Nutanix Flow Network Security Reviews

The major use case for Nutanix Flow Network Security is that it's a network security solution used for enterprise micro-segmentation of the network.

The micro-segmentation feature helps to manage network security effectively because it helps the virtual machines that are already on the cluster and the applications inside the cluster itself. It protects them and helps them communicate with each other without needing a complex external or internal firewall in this use case.

Working with the zero-trust security model means never trust but always verify. Every VM, application, and service in your environment must explicitly prove it's allowed to communicate with others. An application would be able to talk to a VM and vice versa. This zero-trust means explicitly proving that they are allowed to talk to each other, with no implicit trust just because they are on the same VLAN, subnet, cluster, or environment. Nutanix Flow brings the zero-trust model natively to the virtual layer inside the Nutanix software itself, the AHV. The AHV software enforces strict communication rules between workloads.

Integration between Nutanix Flow and other products natively benefits the infrastructure itself as this is a networking segmentation software coming from Nutanix itself. This provides ultimate compatibility. There is no need for extra firewall VMs such as Palo Alto or third-party switches. Security becomes established at the hypervisor level, which creates a new conglomeration of security segmentation.

The network performance analysis that Nutanix Flow Network Security provides is very beneficial and effective.

Nutanix Flow Network Security needs to improve threat hunting, compliance, and policy optimization - these things that security officers would use. Making these aspects clearer would enable easier management. Creating an AI for app segmentation planning or anomaly detections could be beneficial. While it already has anomaly detection and compliance reports, a single AI solution that could create future analysis about what should be done in the network would be advantageous.

I have been using Nutanix Flow Network Security for around three years now.

In my use case, Nutanix Flow Network Security is a stable product.

Regarding scalability, every product has limitations. One of the strong features that Nutanix Flow Network Security has is its ability to support up to 10,000 VMs, which makes it very cost-effective.

The deployment of Nutanix Flow Network Security is not particularly difficult. Compared to ACI or Illumio, it is much easier to deploy.

From a pricing perspective, Nutanix Flow Network Security offers competitive pricing compared to VMware and other competitors. It is an affordable solution.

I am still working with these products. The cloud provider I'm usually using for Nutanix NC2 clusters is Azure. I usually purchase Nutanix directly from Nutanix. The solution is suitable for all types of customers, from small to enterprise. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

I currently use Nutanix Flow Network Security to design a disaster recovery plan.

My company has been leveraging Nutanix Flow Network Security's capabilities to create a non-routed VPC or virtual private cloud that we can use in a routed, but no internet instance of a VPC so that we can deal with failover of our primary data center and secondary data center while maintaining the address space in terms of IP addresses using overlay networks in our DR facility. The VMs in our company wouldn't have to change their IP addresses or DNS centers, which would allow for a seamless failover to another area. Using Nutanix Flow Network Security, we can route all of our traffic from the cores in our main data center to the cores in our secondary data center, which would be invisible to the user and our product offerings.

The most valuable feature of the solution is virtual networking.

The documentation offered by the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. Nutanix does have a documentation issue. Nutanix offers a lot of documentation, but none of them are relevant, pertinent, or easy to understand. The documentation does not cater to the needs of what most people expect. Nutanix needs better scenario-based documentation.

I have been using Nutanix Flow Network Security for five to six months.

It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The scalability can be described as an area that is better than average, but I don't know if it would get better. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The solution's technical support is amazing. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with Guardicore and VMware NSX.

The product's initial setup phase was easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The product is available for free use.

I did not evaluate other options against Nutanix Flow Network Security.

My company is still determining how the product has improved network visibility. My organization is still actively developing the product. There are many things my company is doing in the background to make sure that our VMs come up. My company deals with Nutanix Cross Hypervisor Disaster Recovery, so we are moving from an ESXi or VMware to Nutanix AHV, meaning that my company is crossing over from hypervisor technologies and leveraging Nutanix to maintain the networks at our DR facility.

The most valuable feature of the product in enhancing the security posture stems from the micro-segmentation provided by the product, but I think that it is a functionality in its early stages. The product's micro-segmentation features are being developed to be made robust against technologies such as NSX from VMware and other hypervisor-dependent technologies such as Guardicore. I can't say that the product has given my company any additional features yet, but we hope that the tool will provide us with additional functionalities in the future.

The product's micro-segmentation features seem to be on par with the other technologies in the market when it comes to its ability to isolate workloads.

I haven't noticed any improvements in my company due to the automation capabilities of the product, especially since everything is done manually in our organization because we know the application very well, and we also know how we want to protect it. I am sure the product has automatic features, but we haven't used them in our company.

There has been a positive impact due to the integration capabilities of the product with the other solutions in our company's IT infrastructure.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it, especially those who use Nutanix AHV as a hypervisor.

It would be a good choice to work with the account rep in your company so that you can get a system engineer to help you walk through the majority of the deployment and setup phases since the documentation has certain shortcomings.

I rate the overall tool a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for micro segmentation in the virtualization environment. I make sure VMs in the same network cannot speak to each other.

Nutanix Flow Network Security is a simple solution that is usable, easy to understand, and easy to deploy. The solution gives us a lot of visibility about what happens between the VMs and exactly what it's supposed to do.

The solution’s pricing could be improved.

I have been using Nutanix Flow Network Security for two years.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

Nutanix Flow Network Security is a scalable solution.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team, and then we configured the policy. There's a difference between deployment and configuration. The deployment takes one minute, but you need to learn before configuring.

We pay a yearly licensing fee for Nutanix Flow Network Security.

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

I am using the latest version of Nutanix Flow Network Security. I would recommend the solution to someone who has a flat network and wants to separate their VMs from speaking to each other.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

Our primary use case for Nutanix Flow Network Security was to perform network mapping within our virtual environment, which is relatively flat.

Regarding networking, we have a few virtual LANs set up between certain networks. However, we wanted to evaluate Nutanix Flow Network Security to create additional security rules, specifically firewall rules, for those virtual networks and the virtual machines within them. 

We were exploring the possibility of implementing Flow to prevent any unwanted traffic by applying such rules.

During our evaluation, we used Nutanix Flow Network Security in a monitoring mode, which allowed us to capture network data between the virtual machines and virtual networks in question. This gave us the ability to create policies that would limit communication between virtual networks or servers or allow communication only between specific servers. However, we only implemented these policies in a monitoring mode.

To clarify, we never implemented any firewall rules to actively prevent communication between the virtual networks or servers.

A great benefit we have experienced is being able to understand where our data is traveling over our network, which systems it is reaching, and which users are potentially accessing it. 

Although we are not currently using the product, we found it helpful during the evaluation period to gain visibility into where our data was flowing and which servers were being used. 

The network view allowed us to pinpoint precisely which systems and users were accessing our data, and we were able to identify which servers were not being used as expected.

The network view was excellent as it allowed us to expand the server view and visualize all connections it made within the environment. 

This was particularly useful in identifying the path of our data and not just its location within the data center. 

We could accurately pinpoint the communication route and take preventive measures if necessary.

While the graphical interface of Nutanix Flow Network Security could have been improved, and some of the reporting features needed extra work, the product's features were similar to VMware's NSX. The difference lay more in the presentation and user interface.

I am not able to recall the specifics, but I vaguely remember encountering a minor issue with the product's graphical interface.

My sales engineer was helpful in identifying that I was using a different approach than what was anticipated when expanding the object to view the communication protocols. However, I don't have any further information about the issue.

I have been using Nutanix for three and a half years now.

I last worked with Nutanix Flow Network Security six months ago.

We are a reseller, but my department within the organization is actively using the product. While we do function as a VAR, we also have an internal department that utilizes the product.

I did not encounter any stability issues with Nutanix Flow Network Security. I did not experience any instances of downtime or lagging while using the product.

This is a Microsoft networking product with scalability limited only by the size of your environment.

I would rate the scalability of Nutanix Flow Network Security a ten out ten.

The technical support provided by Nutanix was always professional and prompt in responding to our queries. They were always cheerful and eager to assist us. We found their support organization to be well-managed.

I would rate their support a nine out of ten, despite experiencing a few hiccups here and there.

Aside from Prism, I have experience with various Nutanix products such as Files, Nutanixflow (a micro-segmentation product), and their database product called NDB. While I have examined these products, my expertise lies mainly in Prism and other hypervisor-related products.

I have examined CloudManager and some related products, but I haven't delved much into unified storage, aside from some limited exposure to Nutanix files. Thus, my knowledge of unified storage is limited. 

If I were to prioritize my familiarity with Nutanix products, I would say that CloudManager is the one I am most well-versed in.

This is a recent development that involves the collaboration of multiple Nutanix products. 

We currently use Prism Central as the centralized management component of the Nutanix products we use. For individual cluster management, we rely on Prism Element.

At present, we are not using any of the other cloud or database services offered by Nutanix.

Setting up Nutanix Flow Network Security was extremely easy. 

It only required a single click to enable micro-segmentation. We did need to perform an update in the Prism Central interface to access the controls, but that was straightforward. 

When we wanted to disable the trial, we simply unchecked the same box and the feature was disabled.

We had a team of five people, including myself, my team, and the Nutanix representative, assisting with the initial deployment of Nutanix Flow Network Security. 

However, the process was so simple that the Nutanix representative didn't have much to do besides observe. We were able to complete the deployment within minutes.

The initial setup of the product was extremely easy and straightforward.

It was quickly deployed and we were finished with the setup within ten minutes.

We were able to deploy it ourselves with minimal help from our Nutanix sales engineer.

Although we didn't invest anything in the trial, we still saw the benefits of Nutanix Flow Network Security. We were able to witness how the network flows were working, so there was a return on our time investment.

The company is primarily focused on software, and naturally, they need to generate profits.

While it would be ideal if they could offer their products for free, that is not realistic.

In terms of pricing, I believe their rates are more reasonable than those of VMware.

In comparison to other options available in the market, I would rate their pricing as very competitive, probably a two or three out of ten for cost.

In the past six to twelve months, they have undergone some rebranding, resulting in a few products being renamed. I can't recall all the new names at the moment.

We are currently evaluating the use of Nutanix clusters in Azure as our current operations are all on-premises. 

This is where the new DNS cloud manager feature would come into play. We are not using it actively yet, but it is under consideration.

I have evaluated Nutanix Flow Network Security, which was previously known as Nutanix Flow Network Security micro-segmentation. Although we are not using it at the moment, I can answer any questions or have a discussion about the product based on my experience with it.

We were evaluating VMware NSX for micro-segmentation, as well as Palo Alto for Firewalls for firewall rules.

We chose Flow because we were offered a free demo, and once we saw its capabilities in defining Flows within our virtual environment, we recognized its power and decided to go for it. 

It represented a shift in our security posture as we were moving towards a more cloud-based approach, aiming to move away from traditional data centers. However, our upper management deemed the project to be too costly, so we ultimately decided not to pursue it.

I recommend trying out Nutanix Flow Network Security by doing a test drive on their website. It's also a good idea to engage with the Nutanix community and learn from other users' experiences.

I would rate Nutanix Flow Network Security a nine out of ten.

We have customers that use it, but I'm not an administrator or operator. I just implemented it at the customer site, that's all I did. 

I'm probably not as experienced as some of the customers because they use it more often than me.

Our customers use it mainly for security reasons to block access between VMs in the same subnet. Sometimes, I saw that a few of them have an isolation policy. 

For example, if a VM is infected with malicious software, then they can put the category on the VM, and it goes automatically to the isolation network, which means that the VM cannot communicate with the outside. Only inside connections are possible. That's a nice feature, as well as the isolation of the Flow Network. 

They are completely divided, so they can't communicate with each other. If you have a production site and, on the same cluster or in the same network, you have a test environment, you can divide them with Flow and block any communication between these two sites. That's also a nice feature in my opinion.

Nutanix Flow solution has updated the ability to control everything through API. They also introduced that they develop API first and the rest follows. 

I don't use it very often because the implementation isn't huge enough to necessitate automating things. But I think it could be very solid since the API of Nutanix and the rest of the components is very good. So, I think it can be quite useful and helpful.

It has a lot of features. There is probably some confusion with the name or with the product because there is Flow micro-segmentation and also Flow networking. It's both network-related, but it's not the same product. What I know and speak about is micro-segmentation, and I think it's quite nice. It's easy, and it does what it needs to do.

Last time I used it, it was not handy to see or to analyze traffic logs. As a Check Point partner as well, we have some more expectations to log in. Probably, it's possible to forward all the traffic logs to a log system, but I'm not very into it. It is not very intuitive. A lot of manual tasks are needed to achieve that. But it's possible, and it would be nice to maybe have better examples in the guides or to have another integrated log system to analyze the traffic logs.

My first contact with this software add-on was probably five years ago.

It has been a stable solution.

It's scalable with the use of the API.

We also implement Cisco ACI, but it's a whole different approach. It's also very good and probably just more complicated. It needs deeper knowledge about what you do and what you want to achieve. We don't use Cisco ACI with Nutanix yet.

It's very easy. It is not a complex process. You need to define how you want to split up your VMs. Create categories and assign them to the VMs. 

After that, enable it; it's just an enable button in Prism Central. After a while, you have the feature available. Then you can create your policies, your network policies or micro-segmentation policies. 

There you define the source, the ports, for example, which are allowed, and the destination. You can also create different policy types, such as isolation policy or environment policies. 

After you have created them, you can enable them in monitor mode, and they will collect or monitor all the traffic, but not block anything. So you are able to see if there is any traffic you would block that you don't want blocked. You can adjust the policy to your needs. 

If you see that everything is fine, then you can just press enforce, and it will go over to block mode and will only allow the defined traffic.

The deployment is very easy, straightforward, and quick. It's probably just more about the concept of what you want to achieve or what the customer wants to achieve. It's good if you invest a little bit more time to have a good concept of how you want to deploy Flow and micro-segmentation. But after that, it's just a matter of hours.

Maintenance is not that difficult if you use the API and if you are forwarding all the logs to a log system. I think it's just usable or very important.

I implement it at the customer's site when required. 

It's a good value for the money, , so you don't need to invest a lot of money and a lot of time. You quickly have a security advantage in your environment. So I think in the end, it's a quick win. And the return on the investment, if you need it, is quick. You get a return on investment very quickly.

There are different models like Nutanix AOS Pro or Ultimate license. The prices are different, but it's not in the same price range as Cisco ACI, for example.

I would recommend it. You need to be sure what you want to achieve. You need to identify which security advantage you want to achieve and what Flow or if Flow is the right solution for them.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I primarily use Flow Network Security for micro-segmentation, workload applications, and application databases.

Flow Network Security's most valuable features are user-friendliness, the console, and policy creation.

I've been using Flow Network Security for a year and a half.

I would rate Flow Network Security's stability seven out of ten - it could be improved.

I would rate Flow Network Security's scalability eight out of ten.

The initial setup was easy, and deployment took three to four hours.

Flow Network Security is available on a three-year license, with annual renewals of the maintenance fee.

I would give Flow Network Security a rating of eight out of ten and would recommend it to other users.

We use this solution as a DMZ environment; it allows us to spread to the database traffic.

We appreciate the fact that this solution allows us to segregate two virtual machines that are in the same cluster. 

We would like the reporting functionality of this solution to be improved.

We have been using this solution for around two years.

We have found this to be a stable solution.

This is an easily scalable solution; we carried out an extension recently that worked very well.

The initial setup of this solution is quite straightforward.

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10.

Nutanix Flow has a lot of data protection features. It's also valuable for operations and management. It's a big solution that works well with different solutions and is suitable for most business cases.

Nutanix Flow's networking features could use some improvement. Also, I don't know if it's currently supporting load balancing or not. Lately, we've been working a bit more with Nutanix Calm. We're trying to invest more in Calm and deliver solutions based on that platform. But it is still a new software. It's a new solution for automation and helping customers develop a private cloud. We are still facing a lot of challenges in Calm, but in the future, we will focus on Calm and Era our customers benefit a lot from these products. Era is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) solution that we plan to promote to the customer along with Calm because Calm minimizes the time and operations efforts of the customer.

We've worked with Nutanix Flow for around two years now. So far, we've helped five to 10 customers implement Flow. 

Nutanix Flow is highly stable.

Nutanix Flow is scalable. The most important benefit for the customer is scalability. It's scalable and stable, so if you increase the number of nodes, it will not affect the performance.

Nutanix support is good. When we have any issues during implementation, we open a case with the support and receive good support immediately. I've worked with many vendors in the market, including VMware and other different solutions, and I think Nutanix has some of the best support.

Installing Nutanix is easy. We have expertise in initial deployment and are already delivering multiple projects. Initial deployment involves configuring project node connections and powering on the network connections. Next, you have to set the initial configurations to start the nodes, build the clusters, and then create virtual machines and run them. 

Flow's price is very competitive compared to solutions by VxRail, VMware, Dell EMC, Lenovo, and HPE. However, I'd like to see some different pricing tiers for small and medium-sized customers, who sometimes have trouble affording it. 

Nutanix Flow still doesn't do anything that VMware can't do. To be honest, it's still second to VMWare, but I think it's a very good solution. And it's easier to use. Implementing VMware is complex. There is a lot of configuration and you have to set many policies. Configuring and delivering VMware is challenging, but Flow is straightforward. The interface is familiar and nice. On the other hand, VMware has some features like VxRail that are more advanced than Flow.

I rate Nutanix Flow eight out of 10. We need more workshops for the customers and partners as well as some training for the pre-sales engineering and solution architects implementing Flow for the customer. If the pre-sales engineers and solution architects are confident with Flow and know all the tricks, they will be confident to talk about it with the customer and convince them to go with the product. It's not just an issue with Flow. Nutanix needs more training materials and in-depth workshops for its whole portfolio. We don't really need a workshop that gives a basic overview of the solution. Almost all of our pre-sales staff have a technical background so they don't need a primer on Flow or Calm or any other Nutanix solution. We want workshops that can provide a deep dive into the solution how it works in different use cases. 

Nutanix Flow is a solution to build or provide micro-segmentation. 

Micro-segmentation is a zero-trust environment where no VM communicates to another VM, even if they are on the same network. There are situations when you don't want to allow them to communicate for a specific reason.

Most companies have networks, but there are VMS on those networks and they can communicate with each other. The only option for the customer not to them communicate is for them to have different networks and have them pass through a firewall, which is highly expensive and difficult to manage.

For customers who are running Nutanix Flow and AHV, the largest area for improvement is in the disaster recovery environments. To automate the populate of rules from one side to the other side in case of disaster you report everything on the disaster recovery site, and you have all the rules automatically applied. This was something that was being built when I left Nutanix. It might already be available. Additionally, the usability of the rules editor could improve.

I have been using Nutanix Flow for approximately three years.

I rate the stability of Nutanix Flow a five out of five.

I rate the scalability of Nutanix Flow a four out of five.

Nutanix Flow is straightforward to install. You only need to select a checkmark that you want to enable Nutanix Flow.

I would rate the initial setup of Nutanix Flow a five out of five.

I have seen a return on investment using Nutanix Flow. When comparing the costs of Nutanix Flow versus managing multiple VLANs and many other firewalls, it is far less expensive.

There is an annual subscription to use this solution. There is a 60-day trial to use the solution, it gives you time to decide if you want to continue using the solution.

I rate the price of Nutanix Flow a five out of five. 

My advice to others is to try the solution.

I rate Nutanix Flow a ten out of ten.

The solution is used for micro-segmentation and to control all the traffic east to west in the applications. It allows for policies that enable complete visibility and traffic control.

Flow is great to control East to West traffic

The solution has a very powerful fiber link. For me, it is one of the most important parts. Another valuable feature is the VPC.

Flow is very new in the market. I have two or three years of experience with the solution.

You can increase the nodes and scale the application as needed quite easily.

Nutanix has many call centers worldwide, and you can get an answer on any question quickly. 

The solution is very easy to deploy. Usually, you don't need to make any configuration at all in your hypervisor. It is configured in the micro-segmentation session.

Nutanix Flow is not very expensive. Primary is license by Host

There are no hidden fees. You only pay for how many nodes you'd like to implement in your clusters, and the plans are subscription-based. So you pay for three years at a time, and it's not expensive.

My advice is the network needs to be set up properly, and you need to diagram all of your traffic before implementing to make your troubleshooting easier.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.