What is our primary use case?
We use it for managing the cluster and all the hardware that goes with it, as well as for updates, management, and the whole lifecycle of the hardware. That's all done through Prism Element.
We run it in data centers and we use it for big data, ERP, SQL Databases, Exchange Servers, and file servers. Pretty much everything that can be virtualized is running on Nutanix.
How has it helped my organization?
Prism has made it much easier to build and maintain our test, dev, and production environments, all of which run on Nutanix. And there have definitely been a lot of time savings when it comes to updating and managing the hardware itself.
It's also allowed us to standardize. We are pushing a lot of the traditional three-tier infrastructure to Nutanix, mainly because it provides single pane of glass management for all hardware. You don't have to deal with different vendors to upgrade or maintain versions of firmware. You just log in to Prism Element, upgrade everything, and it takes care of the whole upgrade process for you. You don't have to speak to different vendors to find out what's compatible with what. It has made everyone's lives, and mainly mine, easier, particularly when it comes to managing hardware life cycles.
It has helped with our IT management efficiency because we do it all from Prism. You don't have to log in to different consoles to perform upgrades. We've gone through a few terrible products before, so in terms of time, it has probably increased efficiency threefold. There's no research that you have to do. It just works.
In addition, we use Nutanix as a dedicated platform for hosting our security infrastructure. They call it free. You pay for it, but there are free hypervisors. That's one less layer of complexity for managing the security infrastructure.
What is most valuable?
What I like the most are the self-healing and the ability to see everything at a glance, from metrics to the resiliency status of the hardware. As soon as you log in, that's what you see.
With Prism Element, you can do just about everything from a single console. The user experience of the console in Prism depends on what we are doing, but overall, if we bundle together everything that we could possibly do in it, I would give it eight and a half out of 10.
And as you are building out things like protection domains, it lets you see what's connected to what. It lets you visualize where particular applications or particular VMs sit: in which groups, on which cluster and, ultimately, where they would end up if you were to activate a protection domain or migrate workloads across. And in terms of hardware, there's a diagram view that lets you see which disks and which hosts sit on which boxes, what belongs to which models, and the associated serial numbers as well. It does a pretty good job of helping you visualize.
What needs improvement?
We're running VMware's ESX hypervisor and a lot of networking isn't done in Prism, it's done at the vCenter level. But for the few proofs of concept that I've done, Prism hasn't been a good experience because there's a lot of command-line work that needs to be done to configure the network. The experience with networking hasn't been great. I'm not a big fan of running things on the command line, just because I know for a fact that it can be done easily in something like VMware. They've done a great job of that. I hope that, one day, Nutanix can replicate that experience.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Nutanix Prism for about seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is one of the best features.
How are customer service and support?
Their support is pretty much the benchmark I use when I deal with other vendors. Nutanix support is one of the few vendors that gives you direct access to what they call level-three support. You're not working with a person doing triage who then escalates to someone else who can help. The first person you talk to is the person who will be able to log in and help you dive into the issue.
They're the best I've seen.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were a big Dell shop, and we used HPE and IBMs back then. There was a whole mix of hardware to build up a solution. At the time, Nutanix was very compelling. Our existing hardware, the server switches and the SAN storage arrays, had come to end-of-life.
The Nutanix pricing, at the time, was very competitive. It was almost on par with buying brand-new servers and brand-new storage arrays. And at the same time, the cost savings were in the management of the hardware. With Nutanix, you could do everything from the one console that is Prism Element. The cost savings weren't so much when buying the hardware, they were from the reduced cost due to the time saved when managing it.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment is pretty straightforward now, but mainly because I know what I'm doing. But initially, it was confusing, and my advice to new customers would be to always engage with Nutanix for first builds. You can't just power it on and expect it to work straight away. But Nutanix has come a long way since the early days when you had to use the command line to build it out.
The time it takes to deploy depends on how prepared you are. You have to get all the networking done prior to kicking off the deployment. It also depends on how big the cluster is. If we're talking about the most basic, three-node deployment, it would probably take two to three hours. You unbox it, rack it, cable it up, and then you need to image the nodes with a laptop. I was the only one involved in the deployment on our side.
The few members of our staff who know how to use it went on a three-day course to learn the administration side of it. I don't know of anyone who just dives straight in, because we don't want them to break anything.
In Australia, we have about three people who log in to it. In the US, there are about five, and in Europe, there are about three. There are two of us involved in the maintenance and some of the responsibilities include logging in, triggering firmware updates, host upgrades, and hypervisor upgrades.
What was our ROI?
For the first couple of years, we did see return on investment but, over time, those returns diminished because of the price increases.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing aspect is painful. We are told, "This is when you have to renew. This is the serial number and the part number," et cetera. But it's difficult to know where something belongs unless you dive into the portal and search in multiple areas for a particular serial number. The experience over the years hasn't been great with renewing, and knowing what you're renewing.
Also, there seems to be a year-on-year increase of about 5 percent. It doesn't seem like they really reward loyal customers. New customers don't get that penalty, but as you're renewing each year, you get a cost increase, which we're not happy about.
The network visibility and microsegmentation of Nutanix Prism is a feature we don't use. It's an additional feature that you have to pay for.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at moving things to Azure. We also looked at SimpliVity. The other option was simply to buy brand-new hardware from Dell, IBM, or HPE again. We went with Nutanix because of the price and features.
What other advice do I have?
Always work closely with a technical account manager and the sales engineer. If you're deploying from new, or even as a proof of concept, there is a lot of terminology and a lot of functions and features that are new for someone coming from traditional, three-tier architecture. Work closely with them, familiarize yourself with it, and get into a course.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
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