We performed a comparison between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSAN based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Nutanix Acropolis is the clear winner in this comparison. In addition to being a powerful and reliable product, it is easy to deploy, has excellent customer support and a significant ROI.
"They offer top-tier support."
"High Availability is the best feature of product."
"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"
"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"I've been really impressed with it so far. I think it's pretty great, actually. It does exactly what we need it to do, and it does it well, so I would recommend it. Plus, the support has been very good."
"It is extremely stable."
"Support keeps track of alerts of the system and verifies with us if we need help to fix any issues. They have great and quick technical support."
"It has been stable so far."
"One major thing that comes up again and again is stability. Our downtime is literally based on hardware upgrades that need to be done. Acropolis is very, very user friendly. You don't have to physically have a super IT guy to manage the system. You can actually give it to a younger guy to manage and there won't be problems. And if he makes a mistake, it's very, very easy to fall back and sort out the mistake."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It's easy to use and has a very smooth onboarding process."
"The most valuable feature is the integration of all parts in Prism Element, the browser-based management tool."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is flexible and has helped people to work from home during the pandemic."
"The stability is good. This is the number-one product in that regard."
"The scalability is great."
"The solutions best feature is that it is easy to use."
"VMware has been around for a long time are are doing a decent job at catching up with the latest technologies i.e. bringing in kubernetes and containerization. Overall, this is a great tool for virtualization."
"I think vSAN's stability is good. It's an underlying solution for both on-prem and in the cloud, especially the VMC on AWS stuff too. VMware has been around for a long time, so it's pretty stable."
"The most valuable features of VMware vSAN are that it receives updates frequently, has good compression, optimized storage, and they provide webinars on what is new. Additionally, the integration with third-party products is good and it is easy to manage."
"The scalability has been quite good."
"Technical support is good."
"The vSAN features we've found most helpful are live application migrations and storage policies. It has storage, policies, application, and DRS policies. Automation is there."
"We've found the solution to be scalable."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"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."
"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."
"The scalability of the solution had some issues because there were many VMs and the replication ran into some bottlenecks. It was an issue that was known to Nutanix and it was not disclosed to the customer."
"We ran into an issue as a managed service provider because Acropolis isn't designed to be used the way we are running it. For example, if we want to deploy a Kubernetes service, the customer networks need to reach our protected cluster network. We have isolated our customers in separate VLANs. However, our customers' networks must access our cluster network to get features like iSCSI or Kubernetes to run. It's challenging."
"There is room to enhance the micro-segmentation."
"This solution offers excellent functionality but could use a stronger interface."
"This product would be improved if it included a hybrid cloud solution."
"Limits on increasing space with the inability to have or attach external storage."
"They can improve the manageability of the solution to make it more simple. It is not that complicated, but it will be good if they can make it more simple."
"Lacks sufficient storage terabytes."
"Troubleshooting tools could be improved."
"As no product is 100% perfect, the price for VMware vSAN could still be improved, though it is good when compared to some of its competitors."
"Lacks an integrated backup solution."
"The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."
"The solution could be improved by having more filtered and multiple view volumes instead of a single view."
"Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support."
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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 1st in HCI with 86 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 87 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "Serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and Hyper-V, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. VMware vSAN report.
See our list of best HCI vendors and best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors.
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.
Wow, all the name-droppers are there already!
But we had one job: recommend the best out of two!
Not recommend x,y and z.
I would recommend Nutanix as it has a wider scope as a solution.
Nutanix AOS has better resilience against failures and better performance and even the best support out there.
A wider scope means the eco-system beyond virtualization (and storage of VMs as we are comparing with vSAN) is already in place and the integration of the various products is much better.
You have Nutanix Files for a FileServer-Solution, Calm for Self-Service VMs, Era for your DB-Admins and on and on.
These have to be paid for too, but you would pay for alternatives also.
I really think you should put attention to using Openstack as HCI infrastructure.
With OS you can get all benefits of any HCI solution and keep an agnostic infrastructure. Maybe you lose some minor features but you gain more features than you lose.
Furthermore, you can integrate your current assets as you want and you will not have technologies silos.
You can also create a bridge from your current on-premise technology to hybrid or containerized infrastructure.
At last but not least, the costs. Software's OPEX never goes down. The deeper you go, the more you sink.
Hello fellows!
We´ve been through this sort of decision about a year ago: choose the best among Nutanix, VxRail and Simplivity. By that time, we were using VMware vSAN HCI applied to 9 physical hosts.
No mysteries about VMWare vSAN HCI - but there's a lot of operational work to apply updates/upgrades/fixes to all nodes. It consumes a lot of our team's efforts.
Nutanix and its Acropolis AOS seemed to be a very good choice: user-friendly, seamless navigation between features and configurations. Really nice to use and deploy our Citrix loads.
HP Simplivity also looks great! It offers very good storage and backup solution - DEDUP at very good levels. The V-Motion process between remote sites was very fast and reliable.
In the end, Dell VxRail became our choice, offering all VMWare features with a plus: VxRail software enables a consistent and proactive environment monitoring, all upgrades/fixes/updates are applied without downtime, all easy in a user-friendly interface
The botom line: all these solutions were great, so we invited them all for a PoC.
If it is for full open-source software on Acropolis, Nutanix is a good choice.
If you have to mix VM and containers with Tanzu Kubernetes (a modern app), vSAN seems to be a better choice.
Hi.
We have deployed VmWare vSAN to some of our customers. The advantage with VmWare vSAN is that the vSAN software is integrated in ESX. So, you do not need to deploy virtual SAN as VM's. But you need a Witness VM, wich is a virtual ESX - so it will appear as two machines - little confusing in the beginning.
For small deployment (ROBO), you can have a two node cluster, with vcenter installed on the vSAN. This is a cost-effective solution. But keep in mind, the HCL from VmWare - all hardware has to be approved (on the vSAN Hardware Compability List).
We have also been searching for a solution to replace the EOL HPE VSA (StorVirtual). Here we came across StoreMagic SvSAN - we have deployed this to a Hyper-V customer. It also runs on VMware vSphere. This is also a brilliant solution and very cost-effective. The deployment scenario is often ROBO (Remote Office Branch Office), but it can scale up.
In a two-node scenario, you can connect 10Gb Eth direct between the two nodes, for synchronization. This works for both VmWare vSAN and Store MAgic SvSAN.
It depends on: which product you are able to control, know the product way to fix it, and also the quality of the product support team after going live.
You should consider HP Simplivity.
While Dell Vxrail is the typical solution, HP Simplivity can fit well in various cases. Combined with Green Lake it can bring flexibility e cost savings.
But first, be sure that HCI is the right choice.
Hi!
IMHO you should look into Nutanix with AHV hypervisor and DELL VxRail (instead of vSAN on boxes from somewhere). Both are complete and enterprise-ready appliance solutions available from 2-node RoBo-clusters up to 64-node (VxRail) or even more (Nutanix) -clusters.
Nutanix brings cloud-like management and a complete ecosystem of infrastructure tools and solutions and easily expands to different cloud providers. While I don't recommend it, you could use three different hypervisors: VMware ESXi, MS Hyper-V and Nutanix' version of KVM: AHV.
AHV is the solution of choice, as you get it for free paying for the Nutanix software, which you'll always have to buy, no matter which hypervisor you choose. Nutanix has a very good and clear GUI design (HTML5-Browser based) that makes it easy for administrators to acquire the needed skills.
Dell VxRail is based on the VMware hypervisor only, so if your administrators are used to work with ESXi, they'll be immediately and seamlessly able to work with VxRail. VxRail uses VMware vSAN to converge the cluster nodes' local storage, so the most minumums/maximums/requirements that are valid for vSAN are valid for VxRail too.
Be aware of one fact: VxRail is often cheaper than vSAN Ready Nodes, if you buy via a high-level Dell partner that has a deal registration for your project. Included in VxRail are vSAN licenses (any edition) and a vCenter Server license (cluster internal vCenter only, the license does not include management of non-VxRail ESXi-servers).
Because you say that you work at a large Financial Services company (size: 1000+ employees), please do yourself the favour and forget about StoreMagic SvSAN (it's okay for SoHo and small RoBo locations) and HPE Nimble/Alletra (has nothing to do with HCI, it's nothing but the next evolutionary step of block storage - no compute included). You could also look into Cisco Hyperflex, but if we're talking Cisco, we all know it comes with quite a price tag.
At the end of the day, it's Nutanix/AHV or VxRail, if you want a modern, enterprise-grade, easy to manage, flexible, stable and performant infrastructure solution that's eliminating the silos of a classic 3-tier approach.
Best wishes,
Chris
p.s.:
https://blogs.vmware.com/virtu...