Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Oracle VM VirtualBox comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Oracle VM VirtualBox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI.
To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: November 2023).
745,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts.""The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down.""The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase.""As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed.""Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports.""StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases.""Starwind support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software.""StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

"Nutanix Acropolis AOS has very good stability.""What's best about Nutanix Acropolis AOS is its simplicity. It's simple to install and simple to understand. The technical support and support portal for this product are both very good and very helpful.""The HCI environment itself is very intuitive. Everything is centralized under one solution. And, they also have fast server built in in addition to a network analyzer.""The most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis AOS are ease of management, hyper-convergence platform, and it has robust operations.""A lot of features are there, but for us, on the server administration side, creating a clone of the VM is valuable because many times, we have to deploy security patches. For deploying these patches, it helps to have a clone so that if something goes wrong, we can discard that VM and put back the clone VM. That is a very cool feature.""Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's most valuable feature is the flexibility to move the VMs easily, keeping everything together.""It's much easier and faster even when you want to create a server from a template or clone.""The speed of the operations and of creation of VM is fantastic."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pros →

"The product gives us the flexibility to try different machines.""It is easy to use and does not require complex knowledge.""Oracle VM Virtualbox is easy to use and does not require much training.""The most valuable feature of the solution is that there is no cost because it is open source.""The solution has high performance and is easy to use.""It's very simple to use.""I like that it has a snapshot feature.""Oracle VM VirtualBox has a platform where the support team responds to frequently asked questions by its users. Every time I have had issues with Oracle VM VirtualBox, I always get a solution from Oracle's online platform or GitHub."

More Oracle VM VirtualBox Pros →

Cons
"While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation.""Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons.""I would like to see more advanced free versions.""I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves.""I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page.""The documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional.""The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us.""The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"We'd like to have more resource management.""I would like to see more Kubernetes and container-related workflows and multiple cloud-partner management. I would also like to see how they will synergize all these AI/ML functionalities that are available on other platforms.""The technology has a lot of room for improvement. For example, when they want to segment applications in conjunction with NSX, which VMware uses, Acropolis is not compatible with the competitors. The integration in the security layer is not compatible with NSX for the application segmentation that uses VMware.""Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's LTS version needs to be more reliable.""Deployment could be more user-friendly - currently, it requires certain skills with the network and nodes.""Nutanix can be a bit complex to understand.""In terms of what I would like to see improved, I would say the life cycle management. I don't know if it is because they changed to an LCM from the previous way of upgrading the hardware or software but sometimes it feels that it needs a wizard that says, "Check this, check this," telling you your options. The only thing that's a bit frustrating for me is the life cycle management interface. That's the only thing on the entire system that frustrates me.""There is a need is to be able to consume Nutanix storage from outside the cluster for other, non-Nutanix workloads."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Cons →

"Oracle VMs don't have a solid web interface of their own. This is an area where Oracle is lagging behind. Now, we use headless servers, install Oracle VMs, and manage them remotely. We could use phpVirtual Box, but it is a third-party solution. A lot of people contribute to it, and it's not authenticated by Oracle. As a result, I don't find it to be a good option. Therefore, I would like to see Oracle offer an extension pack or a licensed version that fixes this problem.""Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great.""The solution is not flexible.""The installation is difficult and could be improved.""The solution lacks some open source remote administration tools. The reload of individual virtual machine definitions through the vboxweb service (via its API) without restarting it and the access to shared storage (to use teleport functions) need to be improved.""Oracle’s support team should improve its response time.""Basically, the GUI and command-line interface need improvement.""Oracle VM VirtualBox doesn't work properly with an antivirus tool."

More Oracle VM VirtualBox Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
  • "If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Its licensing model is easy, but the bad thing is that we need to pay for the whole capacity at once. With VMware vSAN, we only have to pay for the capacity that we are using, which is not the case with Nutanix. So, we have more overhead for the licensing cost with Nutanix."
  • "In terms of the solution's licensing, it's quite comprehensive."
  • "The price of the solution is expensive. However, the price to performance is good. The cost for development and installation is very low."
  • "The one disadvantage is relative, financially Nutanix Acropolis AOS is a little bit more expensive than the old solution."
  • "It is less expensive than the VMware alternative."
  • "We just have a support license for Nutanix."
  • "Many of my customers have issues with Acropolis' licensing model because they are charging the customers based on two things— the CPUs and the capacity in the solid stack disk — and that's a problem. Nutanix's competitors are not licensing that layer, so this is something that they should change. They should abandon this licensing model because it's too complex. Technical support is bundled with the subscription."
  • "The solution could be a little less expensive."
  • More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The solution is free."
  • "No licensing is required as it is open-source."
  • "Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten."
  • "It is an open-source solution."
  • "Oracle should consider reducing the cost of the product."
  • More Oracle VM VirtualBox Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment.
    Top Answer:The Premium ProActive service price is a little high, yet worth the price.
    Top Answer:It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website. However, they have a fantastic technical… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface… more »
    Top Answer: Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface… more »
    Top Answer:KVM is easy to use, stable and flexible. It is mature and very fast. It is an affordable open-source solution that is… more »
    Top Answer:Oracle VM VirtualBox has a platform where the support team responds to frequently asked questions by its users. Every… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
    Learn More
    Overview

    StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a top-ranking HCI software, cloud management tool, and Software Defined Storage (SDS) tool that is marketed as the foundation for users' hybrid clouds. It offers a powerful and secure hyperconverged infrastructure to deliver all data and applications at any scale and on any cloud. The solution offers a complete software stack that allows users to unify their hybrid cloud infrastructure. 

    NCI’s services include computer, storage and network, hypervisors and containers, and deployment in public or in private clouds. The product also comes with built-in resilience, disaster recovery capabilities, self-healing, and high-security capacities. It provides further deployment flexibility through several software and hardware options and platforms. NCI includes a full set of enterprise capabilities. It can also be deployed on a wide range of servers from popular manufacturers.

    The capabilities of the product are categorized into three main groups:

    • AOS storage
    • Flexible and open compute
    • Automated and secure networking

    Outside of these categories, NCI also offers other capabilities:

    • Integrated disaster recovery
    • Full-stack lifecycle management
    • VMware with Nutanix
    • Intelligent operations

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Features

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers its customers various features and tools in each of the previously mentioned categories. The available features for users currently include:

    • High-performance: This set of features utilizes hardware advances such as NVMe and RDMA to accelerate users' most demanding applications with consistent performance. The tools in this feature category work alongside data locality to ensure successful results.

    • Foolproof resiliency: These Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure features protect data and keep it available by facilitating advanced distributed consistency algorithms. Users can utilize these features to protect their data from issues like bit rot, hardware failures, and even entire site failure.

    • Flexibility: This set of features allows storage to be sized for the needs of each organization and expanded promptly and easily so that the organization and its data can grow. The features offer flexibility to users in terms of applying storage policies logically on a pre-workload basis, instead of being tied to hardware.

    • Hypervisor choice: Users can choose from the leading hypervisors - Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi. They can also leverage the built-in hypervisor AHV that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides.

    • Integrated virtualization: These features offer simplified automation and AHV streamlined operations. The services in this category are optimized for high performance and reliability.

    • Kubernetes: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to build and deploy cloud-native applications on intelligent distributed infrastructure. Apps can be integrated with cloud-compatible storage and both building and deployment can be achieved within the same platform.

    • Microsegmentation: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to prevent malware spread and reduce attack surfaces by leveraging machine learning (ML).

    • Virtual networking: This set of features allows users to easily implement multi-tenancy in their environment or stretch networks across clouds.

    • Centralized network management: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides organizations with a way to manage networking configurations centrally. Users can utilize it across their human-computer interaction (HCI) environment with simple virtual switch management.

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Benefits

    The product offers various benefits to users who utilize its capacities. Some of these include:

    • NCI reduces technology sprawl and frees up technical resources to allow organizations to focus on other activities, potentially reducing costs for the business.

    • The product allows customers to deploy, scale, and bridge to the public cloud to be able to react in evolving business environments.

    • Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure improves data availability while simultaneously protecting it against several kinds of failures and attacks.

    • The solution offers high-performance, resilient distributed storage for all workloads.

    • Working alongside Nutanix Cloud Platform, NCI offers simple management of data from one console.

    • Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure works by the zero trust philosophy, protecting users' apps and data through specially designed security protocols.

    Reviews from Real Users

    According to Gerhard J., an IT manager at Q4 Fuel, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI.

    A solutions architect at a computer software company describes NCI as a stable, straightforward to set up, and scalable solution.

    Oracle VM VirtualBox is a robust AMD64/Intel64 and x86 next-generation virtualization solution that functions well for home use and is also powerful enough to handle the needs of a busy enterprise organization. This professional solution is open source and provides super-fast high performance in addition to many outstanding value-added features. VirtualBox functions effectively on Windows, macOS, Solaris, Linux, and more. Users can benefit from VirtualBox's dedication to continually developing the product and providing continual progressive updates and releases. The solution is supported by a trusted dedicated professional community and is backed by Oracle, which guarantees that the product is able to consistently meet and exceed quality controls and protocols at all times.

    Oracle VM VirtualBox Features

    Oracle VM Virtual Box provides many value-added features.  Some of these features include:

    • Consolidation: Oracle VM VirtualBox makes it easy for users to seamlessly run numerous virtual machines on a small number of hosts and will also facilitate comprehensive balancing of the loads between VMs. This helps to minimize and consolidate the hardware needed throughout the organization.
    • Diagnostics: VirtualBox provides excellent testing and disaster recovery. Users can use the virtual hard disk like a container. This container can be copied, frozen, backed up, or transported between hosts. Using the virtual machines (VMs), users can easily test multi-node network services for any networking, software configuration, or operating system issues.
    • Snapshots: Using snapshots, users are able to save or freeze a specific state of a VM and choose to revert back to the protected state if/when they desire. Users are able to make changes or experiment within the computing space. Should a problem arise, users can revert back to the selected snapshot; this makes the need for frequent backups and restores unnecessary.
    • Flexibility: The solution makes it easy to run different operating systems (OSes) at the same time. Users can run software designed for one OS on another OS. For example, users can easily run Windows on a MAC and not have to perform a reboot. As users can configure the kinds of virtual hardware to be presented with each OS, there is greater flexibility on which OS can be selected, and users can even choose older OSes or ones that are not currently supported by the original OS.
    • Cost-effective: Virtualization with Oracle VM VirtualBox enables users to considerably minimize overall costs by reducing the amount of hardware needed and the associated expenses of running the physical machines throughout an organization. This tremendous cost savings results in ROI being achieved in a very short period of time.

    Reviews from Real Users

    “Oracle VM VirtualBox is easy to use and does not require much training. It uses fewer resources. Teams using new operating system releases can quickly test and implement. This would make the development of new software releases faster and easier. It also helps users to write the program, test, and support it on multiple platforms. It has a good community as it is open-source.” - Satishbabu G., Oracle ACE

    “It is easy to use and does not require complex knowledge. It uses less resources, which is a requirement as it is used to onboard hardware with very little resources available.” - A PeerSpot user who is an IT Architect - AI at CGI

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    Learn more about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
    Learn more about Oracle VM VirtualBox
    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
    Airbus, Colorado State University, SCS Africa, Wolf Medical Systems.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company9%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization25%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    University13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Government9%
    Educational Organization8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business63%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise35%
    Large Enterprise47%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise25%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    November 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI. Updated: November 2023.
    745,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in HCI with 75 reviews while Oracle VM VirtualBox is ranked 5th in Server Virtualization Software with 12 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while Oracle VM VirtualBox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "What you might not know about Nutanix that makes it so unique". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Oracle VM VirtualBox writes "Easy to set up with good data protection and a free version of the product". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas Oracle VM VirtualBox is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, KVM, VMware Workstation and RHEV.

    We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.