Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Reviews

We have a local data center here that isn't connected to the Internet because of the nature of our organization. It does not have any external communications. Last year, we had a disaster when we ran out of storage space in the clusters assigned to the storage containers. We had around 10 TB allocated for files across five clusters. One of our clusters was hosting critical files, so we had to rate the machine consumption from that cluster, and it can expire because the application that the customer was working on was transferring pictures with enormous sizes. 

We realized that we also had the file license, so why don't we go ahead and use it? We contacted Nutanix, and the managers and system engineers suggested we have meetings. We discussed it and then started providing these storage services. Soon, we will expand with node storage, and that will be another option. We're currently looking at best practices because I think there is a limit on the file sizes. We cannot go beyond 10 TB.

The Nutanix solution has improved the overall performance of our infrastructure operations. Nutanix unifies our block file and object storage. It's like a separate service we can provide for the critical applications we are running, but I can ensure each application is secure against ransomware or other vulnerabilities. I will recommend my team to go further with the block and object storage.

I like Nutanix Prism Central. The primary benefit is that we can manage everything from the same page. It also gives you the data in graph form on the main page, so you can keep a close eye on what is happening. You can watch for high utilization and see the disks and reports in the central console. It's a resilient and highly stable application 

The modernized infrastructure and data services feature is the most beneficial to me as an administrator. We derive business value in terms of storage because we have the option of using Windows Firewall.

Nutanix Unified Storage allows us to consolidate our data platform within the Nutanix cluster itself without using external storage. You can work with all types of unstructured data seamlessly with Unified Storage. There should be no problem with that. There are no issues with audio, video, uploads, downloads, etc. 

It's a flexible solution. This is what I understood as I was reviewing the documentation today. Nutanix is trying to simplify storage and has many options for scalability. 

The GUI is easy to use, but it's complex to do tasks from the command line. That is one way they could simplify things for the engineers. People tend to use a graphical interface more than the command line interface. If anything goes wrong, we need to do troubleshooting from the CLI. It would be nice if there were more ways to fix issues within the GUI. 

Nutanix is highly stable. 

Scaling can be a challenge. Once you order a block with a specific size, it will need to be changed to a different node to scale up. We have to expand the cluster and have the nodes ready to increase the storage size. We cannot go ahead and add an extra hard disk if the slots are full.

I rate Nutanix support nine out of 10. 

Positive

We previously used VMware. Nutanix is faster, but the two solutions offer the same level of security.

A typical deployment could probably be completed in a day or two, but our data site required a lot of approvals and an on-site review by our engineer, so our deployment time was around a week. One person is enough to deploy the solution. It doesn't require much maintenance if the clusters are upgraded correctly. 

Switching to Nutanix Unified Storage reduced the total cost of ownership by nearly 50 percent. You can go on the Nutanix website and see a cost comparison of how much you can save over three to five years. 

Nutanix is priced a bit higher than some of its competitors. A lot of Chinese companies like Huawei are entering the Saudi Arabian market trying to provide similar solutions for a lower price. It offers good value, especially the support. Nutanix has a highly competent team. The after-sales support is excellent. 

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage nine out of 10. 

I use the solution in my company mainly for tax data, which we use for some user orders.

The tool is easy to use. My company preferred Nutanix Unified Storage to replace old storage systems, which is good for our company's purpose.

The solution's most valuable feature is the range of files we use it for in our company. My company also uses Nutanix Volumes.

The aspect of the product that I like the most is its simplicity.

The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads can be handled by the tool, but our workloads are not so intensive since they consist of data, some user files, and so on, but it works fine. The tool does a good job with what you need to do with it.

In our company, our second session with Nutanix Unified storage involves using it to detect and block ransomware threats and then using Nutanix Data Lens. I can monitor with the tool's help, which is an interesting part.

I do not use Nutanix Data Lens, but I plan to use it in the future.

The tools that we currently use to protect unstructured data in your organization revolve around the area of disaster recovery for some of the other sites in our company, along with its use for backup. My company is in the healthcare industry, a reason why I believe that the aforementioned tools are important for my organization.

From an improvement perspective, maybe some features can be rolled out in the GUI, especially the ones we can do only in CLI as of now. There are some processes, like if I like to change the data storage to another place, I have to use CLI, and I don't like it since I believe that it could have been simpler in GUI.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for about five and a half years.

It is a stable solution. I don't remember any crashes when it comes to Nutanix Unified Storage.

It is a scalable solution. My company has multiple file instances, and the tool has the minimum amount of file servers, which is available for free. In our company, whenever we need, we can scale up, but our use is not so intensive, so it works fine for us from the beginning.

The solution's technical support is good, especially compared to other vendors. When you raise the ticket with Nutanix's support team, they reply quickly with a solution. I rate the technical support an eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with Dell PowerScale (Isilon). My company switched to Nutanix Unified Storage from Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as the latter had reached the end of the support phase at a time when we had to renew the license.

The product's initial setup phase was simple.

My company did not have any strategy while deploying Nutanix Unified Storage since it was the first time that my company had deployed it.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. My organization is in the healthcare business, so we are allergic to the cloud.

My company deployed the product with the help of the product's partner, Proact. Nowadays, the tool is installed by our company's sales team.

The ROI I have experienced from using the solution revolves around disaster recovery,, which is good since if one of the sites goes down, it serves as an easy and quick tool to recover it.

The product is neither cheap nor expensive, making it a solution offering a price range that is in the middle. The use of licenses offered by the product is an area that is complicated, especially since my company has so many clusters, for which a couple of different licenses are required for different companies with different licenses. With so many clusters in place, the licensing part gets complicated. Previously, with EBX, my company had to deal with license-related expenses from the US end. My company is learning how to deal with the tool's licensing model so that it can be made easier for us to deal with in the future.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use Nutanix Unified Storage for virtualization with Acropolis and have approximately 120 servers on Nutanix.

We replaced our entire infrastructure with Nutanix, greatly reducing data center space and consumption, which has helped the company. Everything we have today runs on top of Nutanix.

Unified Storage has reduced the number of storage nodes needed by about 60 percent. We had nearly two racks in the data center, and now we have less than half a rack. It has helped us put fewer resources into data center expansion, and by reducing them, we can put more computing power in the same space.

We have virtually zero downtime with Nutanix. It updates itself, and we can easily move machines from one cluster to another. Through its hyperconvergence, Nutanix performs comparably to traditional hardware or better.

I think that recently, about two years ago I imagine, Nutanix added a better feature on the platform and now it competes with the best on the market. I think the add-on feature they used is very good.

While Unified Storage has evolved a lot over time, its database handling needs to improve a little. There could be an improvement in terms of costs. It's a little expensive for Brazil but still delivers a lot of performance.

I have used Nutanix Unified Storage for eight years.

Nutanix Unified Storage is highly stable. We haven’t had any issues.

Over time, Unified Storage's versions changed, and its capacity also increased a lot. Eventually, you also need to upgrade the hardware version, but it is highly scalable and easy.

I rate Nutanix nine out of 10 for support. Nutanix support is one of the best on the market. They respond quickly, and the technicians are knowledgeable and professional. 

Positive

It's easy and transparent to deploy servers on Nutanix. We started with some servers to test. Once we saw there were no major problems and the installation was quick, we implemented the entire load..

We use a consultancy from Brazil called Tech Channel, which supports us to this day. We are here at the event with them.

The biggest benefits are performance, security of use, and a single management platform.

Nutanix's licensing model isn't too difficult, but the price is high for Brazil, and the software renewal is considerable. 

I rate Nutanix nine out of 10. It is extraordinary, and the price is okay.

My company started off without Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor initially. After three years we migrated to Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor and started to increase it in our company's environment with other clusters during the designing phase.

The product has been helpful for my company because we deal with big projects in the data center infrastructure, and we see that with Nutanix Unified Storage, we can improve and get better results for the company.

The most valuable features of the solution are replication and backup and our company needs a tool to help us with disaster recovery and the security of our data.

Some of the new features in the tool cannot be used with just one click, as was possible in the past. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads, such as AI or data analytics, is better in the present compared to the past. In the past, my company faced some small problems with the latency part, but nowadays, it works very well.

In terms of the use of detecting and blocking ransomware threats, I would say that my company applies some configurations to all the data so that the other people in the environment involved in the administration part can't delete them. If someone tries to attack and delete some data, then my company has a feature in the tool to enable the protection of data so that no one can delete any data.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. In the past, my company had more servers and appliances, but nowadays, we have reduced the number of appliances in the data center by around six percent. The reduction in storage nodes has affected our company's operation and business in terms of the cost of energy, environment, administration, and contracts for continuing the business in the data center.

In terms of the tools used to protect unstructured data, my company replicates the environment in one data center to another and one Nutanix cluster to another Nutanix cluster.

It is very important to use the data protection features offered by Nutanix in our company because we can have another point of data in a separate cluster of Nutanix.

My company analyzed a traditional architecture, but we saw a better solution in Nutanix because it is small, and we can run the same appliance everywhere.

The new solutions that users have been seeing for the past one or two years don't have features available in one click like they were in the past, but they do work, though it is not as easy as it was in the past.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for eight years.

It is a stable solution. My company did not have to stop anything in our environment due to any problem associated with Nutanix Unified Storage.

During the eight years that we have had the product in our company, we haven't seen any problems during the three times we used the tool's scalability feature in the environment. During some moments, we were able to improve the same clusters. At times, our company had to buy or order new clusters, but every cluster is actually used for replication, and it has never been a problem.

During the eight years my company has used the product, I would say that we have had some experience with the tool's support team. Whenever my company requires help with the product, we have received good support. I rate the support team a nine out of ten.

Positive

In the past, my company used to use some other solutions for replication purposes, but it was not a native solution of the appliances used. My company used to use another solution like a backup solution, which was a tool to restore a queue manager from IBM.

The product's initial setup phase was easy, especially because my company was planning to move some small workloads on it to see how it works and then continue with the other biggest work.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

My company sought help from a partner company in Brazil named TechChannel to help our organization with the deployment.

The security of the data and replication are areas where I see an ROI from the use of the solution. I think the best ROI is in terms of security since we can save the data in other appliances.

My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We use it for our application servers. We have company applications for the casino, hotel, and food and beverage. 

The cost has been the main benefit. It is a cheaper cost than what we used to use, which was VMware and Dell. Now it is cheaper in terms of hardware and licensing, and that has helped financially. It being up and available helps too.

The throughput is really good, and it has low latency. I would describe it as good on speed and good on not being latent. We have not had any problems with data-intensive workloads.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage will eventually result in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. We are still migrating, so I cannot say that it has done that yet, but it appears that it will. We are still in the process of putting it in. Overall, it would be nice to reduce by 50%.

Redundancy and availability are valuable. We have several nodes, so it stays up, and there is redundancy. Then there is availability. We have all those nodes, so it is always on 24/7.

There should be more information. If it gets used more by more people, they will have a bigger community to share ideas. It is still kind of newer. It is not as big as Dell and other companies. It is still newer. The older it gets, the better it will get.

We have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for about one year.

It is pretty stable. We have not had any outages, so it has been stable so far.

Its scalability is probably pretty good. I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability. It seems that we can scale up pretty large if we want to.

We only have one main data center, but we are going to have a newer data center in the next year, and we are going to use it there too.

It can be slightly improved, but mostly, it is good.

Positive

We were using VMware and Dell. We switched mostly because of the cost. VMware increased the cost by 110%, so it was not economical to have anymore, whereas with Nutanix, once you buy the hardware, the hypervisor is included for free, so it is a better deal.

It is on-prem. Everything is on-prem.

Its deployment was easy. The tenants' move was pretty seamless. It was not necessarily a hard thing to do to migrate over. Now we were worried about the more intensive servers and databases and whatnot that may potentially have an effect on our company, but for all the smaller applications that are not as revenue-generating, they have been good so far.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we analyzed and defined levels of how critical and revenue-generating the applications were. We first did everything that was not supercritical, such as a very small database and whatnot, and then started to increase from there.

We use Nutanix Consulting, not a third party.

The ROI is in terms of the yearly cost or maintenance cost.

Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower.

We evaluated other solutions a little bit. We were not going to go to Citrix or anything else, so it was only Nutanix. That was our only option. 

We use NetApp MetroCluster to protect unstructured data in our organization. It has its own set of ransomware security. I do not have the exact details about it, but NetApp products have some ransomware capability to detect environments. These tools are very important for our organization. In our industry, there are lots of ransomware attacks, and they happen to all our competitors. That is why they are super important.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. It seems very good, but it needs to get slightly better.

We are a managed services provider, and we customize solutions for every use case. For example, we have a client who built up file servers on Azure and found it very cost prohibitive. Thus, they wanted to move back into Nutanix Unified Storage to reduce costs. Our clients have seen a 7% to 10% reduction in storage costs. We have been able to achieve a 4:1 compression using Nutanix Unified Storage.

We have one client who is currently doing a POC with Nutanix Data Lens.

We have been able to improve efficiency metrics such as performance, dedup, and energy savings by using Nutanix Unified Storage.

One of our clients has 14 different locations, and having a single pane of glass with Nutanix Unified Storage would be a great help for them. We would not have to create 14 different consoles.

Nutanix needs to improve their cybersecurity options at the storage level.

We've been working with this solution for a year.

We have not seen any issues with the stability of the solution.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. With a few clicks, you can stand your storage up. It reduces the overall life cycle of deployment within the ecosystem.

We have seen an ROI. When we build a solution for a five or six-year contract, we factor in the total cost of ownership. The total cost of ownership for Nutanix is very competitive.

Compared to other solutions, Nutanix Unified Storage is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance.

I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage and rate it a ten out of ten. You will be able to bring in scalability and flexibility. 

I am not using it currently. I tested a few things a while ago. This is something that we will probably adopt mid-term.

I am not a storage guy. I am a Nutanix guy. I got a question from my boss about what Nutanix can offer, especially for the Nutanix environment. There is a limitation that Nutanix is not able to use any other storage solution or external storage solution. It is NFS inside the VM. We wanted some block storage, so I started to experiment with the Nutanix solution.

There is ease of use. We use other third-party solutions in our environment for storage. The challenge that we have is that we do not have enough people. If someone is going on a vacation, I have to take care of a few things in this area, such as configuring new NFS storage, and trust me, some of the other vendors are very complicated. It is hard to deal with simple things, whereas the solution from Nutanix is simple and intuitive. If I show it to a colleague just once, he will be able to do things easily. It is very good.

I could not test it much for resilience, but overall, we never had any issues with the Nutanix products that we use. We never had data loss or any data-related issues. The performance is also very good. Even though my testing was not deep enough, I am confident it is a great solution. It is a very easy one.

Nutanix Unified Storage is great for helping manage and run storage from any location.

I like that we can have Nutanix clusters for VMs and files. That means we have data locality when we use the NFS storage somewhere else. When you use an external vendor, you do not have the data locality.

The interface is quite simple. It is very good. It is easy to configure. It also has a powerful CLI. In the few hours that I was playing with it, I did not explore the power of it, but I noticed that CLI has potential. Because of its simplicity, the interface can lack some options, but I am pretty sure that any lack of features in the UI can be compensated by the CLI.

Its interface is very simplistic. It is a good thing for people because of the ease of use, but at times, I find it too simplistic. It is hard to find advanced options. They should eventually expand it and provide additional drop-down lists or menus with advanced feature sets. They should expand it with some additional menus and options so that we can do more. Currently, Nutanix is too simple, whereas, with other vendors, you get lost among all the buttons and menus. Nutanix is doing all that simply, but if you keep it too simple, you miss the options to do things through the UI.

The routing of their support cases could be better.

I had a test cluster for two weeks, and I was logging in from time to time. It was more of experimenting than testing. I had my test cluster, and I played around for a few hours.

It was a great experience to use it for files for two weeks.

I can rate it a ten out of ten for stability, but I need to fully test it to provide real feedback.

I did not test it in a big environment, but looking at how Nutanix works, I would say it is scalable. You just add more nodes and storage to expand, and this is familiar with the concept. I am confident in its scalability.

We are a company with about 700 people. We had two people testing it. It was me and my colleague, but he barely tested it.

I have mixed sentiments. If my case reaches the right person, it goes well. It is not about the people. It is about the way the case is routed. We are based in Europe. Usually during the day, our case lands in Asia or EMEA. The India team works till One o'clock our time. If I raise a case an hour before their shift ends, it still goes to them. That is not okay. They are going home. Why assign the case to them? These kinds of things bother us.

I would rate their support a seven out of ten because I know that the others are very bad. As compared to other companies, Nutanix is still doing better. Otherwise, I would have rated it a five out of ten.

Neutral

Its deployment is simple. It took a few days because I was installing it for the first time, so I had to read more, but the second time, I will be able to deploy it maximum in a day.

Nutanix Unified Storage consolidates block, file, and object storage. It is a great idea. I like it, but I am a bit reluctant to put everything into the same cluster. If you have virtualization and storage with all its features, such as block, file, and object, in one cluster, I am not sure what the impact will be in case of any kind of failure. For me, it would be too much. It is nice to have it all, but I am wary of putting too many things in one box.

I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage. I am also in discussion with my manager to start using it.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a ten out of ten.

My colleague and I are currently trying to migrate from the old-style file server to the new Nutanix Files feature. We have bought and organized some sessions with their technician to be able to migrate the files to the new structure and see if we can meet the compliance needs of our company.

We migrated our whole infrastructure based on HPE and VMware to HPE and Nutanix. This powerful and new type of structure has taken our workload to the next level.

We have seen fast recovery time and the ability to quickly move the model machine from one to another. We are proud to be here at .NEXT 2024 and having bought the Nutanix Infrastructure.

Fortunately, we did not have any attacks, and we did not have to manage any attacks. However, with a good recovery point, it would be easy to recover data with Nutanix.

Nutanix Unified Storage has not resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node, but we have the possibility to utilize more VM servers to synchronize any workload. We can move a VM from one node to another in a fast and secure way based on our needs. We have different types of nodes. We have different configurations, and we can move the servers from one to another based on our needs and the workload.

Nutanix Unified Storage has saved us money because many activities are completely automatic. It surely saves money and time for our IT team. It has saved about 30% of their time.

The scalability, data redundancy, and security are valuable.

The dashboard can have more details and be more useful.

I started using it when we put the Nutanix infrastructure in our company in 2021. It has been about three and a half years.

We have chosen Nutanix just for scalability. We are planning a new installation of the cluster. We have to create a new cluster due to the workload needs. We have to put a cluster in the full flash mode and not hybrid mode. We will put new nodes and attach them to the cluster. It will work great.

Their technical support is great. We opened a number of cases. We had a problem with licensing, and we also wanted some information about launching the shell in CVM. We absolutely had a great experience with the tech support.

Positive

We did not use a similar solution for storage. We moved from hyperconvergence and we had the standard structure.

It is quite easy to deploy.

We had help from Nutanix. Their technical architect came to help us during the migration. He helped design the configuration of the new clusters because we had new clusters. It was great. We had no problem with that.

We had someone working in a supplier company who had experience with Nutanix. One day, we were discussing that our company had decided to go to a new type of infrastructure, and we realized that Nutanix was the right decision. We also started using AHV. We left VMware completely and used the hypervisor on Nutanix.

We are currently considering a new cluster of three new nodes, full flash to NVMe, because we have some new needs for the ERP of our company. If the management approves it, we can put it in our company and take our infrastructure to a new level.

We are starting to analyze the flow with micro-segmentation to protect unstructured data in our organization. We have not yet put it into production. We need to study more and go deeper into it. These tools are absolutely important for us. In our company, security or cybersecurity is put at a very high level. It is considered important. We have to manage it and put the correct configuration with things like micro-segmentation.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a nine out of ten.