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Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (17th), File and Object Storage (6th)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
73
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (6th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), File and Object Storage (4th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
SwiftStack [EOL]
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
Juan-Contreras - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling
It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.
Scientif48eb - PeerSpot reviewer
It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers
* You can bring your own drives, which don't have to be certified. This usually means that they cost significantly more to insert a certified drive with the manufacturer who is selling you your solution. * It is platform independent, so you bring your own hardware. It doesn't matter if you get a Dell EMC, HPE, IBM, etc. Its hardware agnostic capabilities are great. Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo are obviously big players, but sometimes they don't have the best prices. You are not tied to any one particular vendor, and it gives you great flexibility as far as pricing is concerned. You can go out, and say, "Give me the most capacity in the smallest number of use spaces." Sometimes that's not the big vendors, it's the small vendors who provide this. * The forward thinking in their cloud solution creates a global namespace across the major public clouds. It allows you to go from on-premise to the cloud seamlessly. They have made it easier to move data between the different cloud vendors and move those flows from on-premise to the cloud, then from the cloud back to on-premise. That freedom that they facilitate is hard to put a price on, because it gives you flexibility. * The metadata search capabilities are something that we look forward to being able to use, though we haven't fully had a chance to get into them. However, in the life sciences area, it could be tremendously beneficial. * Ease of operation: We got it up and running, and it's been solid. We can upgrade the capacity of our drives at any point in time. * The flexibility that the solution provides, both for hardware and on-premise, then to the cloud. That flexibility is great.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."
"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."
"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."
"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."
"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."
"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."
"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."
"The main feature I have found to be product replication."
"The most important point is the simplicity of the API integration. We can leverage the API integrations and connect our hybrid-cloud network environment with Nutanix's cloud storage."
"The solution's most valuable features are its support and speed."
"The customer service executives of all Nutanix products are active and responsive."
"We have virtually zero downtime with Nutanix. It updates itself, and we can easily move machines from one cluster to another."
"The most valuable features of the solution are replication and backup and our company needs a tool to help us with disaster recovery and the security of our data."
"Nutanix's analytics provide better insights into all of our files."
"The integration with Prism Central makes it a lot easier to manage, so we just have a single pane of glass location that we can go to. We do not have a separate admin console or anything that we have to use."
"I appreciate its storage licensing model, as it offers flexibility."
"It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."
"In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware."
"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product."
"SwiftStack is also quite flexible when it comes to hardware. It depends, of course, on the use case and the kind of hardware you want to buy. But you have quite a bit of choice in hardware. The SwiftStack software itself does not impose anything on you."
"The graphs are most valuable. They have a lot of graphs and reports that you can run to see what's happening in the background to configure OpenStack Swift."
"The biggest feature, the biggest reason we went with SwiftStack, rather than deploying our own model with OpenStack Swift, was their deployment model. That was really the primary point in our purchase decision, back when we initially deployed. It took my installation time from days to hours, for deployment in our environment, versus deploying OpenStack Swift ourselves, manually."
"The most valuable feature is its versatility. We use 1space and we can use it for almost anything: for our cloud service, for backups of VMs."
"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."
 

Cons

"The speed could be improved."
"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."
"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."
"I have not seen ROI."
"According to the keynotes announced by Nutanix the previous day or this morning, the data storage for Kubernetes requires improvement as it has a few shortcomings in the area of operations."
"If they can add an integrated DLP feature, it would be great."
"The solution should increase its storage capabilities."
"The solution should include more protocols to access data."
"Improving quota policies would be advantageous, particularly by offering the option to implement blocking instead of just issuing warnings."
"Pricing can always be better."
"The implementation is a little bit complex and should be made easier."
"The solution needs to be more open to integration with other vendors. Sometimes, we struggle with the support process. Our skilled engineers must explain our problems to everyone, even though we've already done preliminary investigations. The support team follows standard procedures, which can be painful. We're not a small customer, especially in the life sciences sector, so we'd appreciate more specialized support. I've heard Nutanix Unified Storage has teams dedicated to life sciences and healthcare; we should be part of that."
"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."
"The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap."
"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."
"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface. There are a lot of options available on the GUI which might be better organized or compartmentalized. There are times when you are going through the user interface and you have to look around for where the setting may be. A little bit more attention to the organization of the user interface would be helpful."
"[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key."
"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."
"At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like."
"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."
"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."
"The price could be cheaper."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"The product is very expensive."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"I am not the one who makes the calls, but it seems to me that it was very competitive. Other solutions would have required dedicated hardware, so an additional CapEx has to be put in place. In that sense, it was definitely a more competitive option to go with Nutanix Files."
"Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower."
"Nutanix is priced a bit higher than some of its competitors. A lot of Chinese companies like Huawei are entering the Saudi Arabian market trying to provide similar solutions for a lower price. It offers a good value, especially the support. Nutanix has a highly competent team. The after-sales support is excellent."
"I'm happy with the cost and licensing because I don't have big volumes."
"The price of the license is expensive when comparing it to traditional storage."
"We are Nutanix partners, so it is pretty good. With the free terabyte that comes with the Nutanix clusters, we have started to build proposals for the clients. The price adjustment with the new policy of Nutanix Unified Storages seems attractive. Let us see if it has results."
"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."
"My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization."
"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."
"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."
"The pricing and licensing are capacity-based, so it's hard to put my finger on them, because so many different vendors charge in different ways. We are still saving significantly over any of the other options that we evaluated because we can choose the best hardware at the best price, then put SwiftStack software on it. So, it's hard to complain, even though a part of me goes, "It would be nicer if it were less expensive.""
"We find the pricing rather steep. Of course, you get quality for your money, that's absolutely true... [But] when you look at the prices of the licensing and the prices of your hardware, it's quite substantial."
"Dollar per gigabyte, it costs us more because we are storing more. However, if you look at it from a cost per gigabyte perspective, we have dropped our costs significantly."
"COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"All in, with hardware and everything else - and I hate to say a dollar amount because it's been awhile since I computed it - I know I'm under the $300 to $500 per terabyte mark. I call that my "all in" price, which has replications built in and protections built in."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
33%
Educational Organization
19%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines
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