Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

Nutanix provides an all-in-one solution for operating our datacenter. Nutanix also provides out-of-the-box redundancy, built in storage savings with compression, deduplication, and erasure coding. All administrative functions are clustered and require no other hardware or software.

Nutanix provides a more agile platform with the ability to spin up and down various workloads on demand, provision developer workstations from a master copy, and protect production workloads with built-in DR sync. Incremental capacity growth helps with budgeting issues as we only buy what we need, when we need it.

There is always room for improvement. One area Nutanix can improve on is DevOps automation. While there is some built-in capability via REST service exposure, a more robust automation controller would be welcome. The recent purchase of Calm.io seems to be a step in this direction.

We have been using Nutanix for just over three years.

We are three years into running Nutanix with zero downtime issues. We have replaced one disk.

Scalability is simple and linear with Nutanix. We have expanded our clusters with additional nodes, and each node provides both capacity and performance. We have also added an all flash cluster to run our heavy I/O workloads.

The initial deployment with Nutanix was quite simple. You just provide IP addresses, pick your virtualization platform (VMWare, Hyper-V, Acropolis) and in about an hour, you have a cluster online and ready to deploy workloads.

I would advise new customers to work with their local reseller and local Nutanix representative and negotiate the best deal they can. I think it helps to keep in mind not only the tangible benefits, but also the intangible benefits. The initial cost can appear to be steep, but when you consider the advantages to IT agility and simplicity, it begins to make more sense.

Before choosing Nutanix, we had looked at a few different options. Option one was to expand current SAN/Servers. We looked at a few others in the early days of “hyper-convergence” such as SimpliVity, Scale Computing, Maxta and Pivot3. The only vendor with a complete solution in our minds was Nutanix.

I would advise anyone looking for a complete in-house, cloud-like solution to consider Nutanix a prime player. The technology is solid, and the support (both sales and technical) are top line.

Prospective customers should use Nutanix sales and technical engineers to get a complete understanding of the product. I personally don’t see a lot of benefit for PoCs. The concept has already been fairly well proven in the IT industry.

1. Ease of administration
2. Monitoring and alerting features through Prism Web UI
3. Acceleration of non-persistent VDI through the shadow clone feature
4. Localization of I/O makes boot and login storms a thing of the past

Rather than spend valuable consulting days setting up a SAN and carving out LUNs, setting up the hosts, etc., I am now able to quickly configure a Nutanix Cluster in minutes. I use the majority of my consulting time fine tuning the VDI and SBC deployment’s performance and policies which is the most valuable to the client.

I've been using Nutanix VCP NOS for two years.

On one particular deployment, I found two issues with hardware; a bad disk drive, and a bad motherboard. Luckily, Nutanix support contacted me because they received the alerts at the same time I did and we were able to triage and replace the defective hardware prior to the roll-out.

Something to consider when designing Rackspace for Nutanix blocks, and other SuperMicro server hardware, is that you are effectively adding four computer nodes into a 2U space. When you stack multiple blocks together in a rack, the density of heat is considerable when compared to typical server hardware in the very same amount of space. If you do the design without appropriate cooling, yes, you will have issues with stability.

Quite the opposite, really, this is the first time when scalability is not an issue. Adding another Nutanix node to a Cluster adds storage, memory and compute very easily. Nutanix scales very linearly, like some other converged solutions. Because it scales so linearly, it is important to choose your Nutanix model wisely so that you scale appropriately for the workload you are throwing at it.

Customer service is fantastic.

Prior to Nutanix, we, like everyone else, pieced together our solution using HP Proliant servers, and NetApp SAN storage. Between ordering, qualifying, unboxing, setup and configuration, the amount of time required to get the client up and running was huge. We had to have experts on shared storage and networking; a lot of time was spent doing tasks that didn’t directly translate into value for our clients. Switching to Nutanix flipped the value proposition around, and suddenly one technical person qualified in Nutanix was all that was needed. Our time to deployment was much faster, and both ours and our client’s costs went down.

Setup is very straightforward. Once racked and cabled, all I need is an IPv6 capable machine with a web browser. The Nutanix wizard guides me through the setup and configuration of the cluster in minutes.

I am the consultant providing the services.

If you decide to deploy Nutanix in your organization, choose the team wisely. We were fortunate to have our own CTO, Mark Knouse, be awarded the NTC title. As Nutanix aggressively adds new features and ways to buy into the platform, and the Nutanix community grows, having a trusted team with NTCs that works directly with Nutanix with ensure your deployment is a success.

I have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for approximately three years. However, I believe Nutanix Acropolis AOS is used in combination with Oracle solutions.

I have used Nutanix Acropolis AOS for approximately four years.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is stable. We didn't receive any concerns regarding any problems, The customers have no concerns about the reliability.

The solution is scalable, we can scale it up when needed.

The technical support from Nutanix Acropolis AOS is very good.

The initial setup of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is simple.

We have a team that does the implementation of the solution for our customers, it is better to have professionals handle the process.

The return on investment of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is better than other solutions. Other solutions have higher overall costs, such as support or renewals.

Our customers are on three years license to use Nutanix Acropolis AOS. The price of the solution includes all features and support.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a ten out of ten.

We use Nutanix Acropolis AOS for compute virtualization. The main purpose was to replace FlexPod. The important problem we were trying to solve was to replicate between the two data centers. However, we encountered some issues.

I have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for approximately two years.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS has very good stability.

The scalability of the solution had some issues because there were many VMs and the replication ran into some bottlenecks. It was an issue that was known to Nutanix and it was not disclosed to the customer.

The support is very good, responsive, and helpful. Even with the issue we had,  where they did not disclose beforehand, they were very quick and helpful with fixing it.

I have used HPE SimpliVity previously and Nutanix Acropolis AOS is better.

We had a service provider do the implementation of the solution for us. They were able to do it quickly.

The amount of people needed for the deployment and maintenance depends on the size of the implementation. We had 30 or 40 hardware systems and they're servicing them with a team of six people.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is affordable, it has good value. The final price depends a lot on the hardware used, it's an appliance in the end. Whether you use HPE as the hardware vendor or Supermicro as the hardware vendor, it really depends on what hardware is used which is the main cost.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a seven out of ten.

Our primary use is to replace legacy infrastructure and to improve production.

We wanted a solution that would allow us to easily manage and upgrade without a noticeable impact on the users. We found ourselves having to search for different outage windows that nobody liked in our old infrastructure.

What is also important is the reliability of the upgrade and how it works with the rest of our infrastructure. The security and encryption are also enterprise-grade, which is something that we like.

Overall, the solution works very well with our environment.

We have been running Nutanix since 2019 and it has been a day and night difference from our old infrastructure. The high availability of the CVMs along with high performance on the hosts has made transaction processing fast and efficient.

The deployment did not take long and everything on Nutanix is performing blazing fast. The simplicity of management is fantastic and the learning curve is great as well.

The most valuable features are simple management and one-click upgrades. The ability to upgrade during the day, although not recommended, works and is fantastic.

This solution would be improved with built-in integration with Rubrik.

We have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for one year.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

My advice is to get the ultimate license, as it is worth it.

We evaluated VxRail before implementing this solution.

Our primary use case for Nutanix is removing the classic 3-tier architecture and switching to hyper-convergence. 

Migrating from the 3-tier architecture to HCI helped us to free up rack space, remove the old hardware, and run systems on the new platform. 

There was a four-rack, and now there are ten units of hardware. It's really cool and fantastic.

It is now managed from one interface, covered by technical support and it's homogenous. If you need to expand a cluster or storage then all you need is just add new nodes. You don't need to buy new storage, you don't need to expand your SAN, and so on.

Now, all of the systems run on the same hardware with the same software, which can be managed from a single pane of glass. All you need to know is AOS. You don't need to learn about storage, SAN, or virtualization. It's easier to start with Nutanix than start with classic architecture.

The software features which really can improve the organization are deduplication and compression. These really can help to save a lot of space. On the non-homogenous systems, we achieved approximately 2:1 space savings, which is great.

We really love the Lifecycle manager and one-click upgrades. All you need to do is run the upgrade procedure and watch it go.

You don't need to update firmware, software, hypervisors, and so on by yourself. LCM can do it for you. It really can save a lot of time. LCM will install only compatible firmware and software, so you can't install (for example) unsupported firmware and break down your system.

LCM is a really cool feature and one of the best in the market. I have never seen anything like this before. 

I think there is a lot that Nutanix can improve in AOS, in particular, moving tasks such as creating trunked networks and managing nodes from the CLI to Prism Element.

I would like to see more information in Prism Element about how Curator works. 

There is a lot of functionality in Prism Central, but sometimes you want to see those features in Prism Element. One of them is RBAC. If we have one small cluster, and we need RBAC, we must install Prism Central. This is an inconvenience and I hope to see this feature in Prism Element in the next releases of AOS. 

We are using Nutanix solutions based on AOS since 2017. 

Nutanix AOS is a very stable system. You can lose drives or nodes, depending on your replication factor, and you will not lose your data. 

It's very easy to scale. You just add new nodes, increase compute, and increase storage at the same time.

Nutanix has one of the best technical support groups I've ever seen.

They answer fast and they solve problems fast. They don't ask you a lot of unnecessary questions; rather, they just do the work.

Previously, we used different solutions from different vendors. We needed to put it all together, and Nutanix helped us.

Setting up a new cluster is easy and the documentation covers this process.

They are very highly qualified specialists. 

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Nutanix. 

My advice is that deduplication and compression can save money, so use it. 

• Service portal
• Self-service restore
• Single pane of glass for management.

We are a Managed Service Provider and these capabilities make our platform agile and easy to use for our customers.

• Less IT admin
• More performance
• More resiliency
• More protection of data (lots of storage SnapShots with no performance impact)

In order to replace massively Install base of VMware vSphere, they need to expand their ecosystem with ISVs (i.e. F5, PaloAlto, Citrix, TrendMicro etc.) in order to provide a wider range of solutions running as a virtual appliance (vApp), just like VMware did years ago. There is currently an ecosystem, but I think it is around 30-40 providers.

So they should expand the eco-system for Virtual Appliances with Acropolis. Network Segmentation is also a must with AHV.

We have used the solution for about 18 months.

We have not encountered any issues with stability.

We have not encountered any issues with scalability.

Technical support is the best.

We previously used legacy infrastructures: EMC, NetApp, and IBM.

The initial setup takes about one hour and then you are done.

I don't have anything special to advise about licensing and pricing.

We evaluated VMware vSAN.

Don't be afraid of Acropolis Hypervisor. It is stable and powerful, just as vSphere is.

It has built-in advanced analytics and powerful operations, Self Service Portal and components for DevOps included, managed by a single pane of glass (Prism) via HTML5 and it is free of charge – This is why Nutanix is so advanced and revolutionary.

The three-tier architecture is not that flexible and quick. Now, I can update or upgrade my whole datacenter with one click, the rest is done by Nutanix. No more reading and studying the HCL lists of controllers or disks. Each performance test with SQL, Exchange, Oracle, or SAP is better than on a three-tier architecture. I have one GUI for everything: for my VMs, my storage and my network.

Scaling is very easy and no limitations are set.

The file services that they also provide need some more features, like on the Windows file server.

I have not encountered any stability issues at all.

I have not encountered any scalability issues at all. It is easier than any other product I know.

The technical support is the best I have ever seen. They act quick and directly via Web session. No more first-level support and so on.

We previously used VMware for virtualization and NetApp for storage. We switched because we need to expand and that is not easy with NetApp. VMware only has the best features in the biggest license, which is expensive.

The setup of Nutanix is done in one hour. They say: “Start small, start quick, and pay as you grow”. That is really very easy.

Pricing is nearly the same, but don´t forget in this price I have included my storage and virtualization costs. And it will be much cheaper in the future.

We checked other options, too, such as EMC, EqualLogic, and Nexenta. But the easiest and the one with the most scalability was Nutanix.

If you have an old three-tier architecture that is more than three years old, check your contracts. Check your applications like Exchange, SQL, Oracle, SAP, or VDI, and if you have problems or you need better performance, then go to Nutanix and start a test with your application. I recommend a try-and-buy solution or go directly into a proof of concept. They will help you out.

It is the most flexible product for the datacenter.