Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Fast, easy to use, and offers good technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "It's much easier and faster even when you want to create a server from a template or clone."
  • "The licenses for Nutanix are very complicated."

What is our primary use case?

I use it to host all the servers and the storage. It's a replacement for the Vblock.

How has it helped my organization?

The customer is happier now with the services. It's much faster for storage with the server connection.

What is most valuable?

The solution is much faster. The performance is very good - much better than VMware. It's much easier and faster even when you want to create a server from a template or clone. 

What needs improvement?

The licensing gave us trouble. The licenses for Nutanix are very complicated. Everything had a separate license, and we are having some trouble with that. Some of the licenses are expiring, and when we purchased the solution, we didn't know everything would be all over the place. It's not like there's one server license. Every node has a license, and a person has a license of their own too. They should just group everything together instead of forcing users to worry about separate licenses and various renewal dates. We actually have had some meetings about this and have tickets open about the licensing. 

I don't have a full picture of all the features just yet.

Buyer's Guide
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
April 2024
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For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for seven or eight months. it hasn't been a long period of time. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The performance, the stability, are good. My only concern is about the licensing process and the difficulties involved with licensing. It's much too complicated. That said, overall, we have not worried about bugs, glitches, or freezing.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good.

We have roughly 2,000 users on the solution. We use it quite extensively.     

How are customer service and support?

Support is great. We contacted them to help us with the initial implementation.

They are, in general, very helpful and supportive.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

It was migrated from Vblock.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. It's not overly complex.

The migration from Vblock to Nutanix took two days. I remember that didn't take a long time in regards to setting up the hardware or changing the configuration from Vblock to Nutanix. The migration is easy. There is a tool from Nutanix to migrate the servers from Vblock to Nutanix which simplified everything.

We have three people that handled the deployment and maintenance tasks. 

What about the implementation team?

We couldn't do it by ourselves. The implementation was with the help of Nutanix support. They did the job for us.

What was our ROI?

We have not noted an ROI.

What other advice do I have?

We are a customer and an end-user.

We are using the latest version of the solution.

It's not a very common solution in Saudi Arabia. Not all companies use it. My advice is to, even for the large organizations, is it's better for them to move to Nutanix solution, even though they may not recognize it as a brand in this region.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Ryan Uy - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Strategic Synergy Inc
Reseller
Top 5
Our clients are happy with its built-in replication features
Pros and Cons
  • "In addition to the hyper-converged infrastructure, most of our clients are pleased with Acropolis' built-in replication in terms of the DR setup. Our clients also like Prism Central's advanced management and analytics, and many find Nutanix Flow and playbooks incredibly useful."
  • "Nutanix could streamline Acropolis' advanced management to keep pace with its competitors. For example, in VMware vSphere ESXi Hypervisor, you can directly put a host into maintenance mode via the GUI. However, it takes several steps to do this with Nutanix Acropolis, and you need to use the command-line interface for most of the steps."

What is our primary use case?

We deployed Nutanix Acropolis for a school system in a recent use case. One of our clients uses Nutanix for three campus sites. They've implemented multi-site replication, so there is protection on the data center end. Another client is a hospital that uses Nutanix HCI for its medical systems, like PACS imaging servers. We also have clients in financial services and banking.

What is most valuable?

In addition to the hyper-converged infrastructure, most of our clients are pleased with Acropolis' built-in replication in terms of the DR setup. Our clients also like Prism Central's advanced management and analytics, and many find Nutanix Flow and playbooks incredibly useful.

What needs improvement?

Nutanix could streamline Acropolis' advanced management to keep pace with its competitors. For example, in VMware vSphere ESXi Hypervisor, you can directly put a host into maintenance mode via the GUI. However, it takes several steps to do this with Nutanix Acropolis, and you need to use the command-line interface for most of the steps.

We also faced another challenge in version 5.15. It wasn't easy to upgrade the firmware. You need to set permissions in your cluster to download it from the Nutanix repository and do it offline. After that, you need to create a dark-site web server and put all the repositories or installers to update there. However, I think they enabled upload mode in the new release, so you can download the firmware directly from the website and manually upload it. I haven't tried it yet, but that should be available in the latest version, according to the press release. 

I also think Nutanix Flow has some room for improvement. It currently only protects east-west traffic — like a mini firewall. You should be able to set a security policy that will let you disallow some ports and subnets. That's the only feature that Nutanix Flow lacks right now. Competing products like VMware NSX and Sangfor are more robust in security at the networking level. I think that's the crucial part, given the security concerns we face. It's not only on Layer 2 but down to Layer 3 and the routing aspects of networking.

For how long have I used the solution?

We're a Nutanix partner in the Philippines, and we've been working with Acropolis for around five years. We started in 2017.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In terms of stability and performance, Acropolis is excellent. We've never gotten any negative feedback from our users. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've deployed Acropolis for clients of all sizes, but most are small or medium-sized businesses. Some are on the enterprise level. We have some major banks or financial service clients who also acquire Nutanix. 

How are customer service and support?

We offer different levels of support to our clients. When they experience a problem, they go directly to us. If we can answer the question, it's all good. However, we sometimes face a hardware or software issue, so we need to open a case with Nutanix or the hardware vendor.

Nutanix support is excellent. Their support engineers are well trained. But the resolution speed often comes down to the communication between Nutanix and their OEM partner. For example, if Nutanix support finds a problem with the hardware, they need to report it to the OEM vendor, so that can take time. But in terms of experience and skills, the Nutanix support specialists are outstanding.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Acropolis is straightforward. I can implement it by myself in one day. 
After installation, we do some preventative maintenance, like checking the hardware and upgrading the firmware and software for the hypervisor as well as the OEM hardware, whether it's Dell, Supermicro, or Lenovo.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Acropolis is priced similarly to competing solutions. In my experience, as long as we have properly sized workloads on the Nutanix cluster, Nutanix's price can even be lower than other HCI brands. Some of the features are licensed separately from Nutanix Acropolis AOS. For example, Flow has a separate license. Nutanix Files and Objects are licensed per terabyte.

If you are thinking about implementing Acropolis, my advice would be to properly size your workload and forecast performance utilization so your sizing will be accurate and you can predict the cost.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS nine out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
769,065 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Reseller
Good documentation and support, with a strong community that is responsive
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the one-click to update the firmware and software."
  • "I would like to see official compatibility with Red Hat in the future."

What is our primary use case?

We are a reseller and Nutanix Acropolis AOS is one of the products that I have experience with. I have three nodes, and I am very satisfied with it. I deploy my ERP and my CRM into this infrastructure.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution provides very good opportunities.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the one-click to update the firmware and software. This is a very good feature for me.

What needs improvement?

The access speed needs to be improved.

I would like to see official compatibility with Red Hat in the future. This is important because we have a lot of customers who are using Red Hat.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been working with this product for approximately a year and a half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is very good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is wonderful, as it is very easy to increase scale.

Our clients are medium and large-sized companies.

How are customer service and technical support?

Nutanix technical support is very good. The documentation and the community are also very good. There are a lot of blogs in the network and they respond very quickly when we have a problem.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very easy. The length of time required for deployment depends on the packages and functionality. In some instances, we have deployed in one minute, whereas in others, it has taken 30 minutes.

What about the implementation team?

We have a team of developers and they are responsible for the deployment we use in the company.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, this is a very good product. I would say that it is a Top of the World solution.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Information Technology Security Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Stable operating system with a straightforward setup
Pros and Cons
  • "This operating system offers stability. Setup is straightforward."
  • "The scalability of Nutanix Acropolis AOS needs improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We use Nutanix Acropolis AOS for delivering applications, e.g. our billing system.

What needs improvement?

The challenge we are facing with Nutanix Acropolis AOS is its scalability.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for more than a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I find this solution stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Nutanix Acropolis AOS could be better.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for this solution was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented Nutanix Acropolis AOS with the help of a consultant or integrator.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated HPE Hyper Converged and VMware.

What other advice do I have?

I'm satisfied with Nutanix Acropolis AOS.

The implementation of this solution, particularly migrating our all workers to it, took one week.

We have 50,000 users of this solution in our company. We don't have plans of increasing usage for it.

We have 25 engineers who are responsible for the deployment and maintenance of Nutanix Acropolis AOS.

I have never contacted their technical support team.

We are satisfied with this solution.

I'm recommending Nutanix Acropolis AOS to people who want to pay for and use it because from my experience, everything's okay with this solution.

We might be paying for the license fee monthly, but I'm not sure.

I'm rating Nutanix Acropolis AOS an eight over ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Civil Engineer at gieco
Real User
Data service tool used effectively for SAP S/4HANA

What is our primary use case?

We mainly use SAP S/4HANA as well as the domain controller and file servers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a very stable solution. 

How are customer service and support?

The support for this solution is really good. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward and we completed it with a Nutanix partner. The installation took four hours.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The standard version of this solution is free but we are using a paid version which is billed annually. Previously with another soltion, we needed to purchase SAN storage to accommodate the storage needs which was expensive. With Nutanix, we saved a lot of money due to that new technology.

 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
IT Infrastructure Manager at a retailer with 11-50 employees
Real User
Very stable and has good technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "Some of the most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis are that it's free from Nutanix and it's very stable."
  • "The one note of improvement I have for Nutanix is that the installation should be easier."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use Nutanix Acropolis for anything that I can't engineer in the environment, such as redundancy between the database servers and the clustering. 

This solution is deployed on-premises. 

What is most valuable?

Some of the most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis are that it's free from Nutanix and it's very stable. 

What needs improvement?

The one note of improvement I have for Nutanix is that the installation should be easier. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for five or six years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is very stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is scalable. 

In our organization, there are around 1,400 users of this solution. 

How are customer service and support?

Nutanix technical support is good. Whenever I contact Nutanix, they reply to me and solve my issue. I think that Nutanix support is better than the support of other companies—with a previous VMware solution, we were using it for three or four years, but when a problem came up, it took their support three months to resolve the issue. After that, we switched to Nutanix. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Nutanix is the third virtualization solution that I have used. We previously used a VMware solution. In comparison, Nutanix support is much better, but the installation process for VMware was easier. 

How was the initial setup?

The installation for Nutanix was not easy. We needed to do many interactive things in order to install it, and there were many controllers. You will need a technical engineer to help with installation. Installation takes about two days, maybe three days, maximum. 

What about the implementation team?

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We just have a support license for Nutanix. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Nutanix Acropolis a ten out of ten, and I would recommend Nutanix products to others. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Head Of Hardware Department at a university with 201-500 employees
Real User
Simple installation, highly scalable, and central management easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "The best feature of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the central management of all of our resources. Additionally, it is easy to use"

    What is our primary use case?

    I use Nutanix Acropolis AOS to host all of our electronic services in the university, such as e-services, e-learning system, registration system, library system, finance system, HR system, and clinics.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Nutanix Acropolis AOS has helped our organization run a lot better by allowing us to manage everything from one single location.

    What is most valuable?

    The best feature of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the central management of all of our resources. Additionally, it is easy to use

    What needs improvement?

    The solution has been more than enough at the moment to manage all of my services.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have used Nutanix Acropolis AOS within the past 12 months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is very stable at the moment.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Nutanix Acropolis AOS is highly scalable. This is the most important factor that we went to this technology.

    Every cloud distributer went to hyper-converged because of the scalability.

    All of our users have migrated to the new cloud, which is the new hosted at the university. We have approximately 2,000 students, 300 administrators employees, and 150 faculty members. The total is approximately 2,500 users using this solution. The university is still expanding, it is a young institute and we plan to increase usage of the solution.

    How are customer service and support?

    We are still new at using this technology, and till the moment, we did not have any problems. I think you cannot tell if there are any issues with the product for a couple of years. When we start to upgrade our framework, upgrade the main OS, we will see if then we might have issues. At this point as an administrator, everything has been stable, we do not need any support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We were using Citrix for our servers previously. However, it is hard to compare to Citrix because it is a different technology.

    How was the initial setup?

    When comparing Nutanix Acropolis AOS installation to the traditional solution, you have to bring the servers, deploy the operating system, and then attach them to SAN storage. This newer solution was much easier than the old technique that we used, the installation is very straightforward.

    Once you start it up from out of the box you can start creating virtual machines and migrate your servers. It is very straightforward. The virtual concept is simple, you create the virtual machines and book the resources.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The one disadvantage is relative, financially Nutanix Acropolis AOS is a little bit more expensive than the old solution.

    Nutanix owns the hosting, servers, and licenses. You purchase the whole product as a bundle,  and you can have support for it.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We did our homework and we did study the technology in Nutanix Acropolis AOS before choosing it.

    What other advice do I have?

    We have contacted more than one partner regarding the hyper-converged system. They sent us their solution from HP, for instance, they have their own hyper-converged system. They are using the DL Series DL380 and I went back to Gartner reports and other review sites, and then compared the specs to others. There is a hyper-converged solution from Dell but I think the leader in this technology right now is Nutanix. It is important to do a proof of concept.

    The Patriarchate that owns the university is also in charge of multiple educational institutions. What we are thinking is to migrate all our services, to have our own private cloud, instead of being hosted separately into multiple hosts in our university. That's why we are planning to increase our nodes and to move all of the nodes, and all of the e-services related to our institute, inside our campus.

    My advice to others is this solution is great and I highly recommend it. It's much better than the other technology or the deployed traditional solutions.

    I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a ten out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Senior Manager -Datacenter Planning and Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    The maintenance software is straightforward but there are performance concerns
    Pros and Cons
    • "The maintenance software is straightforward because you do not need to do any configuration."
    • "To have internal stability, we needed to network the solution ourselves. Performance depends on the application. Performance could be the lack of IOPS, memory and CPU and configuration issues."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using the hyperconverged Cloud software and I manage Nutanix. I was responsible for the planning, management and the architecture. It was then given to the structural team.

    We updated the internet software so when we migrated the workload we could compare from previous examples.

    What needs improvement?

    To have internal stability, we needed to network the solution ourselves. Performance depends on the application. Performance could be the lack of IOPS, memory and CPU and configuration issues. 

    We are not going to increase our usage of Nutanix Solutions. We are migrating to the Cloud because of the cost.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have been using it for about one month.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Stability depends on the type of application you are running. If you are running complex applications you should run them one at a time.

    How are customer service and support?

    We have a Nutanix vendor that provides maintenance. We escalate to support if it is beyond the control of our in-house support team.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Our company already had a license for Nutanix so we wanted to us Nutanix Acropolis Solutions before any licensing costs. 

    How was the initial setup?

    It is not straightforward to install, you need to follow the installation steps. The installation took about one to two months to complete the entire process as it took workloads from our existing developer platform.

    We have about 25 people managing the application deployment.

    The maintenance software is straightforward because you do not need to do any configuration.

    What about the implementation team?

    The installation was carried out by the vendor.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    We did not require licenses because we already used Nutanix, so we only need to buy the software.

    What other advice do I have?

    I recommend certain applications but not this solution. There are certain limitations due to the lack of storage. If you need high performance, heavy applications you need to consider hardware and storage.

    I would rate this solution a 6 out of 10.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: April 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.