three years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The customer support for this solution is excellent. 

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. 

This solution is reasonably priced. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We are a system integrator and this is one of the solutions that I recently implemented for one of my customers.

Their primary use case is managing their database lifecycle.

The most valuable features are working with database errors. There are a lot of options for working with the database.

The interface is easy to use.

I would like to see the SQL compatibility enhanced.

This is a stable solution that is easy to use, without much complexity.

This solution is scalable. Right now, our client has three or four DBAs using it.

I did not use technical support for this solution, but my understanding is that it is good.

The initial setup for this solution is straightforward. The deployment took less than two hours.

This is a solution that I recommend. It has very good features for the database lifecycle, and I would definitely recommend that people try this. 

This is a good solution, but there is always room for enhancements such as compatibility with other databases.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.