Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Reviews

We are currently using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for Citrix Virtual Desktop. These virtual desktops are used as a jump host.

There are a lot of features in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). The file server is very good for the environment because previously we needed to create separate file servers. Now we can make them on Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) only. There are many features like Flow, which is for segmentation. I also have experience in administration.

There are some techniques in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) that need to be improved. Sometimes, processes get stuck on the console, which requires intervention from the command lines. There are gaps between the GUI and command lines.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for the last ten years.

For the first time, it was difficult because it was our initial deployment. After that, it has been very easy.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very stable. During updates or upgrades, it is stable and user-friendly. The upgrade process is simple: just click, click, click, next, next, next, finish.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very easy to scale. You can simply rack and mount the server or node you want and add it to the cluster anytime.

The customer service is better than VMware and other solutions. They come on the call and start troubleshooting immediately. The quality of support is good.

Neutral

I previously worked with VMware before moving on to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). I also have experience with Citrix and Hyper-V.

The initial setup was difficult the first time, but after that, it became very easy.

Just one person is required for the deployment. However, we need information from the network teams about requirements. During our recent deployment, I was in Mumbai, India, while my hardware was in Denver, US. We didn't use a deployment service. Our data center team connected the cables, and I managed the rest remotely.

I heard that VMware is costlier than Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Previously, I worked with a Nutanix partner, so I am aware of the pricing.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a perfect ten out of ten. You don’t have to do much; you just have to purchase the required hardware, rack it, power it on, connect the network cables, and add it to the cluster. That's it. Nutanix technical support is impressive, as they resolve issues immediately without unnecessary delays. My overall product rating is ten.

On-premises

We are using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for file storage.

We also use NetApp storage and Synology storage in my current organization, but for the file server, we are using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). We can create a shared folder on Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), and from that, we can provide access to the server. The access to that file storage shared folder is very good compared to other storage. The storage access speed is very fast for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

For AI and ML workloads, we are not using that yet because my senior team is working on those types of projects. They will make a decision on that. We just access the folder. We can take a user request and share it with our senior team. We are also using Prism Central for connecting to that virtual machine and storage.

The policy creation and the way we provide access to the user is very simple in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

We can share the NFS and SMB file shares. We can also connect the shared folders using iSCSI on the server. We can connect S3 compatible APIs on that Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

For implementing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), we can provide the virtual machines. We have created the virtual machine. We have the volume, and we can share the volume through volume groups and all those features.

The best part is that we can use the volume groups there.

We need to work on reporting in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

Customizing reporting needs improvement.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for the last one and a half years.

It took months to deploy Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) in our organization because we have multiple data centers in my current organization. We need to take downtime, and then we need to move the machines from VMware to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). It takes a considerable amount of time.

I rate the stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) an eight out of ten.

I rate the scalability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a nine out of ten because it is highly scalable.

Technical support is good, and I rate it eight out of ten.

For file server patching, we raise a ticket with support and they help us.

Positive

In six months, I completed all my training for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). I moved to another team, and I will start working on other projects also.

I still don't have higher-level access. We receive the first-phase user request and discuss it with our internal team. Then they make a decision and provide the details on how to provide access to users or how to connect the servers and shared disk.

I'm still reviewing the solution. I've only been using the storage for one and a half years and am still in the learning phase. When I open a support ticket with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), it is very easy, and documents are readily available. The only concern is that we don't have videos available on YouTube or anywhere else. We need to learn exclusively from the Nutanix sites and Nutanix University.

I will suggest Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) to my friends because it is very easy to understand. Out-of-the-box, all features are available, including storage, networking, and other capabilities.

I'm still in the learning phase and have to go through all the points, which is why I'm giving it a rating of 9 out of 10. So far, it has been very good.

On-premises

Other

We use Nutanix Unified Storage for file storage and SMB sharing. My company has around 2,000 to 3,000 users on the platform.

We have massive storage needs and currently have 20 terabytes of storage Nutanix. We are storing around 10 or 11 terabytes of data on NUS. The cost would be huge if we wanted to add another NAS. 

A separate NAS would require us to buy more hardware and add switches. Nutanix allows us to add more storage inside the same cluster. It has significantly reduced our storage nodes by about 50 percent. It has been effective for us in terms of operations, management, and control. 

Nutanix Unified Storage is easy for end users to access. They can use it like any other drive on their systems.  We have mapped it in the user system so they can scan files and store them. They can use it just like an Android drive.

The dashboard could be more customizable

We have had Nutanix Unified Storage for four years.

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage nine out of 10 for stability. 

Nutanix Unified Storage is scalable. 

I rate Nutanix support nine out of 10. If you face any problems, support checks and resolves them immediately. 

Positive

We were using a VMware solution, but it required us to purchase separate storage and integrate it with the hardware. Nutanix is more convenient. 

We have Nutanix Unified Storage deployed on-prem in our data center. The deployment wasn't complex, and it only took two days. After deployment, NUS only requires periodic software updates but no patches. 

We see a 35 to 40 percent ROI on our investment. 

Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive. 

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage nine out of 10. I would recommend it to others.

On-premises

Some of the features that we use include replication and snapshot capabilities, especially from remote locations to our data centers. The main benefit our company sees from using Nutanix Unified Storage is simplification. In the past, we used three-tier solutions with a lot of complexity and operational overhead. Now, we want to focus on the layers above. I want to have storage available, but I don't want to have to think about it. I want it to work without any issues.

The solution needs to be more open to integration with other vendors. Sometimes, we struggle with the support process. Our skilled engineers must explain our problems to everyone, even though we've already done preliminary investigations. The support team follows standard procedures, which can be painful. We're not a small customer, especially in the life sciences sector, so we'd appreciate more specialized support. I've heard Nutanix Unified Storage has teams dedicated to life sciences and healthcare; we should be part of that.

I have been using the product for five years. 

The solution's stability is good. We haven't heard about any issues with it, which is great. We have had issues related to hardware. 

We have used the tool's technical support and found it good. It's one of the best support services in the market. While some tech support experiences can be painful, Nutanix Unified Storage's support has been solid.

Positive

We see time and money savings from using the product. The simplification means we no longer need to worry about configuring small pieces. It's just a few clicks, and it's done. This saves us a lot of time and helps us avoid human errors. It's hard to put an exact number on the savings, but overall, it's a really simple process.

The solution's pricing is fair. 

The tool has been good so far. Our company has thousands of clusters installed, which we're using for virtualization and VMware. I want to explore whether there's a way to eliminate VMware. We want to try using AHV together with storage as a complete solution. 

Over the last five years, we don't have any other use cases with Nutanix Unified Storage. We're new to NetApp. We use NetApp extensively, and everything is connected to our NetApp ecosystem. We'll try the solution, but there are special use cases where we use some specific NetApp features that aren't available in Nutanix Unified Storage. 

One limitation we faced was the inability to use external storage, but I've heard that it's on the roadmap and should be delivered soon, which is awesome. Another important feature I learned about is the ability to scale up storage and compute independently. This is crucial for us because we've struggled with this in the past. It's good to see that you're listening to your customers.

We haven't been able to reduce the number of storage nodes so far because our systems are distributed worldwide. We need capacity everywhere, so it's hard to consolidate. However, we have been increasing the storage capacity in our storage nodes. I'm happy the tool allows us to think about storage and computing separately. We can grow each independently, which is good for our needs.

We initially used VMware virtualization, but we adopted a dual strategy by introducing Nutanix Unified Storage about five years ago. We saw great potential in it from the start. While there were some aspects we weren't fully satisfied with, we actively engaged with the tool, providing feedback. Our goal was to help make Nutanix our primary infrastructure solution.

The key factors driving us to adopt Nutanix Unified Storage fully are simplification and end-to-end coverage. We don't have to worry about building the solution or dealing with integrations.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

On-premises

The Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is for multiple use cases such as S3 for application use and providing files for users, including file servers; additionally, we are using the NUS for the cluster and other purposes.

For data-intensive workloads such as AI and ML in hybrid cloud environments, we have a different cluster where we are using NVMe and storage nodes that provide storage capacity with high performance; we are using the storage node as capacity from the Nutanix side to support this.

Overall, we see many benefits from using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for multiple purposes; we use Nutanix for our database automation, where we use the storage to store data, and we also use it for AI/ML workloads.

One of the best features of the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that I find everything, all the solutions, in one single box; if you look into Nutanix, the HCI plus whatever storage is required as part of the requirements, such as if applications are hosted on Kubernetes or container platforms requiring S3, NFS, or any other protocol, we can access everything from a single system, eliminating the need to manage multiple systems and different storage in the data center, as one system from one OEM provides everything.

I have never seen any performance issues with the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for high-throughput and low-latency requirements in AI and ML workloads because we are using all NVMe as part of the storage.

The Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has helped us consolidate our systems, thereby reducing our overall TCO significantly; we only deal with one OEM for any issues, allowing us to consolidate our infrastructure and reduce our data center footprint, so the overall TCO is a benefit to us.

While there are good aspects, I would like to see improvements in networking configuration, particularly regarding overlay and underlay, plus enhancements in micro-segmentation, as that would provide added advantages in security and data availability.

I have been working with the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for around six, six-plus years.

I have not had any performance issues with the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

The Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is scalable.

My experience with customer service and technical support of Nutanix is positive; the technical support is good and I do not encounter any challenges with it.

Positive

I have not used any different solutions before Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

We evaluated other options before choosing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS); we previously worked with NetApp as our storage solution for a 3-tier architecture but not in the HCI context.

We did not purchase Nutanix through the AWS Marketplace; instead, we directly obtained it from a partner for our on-premise needs.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that it is competitive compared to other solutions available.

From a security point of view, my impression of the cybersecurity features in Nutanix when dealing with unstructured data like ransomware threats is positive; we are using the snapshots feature to ensure protection from ransomware and Flow for micro-segmentation as part of data security and segregation.

I have not had any issues with the security aspect or any challenges so far.

My advice to other organizations considering Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that if they are looking for consolidation and better TCO, or they want to run applications in their systems, Nutanix will be the right choice for them.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight.

On-premises

Other

Our use cases can be divided in two. The first relates to end-user computing. We run Citrix on top of Nutanix clusters. It's highly stable, and we have a user base of around 8,000 people. It's a platform where people can claim government benefits, and many of our office staff at job fairs use it to access their applications. 

We also use it for backend functions in our data and analytics department. Our data lake solution uses cloud data housed on several Nutanix clusters in our data center. The application crunches that data and several analysts rely on it to predict things like fraud. 

The other side is a data warehouse we use for our SaaS application. It holds a massive data set that is pulled into the SaaS application, which crunches the numbers. With Nutanix, we can spread our SaaS worker VMs across several Nutanix nodes. They're all rolled together, but each worker is only dealing with the local data.

Once we patch a Nutanix cluster, we know it has also patched the storage element. We aren't dealing with the hypervisor separately, so we know it isn't completely separate from the SAN, which makes things a lot slicker. It's the same with the storage element.

From an analytics perspective, the best aspect of Unified Storage is its locality. When you read data, you want to know that you're only reading data from the particular local storage node. It's also critical to access the data as quickly as possible from that.  From a business perspective, the most important thing is ease of use. Having a combination of compute and storage makes it much easier to manage. 

We don't have any latency, which is one reason we continue to use Nutanix for these workloads. Our data warehouse has a traditional three-tiered structure and has been that way for many years. It doesn't mean it doesn't function, but we wanted to modernize it by improving performance. 

We achieved that using Nutanix. We could remove the latency you would get from reading your traditional SAN and combine all that into the Nutanix nodes on a cluster. 

It has reduced the number of nodes to a degree because we've been able to collapse several legacy SAN infrastructures into the Nutanix boosters. We still need that storage for three-tier, so we put it together outside. 

Historically, it has been a hyper-converged infrastructure, so when you are looking to grow the solution, you need to scale the compute and storage. Having the ability to scale the storage independently would be a good improvement. 

We have used Nutanix Unified Storage for nearly seven years. 

Nutanix technical support is generally very good. You can speak with someone, and they'll work behind the scenes to resolve the issue. If it's a more long-term issue, it may need to be passed from one team to another. It tends to work smoothly. 

Positive

We also use VMware, Oracle, and Linux hypervisors. When we adopt new tech, we add tenants to the picture because of what they can offer. We combine the skills of our system administrators and collapse them into one. Nutanix's advantage is ease of use. Compared to all the products we've tried, Nutanix performs just as well as anything else — better in some cases. 

Nutanix Unified Storage is competitively priced. There aren't any competitors that can do much better for the same price. 

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage eight out of 10. 

On-premises

We use the solution more for Citrix profile VDI. We also have some Windows servers running, and we use Nutanix Unified Storage more for the server platform. If I remember correctly, we have more than 1,200 servers running on the Nutanix cluster.

Our company is a product-based company that performs order processing. Most of our applications are on the web. We also get invoices and a lot of files. It generates a lot of files and keeps them on the server, and the application is posted on some of Nutanix's servers as well.

In my experience, we haven't had any outages so far. The virtualization of the memory is based on the usage, and it consumes a lot. The previous tools were not as efficient as compared to Nutanix Unified Storage.

Nutanix Unified Storage is a cluster. Compared to any other virtualization environment, Nutanix Unified Storage doesn't require any downtime to upgrade and doesn't experience storage outages. So, things are going smoothly with Nutanix, and that's the best part of the Nutanix cluster for storage.

The solution's most valuable feature is the Prism Central centralized management console. We have close to eight to nine clusters and also remote sites. Compared to other tools, the solution is easy to manage. I would also like to mention the solution's ActiveDR concept and replication.

We have sites from different locations, and we are in the process of procuring ultimate licensing. Even if one cluster goes down, we can bring it up and have the application operating from the other site. That's the beauty of the tool, which makes it more efficient.

We use Cohesity from Nutanix to protect our organization's unstructured data. We also have a cloud-based Rubrik tool. Cohesity has the same infrastructure as Nutanix Unified Storage. I am an administrator for both Nutanix Unified Storage and Cohesity. We take snapshot-level backups. Since we are implementing ultimate licensing for remote sites, we will use an internal snapshot feature to replicate to the other sites.

The solution's storage and scalability features have improved our data operations. Our storage is increasing daily for business purposes. Nutanix Unified Storage has good scalability. We recently received some orders, and some nodes were added.

I like Nutanix's data locality feature because it improved our data accessibility and availability.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage has tremendously reduced the number of storage nodes by around 20% to 30%.

There is no tagging concept in Nutanix Unified Storage where you can tag the servers. It is more useful for backups because I manage backups as well. In other solutions, you can group servers in the backup. Although we can do a complete cluster of VMs in Nutanix, we cannot tag the server to a particular tag ID or number you can pull from the backup solutions.

If you call for that number, the server should ideally take the backups irrespective of the cluster in which it is present. We faced issues with those things. We have to protect the entire cluster manually. The server tagging feature could be added to the solution's future releases.

We didn't face any issues in Nutanix after the upgrade, but we had issues with the Cohesity backups. We consistently work with both the vendors, and that has been fixed. So that is the only thing that we had faced up to the upgrade.

We have been using the solution in my current organization for four years, and I used it for over a year in my previous organization. So, I have a total of five years of experience with Nutanix Unified Storage.

Nutanix Unified Storage is a stable solution. That's what we need. I see. As a customer, we look for such solutions to stabilize our environment and storage. Our day-to-day business requires that.

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

Around 784 users use the solution in our organization.

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

The solution's technical support is good and pretty responsive. We contact the support for small issues, and their problem-solving is the highest.

I rate the solution’s technical support a nine or ten out of ten.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. The upgrade from a previous version to the latest version is also easy. I wasn't involved in the solution's initial setup because it already existed when I joined the company. However, I was involved in increasing the nodes, which took around three to four hours. I don't remember exactly because it's been a while since we added storage.

From what I hear from the management, Nutanix Unified Storage has comparatively decent pricing. I think we are in pro licensing and have yet to get ultimate licensing.

We are not into AI yet. I'm an administrator and not an authorized personnel for those things. We are a product-based electronic components reseller. From what I have heard from management, we will be implementing AI soon.

We are mostly concerned about and focused on security hardening. Some internal solutions, like SentinelOne, have been recommended for security hardening. However, we are not dedicatedly using anything. We are also checking Cohesity DataHawk, and we are still in the process of finalizing it.

The solution is deployed in eight locations. We have multiple nodes in our main data center and DR data center. We mainly use the solution for VDI profiles and server virtualization.

I told my old colleagues that we are using Nutanix Unified Storage, and they were pretty impressed with its features. I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage to users as a unified storage solution.

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

On-premises

I use the solution in my company mainly for file shares and also in conjunction with objects to provide persistent volume claims with Kubernetes.

In terms of benefits, my company has reduced costs by using free trial storage. Cost reduction, along with simplicity, means only fewer hours are required from manpower in configuration and day-to-day administration.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its simplicity because managing installations sometimes involves defining, undoing, and configuring phases, which are not very easy, but Nutanix makes it straightforward. The tool is very stable. It doesn't come to my mind that I have seen the tool in our company's infrastructure for four years.

According to the keynotes announced by Nutanix the previous day or this morning, the data storage for Kubernetes requires improvement as it has a few shortcomings in the area of operations.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for four years. I am a customer of Nutanix.

It is a stable solution.

Scalability-wise, it is quite a simple and straightforward tool. If you need more storage, you just get a new node, and everything gets done in the background, so you don't have to configure anything much.

The technical support for the solution is the best I have seen in my life. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

In the past, my company tried to use an early version of vSAN, and we found that its performance was not good. After my company performed a PoC phase, we deployed Nutanix Unified Storage.

The product's initial setup phase was simple.

When it comes to the product's deployment phase, my company defines the strategy along with the PoC because we are a manufacturing company that has a large and sparse site with more than 100 factories, which we have to take into account. My company started off with the PoC, and then we expanded.

The solution is deployed on a hybrid model, but the majority of the storage is on an on-premises model. My company uses the cloud services offered by Azure.

Nutanix does provide my company with a technical consultant and a pre-sales engineer to help us deal with the implementation part, after which we perform a small test and then go ahead with everything. In Germany and the United States, my company has worked with a third party that Nutanix recommended we approach in order to deploy, install, and configure.

My company pays money for the tool's licensing fees, but we are saving quite a lot of money by getting to have our own resilient storage device.

In my opinion, the product is fairly priced. I would not be surprised if, in the near future, there is a rise in the prices associated with the tool's licensing models.

My company did not evaluate any other solutions against Nutanix Unified Storage. After Nutanix Unified Storage was presented to our company at a meeting, it would be a good idea to do a PoC before choosing the product.

The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads, such as AI or data analytics, is not an area my company considers a use case in our infrastructure. In our company, we are exploring and migrating some AI and LLM models while also testing them on an on-premises model in order to have a little more control of the data that we are training and so that we can reduce some costs associated with the public cloud, but in general, it is a medium-term project we have in our operations. The product is also capable of working with big projects.

My company has not faced any use cases where we had to use the product to detect and block ransomware threats.

Implementing the tool has certainly resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to an increase in storage capacity per node. I don't have the specific number because storage is not my main area, but I say from the top of my head that it could be at 3:1 or 4:1 consolidation. You should not take my word for granted because it is not my main area. The aforementioned area has affected my company's operations and business, especially in terms of simplification, by allowing us to save hours for our providers in the storage area for our administrators while also covering a reduction in incidents.

I don't have any idea about Nutanix Data Lens, but in the future, I am interested in working with the cybersecurity team to have a look at the tool's PoC phase, if possible. I think it could be a good use case for us.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud