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Cloud system engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Offers a higher level of granularity and more control over the security features than competing products
Pros and Cons
  • "Unified Storage's centralized management features enable us to accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migrations."
  • "The graphical user interface could provide more detail. It would be nice if we could click on the service and get some expanded definitions of them. When hiring new people, it's difficult to teach them how everything works, but if they can access everything, they can teach themselves."

What is our primary use case?

Our organization primarily uses Unified Storage for hybrid cloud connectivity, virtual machine deployment, and migrations. We mainly use mixed storage with varying block and object sizes and compare various databases within the unified interface. It's mainly used to share storage to the SMB and enterprise protocols. It's very helpful for my use case.

We use any data type. The structural application code is any type of data storage. We have EC2 and S2 buckets in AWS and also GCP bucket storage. All of our storage is managed from one location, and we have more than 100 users. 

How has it helped my organization?

We previously used a traditional file server storage solution, and we had to use a different vendor for every type of work. By migrating to Nutanix storage, we could simplify everything through a single-vendor approach. The fact that Unified Storage is centralized makes it easier for us to consolidate business operations. 

We also appreciate the scalability aspect because we can scale based on the performance procurement of our workload. It unifies all types of storage. Everything has been streamlined and simplified to a single-window approach. This is amazing because we can accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migration. We had a three-tier architecture, but now we can stream everything using a single vendor. 

What is most valuable?

Unified Storage's centralized management features enable us to accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migrations. It's easy to manage the environment. Scalability is also a valuable feature. Unified Storage is highly flexible and stable. Scaling up the environment is simple, and we can scale based on our workload, which can be unpredictable. 

Nutanix's SaaS-based data security solution is great. It protects us against ransomware and global data threats. Everything is protected. It also provides cloud-hosted analytics. The Data Lens monitoring services are working well for us. We can view all the analytics from within the centralized management platform, which is convenient for users. The security features are all there. We feel comfortable knowing that we get a high level of detail at the security level. Data Lens' rating is centralized and everything is easy to use. 

What needs improvement?

The graphical user interface could provide more detail. It would be nice if we could click on the service and get some expanded definitions of them. When hiring new people, it's difficult to teach them how everything works, but if they can access everything, they can teach themselves. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Unified Storage for a year and a half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Unified Storage 10 out of 10 for stability. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Unified Storage nine out of 10 for scalability.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Nutanix support 10 out of 10. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Deploying it is straightforward. I wasn't part of the initial deployment, but I know about the integration and migration because I primarily focus on storage. The deployment took about 20 days. We have about 10 people on our team. 

Unified Storage requires some maintenance, but it isn't that difficult. We need to do some patching, but everything is efficient and manageable. The support system around is excellent. If we need to purchase anything, we can get everything quickly from the website. Only three people are responsible for maintenance and administration. 

What about the implementation team?

The Nutanix team handled the deployment. They were very helpful. 

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

Unified Storage is reasonably priced compared to other platforms. The license is neither costly nor cheap, but it's reasonable. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We explored Dell VxRail and NetApp's retail solution. Unified Storage offers a higher level of granularity and more control over the security features, and options are available to us.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage 10 out of 10. I would recommend Unified Storage if you're looking for more security. It's a feature-rich platform that gives you a high degree of granular control over security. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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IT Admin at a sports company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
Cut our TCO in half while improving the overall performance of our infrastructure operations
Pros and Cons
  • "I like Nutanix Prism Central. The primary benefit is that we can manage everything from the same page."
  • "The GUI is easy to use, but it's complex to do tasks from the command line. That is one way they could simplify things for the engineers. People tend to use a graphical interface more than the command line interface. If anything goes wrong, we need to do troubleshooting from the CLI. It would be nice if there were more ways to fix issues within the GUI."

What is our primary use case?

We have a local data center here that isn't connected to the Internet because of the nature of our organization. It does not have any external communications. Last year, we had a disaster when we ran out of storage space in the clusters assigned to the storage containers. We had around 10 TB allocated for files across five clusters. One of our clusters was hosting critical files, so we had to rate the machine consumption from that cluster, and it can expire because the application that the customer was working on was transferring pictures with enormous sizes. 

We realized that we also had the file license, so why don't we go ahead and use it? We contacted Nutanix, and the managers and system engineers suggested we have meetings. We discussed it and then started providing these storage services. Soon, we will expand with node storage, and that will be another option. We're currently looking at best practices because I think there is a limit on the file sizes. We cannot go beyond 10 TB.

How has it helped my organization?

The Nutanix solution has improved the overall performance of our infrastructure operations. Nutanix unifies our block file and object storage. It's like a separate service we can provide for the critical applications we are running, but I can ensure each application is secure against ransomware or other vulnerabilities. I will recommend my team to go further with the block and object storage.

What is most valuable?

I like Nutanix Prism Central. The primary benefit is that we can manage everything from the same page. It also gives you the data in graph form on the main page, so you can keep a close eye on what is happening. You can watch for high utilization and see the disks and reports in the central console. It's a resilient and highly stable application 

The modernized infrastructure and data services feature is the most beneficial to me as an administrator. We derive business value in terms of storage because we have the option of using Windows Firewall.

Nutanix Unified Storage allows us to consolidate our data platform within the Nutanix cluster itself without using external storage. You can work with all types of unstructured data seamlessly with Unified Storage. There should be no problem with that. There are no issues with audio, video, uploads, downloads, etc. 

It's a flexible solution. This is what I understood as I was reviewing the documentation today. Nutanix is trying to simplify storage and has many options for scalability. 

What needs improvement?

The GUI is easy to use, but it's complex to do tasks from the command line. That is one way they could simplify things for the engineers. People tend to use a graphical interface more than the command line interface. If anything goes wrong, we need to do troubleshooting from the CLI. It would be nice if there were more ways to fix issues within the GUI. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nutanix is highly stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling can be a challenge. Once you order a block with a specific size, it will need to be changed to a different node to scale up. We have to expand the cluster and have the nodes ready to increase the storage size. We cannot go ahead and add an extra hard disk if the slots are full.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Nutanix support nine out of 10. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We previously used VMware. Nutanix is faster, but the two solutions offer the same level of security.

How was the initial setup?

A typical deployment could probably be completed in a day or two, but our data site required a lot of approvals and an on-site review by our engineer, so our deployment time was around a week. One person is enough to deploy the solution. It doesn't require much maintenance if the clusters are upgraded correctly. 

What was our ROI?

Switching to Nutanix Unified Storage reduced the total cost of ownership by nearly 50 percent. You can go on the Nutanix website and see a cost comparison of how much you can save over three to five years. 

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

Nutanix is priced a bit higher than some of its competitors. A lot of Chinese companies like Huawei are entering the Saudi Arabian market trying to provide similar solutions for a lower price. It offers good value, especially the support. Nutanix has a highly competent team. The after-sales support is excellent. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage nine out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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