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Nutanix AHV Virtualization vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.0
Nutanix AHV Virtualization offers significant ROI by reducing costs, saving time, and optimizing resources, with 45% cost savings.
Sentiment score
6.8
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure delivers ROI by reducing costs and simplifying management, enhancing resource efficiency and minimizing downtime.
We find a 100% return on investment with Nutanix AHV Virtualization, so there's no question about it.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Nutanix AHV Virtualization's 24/7 support is praised for quick problem resolution, knowledgeable staff, and strong interoperability with vendors.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's customer service is praised for quick, knowledgeable support and effective resolution despite some cost concerns.
Their engineers are excellent and provide great supportability.
We are getting the correct support personnel, who help us sort out our issues, so the support is very nice.
They provide prompt and quality responses.
The technical support from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is excellent, deserving a nine out of ten rating.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Nutanix AHV Virtualization is highly scalable and flexible, ideal for medium to large enterprises, but may be costly for smaller businesses.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers seamless scalability, allowing effortless, efficient cluster expansion to accommodate diverse business sizes and needs.
We can scale our systems easily without any downtime, making it a highly effective solution for dynamic environments.
Nutanix AHV Virtualization is very much scalable, and we can scale up to 32 nodes easily, which is a huge size.
Nutanix AHV Virtualization is very scalable; however, I might be underutilizing its capabilities.
The scalability of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) deserves an eight out of ten rating, as there is no solution that is 100% efficient and there is always room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix AHV is highly stable, well-integrated, and user-rated, with occasional update issues but strong performance overall.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers outstanding reliability and stability, with minimal downtime and prompt support addressing minor issues effectively.
The solution is very stable.
Upgrades and updates occur without any downtime, so it is 100% stable.
Issues such as patch delays and the OVF format challenge affect its stability rating.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
Regarding stability, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a seven out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix AHV requires enhanced support, improved GUI, better cloud integration, affordability, documentation, and advancements in AI and database capabilities.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in pricing, setup, integration, user interface, performance, and multi-tenancy features for users.
This delay in patching creates risk, especially for government projects that require timely updates.
Using Lenovo hardware seems problematic with Nutanix AHV Virtualization, which demands careful consideration during updates.
These menus often show options like host, memory, and disk, however, they fail to provide insight into what's happening.
They should add AI features in the future.
I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
We hope Nutanix can integrate inside our current license module.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix AHV offers cost-effective virtualization with no license fees, competitive pricing, and annual support, suitable for enterprises.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides competitive pricing and flexible licensing, offering good ROI and TCO benefits despite hardware costs.
This has been advantageous as it does not require additional licensing costs for the hypervisor, contributing to overall cost savings.
Other solutions like Citrix and VMware have seen a significant price increase, whereas Nutanix hasn't increased as dramatically.
The pricing was reasonable compared to other competitors, though the storage was expensive.
It costs more compared to VMware due to different licensing areas.
It is expensive to move to the cloud.
The pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix AHV Virtualization offers efficient, scalable management with user-friendly features, strong automation, cost-effectiveness, and seamless cloud integration.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance, user-friendly management, scalability, integration, and cost efficiency with seamless updates and monitoring.
It is easier to manage than VMware in some ways, providing a good level of interaction.
Using Nutanix AHV Virtualization in a single management pane is very important to me, as it allows us to see everything related to our hardware, software, servers, and VMs from one console.
The technology behind the backups is very efficient, enabling a reliable virtual environment.
When technology development or devops teams request server provisioning, the setup time has been reduced from hours to less than 20 minutes.
The replication method between Nutanix clusters is a valuable feature.
It is easy to use, and it's easy to maintain.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix AHV Virtualization
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (4th)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (4th), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Nutanix AHV Virtualization and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Nutanix AHV Virtualization is designed for Server Virtualization Software and holds a mindshare of 7.6%, down 7.8% compared to last year.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 9.6% mindshare, up 8.0% since last year.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix AHV Virtualization7.6%
VMware vSphere16.8%
Proxmox VE16.1%
Other59.5%
Server Virtualization Software
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.6%
VxRail15.8%
VMware vSAN13.9%
Other60.7%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

TAIYAB HASAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided seamless virtualization and centralized control with strong security and reliable performance
I find almost every feature of Nutanix AHV Virtualization useful, as it's a very nice HCI solution from Nutanix. AHV is their native product, so it's very integrated with all the hardware they provide. Integration is very nice with the baseline hardware. We are using all built-in security features of Nutanix AHV Virtualization, which include encryption. It is very effective in protecting our VMs, and it is very secure. The impact of AHV, such as micro-segmentation, is very effective for us and it's working as per our requirements. We are very happy with the features. Role-Based Access is also a very nice feature for us to define to whom to give admin access and to whom to give read-only access. This kind of authentication helps us distribute tasks within the teams. Using Nutanix AHV Virtualization in a single management pane is very important to me, as it allows us to see everything related to our hardware, software, servers, and VMs from one console. We can reach everything from this one console, which provides a nice inside view for our software, hardware applications, server details, issues, alerts, or any unwanted activity. We are using the non-disruptive operations feature because Nutanix AHV Virtualization is in our production environment, and this feature helps us perform any activity without any downtime.
MahendraPanchotiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates
Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface. While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members. We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX. Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product. Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs. We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix. Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform. Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10. Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise77
Large Enterprise82
 

Questions from the Community

How does Nutanix AHV compare with VMware vSphere?
To understand which is better - Nutanix AHV or VMware vSphere - you need to do a product comparison. Both products support hypervisors. However, Nutanix supports some of the most popular ones and m...
What do you like most about Nutanix AHV Virtualization?
Integration is the most valuable feature of the product.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix AHV Virtualization?
Compared to the competition, the pricing for Nutanix AHV Virtualization is reasonable. Other solutions like Citrix and VMware have seen a significant price increase, whereas Nutanix hasn't increase...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...
What makes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) worth using?
NCI is a product with many tools and services but the one that, in my opinion, makes it better than similar products and worth using, is the full-stack lifecycle management. This capacity allows u...
Have you received reliable help from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's support when you contacted them?
NCI is one of the best out there. For any software, no matter how good it is, technical support makes it or breaks it for me. You may have an amazing product but if there is not anyone to help you ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Proxmox, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software. Updated: October 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.