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.
"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"The most valuable feature is the reliable storage replication, which enables me to create a robust infrastructure to run our business."
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost."
"It's quite easy to manage."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"This solution enables us to make better cost-effective use of our existing hardware and leverage the current infrastructure at a higher level than we could before."
"In general, being able to patch and not having to pay for SanDisk is the best thing about hyper-converged."
"Performing a Nutanix software upgrade is a very simple and non-disruptive process."
"Acropolis AOS's networking concept is excellent."
"Technical support is okay."
"We really love the Lifecycle manager and one-click upgrades."
"The hyperconvergence service, as well as the DR solution, are game-changers for Nutanix."
"I have found the solution to be stable."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is easy to use, integrates with other hardware configurations, and is simple to manage."
"It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable."
"The solution has high performance."
"Storage is expandable with no extra cost."
"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 most valuable feature for our customers is vMotion. It allows them to shut down virtual machines and migrate them to others servers."
"The most valuable features are productivity and data storage."
"VMware comes with different stacks like VMware Cloud Foundation, which is integrated with different VMware modules. There's interoperability between VMware products."
"Being able to deploy multiple applications with virtual servers is the most valuable for us. The capacity of the system is quite constant so it's got some of the good features."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"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."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"Having more support plan options would be nice."
"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."
"The StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"As of now, Acropolis and VMware cannot talk to each other. Until we have some kind of interface, it would be much better for Nutanix if they built an interface that can talk. Otherwise, if I have a VMware stack and I already have a Nutanix stack, I can create containers, I create clusters on VMware, I create clusters on Nutanix."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS could improve by having an auto-update feature. At this time I have to update each system manually. However, I bought the standard license and I did not buy the maximum license they have available. There could be a certain license that does the updates automatically."
"As Nutanix Acropolis AOS is on the expensive side, one of its areas for improvement is the price. It would also be better if it can be integrated with other cloud providers, because currently, it's only for private cloud deployment."
"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."
"The self-service side of the product needs to be improved. We should be able to add two-factor authentication and more security layers to it."
"The patch updates of Nutanix Acropolis could be improved. I'm work on the corporate side, but I get feedback from our IT team that patch updates and other updates are taking a significantly longer time. This definitely needs to be resolved. We are in discussion with Nutanix regarding certain configuration issues we are having, so maybe something can be changed to ease these patch updates."
"It was not a great fit for really large databases that required high-end or lots of compute. They might already have addressed this concern around very high-end databases that require high-end compute. In the past, it wasn't a great fit for them."
"When we have issues with the solution, they tend to be around networking."
"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper."
"Ease of administration is one area where vSAN could be improved."
"Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes. The maximum number of nodes is okay, but our use cases could probably do with more nodes, probably up to 64. In terms of new features, it should probably have the basic support for high-speed networking spaces."
"VMware vSAN could improve by adding NAS and object storage."
"In a future release, they could add micro-segmentation or security level features integrated into vSAN."
"We are facing some problems with updates with the VMware vSAN. When we upgraded from version 6.5 to 7, we have been faced with many problems. They have been deploying many hotfixes for this version, and they need to continue to improve this version."
"There is a lot that VMware could improve from a marketing perspective. The cloud is still new for many people, so extending storage should be effortless. It shouldn't be so complicated to extend the storage so workloads can access it no matter where they go."
"Reporting currently depends on third party applications and that could be improved."
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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 1st in HCI with 85 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 NetApp HCI. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. VMware vSAN report.
See our list of best HCI vendors and best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors.
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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...