We performed a comparison between Nutanix Acropolis AOS series and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the solution our users prefer when looking for an HCI solution. It is user-friendly and offers simple operating system features, easy installation, and excellent centralized administration. VxRail users are happier with that solution’s pricing, however.
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."
"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"Starwind support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software."
"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."
"Support keeps track of alerts of the system and verifies with us if we need help to fix any issues. They have great and quick technical support."
"This solution enables us to make better cost-effective use of our existing hardware and leverage the current infrastructure at a higher level than we could before."
"Acropolis' main advantages are high performance and availability."
"The most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis AOS are storage and hyper-converged. The solution is easy to use and the administration is very good."
"To receive a performance enhancement by merely clicking the one button upgrade is the true value of the platform and what I look forward to the most."
"This is a very flexible solution that you are able to run however you want."
"You need to send commands through the command-line interface(CLI). This could be improved. The commands are done better in VMware."
"One of the most valuable features is how well this solution performs. It's stable, aside from some patch issues, but it's great from a virtualization and scalability perspective."
"One of the most valuable features is that it can be applied at any scale."
"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is its low cost, guaranteed to failover and failback with only a few clicks."
"The stability continues to get better and better. It's pretty reliable."
"It's a turnkey solution, which is good for customers, because they are buying into stability."
"I like the new releases that Dell EMC is doing with VMware. They are allowing for flexibility across the hybrid cloud. This allows organizations to use containers and to be able to move into the public cloud, but also not have lock-in. They can come back to the private cloud when they want to, so it's creating a lot of flexibility across the stack."
"It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly."
"This is a good solution if you want to deploy an ACI Environment but don't have all the necessary resources."
"Enterprise is a complete solution that includes performance, backups and disaster recovery."
"For me, the most valuable feature is in relation to the software updates."
"I would recommend VxRail, it works for most of the use cases."
"The reconnection of the attached drives upon a reboot could be improved."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"I'm sure it needs bug fixes..."
"There is no IPv6 support. That is our only issue at this time."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"They should support more VM, which is not currently supported."
"I would enjoy an advanced mode where experienced users can leverage their knowledge to do advanced things currently only allowed using the command line tools on the CVM."
"AHV is a great hypervisor but still limited compared to VMware. AHV is the one product they must improve."
"I would have liked it if Nutanix were a hardware as well as a software platform."
"The only problem is that not many operating systems are supported on the AOS hypervisor. They need to probably increase the support on multiple operating systems. As of now, a very limited number of operating systems and patch levels are supported on AOS."
"We would like to see it support other systems outside of the compute stack from which it was built."
"There is a feature that exists used for disaster recovery, but it requires an extra license. It should be included with the regular normal standard license."
"The cost of the solution is too expensive. There are other options, such as VMware, that are offered for less money. In Latin America, it seems to be overpriced for the market."
"The implementation of a VxRail, it's straightforward, but the ongoing utilization, and integration, are where it can start to become difficult if you're not used to doing it."
"You have to buy a new server if you want to scale up."
"The requirements need improvement. Some of the managers of VMs are a little sensitive to where they need to be placed in the environment and what names they need to have. I would like a little more control over that so that it fits into our naming scheme and it fits our organizational structure within vSphere."
"They should add automation and activation going forward."
"VxRail is a closed system with an out-of-the -box solution approach, it has basic 3 layers, Hardware, Network, Storage, Software, (Virtualizing) Applications. Release notes and improvement tips, patches from the back office, the business units, should be frequent and up to the patches which are coming from different vendors as far as the operating system application and also the technology itself is concerned."
"Technically speaking, the vCenter and the administration of the integration of the vCenter could be improved."
"When using hybrid nodes, such as VxRail, there should not be compression and deduplication, only in All-Flash nodes."
"Dell wants to implement the disaster site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet. I hope we will have the opportunity to sell VxRail with this disaster site. It is not really clear at the moment, but hopefully, we will get some good news from the customers in the new year."
More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 3rd in HCI with 194 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere, Dell PowerFlex and Hyper-V, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, HPE Hyper Converged and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. VxRail report.
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"Nutanix node you will be running vSphere on top on the underlining Nutanix software" This description is incorrect.
There is no "layer" between the hardware and the OS which is ESXI hypervisor on both cases.
While both systems do a very good job within the nodal limits for scaling a compute environment - it is the networking layer that has the most impact on GPU sharing across a cluster. From a practical perspective, VxRail nodes will typically offer a discount over native Nutanix nodes. With Nutanix you also need servers, disk, networking and GPU's. VxRail will be more integrated with sized nodes, Dell, Cisco or other networking and often the VSphere 7 licenses can be integrated - achieving a lower net cost.
Testing for optimizations on either VSAN or Nutanix to see which favors a vGPU system would be something I would like to see quantified. My guess is they are network constrained and differences between VxRail and a build your own Nutanix environment will be negligible for the same network. Would be good to confirm if there is an optimal point - say 40Gbps vs 10Gbps or 100Gbps for the inter-GPU message passing.
Best option for vSphere 7 is the VxRail as it designed on VMware technology and built in integrates with vSphere, on a Nutanix node you will be running vSphere on top on the underlining Nutanix software.
Ok, I have no hands-on with vxRail.
But we have vGPU running on Nutanix with ESXi (vsphere). I am not aware of something like vGPU sharing across nodes/hosts. You did not mention which solution you have in mind as you would be about to choose in the process.
We have Citrix XenDesktop running. It works really smoothly most of the time. We only encountered a lagging problem once every few weeks which we are yet to solve. Perhaps something running in the back of our net.
With Nutanix you would have a solid base to work with.
You did not mention what automation is to be used. You could use something like Nutanix Calm as an automation solution.
further reading: Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop on Nutanix
Dev-Test: Cloud Development Environment & Testing Solutions | Nutanix
Let me know which platform you have in mind to narrow down suggestions.