Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

We have moved to Nutanix AOS as our one-stop hyper-converged solution for VDI and Virtual Servers. We have implemented Nutanix AOS in all our domains to replace old architecture. Before Nutanix, we used a mixed environment of HP Blades, Dell "Pizza Box" servers, a combination of local and shared storage, and a mess of networking hardware to make it all work. Now with Nutanix AOS and cluster, this has simplified everything from standard operating procedures to modification and scalability. Now our new Standard Operating Procedures are much more "Standardized."

Nutanix AOS has improved our datacenter in the way of availability, scalability, and speed. The Nutanix clustering provided by AOS has ensured more uptime and speed of delivering existing applications. AOS also offers fantastic ease of expanding our infrastructure. Initially, Nutanix was our VDI Backend solution, then we started migrating all virtual server infrastructure over to an entire Nutanix solution as well. Since then we have been expanding on both and providing end-users an amazing experience.

One-Click Upgrade and Foundation is the most valuable feature. One-Click Upgrade makes upgrades and LCM a breeze. Prior to Nutanix One-Click Upgrade, upgrades and LCM were overly cumbersome and time-consuming. Foundation provides an easy, yet very structured, approach to cluster modification (adding or removing nodes). Prior to something like Foundation, the process to scale out additional infrastructure was also cumbersome and tedious. Nutanix has completely simplified both of these processes and has made it very easy to focus more time on other things.

The One-Click Upgrade process could/should offer the ability to integrate with 3rd party drivers. For example, we use NVIDIA Grid graphics cards. It would be amazing if, during the One-Click Upgrade process, we could "slipstream" additional VIB drivers for ESXi into the upgrade process. Otherwise, we are left to a typical upgrade/maintenance window process in order to keep ESXi updated with 3rd party drivers for additional hardware installed in each node. If the One-Click Upgrade process could implement this feature, this would limit downtime maintenance as well.

I have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for five years.

Excellent. The best I've seen.

Excellent. The best I've seen.

Technical support has been absolutely amazing. Again, the best I've seen. We felt like the Nutanix Bible didn't quite cover all the bases that we wanted to know more about. On a whim, we asked for a more technical deep dive and support provided us with a 1 time deep dive on-site to learn more about the product and troubleshooting. A support representative came on site and provided us with a bunch of troubleshooting scenarios (in a lab environment) in which we learned some "Tier 2+" troubleshooting methods.

HP/Dell architecture. These proved as an overly tedious and dead-end solution.

Straightforward. I was new to Nutanix but felt completely comfortable diving right in and taking lead.

Our initial setup was supported by a vendor team who was top notch.

The pricing from my experience is, unfortunately, a necessary evil, however, the initial setup cost could be a waste, depending on your comfort and skill level. I say comfort first because the setup is actually very easy and straightforward once you understand the foundation process. It would really depend on your experience and comfort moving to new infrastructures.

Not really. Once we found Nutanix, all other options seemed like lesser options.

Way to go Nutanix. Keep up the great work. We look forward to a very long term relationship.

We use Nutanix Acropolis AOS for the high availability that we get with it. The platform's extremely stable and other nice things that we like about it is that if we have to move the server or anything, it's not a lot to move and power consumption is a big thing for us as well.

My primary use case of this solution is that it helped me solve all of my use cases. I can create an integrative private cloud in a data center, create a hybrid cloud, public cloud, and near-site data recording. For example, there are lots of sites that do not have the data there so I can create data because Nutanix also has got it stored on the nodes. It takes care of storage on the nodes. I can build storage on the nodes, compute them, give the clients who already have a small data center within themselves but they do not have it externally. By using storage on the nodes in Nutanix I can give them the external.

We primarily use Nutanix as our base environment where we host all our database servers. We also host our active directory on it, our mail servers, and all of our bare-metal systems combined into one unit. Then we use Inuvika for the VDI environment on top of Nutanix.

One of the benefits this solution has had for my organization is space consumption. Space consumption was reduced by approximately 40% because if I had gone with another kind of traditional, or open-world solution, then I would have not saved my floor space. Another way it has benefited my organization is because of the energy consumption.

I definitely find the reduced power consumption very valuable. Another aspect I really like, when one compares Citrix to VMware, is the interface where you talk directly to your VM from the present software.

On-demand scaling is the most valuable feature, I can keep on scaling on-demand.

With Nutanix, if I do three or four nodes if I look at the traditional environment I have to really figure out the wave concept. Connect wave one, wave two, wave six, wave five. In Nutanix I don't have any of these issues. Lastly, deduplication. Deduplication and erasure coding

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. All of these clusters cannot talk to each other. Then it has to be then subverted as parallel execution.

I would suggest that this could perhaps be switched. That is so far the only change I would like. I would like it if they could fix the instance where you double click on a VM and it opens the VM instead of the setup.

We've only been using Nutanix Acropolis for a short time now so we haven't gone into full production with the product yet.

This product is very scalable. We currently have 60 users. One of the things I like about it is that you can add extra nodes without any problem. Something we are currently looking at for the future is to put a smaller cluster on each side, where we can then, overnight, replicate the data from the site to the primary cluster. That's one of the other reasons why we looked at Nutanix instead of VMware and Citrix.

We had only one query so far, and the support team was excellent. They came back to us immediately and their service was excellent.

We've only been using Nutanix Acropolis for a short time now so we haven't gone into full production with the product yet.

The entire setup took us half a day. We used a consultant for the deployment. The service I received from them is unbelievable.

One of the major problems with IT in South Africa is that licensing fees are 14 times more expensive than anywhere in the world.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. If they develop the interoperability then it would make it a ten.

We looked at other options like VMware and Citrix, but Nutanix was the only solution that offered us scalability and the option to add extra notes without any problems.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for Nutanix is removing the classic 3-tier architecture and switching to hyper-convergence. 

Migrating from the 3-tier architecture to HCI helped us to free up rack space, remove the old hardware, and run systems on the new platform. 

There was a four-rack, and now there are ten units of hardware. It's really cool and fantastic.

It is now managed from one interface, covered by technical support and it's homogenous. If you need to expand a cluster or storage then all you need is just add new nodes. You don't need to buy new storage, you don't need to expand your SAN, and so on.

Now, all of the systems run on the same hardware with the same software, which can be managed from a single pane of glass. All you need to know is AOS. You don't need to learn about storage, SAN, or virtualization. It's easier to start with Nutanix than start with classic architecture.

The software features which really can improve the organization are deduplication and compression. These really can help to save a lot of space. On the non-homogenous systems, we achieved approximately 2:1 space savings, which is great.

We really love the Lifecycle manager and one-click upgrades. All you need to do is run the upgrade procedure and watch it go.

You don't need to update firmware, software, hypervisors, and so on by yourself. LCM can do it for you. It really can save a lot of time. LCM will install only compatible firmware and software, so you can't install (for example) unsupported firmware and break down your system.

LCM is a really cool feature and one of the best in the market. I have never seen anything like this before. 

I think there is a lot that Nutanix can improve in AOS, in particular, moving tasks such as creating trunked networks and managing nodes from the CLI to Prism Element.

I would like to see more information in Prism Element about how Curator works. 

There is a lot of functionality in Prism Central, but sometimes you want to see those features in Prism Element. One of them is RBAC. If we have one small cluster, and we need RBAC, we must install Prism Central. This is an inconvenience and I hope to see this feature in Prism Element in the next releases of AOS. 

We are using Nutanix solutions based on AOS since 2017. 

Nutanix AOS is a very stable system. You can lose drives or nodes, depending on your replication factor, and you will not lose your data. 

It's very easy to scale. You just add new nodes, increase compute, and increase storage at the same time.

Nutanix has one of the best technical support groups I've ever seen.

They answer fast and they solve problems fast. They don't ask you a lot of unnecessary questions; rather, they just do the work.

Previously, we used different solutions from different vendors. We needed to put it all together, and Nutanix helped us.

Setting up a new cluster is easy and the documentation covers this process.

They are very highly qualified specialists. 

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Nutanix. 

My advice is that deduplication and compression can save money, so use it. 

We have had customers who wanted new hardware and new software with a certain price point in mind, and didn't want to pay the VMware licensing. We switched them to Nutanix Acropolis.

Our clients like several features including the micro-segmentation flow, the one-page management through Prism, and the LCM (Life Cycle Management) that Prism offers.

There are several features that need improvement. Some of the areas are:

• The Nutanix flow is only for micro-segmentation functionality.
  
• It doesn't integrate with their cloud solution.
  
• It's only for on-premises, even though they have micro-segmentation, it doesn't extend it through the cloud.
  
• It (Flow) doesn't work with the XI frame.
  
• Life Cycle Management is very simplistic for the HPE DX.
• Some of the applications are not supported yet.

We have to look at the ecosystem that Nutanix is trying to create. It's lacking in some features but overcompensating in others. They are trying to be holistic, but they have a lot to catch up on when it comes to VMware. For example, they only support Citrix, and if you run Nutanix Acropolis you can't run VMware Horizon. There are limitations and the Kubernetes solution is limited.

I have been dealing with Nutanix Acropolis for quite a while. I have many certifications with Nutanix.

This solution is stable.

The scalability is fine, as it is advertised, but I can't attest to any performance indicators because I haven't stress-tested it.

Nutanix does a superb job with technical support. Technicians who work your case answer their phones.

It's a good alternative, but it doesn't have all of the features. It's not on par with VMware but it is a potential alternative. It's similar to comparing Apple to Oranges.

If you are invested in the infrastructure and that is what you have to consider, but it's not easy. Overall, it's good software.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We like that the size of the box is 1U or 2U only, and all the servers are fit into that box. The ease of operation is there. All the servers and the SAN storage are inside the box. So there are no wires, cables to manage. Secondly, since it is a hyper-converged infrastructure, we can scale up very easily. Suppose, for example, we were using 24 TB SAN last year, and now we are increasing up to 96 TB SAN. That is very easy to do with Nutanix. Just install the hard disk, enterprise-grade SAS or SSD, and expand that particular SAN. So within a short span of time, we can increase the capacity of the RAM or the hard disk. With how compact the equipment is it saves us a lot of space in the racks. 

In previous years we had six to seven server rooms, those are consolidated to only one server room now. We have only one server room and the space of that server room is hardly is 200 square feet. Cooling is easy, the amount of cooling needed is also reduced, so the administration becomes very easy. Reports are generated very easily. Additionally, we can configure the machines, we can create the VDI, for example, at a fast pace. Within four, five minutes, we are able to create the machine.

Pricing and varieties of options could be better. I represent an educational Institute, higher education. So, the cost is a major concern. Secondly, we have the 1000 and 3000 series. So we would like to see that graphic virtualization. It should support all the open standards as well as Nutanix. If the other vendor brought some SAN or NAS, it should be very compatible with that. I would rate it at a nine on a scale of ten.

We have been using Nutanix Hyper-Converged Infrastructure for three years. We use the 1000 series.

It is very stable and scalable also. So even if we are facing the power problems, the machine restarts immediately after the power is resumed, and the machine is a rugged one. So definitely a stable machine.

It is very scalable and easy to scale quicly.

The technical support is also very nice. They have partner support and direct Nutanix support.We are getting better support from Nutanix. So I can rate them with an A grade.

The Nutanix Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is easy to install. Initially, it took around one and a half days to understand the complete setup, but now once we understand the setup, we can install the complete setup within two to three hours.

I strongly recommend the product.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

We deliver a lot of different solutions on various platforms, including different HCI solutions and solutions like Nutanix and Cisco HyperFlex and NetApps, later HCI mile. Most of them have been on Nutanix and on Cisco HyperFlex and as well as VxRack. Our primary use case has of Nutanix has been for virtualization consolidation. We are partners and resellers of Nutanix and I'm a consulting solutions architect.

Nutanix has several feature sets that we like. For example, everything's core centralized on the UI. You don't have multiple interfaces that you have to jump between like in some other solutions. It's more integrated for the overall management of the infrastructure. The other part too which is very attractive, is the fact they provide an option if you're not leveraging your OEM hypervisor like VMware or HyperV. That was a significant cost saver for us as well as enabling us to look at alternatives to the VMware tax. 

For now, I can't think of anything that can be improved. They've been pretty innovative and have provided a fairly comprehensive roadmap. I've worked directly with some of the backend TME guys and they're very responsive and have addressed anything that's come up. However, I would like to see better visibility with the main OEM backup integrators to have a full backup recovery from site to site and from site to cloud and cloud to cloud - the full range. The cloud ecosystem for public/private, site to site visibility with a single backup product.

I've been using this solution for five years. 

From a software perspective, it's incredibly stable and portable. The only caution I would give is that since it is a software-defined solution, be careful of the underlying hardware. It's nothing to do with Nutanix, it's a hardware issue. You may have a highly available, reliable software platform, but it's on commodity hardware so you might experience more failures on the hardware because you decided to go for commodity. You need to be careful how you're architecting your solution and your application factors as you build up your data center, and not sell yourself short and get the cheapest hardware on the market to save costs, because that can turn out to be an expensive decision. 

I haven't seen any issues with scalability. Most people I know for the most part are very sensitive about the fault domains. So they tend to go off from smaller clusters. You do have the ability to go pretty much as far as is humanly possible, it depends how much risk you want to take, but at the same time the scalability is definitely there. Most systems are capped at where you can scale out cluster-wise of VMware, 64 nodes and HyperV at 64. There are two factors to the scalability equation. There's the storage within each node, which is fine and then obviously the scalability as far as CPU and memory go. You can mix and match your platforms on your favorite vendor, but then you need the ability to go beyond 64 where necessary. We do have a couple of accounts that we've worked with where they have some fairly large clusters and I think that's a great option for people needing that level of scalability.

The biggest thing that I've seen has been the backup and recovery which has been challenging for them over the past couple of years. They partnered with Beam and with Rubrik and Cohesity. They had their OEM go-to's, but didn't initially deliver a very good story for application integration for backup and recovery where they had good copy data management. Most of the OEMs are very good at backing up single clusters for local backup and recovery. That said, whenever true disaster recovery was needed and you're leveraging multiple Nutanix missions site to site, there wasn't the visibility of being able to backup or being able to have the application integration.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We primarily use it based on the VMware vSAN. I use it with EMC VxRail.

The solution offers impressive performance.

We don't have to pay for extras.

The interface of the solution is good. I like the UI.

The stability of the solution is quite decent.

The solution doesn't support older systems, which can be a problem for some organizations who wish to implement it. It became a problem for us due to the fact that some of our systems are older.

I'm fairly new to the product. I've only been working with it for about two months now.

The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't run into bugs or glitches. There haven't been crashes. So far, in the little experience we've had, I'd say the solution is quite dependable.

We're finding that scaling is acceptable. If an organization needs to expand Nutanix, they should be able to do so with no problems whatsoever.

To be honest, we don't actually contact Nutanix for technical support or troubleshooting issues. Therefore, it would be hard to rate them or describe any recent experiences. We find that our system integrator vendor is good at helping with support-related enquiries if we have them or need help. They've been well trained on Nutanix and understand how the system works. For now, we're satisfied going through them to get the support we need.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward, mostly because we didn't handle it ourselves.

Our implementation only took about a week.

We hired a system integrator to handle the implementation of the product. They were great. We trust them and find their work to be very dependable. They also are able to provide support.

The solution is very cost-effective.

We're just a Nutanix customer. We don't have any partnership or other type of relationship with the organization.

The solution is a good product. It works great on newer systems, however, if a company has an older system they might run into issues.  

The performance is great and the pricing is very reasonable, which is why we like it and why we would recommend it to others.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten. If it worked better with older systems, I might rank it a bit higher.

We primarily use Nutanix as our base environment where we host all our database servers. We also host our active directory on it, our mail servers and all our bare metal systems combined to one unit. Then we use Inuvika for the VDI environment on top of Nutanix.

The main reason why we liked it is because of the high availability that we get with it. The platform's extremely stable and other nice things that we like about it is that if we have to move the server or anything, it's not a lot to move and power consumption is a big thing for us as well.

We are not fully in production yet and we are still busy testing Nutanix. A couple of things that it makes a huge difference in is our company's power consumption because we don't have to use computers for all our employees. We can simply put down a Raspberry Pi or a little nook, and in the Inuvika environment, everything is up and running immediately. It gives the users a lot more freedom in connection with what they usually have in a standard setup. With everything operating in the cluster, the chances of losing data is reduced by about 90%. We use this move from one site because we've got about seven sites that we are running from the one Nutanix cluster.
We can move a user from one site to another site without having to move hardware. It is very user-friendly. Another thing I like a lot about Inuvika is the deduplication that you can do on different containers. You don't have to do everything on one container or on one VM itself. 

I definitely find the reduced power consumption very valuable. Another aspect I really like, when one compares Citrix to VMware, is the interface where you talk directly to your VM from the present software. We have found that it is a lot more responsive using VMware compared to Citrix.

One thing I've noticed is that, when you do a shift from VMware to Nutanix, it opens the setup of the VM that's currently running. If people from another site double click on it, it opens the VM instead of the setup of the unit. So I would suggest that this could perhaps be switched. That is so far the only change I would like. I would like it if they could fix the instance where you double click on a VM and it opens the VM instead of the setup. That's the only thing that's a major bother to me.

The easiest way to explain the stability of Nutanix is to start it up and forget about it. We haven't had any problems with this solution. We've done a couple of tests and restarts and we've moved VMs from one machine to another machine. We tested the availability and we didn't have any problems with that either. The performance and stability of Nutanix is so good, it is almost unbelievable. 

This product is very scalable. We currently have 60 users. One of the things I like about it is that you can add extra nodes without any problem. Something we are currently looking at for the future is to put a smaller cluster on each side, where we can then, overnight, replicate the data from the site to the primary cluster. That's one of the other reasons why we looked at Nutanix instead of VMware and Citrix.
At this stage, we haven't transferred our SQL database as of yet. We're waiting for the software providers to come in and do the transfer from the old server to the new server. All our documents and all our data must be transferred. 

We had only one query so far, and the support team was excellent. They came back to us immediately and their service was excellent.

We used a different solution before we started using Nutanix. We ran three sites on EXSi from VMware. After doing some research, I saw the feasibility of Nutanix. Not only on costs, but on scalability as well. Although I'm a big VMware fan, I've found that one only has a certain amount of time to build your setup with VMware, and if you don't do it in that time, you must start again. One of the main things I liked of Nutanix, is that I can add an extra node or four extra or nodes if needed within a period of two years.

The initial setup was really straightforward. We had a little trouble with the nicks. Also, under the software setup, it doesn't give you the version of the software. It only shows as 'unknown'. So we had to dive into the setup to find out which version it was to update correctly. The entire setup took us half a day. We used a consultant for the deployment. The service I received from them is unbelievable.

One of the major problems with IT in South Africa is that licensing fees are 14 times more expensive than anywhere in the world. This is due to the rand/dollar exchange rate. If I remember correctly, our licensing fee on the total setup was about R900,000. 
There are no additional costs. The only additional things we added to the system was Commvault for additional backup services for the cluster.

We looked at other options like VMware and Citrix, but Nutanix was the only solution that offered us scalability and the option to add extra notes without any problems. 

Nutanix is an extremely cost effective product for the stability that you get without having to install additional hardware to get everything up and running. No other product out there can compare with Nutanix. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.