There is room for improvement in the pricing structure, especially given the complexity of our business model involving multiple data centers and a variety of services. While the user-friendly GUI and branded plug-ins for HPI solutions make management easier, there is still a need for simpler operational tasks.

The patching should be a one-button function. Also, it works about 80 percent of the time, but 20 percent of the time it requires manual intervention. And sometimes, until you understand the technical underpinnings of that process, you can't fix it. I thought we would move past that. In the last version, they broke a big chunk of that for me, and that's why I'm waiting for the new release because they promised me it would fix the problem.

The updating of the database engine is something that can be improved. For example, assume that we are using PostgreSQL out of the box, and it is version 10. If we want to migrate to version 11, 12, or 13, then it is not very easy to do that using Nutanix Era. This is an area that I would like to see improved because I have had many problems with it. In one situation, I was trying to deploy PostgreSQL version 12 and it was very difficult to achieve. If this were improved then it would be very good for the solution.

The problem is not tied directly to how long it takes to perform updates. Rather, it is not easy to do. Database engines differ in this regard because Microsoft SQL is easier to update than PostgreSQL. With PostgreSQL, for example, upgrading the software profile requires several steps. You have to manipulate too many things, create VMs, import them into Nutanix Era, and deploy a new cluster. If the process were automated by the software then that would save a lot of time.

If there were data integration services included with the platform then it would be interesting, and it would help us a lot.

It should be able to be consumed by other customers because only the enterprise cloud customers are able to buy this software.

From an architecture perspective, Era cannot be deployed onto any other platform apart from Nutanix.

More databases should be integrated quickly. If any VM is running on the Nutanix platform, like Oracle or SQL, and we right click that VM, from there we should be able to add the database into Era rather than go on the no-Era console.

The downside of this solution is that it's more expensive than its competitors. 

The other thing is that the scalability part of this solution should be improved.

There is room for improvement in the automation. It is customizable and we can create our own solutions, but if there were a central repository of automation scripts that we could use, that would be good.

Secondly, the graphical user interfaces could be much more user-friendly. They are already user-friendly, but they could be simpler so that we do not need L3 staff to handle them. If they were simpler, we could also have some command center or L1/L1.5 associates do some housekeeping activities on it.

Also, something we are not very clear on with Nutanix is whether it is also integrable with cloud platforms like Azure and AWS. Right now, we are using it more for traditional infrastructure. But tomorrow, if we have other components, can we also get a hybrid view? That is something that we need to look at.

It's important to have a hybrid cloud environment. At any point in time, you're going to have on-premises and different public cloud environments in use and, at times, a hyper-converged infrastructure. A hybrid environment offering is something that would work well in the future.

They recently came out with a new version, so there are some new features that I still need to try. So it's hard to say what should be improved. Also, I don't have any essential databases that I'm managing with Era, so I'm not really close to the DBAs and don't know what they need or where there is still room for improvement. The best ones to answer this question are the DBAs because Era is basically designed for the databases. 

The management of the solution needs to be improved.

The solution needs better backup support, especially with Amazon Media. 

The solution needs to improve compatibility with other back-ups and products.

Currently, we can only patch the operating system for Linux operating systems. It would be helpful if we could patch Windows operating systems with the solution. Also, their tech support's service and response time could be improved.

The solution should provide more integration with more databases.

The solution could improve by providing more support for more vendors.

This solution could be improved by integrating with more database providers. 

We just started about three or four months back to do deeper explorations of the product. We are in the implementation of it really, and exploration is still on-going. Essentially, customers have just started using this product so we need to wait some time and see what their feedback is going to be like. Generally, before, we were using the Nutanix Acropolis product, which is another hypervisor, and the deployment was okay. This is something new for us, so we are still discovering a lot about this solution. Maybe after six months, we will have more valuable customer feedback about what is missing and what is required to be improved.  

But so far, we already have some issues like patch management which has shown to cause some stability issues. The pricing — which is probably the biggest issue for this product becoming more accepted in the market — probably needs to be re-evaluated because it is too high and customers are resisting the cost. The pricing structure is also much more confusing than it needs to be.  

I would like to see the SQL compatibility enhanced.