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 product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"We went from "no way DB applications would have good performance" to "Wow! We can now actually have a DB running and have some VMs running at the same time.""
"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 essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"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."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"The initial setup was quite straightforward."
"Its low maintenance is a key feature. It is easy to install, upgrade, and scale by adding more blocks."
"The most valuable features are the RBAC, role-based access control, and the reporting. NCI also provides a single platform, a single pane with a dashboard, to manage the entire infrastructure. We have complete information about overall utilization, performance, and a forecast for our platform in that single pane."
"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."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS has very good stability."
"A great feature involves real-time hardware changes."
"The hyperconvergence service, as well as the DR solution, are game-changers for Nutanix."
"It has a user-friendly dashboard and interface."
"The solution is easy to use."
"VMware vSAN is an easy to use and easy to manage storage solution. Deploying and upgrading are easy. Technical support is very good."
"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."
"VMware vSAN is compatible with the legacy hypervisor solutions and most of the features are good."
"The simplicity, as well as the integration with virtualization."
"The solution has high performance."
"It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable."
"In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent."
"The documentation can be better for the free tier."
"When you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind."
"Updating the software can be a bit tricky."
"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."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"This is a great product."
"StarWind really needs to market its product more."
"Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes."
"I'd like it to be more API-based."
"It is a CentOS-based operating system, but CentOS releases security patches almost every week or every other week. However, Nutanix releases their upgrade at three or four month intervals. According to my organization's SLA, if a critical patch is released during that time, then I need to implement the patches within 30 days. If it is a standard patch, then I need to patch it within 60 days. Since that is my SLA, I cannot meet my SLA for security because Nutanix will not release the upgrade within these 30 days. Between the critical patch release and the Nutanix release, my customers say they are vulnerable and I am accepting the risk while the SLA is breached."
"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."
"The one note of improvement I have for Nutanix is that the installation should be easier."
"An area for improvement would be the cyber security 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."
"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 price could be lower."
"The integration could be improved. I would like to see integration with other platforms."
"It can be very expensive."
"I have used the VMware Replication but I can't get it to work properly. The process should be simplified."
"This product is very expensive."
"The architecture of vSAN is not good. vSAN works with objects, such as disks, and it causes problems with availability."
"Improvements can be made with respect to scalability."
"More focus has to be put on deduplication and compression with a hybrid architecture."
"The technical support, it's not satisfactory. Whenever we raise a ticket it takes a lot of time to have an engineer get involved sometimes, or we receive a less experienced engineer. We then have to repeat the situation to the next engineer which all takes time."
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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 1st in HCI with 74 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 78 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, Hyper-V and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and HPE Hyper Converged. 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...