Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSphere comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and VMware vSphere based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI.
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Q&A Highlights
Question: What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
Answer: Nutanix AOS is an SDS (Software-Defined Storage). We can compare it to VMware vSan. To simplify, we use it to aggregate the local drives of each node and provide a storage cluster. VMware vSphere is a virtualization layer. It's used to provide a compute cluster. For Nutanix, the virtualization layer is AHV. So, we combine the virtualization cluster and SDS cluster from the same nodes to provide an Hyperconverged platform. For the best fit, it depends on your need. If you're looking for performance and simplicity, I think Nutanix is the best choice.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices.""This solution has a very good user interface, with simple administration/management.""Their support goes above and beyond with the integration of their software.""One of the standout features of StarWind.com is its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with Dell systems. This integration provides users with an unmatched level of convenience and compatibility, allowing for streamlined operations within a Dell environment. This compatibility factor alone can save significant time and effort for IT professionals, ensuring a smooth integration process and optimized performance.""It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one.""StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases.""The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing.""The price was right."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is it has centralized management.""Flexibility. We're able to mix performance nodes with storage nodes easily. Unlike other vendors where, if we start a hyperconverged solution with them, we have to stick to a specific model, to a specific series with specific capabilities, with Nutanix it's very easy to mix and match the best solution, especially for a dynamic infrastructure like ours.""It has enterprise data services with consolidated storage data protection and disaster recovery. One valuable aspect is its efficiency as a robust platform. There is an ease of managing all processes. The data recovery process is remarkably fast. It’s a stable solution. The product is scalable. It provides high-speed live migration capability.""Acropolis has a great interface and lots of management features packaged with it at an affordable price.""Scaling is very easy and no limitations are set.""The flexibility of this system is very good. It's also faster than others, and has skilled technical support who showed more initiative than a competitor, e.g. VMware.""One of the most valuable features that can be found, is the inclusion of a hypervisor for free.""It is less expensive than VMware products. It is also a little bit more flexible, but it really comes down to price for us."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pros →

"It's a very nice tool to be able to reduce your footprint, consolidate servers, and accumulate several servers in a high-density configuration.""VMware vSphere is easy to scale. We haven't had any problems scaling what we're scaling now.""It is very stable and scalable, and implementation is straightforward as well.""The most valuable feature of vSphere is its modularity. I also like the maturity updates. It's available everywhere and almost all the data centers are using it.""Vmware vSphere is the benchmark of the visualization market.""Also, the automated builds are being done through it, and we don't have to manually do it anymore. All of my AIS platforms are completely automated now with the VM suite.""The feature that I find very valuable is the ability to move images of virtual machines from different workspaces to other workspaces between different installations.""We saved a lot of time and hardware with this solution. It also prevents fewer incidents."

More VMware vSphere Pros →

Cons
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure.""It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers.""Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer.""We would like to see the documentation more fully developed.""Regular updates to the software are required, and subtle design changes would be welcome.""A central management console may be nice to see all nodes.""While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation.""I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"Make it easier to manage.""It would be great if they could improve the GUI features.""Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's cloud platform management software could be improved so that I can manage my load between the cloud and on-premises.""The file services that they also provide need some more features, like on the Windows file server.""The technology has a lot of room for improvement. For example, when they want to segment applications in conjunction with NSX, which VMware uses, Acropolis is not compatible with the competitors. The integration in the security layer is not compatible with NSX for the application segmentation that uses VMware.""Some clients find the solution's cost to be too high.""Nutanix Acropolis AOS could improve by adding some NAS features, similar to the ones that are available in the NetApp solution.""USB dongle-based licenses do not allow us to directly locate the USB ports on Nutanix."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Cons →

"the HTML version of things needs to get a little bit better. The vSphere side of things gets a little difficult to manage; right-click, in some browsers, doesn't work as well as it used to. I'm seeing a little bit of general latency that we didn't used to get with the thick client, although it's getting there.""One problem that needs fixing is when we run the backup for the servers, the servers become inaccessible to everybody on-site while it is creating a snapshot.""There is definitely room for improvement and that improvement should be in the licensing and the simplicity of procuring additional licenses or additional VMware products. Right now, it's very complex.""They need to stop pushing code out so fast.""The implementation of VMware vSphere is easy. For integration companies, it's easy, the final client cannot do it alone but for an implementor it's easy.""In the next release, I would love to have Java as a service, platform as a service, and container as a service.""The biggest room for improvement would be just simplicity. It is very intuitive, but it needs somebody with a lot of IT background.""The cost could always be lower."

More VMware vSphere Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
  • "We are happy with the price."
  • "The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
  • "The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
  • "When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
  • "The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
  • "The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
  • "The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Able to grow with smaller, more linear increments of investment"
  • "The basic license that comes with the box allows basic virtualization features but advanced automation features would require an upgrade of licenses."
  • "I know Nutanix and VxRail have similar prices and licenses. Nutanix is a go-ahead if AHV is used as hypervisor because it is already embedded in the price."
  • "While cost may seem higher than your traditional 3-tier architecture, you need to look at the bigger picture. You're not just buying hardware here. You're buying a complete environment."
  • "Setup cost is minor, pricing is quite a bit (we have a 7-node-cluster for about 450K EUR with 2 vGPU-nodes for Citrix) but that includes hardware, software, and support."
  • "The price is good but I think there is still room for improvement on the price."
  • "Extra features should not be so expensive. We would love to be able to use or even just try some of the extra features without having to buy them. Buying those features is just as expensive as buying vSphere licenses, so the cost savings is nullified."
  • "Work close with your InfraTeam and discuss with Nutanix the best way to achieve sizing and price that are right for you."
  • More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "My advice when it comes to pricing is that pricing is a bummer, especially when it comes to SnS coverage."
  • "Purchase only the cheaper solution with support. I don’t recommend high-end licenses."
  • "Pricing needs to be competitive since Microsoft Hyper-V has come a long way; they are both around the same price range."
  • "VMware is consistently expensive and their pricing arrogance is what will drive us and other customers away."
  • "Start with the lowest and upgrade if, and only if, absolutely necessary."
  • "Compared with other vendors’ products, the pricing of the license is slightly lower. The annual S&S price is very affordable."
  • "The product is worth what you pay for it. I definitely feel like I"m getting good value."
  • "​The only issue with vSphere might be with the cost of the tools and the software.​"
  • More VMware vSphere Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Miriam Tover
    Dorian Boris MOUKET - PeerSpot reviewerDorian Boris MOUKET
    User

    Nutanix Acropolis has been specially designed to respond to the problems of hyper-converged infrastructures.


    We believe that Nutanix Acropolis is more flexible and better suited to respond to the issues of very high availability.

    Patrick Ringelberg - PeerSpot reviewerPatrick Ringelberg
    Real User

    Question one:
    Does the customer already have vSphere because than I would suggest not to use Acropolis? Nutanix wants to control the entire platform with its HCI solution like VMware.

    Question 2:
    Do you want to use NSX now or in the future? Use VMware, because if it will be supported and it would always give issues with the integrations with Acropolis.

    Question 3:
    Is the growth of the customer low? Then Nutanix can be a choice if it is bigger than VMware. Nutanix is not flexible in big site setups and can give big problems with updating.

    Maan Othman - PeerSpot reviewerMaan Othman
    Real User

    I think VMware vSphere is more mature as a hypervisor than Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV). it is more capable to serve almost most of the workloads. having said that if you are talking about a standard workload both of them can do the job, but your workload is sensitive or even newly released you most properly find it will be certified to work vSphere before becoming certified on AHV.


    in addition most technology providers and one of them Nutanix they first certify their solutions to work with vSphere before certifying any other hypervisor.

    KM Poon - PeerSpot reviewerKM Poon
    User

    Nutanix is running AHV. There is no need for a VMware license. 

    Steffen Hornung - PeerSpot reviewerSteffen Hornung
    Real User

    Acropolis in itself is no product. 
    Do we speak AOS or AHV Ort both?


    AOS is the intelligence on Top of a hypervisor making AHV Or Vsphere an HCI Solution.


    AHV is Nutanix own KVM-based hypervisor managed completely within Prism from AOS, so there is no standalone offering, it always comes with AOS.


    This seems to contradict the statement above, but since you can have AOS without AHV, you can make a clear distinction between both.


    AHV has the advantage of being optimized tightly with AOS. Together with ESXi, you still have to use two management tools for AOS + ESXi. AHV + AOS utilizes the same prism element web management. So, integration is the biggest difference between AHV and ESXi


    For AOS and ESXi the answer is quite simple: you would have to compare VSAN with AOS. Then you see, the integration of products and resiliency in Nutanix is better by a magnitude.


    if your comparing features you have AHV on Par with ESXi.


    AHV is the predominant hypervisor on nutanix systems deployed. Vmware would mostly be used for customers who already have vsphere licenses or want to keep their standard hypervisor.


    I dont think there are stability issues with AOS or AHV. We tend to update more frequently our AHV systems than we do with VMware. With Nutanix you leverage the update process conveniently with LifeCycleManagement (LCM) integrated into Prism Web Management supplying everything from native nutanix products to firmware for your hypervisor hosts. There are also regular customer notifications to warn of detected misconfigurations in the field and check for your own setup and howto act on that. I never got anything from VMware regarding such a thing. And I do know what a purple screen of death looks like...

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected.
    Top Answer:The cost of this is less than you expect. Since they're selling a software stack, you do need to consider your own… more »
    Top Answer:Pricing is a bit high. That said, the support is worth it. It's really hard to point out any other negatives. The… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface… more »
    Top Answer: Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface… more »
    Top Answer:DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms… more »
    Top Answer:We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux… more »
    Top Answer:For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
    Learn More
    Overview

    StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a top-ranking HCI software, cloud management tool, and Software Defined Storage (SDS) tool that is marketed as the foundation for users' hybrid clouds. It offers a powerful and secure hyperconverged infrastructure to deliver all data and applications at any scale and on any cloud. The solution offers a complete software stack that allows users to unify their hybrid cloud infrastructure. 

    NCI’s services include computer, storage and network, hypervisors and containers, and deployment in public or in private clouds. The product also comes with built-in resilience, disaster recovery capabilities, self-healing, and high-security capacities. It provides further deployment flexibility through several software and hardware options and platforms. NCI includes a full set of enterprise capabilities. It can also be deployed on a wide range of servers from popular manufacturers.

    The capabilities of the product are categorized into three main groups:

    • AOS storage
    • Flexible and open compute
    • Automated and secure networking

    Outside of these categories, NCI also offers other capabilities:

    • Integrated disaster recovery
    • Full-stack lifecycle management
    • VMware with Nutanix
    • Intelligent operations

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Features

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers its customers various features and tools in each of the previously mentioned categories. The available features for users currently include:

    • High-performance: This set of features utilizes hardware advances such as NVMe and RDMA to accelerate users' most demanding applications with consistent performance. The tools in this feature category work alongside data locality to ensure successful results.

    • Foolproof resiliency: These Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure features protect data and keep it available by facilitating advanced distributed consistency algorithms. Users can utilize these features to protect their data from issues like bit rot, hardware failures, and even entire site failure.

    • Flexibility: This set of features allows storage to be sized for the needs of each organization and expanded promptly and easily so that the organization and its data can grow. The features offer flexibility to users in terms of applying storage policies logically on a pre-workload basis, instead of being tied to hardware.

    • Hypervisor choice: Users can choose from the leading hypervisors - Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi. They can also leverage the built-in hypervisor AHV that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides.

    • Integrated virtualization: These features offer simplified automation and AHV streamlined operations. The services in this category are optimized for high performance and reliability.

    • Kubernetes: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to build and deploy cloud-native applications on intelligent distributed infrastructure. Apps can be integrated with cloud-compatible storage and both building and deployment can be achieved within the same platform.

    • Microsegmentation: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to prevent malware spread and reduce attack surfaces by leveraging machine learning (ML).

    • Virtual networking: This set of features allows users to easily implement multi-tenancy in their environment or stretch networks across clouds.

    • Centralized network management: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides organizations with a way to manage networking configurations centrally. Users can utilize it across their human-computer interaction (HCI) environment with simple virtual switch management.

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Benefits

    The product offers various benefits to users who utilize its capacities. Some of these include:

    • NCI reduces technology sprawl and frees up technical resources to allow organizations to focus on other activities, potentially reducing costs for the business.

    • The product allows customers to deploy, scale, and bridge to the public cloud to be able to react in evolving business environments.

    • Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure improves data availability while simultaneously protecting it against several kinds of failures and attacks.

    • The solution offers high-performance, resilient distributed storage for all workloads.

    • Working alongside Nutanix Cloud Platform, NCI offers simple management of data from one console.

    • Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure works by the zero trust philosophy, protecting users' apps and data through specially designed security protocols.

    Reviews from Real Users

    According to Gerhard J., an IT manager at Q4 Fuel, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI.

    A solutions architect at a computer software company describes NCI as a stable, straightforward to set up, and scalable solution.

    VMware vSphere is a powerful and complete server virtualization platform that allows its users to create and manage virtual data centers and machines. VMware vSphere is designed to help IT departments set up and run applications using the most cost-effective computer resources. By using vSphere, organizations save the time and energy necessary for purchasing infrastructure and software and reduce ongoing maintenance and operational burdens on IT teams.

    Infrastructure administrators and network operators can access and manage the vSphere server by using a web-based cross-platform client application or via the vSphere client tool provided with vSphere. 

    VMware vSphere provides visibility into VMs and enables its users to carry out operations to manage VMs. This includes tasks such as:

    • Powering VMs on and off
    • Launching the VM console
    • Shutting down guest operating systems
    • Settings configurations
    • Taking system snapshots

    VMware vSphere Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using VMware vSphere include: 

    • Reduced costs: Since VMware applications are run on a server, it is not necessary to spend large amounts of your organization’s money on hardware, software, and infrastructure.
    • Increased productivity and customer satisfaction: VMware is able to operate multiple complex processes simultaneously. With all your applications being managed and run on the cloud, downtime, failures, and application errors are rare. VMware easily scales up and down to meet your computing needs. The high availability that VMware provides allows your IT staff to focus on other issues and keeps your customers satisfied with the service they receive.
    • Unlimited access to your VMs: VMware’s user-friendly cloud-based interface allows any employee to work from any location at any time.
    • Enhanced security: VMware’s security tools deliver full visibility into your entire system. This keeps your applications and data more secure, in any type of environment. VMware provides multiple protective tools including antiviruses and anti-malware, as well as backup and recovery services.

    VMware vSphere Features

    Below is a list of some of VMware vSphere’s key features:

    • Transferable virtual machine images: Export and import virtual machine images from your local environment. This gives users the ability to set up and configure their systems locally and only upload them to the server once everything is working properly. VM images can be moved back and forth between vendors, ensuring that your company is never tied up to a specific cloud vendor.
    • User-friendly interface: Using VMware’s intuitive console, you can easily create, manage, share, and deploy virtual machines.
    • API integration: VMware’s APIs support integration with third-party applications for data protection, multipathing, and disk array solutions.
    • Distributed power management: Automate efficiency by continuously optimizing server power consumption within each cluster.

    Reviews from Real Users

    VMware vSphere stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. A few major ones are its virtualization abilities, its flexibility and availability, and its user-friendly interface.

    Felix D., an Automation project administrator, DCS, I&E at Centennial Cayman Corp, writes, “The connectivity is fantastic, and many functions can run together in one server. If you need to scale, we can continue to add components or modules. It's a beautiful virtual solution that has many advantages over physical hardware, where you have to use devices and wiring to connect all your projects.”

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    Learn more about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
    Learn more about VMware vSphere
    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
    Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Educational Organization8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization26%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Computer Software Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization25%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise30%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise36%
    Large Enterprise47%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise34%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    February 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI. Updated: February 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in HCI with 29 reviews while VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 14 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while VMware vSphere is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "What you might not know about Nutanix that makes it so unique". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers a suite of software components for virtualization including ESXi, vCenter Server, and other software". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, Hyper-V and Dell PowerFlex, whereas VMware vSphere is most compared with Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, VMware Workstation, Oracle VM and VMware Aria Operations.

    We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.