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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware Cloud Foundation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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
6.8
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure delivers ROI by reducing costs and simplifying management, enhancing resource efficiency and minimizing downtime.
Sentiment score
5.7
VMware Cloud Foundation promises future returns with potential savings, despite high costs, through increased efficiency and stability.
VMware Cloud Foundation allows cost and time savings by quickly deploying infrastructure requests and integrating automatic ticketing and backup services.
In terms of ROI, although VMware Cloud Foundation is expensive, it saves time in most cases, which indirectly saves costs for users.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's customer service is praised for quick, knowledgeable support and effective resolution despite some cost concerns.
Sentiment score
7.0
VMware Cloud Foundation's support is generally responsive and professional, but some users seek improvements in speed and issue resolution.
When we send an email, an engineer is assigned within 15 to 20 minutes, and we get on a call to resolve the issue.
There are times when support is unclear, and even VMware support personnel may lack familiarity with certain parts, causing difficulties.
Based on my nine years of experience with VMware, I would evaluate their technical support as effective.
The technical support from VMware Cloud Foundation deserves a nine out of ten rating.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers seamless scalability, allowing effortless, efficient cluster expansion to accommodate diverse business sizes and needs.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware Cloud Foundation offers excellent scalability, adaptable for various businesses, though dependent on licensing and hardware configurations.
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.
When more hosts are added, performance goes slow.
VMware Cloud Foundation supports scalability and company growth.
VMware Cloud Foundation is quite scalable, receiving a rating of eight and a half to nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers outstanding reliability and stability, with minimal downtime and prompt support addressing minor issues effectively.
Sentiment score
7.7
VMware Cloud Foundation is stable and reliable, with high performance and minimal issues, despite some migration complexities.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
Regarding stability, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a seven out of ten.
The stability of VMware Cloud Foundation is very high.
If one component fails to operate in a timely manner, the entire infrastructure can go down because everything is interconnected.
I am currently satisfied with the stability of VMware Cloud Foundation, though having started only two to three months ago, I am still in the monitoring phase.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in pricing, setup, integration, user interface, performance, and multi-tenancy features for users.
VMware Cloud Foundation requires improved integration, security, user-friendly features, better pricing, and enhanced support, especially post-Broadcom acquisition.
We hope Nutanix can integrate inside our current license module.
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.
They should add AI features in the future.
VMware Broadcom needs to include auto resource allocation at the VM levels.
The maintenance cost has increased significantly, especially after Broadcom acquired VMware, with a shift from socket-based licensing to core-based licensing.
Each user needs deep knowledge of every aspect of virtualization.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides competitive pricing and flexible licensing, offering good ROI and TCO benefits despite hardware costs.
VMware Cloud Foundation is costly but valued for comprehensive features, despite post-acquisition price hikes; bundles offer savings.
The pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
It costs more compared to VMware due to different licensing areas.
At first, it is cheaper than cloud services, so the cost is a major benefit.
The cost has become very high, especially after Broadcom's acquisition, altering the licensing model to a more expensive core-based system.
When comparing prices of both clouds, AWS is cheaper because they offer a free section for practice.
The price is quite higher than some other vendors.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance, user-friendly management, scalability, integration, and cost efficiency with seamless updates and monitoring.
VMware Cloud Foundation offers scalable automation, disaster recovery, and seamless management, enhancing operational efficiency and infrastructure modernization.
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.
The solution now offers auto-deployment of VMs.
All features of VMware Cloud Foundation are valuable to us, as it covers every industry standard protocol and requirement protocol.
VMware Cloud Foundation allows for extensive customization, aligning with our customer requirements.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Ranking in Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms
4th
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)
VMware Cloud Foundation
Ranking in Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is 7.4%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Foundation is 19.5%, down from 24.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Cloud Foundation19.5%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)7.4%
Other73.1%
Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Narasimha Reddy Illuri - PeerSpot reviewer
There is progress in performance and stability, but further advancements are needed for end-user satisfaction
VMware Cloud Foundation's best features include its advanced capabilities, security purposes, and performance levels. The solution offers efficient licensing options. Previously, vSphere essential was available, but now it has moved to VMware Cloud Foundation 8.0. It includes advanced features such as lifecycle manager, patching level, and cluster level patching options. The solution now offers auto-deployment of VMs. Previously, I had to use the content library, right-click, and create VMs manually. With VMware Cloud Foundation, auto-deployment is possible by simply right-clicking and assigning a specific DHCP IP, enabling physical to vCenter level communication for automatic VM deployment. The workload portability feature in VMware Cloud Foundation provides good workload balance. For instance, in a cluster level with four to five ESXi hosts, each host has minimum resources allocated for CPU and memory, resulting in significantly reduced utilization at the VMware Cloud Foundation level.
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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
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise77
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise27
 

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...
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 ...
What do you like most about VMware Cloud Foundation?
VMware Cloud Foundation provides us with the vSphere dashboard through which we can manage, monitor, schedule, and spin up your virtual machines. We can manage, monitor, and get reports of your inf...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Foundation?
Regarding pricing, VMware Cloud Foundation includes normal licensing costs. Since VMware's move to Broadcom, the pricing has increased significantly. Compared to Nutanix, which many people consider...
What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Foundation?
Regarding improvements in VMware Cloud Foundation, stability has significantly improved, and many issues have been resolved. The efficiency, stability, scalability, and advanced level features have...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
ricoh, dell technologies, sky
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. VMware Cloud Foundation and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.