Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs SteelFusion comparison

Nutanix and Riverbed are both solutions in the HCI category. Nutanix is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Riverbed is ranked #30. Nutanix holds a 9.1% mindshare in HCI, compared to Riverbed’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Nutanix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Read 200 Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) reviews

20,796 Views
11,230 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SteelFusion

Read 2 SteelFusion reviews

892 Views
821 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

SteelFusion

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure and SteelFusion compete in enterprise IT, focusing on data management and cloud infrastructure. Nutanix is noted for its competitive pricing and robust support, while SteelFusion is superior in advanced features, justifying its higher cost for many enterprises.

Features: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure includes hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities, seamless cloud integration, and simplified management tasks. SteelFusion offers edge computing capabilities, enhanced data access, and protection at remote sites, making it ideal for enterprises needing remote data protection and rapid recovery.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix delivers a straightforward deployment process with excellent customer support, facilitating smooth platform transitions. SteelFusion's deployment is more complex, but its comprehensive customer service provides effective guidance, making up for the complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Nutanix offers cost-effective solutions with competitive pricing, yielding favorable ROI for budget-conscious businesses. SteelFusion's higher initial costs reflect its premium features and capabilities, resulting in substantial ROI for companies prioritizing data protection and remote access.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

June 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Ranking in HCI

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

200

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th)

SteelFusion

Ranking in HCI

30th

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is 9.1%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelFusion is 1.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)	9.1%
SteelFusion	1.2%
Other	89.7%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Jean Charles

Dsi at OFFICE PUBLIC DE L HABITAT DE ROUEN

Hyper-converged storage has improved performance and now supports high redundancy for our VMs

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) was transparent because we were on a regular infrastructure before. We went on NCI and were able to improve performance, but it did not really change how things worked. The performance was really better for applications and access times to the data. I regularly looked at the analytics to see what was going on in my servers and what it was saying to optimize performance. It was pretty interesting because it could analyze and give insights on how to get things working better. In the latest versions, the Prism interface has been replaced by Prism Central. This requires another machine to be deployed to manage the servers.

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it_user866178

Chief Technology Officer at MAZZETTI+GBA

Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices

The level of tech support depends on who you get. There are some techs that just read the script and ask you if you’ve rebooted, but once you get past that - or if you have a very technical issue - the support is great. They really know the product and get you up and running again ASAP.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Nutanix Acropolis AOS has very good stability."

"The most valuable feature would be the ease of deployment. That is the most significant feature for me because I've worked with multiple vendors and it's always been very complicated to install the software and get everything running."

"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is its low cost, guaranteed to failover and failback with only a few clicks."

"The performance and stability of Nutanix is so good, it is almost unbelievable."

"Nutanix provides an all-in-one solution for operating our datacenter."

"The main reason we decided to implement the Nutanix solution was the ease of use of the environment."

"The level of statistical performance data that it can confirm in real-time is extremely useful. I can see what my VM’s hosts and guests are doing from a single pane of glass and identify issues before they would otherwise become apparent."

"The scalability is great."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pros

"That is why Riverbed SteelFusion has delivered a masterclass technology that not only abstracted and virtualized the storage vendors’ unique logical storage structures, it has made it logically closer and seamless to the branch applications from a performance and experience perspective."

"Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices. All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers. Users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central, and protected. If an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."

Cons

"The latency needs improvement"

"I'm sure there are a lot of things that could be improved, but I'm actually very satisfied with this product. There may be some possibilities to move the virtual server dismounting points or to move the server from one group to another, but I can't think of any special improvements or update features."

"If your server virtualization, network and storage teams operate in silos and are constantly at war with each other, then HCI is probably not for you at this time."

"The compatibility and integration of Nutanix Acropolis AOS could be improved. For example, we have a WAF application firewall and it does not work on this solution. Not all the OS's run on AOS. You need to have a newer version of an operating system if you want Nutanix to perfectly run all the different options."

"Deployment could be more user-friendly - currently, it requires certain skills with the network and nodes."

"It would be great if it could emulate some of the features that their competitor VMware has, for example port mirroring or Netflow output at hypervisor level."

"I would like to see asynchronous replication in less than 60 minutes, or even in 15 minutes."

"This product is expensive, but they do have discounts."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) cons

"Setting up disks for use is a multi-step process that could use some refinement. Setting up a core-to-core replication or DR strategy is also cumbersome."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license required for this solution and my clients usually purchase a two-year license with extended support. The price of the solution could be reduced, it is more expensive than competitors."

"This product is expensive, but they do have discounts. At one point, I saw that they were giving a 70% or 80% discount, which is a good thing, but maybe they should have a more realistic price and then a 5% to 10% discount."

"In terms of the solution's licensing, it's quite comprehensive."

"When we purchase a new physical server or a couple of physical servers into our cluster, we always purchase it with Nutanix licensing. We are receiving the license from Nutanix directly and not from the vendor. In the way we're dealing, with the licenses it is a bit costly for us but as the company is getting larger, day by day or year by year, those licensing costs become lower each time for us. We are purchasing the licenses for three years for some of our clusters and for some others for five-year licenses and the licenses are still costly. We have good discounts for the licenses, but it is still expensive."

"I know Nutanix and VxRail have similar prices and licenses. Nutanix is a go-ahead if AHV is used as hypervisor because it is already embedded in the price."

"There are a lot of features included with Nutanix that cost a lot with other companies."

"The software only licensing model is priced normally, but the licensing model that comes with hardware is priced very high. You can choose to pay the license yearly, or you can pay every three years, or every five years."

"Setup cost is minor, pricing is quite a bit (we have a 7-node-cluster for about 450K EUR with 2 vGPU-nodes for Citrix) but that includes hardware, software, and support."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pricing and cost advice

"Price is an issue – this is expensive stuff. My advice is to beat up Riverbed as much as possible on price. These things are expensive and there is room for negotiation."

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	93
Midsize Enterprise	76
Large Enterprise	88

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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Comparisons

VMware vSAN vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 7% of the time

VxRail vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 6% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 5% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 3% of the time

Azure Local vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 3% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Competitors

HPE SimpliVity vs SteelFusion

Compared 12% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs SteelFusion

Compared 8% of the time

Pivot3 vs SteelFusion

Compared 7% of the time

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs SteelFusion

Compared 6% of the time

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs SteelFusion

Compared 6% of the time

More SteelFusion Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

June 2026

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

June 2026

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Also Known As

Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis

No data available

Overview

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure delivers high performance and scalability with central management and one-click upgrades. It enhances data protection and reduces deployment complexities, perfect for businesses seeking efficient virtualization.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers a comprehensive platform integrating compute, storage, and network for optimal infrastructure management. It supports multiple hypervisors, offering flexibility, efficiency, and ease of use. With features like Prism for centralized management, organizations can manage resources effectively while benefiting from data protection enhancements such as deduplication and compression. Hyper-convergence enables seamless integration, reducing operational costs and increasing scalability. Though the pricing is high, and setup and administration can be complex, the ability to support hybrid cloud implementations and critical infrastructures like VDI and databases provides notable advantages.

What are the key features of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure?

Prism for Centralized Management: Simplifies resource management with a single control interface.
High Performance: Offers efficient I/O operations to enhance processing efficiency.
Scalability: Easily adjusts to growing business needs with one-click upgrades.
Data Protection: Uses deduplication and compression for secure data handling.
Hyper-Convergence: Integrates compute, storage, and network to optimize infrastructure.
Multi-Hypervisor Support: Provides flexibility to choose preferred hypervisors.

What benefits should users look for in Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure?

Cost Effectiveness: Reduces operational costs through resource optimization.
Ease of Management: Centralized control enhances administrative efficiency.
Scalability: Grows seamlessly with business demand.
Data Protection: Increases security and reliability of data management.
Performance Improvement: Streamlines server provisioning and resource management.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure finds adoption across industries for virtualization, cloud services, and infrastructure consolidation. Organizations utilize it for hybrid clouds and virtual server hosting, supporting applications like databases and virtual desktop infrastructures. They report enhanced data protection, disaster recovery capabilities, and improved performance, facilitating effective resource management.

Nutanix

SteelFusion is a high-performance converged infrastructure solution designed to streamline and secure data management in branch office environments, combining server, storage, and network functionalities in a single platform.

SteelFusion enhances efficiency in remote IT operations by integrating with existing IT systems to deliver seamless data centralization and protection. Its architecture supports diverse applications without compromising on performance, making it essential for enterprises looking to optimize their remote branch office operations. Organizations can reduce data footprint, improve resiliency, and ensure data compliance across dispersed locations.

What are the key features of SteelFusion?

Edge Servers: Deliver high-speed performance with robust compute capabilities.
FusionSync: Offers real-time data replication to maintain data consistency.
Virtual Services Platform: Simplifies branch IT with centralized management.
Branch Recovery: Minimizes downtime with rapid recovery options.
Hybrid Cloud Support: Integrates seamlessly with cloud services for extended scalability.

What benefits can users expect in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces overall IT costs by consolidating infrastructure.
Data Security: Enhances data protection through centralized monitoring.
Operational Simplicity: Lowers complexity in management and deployment.
Performance Optimization: Ensures consistent application delivery across branches.
Risk Mitigation: Decreases risk with improved disaster recovery processes.

SteelFusion is prominently implemented in industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, where secure data access and rapid recovery are critical. These environments benefit from its robust data management capabilities, enabling them to maintain continuous operations while reducing operational burdens. Its deployment allows businesses to adapt quickly and remain competitive in fast-paced markets.

Riverbed

Sample Customers

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.

Roxtec, Engen, Bobst, CBP, IUCN, Mahoning County, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet

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