We use NCI in the transportation domain.
CTO at DPD south AFrica
A simple, stable, and easy to upgrade solution that help to create high-availability environments
Pros and Cons
- "The tool is simple, stable, and easy to upgrade. It also requires few resources to manage, which simplifies our work. The solution's ease of upgrading is its valuable feature. AHV, provided by Nutanix, is excellent in performance and ease of use. It's based on an open-source product called KVM, which I also use for other services."
- "NCI's pricing is expensive."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The tool is simple, stable, and easy to upgrade. It also requires few resources to manage, which simplifies our work. The solution's ease of upgrading is its valuable feature. AHV, provided by Nutanix, is excellent in performance and ease of use. It's based on an open-source product called KVM, which I also use for other services.
Data protection and disaster recovery features have been beneficial for our work. With these features, we're able to create a high-availability environment where if one node goes down, another one takes over.
What needs improvement?
NCI's pricing is expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the product for six years.
Buyer's Guide
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
August 2024
Learn what your peers think about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2024.
801,314 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate NCI's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has 1500 users.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's support is excellent.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The deployment process usually takes around a week, depending on whether you need to migrate your systems to a hypervisor environment. It can be quite easy if you already have that setup, especially with something like VMware.
What was our ROI?
For me ROI is the tool's stability.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Reconsidering the licensing packages could reduce the price, especially for companies that may not need all the bells and whistles. Many of the features are based on open-source software, so there's potential to offer more flexible pricing options. Additionally, with the right expertise, companies could potentially create similar environments themselves, reducing the need for extensive support and licensing costs. I rate its pricing a six out of ten. The tool costs around 300,000 dollars per year.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the tool an eight out of ten. I am exploring new technologies because the market was different when I implemented NCI six years ago. Keeping up with changes is important, so I'm currently evaluating new options. I am looking to KVM. You should use NCI if you can afford it.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Apr 8, 2024
Flag as inappropriateSenior Manager ICT & at Bangalore International Airport Limited
Resilient platform with impressive capabilities in networking, storage, data protection, and disaster recovery
Pros and Cons
- "It has enterprise data services with consolidated storage data protection and disaster recovery. One valuable aspect is its efficiency as a robust platform. There is an ease of managing all processes. The data recovery process is remarkably fast. It’s a stable solution. The product is scalable. It provides high-speed live migration capability."
- "The latency needs improvement"
What is our primary use case?
It is a universal public cloud. It caters to our current usage of a private cloud. It ensures performance and security, whether on-premises or in a hybrid setup, offering us a cost-effective solution. It has enterprise data services with consolidated storage data protection and disaster recovery. We are also running Microsoft SQL Server on the tool.
How has it helped my organization?
The tool facilitated the consolidation of our organization's applications by combining storage and completing configurations. This has enhanced the effectiveness and availability of our applications. Consolidated storage, data protection, disaster recovery, and virtualization contribute to its commendable performance and service delivery.
What is most valuable?
One valuable aspect is its efficiency as a robust platform. It can also be updated with a single feed. Mainly, there is an ease of managing all processes. It effectively minimizes downtime with features like container management and robust networking capabilities. Additionally, the data recovery process is remarkably fast, enabling us to swiftly retrieve and restore information within a short period.
What needs improvement?
The latency needs improvement, particularly in terms of storage. The current system has complex storage issues, compounded by legacy infrastructure-blocking incident software. To address this, an enhancement in storage capacity is crucial, which, in turn, would contribute to a decrease in latency.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It’s a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable. It accommodates around 200 users in my company. One administrator handles the administration part.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In my organization, we used VMware, and when comparing it with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, the latter stands out for its high performance and efficient and robust infrastructure. It provides high-speed live migration capability. We migrated from VMware to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.
How was the initial setup?
My team executed the initial setup.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the solution because it can converge the data center stack, including computing, storage, networking, and installation, all under one umbrella. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Dec 28, 2023
Flag as inappropriateBuyer's Guide
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
August 2024
Learn what your peers think about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2024.
801,314 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sr. Systems Administrator II at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Provides the flexibility to move VMs easily, but the LTS version needs to be more reliable
Pros and Cons
- "Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's most valuable feature is the flexibility to move the VMs easily, keeping everything together."
- "Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's LTS version needs to be more reliable."
What is our primary use case?
We use Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for SQL Server, VDI, general workload, and remote sites.
How has it helped my organization?
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure allowed us to run our BDI a lot more efficiently, and the SQL servers worked up pretty well.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is running all of my business-critical workloads. In my area of the world, we'd have our test dev running on there as well, but we have our core applications that are critical to our operations 24/7 that are running on the solution
What is most valuable?
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's most valuable feature is the flexibility to move the VMs easily, keeping everything together. They really help with the administration side of things. Rather than having a bunch of admins, only a few admins really need to work on it.
What needs improvement?
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's LTS version needs to be more reliable. I've run into too many issues where I've found the bug, and it caused a lot of grief. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure should do more testing on its LTS version and get that straightened out.
Performance-wise, there is an upper limit on the number of nodes that Prism Element and Prism Central can handle. My two Prism Centrals are scaled for huge workloads, but I struggled with them for a better part of five or six months, where they were timing out on my admins and throwing random errors. The same thing was happening with Prism Element in our larger clusters.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) for about ten years.
How are customer service and support?
In the beginning, Nutanix support was top-of-the-line. When I had a problem, I would call them and get a knowledgeable engineer. As of late, it's been a bit of a challenge. I understand that Nutanix is going through some onboarding issues, and it takes a long time to get support people onboard and then get them trained in different situations they will encounter. I think Nutanix does not have enough support staff to care for all its customers.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We still have some VMware floating around, but it's considerably smaller. I used VMware when it was just VMware hosts, and I could throw that on top of Windows and have VMs.
We switched from VMware to NCI because we wanted to get rid of the three-tier solution. On top of that, our hardware was aging, and we didn't want to increase it. So we just started shrinking it down, and now the old hardware is going to end. We only have around 16 to 17 nodes of VMware left, but everything else is Nutanix.
What about the implementation team?
I was not initially involved in the initial setup or deployment of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure. It was handled by some admins overseas. However, after those initial VDI clusters, I got more involved with Nutanix and I did the conversions from VMware to Nutanix.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's core licensing needs to have an upper limit since processors are coming out with incredible numbers of cores on them.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I wasn't involved with the original comparison for VDI, but I do recall that solutions like VMware and vSAN were reviewed.
What other advice do I have?
We struggle with software licensing. Everybody's charging by the core. The larger nodes I put in, the more dense I can go, but my licensing costs are still going out.
I really like the whole LCM process in Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure. The whole one-click isn't true. If I go into LCM, do an inventory, and then say patch everything, it will ultimately fail. However, it still works out all right, and we can patch the firmware, drivers, AOS, and all the nodes and do a rolling patch.
When considering NCI, the big thing is considering your entire infrastructure because you go from different vendors and different hardware to handling storage and computing. I think what Nutanix and NCI offer is far better than VMware and Red Hat.
We haven't used much on the security side with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure. NCI being pre-hardened helps me a lot because that keeps the security team off my back. We do the encryption but don't use the micro-segmentation because that falls to our security team and their firewalls
I have run into problems with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, where I have an overabundance of one aspect of the infrastructure and then come up slightly short on another aspect. For example, somebody throws out a server and needs 20 terabytes of space. I buy nodes to fulfill that, but now I'm sitting there with a whole bunch of extra computing. I've tried using just the storage blocks, and I'll never do it again because it's just a waste of licensing.
Overall, I rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a six out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Manager at Cyfuture India Pvt Ltd
Easy to use and reduces downtime but needs better resource management
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is easy to use and the pricing is affordable."
- "We'd like to have more resource management."
What is our primary use case?
We use backup and restore as a service via this product.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution has helped us protect against attacks. If someone is going to attack the network, it will come on the network site as an agent. We will get notifications of certain behaviors and we can easily check and block effectively.
What is most valuable?
We like the pay-as-you-go model.
The solution has many valuable features. There's 24/7 support and a dedicated account manager.
The solution is easy to use and the pricing is affordable.
It provides a single platform from which to manage the databases. Applications of any category can be run on Nutanix.
It's reduced downtime for our customers. We can monitor all of the servers from one place and get notifications and alerts to help with workflow.
The product has helped us prevent and block attacks effectively.
Applications are consolidated thanks to Nutanix. It's nice to have consolidation. We were able to eliminate some of our client's legacy infrastructure.
We're able to use VMware and Nutanix infrastructure in parallel with ease.
We have been able to migrate services to Nutanix easily. It's helped clients save money. Clients who have not been satisfied with the costs and high expenses have been pleased with the cost savings by moving to our Nutanix cloud.
It is important for our customers that Nutanix Cloud offers a variety of cloud operating models across on-premises, Edge, as well as multiple hosted managed and public clouds. It provides good security. We can effectively prevent attacks. There's less chance of hacks or threats.
What needs improvement?
The support could be improved.
Some customers who use Oracle on-premises would like something similar. They don't want to migrate their dedicated server, which is on-premises. They would like it tied to Nutanix on their premises, however, right now, we can only offer a migration for them from their on-premises Oracle model to our Nutanix cloud. For security reasons, they aren't allowed to do this. They can't move to the cloud.
We'd like to have more resource management.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for more than ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I've never had any issues with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We can scale the solution without issue. There are no limitations.
How are customer service and support?
Support is very good. It's a very strong service.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not complex. It is straightforward. How long it takes to deploy depends on the requirements. We can deliver 100 servers or VMs within half an hour. Generally, implementation takes about 24 hours. The client can go with a physical model or a fixed cost. Cloud services usually take 24 hours to deploy.
You only need one or two people to deploy the solution.
There isn't really any maintenance necessary.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is not expensive. We've had clients that have paid 50 lakh rupees to AWS and now that they have migrated to us, they are only paying 10 lakh rupees.
We have seen many clients looking for an AWS data center as there are a lot of issues related to billing and latency. We can provide very similar solutions to what Azure and AWS provide at less cost.
There are fixed costs or pay-as-you-go models.
What other advice do I have?
We are Nutanix partners.
I'd rate the solution six out of ten. I'd recommend others to check certifications before purchasing the product.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
Senior Director - Technology at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Consolidated all our physical and VMware servers, eliminating complexity and reducing cost
Pros and Cons
- "The architecture of Nutanix is the best, and the virtualization we get, out of the box, is an advantage. Also, dedupe and compression are done natively, inside the platform, so there are no additional licenses. That adds value to it."
What is our primary use case?
I use it for the app DB and infra-related services like Active Directory and file servers. And we run our Verint Enterprise Recording application on the platform.
I set things up for my internal customers who are the end-users.
How has it helped my organization?
The number of servers we need has been reduced with NCI's performance, and it reduces the space we need and provides energy savings on top of that. The major benefit is the consolidation of all the physical and VMware servers into the Nutanix AHV platform. That's the baseline of the entire application, the core platform. We no longer use our old HPE and Dell servers. The three-tier architecture has been eliminated. NCI has eliminated that complexity and the costs associated with it.
What is most valuable?
The architecture of Nutanix is the best, and the virtualization we get, out of the box, is an advantage. Also, dedupe and compression are done natively, inside the platform, so there are no additional licenses. That adds value to it.
In addition, it provides us with a single platform, which is pretty user-friendly, to manage our databases. It doesn't take much to manage the console.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for about five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's stable. The design means we get an N+1 architecture for node failures. We haven't had any major downtime until now. We are good with the performance.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have it deployed in multiple locations. It's a distributed architecture.
How are customer service and support?
Their technical support is good, but they do have third-party system integrators. If you get one who is not that great, you will have problems.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have worked with Cisco Hyperflex and HPE Simplivity but they don't have software that is equivalent to what Nutanix has. The others are still developing their software.
And Nutanix is far better than a standard SAN solution because it is an all-in-one solution. The read/write speed is far better than in three-tier architecture.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment is pretty straightforward. One person can handle it.
There isn't much downtime due to maintenance. And updates are pretty easy, they're just plug-and-play. It's not complex. Adding compute and storage on demand is not a problem for me because my deployment is on-prem.
What was our ROI?
The ROI is definitely there, based on the consolidation. It reduces the workload footprint. That's the benefit. There aren't too many servers or storage. Nutanix becomes an all-in-one and enables us to accommodate more workloads because it has built-in dedupe and compression.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If they could further reduce the cost, that would be great. I would like to see the cost be less than the equivalent three-tier architecture.
What other advice do I have?
My advice is to get away from the traditional approach and think in forward terms about an HCI model. Nutanix stays ahead in the market.
I haven't seen any drawbacks that would lead me to suggest any improvements to the functionality of NCI.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
Vice President Technology at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Ability to seamlessly transition with click of a button means we have no downtime
Pros and Cons
- "It gives us a single dashboard to control multiple sites and multiple zones. It helps to do things on a single platform and data sharing is quite easy. The network and the security are easy to manage."
- "I would like to see more Kubernetes and container-related workflows and multiple cloud-partner management. I would also like to see how they will synergize all these AI/ML functionalities that are available on other platforms."
How has it helped my organization?
Any single server or one-plus-one server is very difficult to manage if there is hardware failure. But with this solution, the transition is seamless because a 10-plus-one redundancy is built into the system.
With the click of a button, we can migrate the services to other servers. We have never had any downtime and we are a 24/7 operation. Production has continued,
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure also helps us to optimize power utilization and the rack space used in the data center, resulting in overall energy savings.
These were immediate advantages because, eight to 10 years back, this was a new technology. We tried it with our less critical operations, and we slowly introduced more production-critical workloads.
Also, we were using Active Directory and other SQL databases on individual servers. We were able to consolidate them into a single database. That helps with ease of operations and enables taking backups from a single place. We migrated all our standard database structures and we don't need a cluster mechanism because the cluster or failover mechanism is built into the Nutanix architecture.
What is most valuable?
It gives us a single dashboard to control multiple sites and multiple zones. It helps to do things on a single platform and data sharing is quite easy. The network and the security are easy to manage.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see more Kubernetes and container-related workflows and multiple cloud-partner management. I would also like to see how they will synergize all these AI/ML functionalities that are available on other platforms. We need to see those intelligent functionalities included.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been working with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) for almost eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's quite stable. We have never had any downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For any on-prem or hybrid solution, it is highly scalable and easy to manage. We expect to increase our usage of NCI.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used VMware which was helpful for a lot of things, but in terms of the scalability, the main thing was the central storage architecture. That became a bottleneck. Scaling up the storage was a little difficult. When it came to usability and ease of management, we decided to go with Nutanix.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment was straightforward. It took less than a week, including doing the application migration. It was quite easy to create an image of the existing bare-metal infrastructure and migrate that image to the new solution. We always did it on a weekend or during a window of downtime at night.
We have it deployed in a single data center and we have under 100 users.
There is minimal maintenance. Upgrading is quite easy. Adding compute or storage on demand is also quite easy because we get a compute-only node or a storage-only node and add the nodes to meet requests for the CPU or storage requirements. These tasks are managed by the IT infrastructure team.
What about the implementation team?
We used a reseller, and we had four or five people involved from IT and database administration.
What was our ROI?
The primary objective was to reduce downtime. That means we can't assess ROI in terms of monetary value. It is more an issue of reliability.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is slightly more expensive compared to a standard, on-prem, bare-metal configuration. There is about a 30 percent overhead there. That is the pricing in the Indian scenario.
The single dashboard is an additional cost option.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
VMware is the only competition I can think of.
A standard SAN solution is quite fast in terms of storage, if you size it well, but the main challenge with a SAN solution will be scaling up. If it's not sized and planned well, it will be a big challenge and we would need to invest huge money in the SAN architecture.
What other advice do I have?
It is quite comprehensive, all the toolsets are available, so there aren't many limitations. If you are looking for hybrid or on-prem virtualization, Nutanix is the preferred choice. The things that stand out are the scalability and ease of use. For a CIO, what is relevant is how scalable and reliable the solution is.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
System Engineer at MUA`
Easy to manage with a centralized dashboard and fast restore capabilities
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues."
- "It does not have good backup feature tools, like having templates or being able to back up every two or three days."
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution in a growing industry where the expansion of servers is critical. The expansion power is pretty accomplished. I can add a node or change hardware easily.
How has it helped my organization?
The web application on the servers has been a game changer. It was expensive before. It used to be a headache. It used to take weeks if we had a crash. Now, we can fix everything and put everything as it was within hours.
What is most valuable?
The management is very easy. You can see everything within a single platform to manage your databases. Everything is there on a single dashboard.
NCI's features helped our organization reduce downtime greatly. We use it effectively for replication as well.
The ability to restore within seconds is great. It takes a few seconds to rewind back to a previous marker and have everything up and running again.
We migrated other services over to Nutanix. For example, we migrated over from Microsoft Hyper-V. This allows us to manage everything from one single platform and to save on licenses. We no longer have to license all of these different types of hardware.
It's easy to launch on demand if you are using a newer OS.
What needs improvement?
The feature that is lacking right now is the backup. It does not have good backup feature tools, like having templates or being able to back up every two or three days.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for almost five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have the solution in one central location. Everyone connects to it remotely. the number of end users fluctuates. It could be 200 to 300 users.
It's very easy to scale. It's the main reason we chose it. It's easy to add nodes and resources.
How are customer service and support?
They assign you according to the time you call. If I'm calling after hours, I'll be assigned to someone in another country.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used to use XenServer, Hyper-V, and vSphere among other solutions. We decided to consolidate everything under one console to save on licensing and having to check multiple places. It makes manageability and the ability to extend easier.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved with the deployment. There were five people involved. The deployment itself was pretty straightforward. That said, it did take some time. We gradually moved the servers. We kept both operating to make sure everything was running, then moved off the older servers slowly.
In the case of hardware failures, we'd inform the supplier. Otherwise, the software is upgraded every six months. There is very little maintenance required beyond that.
What about the implementation team?
We did use a reseller to assist us with the initial setup. Our experience with them was very positive.
What was our ROI?
We can easily provision servers and add nodes on the fly without shutting down. There are no limitations either, beyond having the proper licensing. It's the easy extension of resources where we see the ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
They were pretty aggressive coming into the market and the solution started as a cheap option, however, the price is now going up as they mature.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked into Simplivity. The main difference was the cost between the two options.
What other advice do I have?
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall.
I'd advise people to try it out. However, ensure that you lock in your price over the next three to five years so that incremental changes do not affect your contract.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Evangelist / CTO at FGNext / FGN GmbH
Easy to use, good performance, and exceptional support
Pros and Cons
- "It is easy to use. One of the things they have as a design goal is to reduce complexity and simplify things."
- "One of the improvements I would like to have is related to naming. It is getting confusing because they are using three-letter acronyms, which are more or less misleading. What I do not like is that they changed names and reused names. They had a meaning in the past and they are still using the names for something similar."
What is our primary use case?
We use it for the setup of multi-cloud infrastructure. Nutanix offers enterprise cloud, and then there are other clouds such as AWS and Azure.
How has it helped my organization?
It is a single platform to manage services. It starts at the infrastructure level, but Nutanix also offers other products that are more about services, not about infrastructure. Typical IT organizations know a lot about IT infrastructure, VMs, storage, and network. Nutanix is trying to reduce this workload and give you more time to think about services that are of benefit to your business because knowing about infrastructure is not of benefit at the business level.
Our clients run SAP HANA, Microsoft SQL databases, Oracle databases, and even MySQL databases on Nutanix. There are no limits. In 2012, they started with a high focus on VDI use cases because they were able to solve the problem of the traditional infrastructure solutions. Server virtualization and enterprise or mission-critical applications are also among the broad portfolio of use cases. I am sure you can run any use case on the Nutanix platform.
NCI’s features have helped our clients' organizations reduce downtime. One of the most impactful aspects is that once the SLAs of your services are declared or you know what your SLA requirements are, you can just implement or move the services to match the SLAs. This is one thing, and then you also have runbooks. High availability is not something you do once and it is done. It is a constant process of changes. You need to look at things, fix them, and test them. With Nutanix, you are able to do all of that. You have the ability to have runbooks where if there is an impact and something is down, you can specify how to start it again. This can be written in a runbook, so you have not only the technical ability but also the operational ability to recover from failures.
It helps to know the resource consumption. You know which resources are being consumed and which systems are over-provisioned. You can right-size them. You see the applications that are affecting other things. There is machine learning or artificial intelligence running at the backend telling you, "Look, these are the things we see." If there are any anomalies, you get messages saying that something is strange or going above the expected limits or below the expected reserve usage. You get to know if there is something going on that is different from the past. You can also do capacity management and planning. For example, if you have to run 20 more databases, you can assess if there are enough resources in your environment. In the end, you simplify things. You do not have to do the things that you did in the past but are of no value to the business, such as capacity management. If you are good at it, you will spend less on hardware, but it is not the business. It is just efficiency and consumption of resources, and it is automatically done for you with Nutanix. You do not have to do it.
For a client, we moved the complete IT infrastructure to the Nutanix infrastructure based on NCI. We moved hundreds of virtual machines or services. There is also a tool to do this, which belongs to AHV, not to AOS. AOS is for multi-cloud infrastructure. It is hypervisor agnostic, which means you can run the hypervisor you want such as AHV, Hyper-V, vSphere, etc. You can even select different hypervisors for different infrastructures. Generally, you move services at the hypervisor level, and it is easy to move services within the same hypervisor. If you want to move services across hypervisor where, for example, you decide on Nutanix and you also decide to switch from vSphere to AHV, there is a tool called Move that allows you to plan the migration process and deploy.
What is most valuable?
This is a way into cloud consumption. Because the cloud is not about a vendor; it is an operational model, you can have your cloud in your data center, and later on, you can extend to a public cloud, which is a different approach. A few customers say that they have a cloud-first strategy, which means everything from the data center is brought to the cloud. Another approach is lift and shift, but it will cost you a lot of money in the public cloud. If you want to leverage and use a cloud, why not start with a data center? You can implement your cloud use case there, and if you want to extend your multi-cloud or hybrid cloud to public cloud suppliers or CSPs, such as Azure, GCP, or AWS, you have the same workbench in their cloud, so what Nutanix offers us is that in their public clouds, there is dedicated hardware, and they run the same infrastructure links that are in your data center. This way, it is easy for you to move workloads from your own data center to the cloud, which is a real benefit because there is no cloud login. It is not easy to move from AWS to Azure if you use their products, but Nutanix offers this flexibility and scalability.
It is easy to use. One of the things they have as a design goal is to reduce complexity and simplify things.
What needs improvement?
One of the improvements I would like to have is related to naming. It gets confusing because they are using three-letter acronyms, which are more or less misleading. What I do not like is that they changed names and reused names. They had a meaning in the past and they are still using the names for something similar. It is not related to the product. It is related to the naming conventions thing because this is driving partners and even customers crazy because the name is still the same, but the product in the backend is a completely different product.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability. It is rock solid. It is not made by god. It is still man-built, so there are errors, but their support is excellent. If there are flaws in the new functions, they improve it really quickly. Afterward, it is okay.
The thing with the software is that you can test and test and test it, but in the end, the reality is that most software solutions get better after reaching the first customer. They get better and better by detecting errors. This is the same with Nutanix and other vendors. They track where the problems are, and if errors accumulate in a specific area, they have their task force internally focusing on these problems and fixing them. Pretty soon, in about three months' time, the problem is solved, and the fixes are released.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable. It is not difficult to add compute and storage on demand. If you run it in your own data center, you need extra hardware. If you need more resources, you have to add hardware and the whole process of adding this new hardware is simple. Mostly, we support scaling by adding more nodes to the cluster. There is also the possibility to scale up, for example, by adding some more disks to the existing system if there are free slots. It is also possible to get an extended RAM. It depends on the hardware. Some hardware vendors allow you to change CPUs.
Nutanix runs on hardware from different vendors, such as HPE, Dell, Lenovo, Fujitsu, or Supermicro, so you are independent of the hardware. You do not need any special hardware, so there is no RAID control. The idea is to use x86 servers, so you do get rid of all of the special hardware. You just buy what is available from Intel or AMD. You buy what is actually available, and all the functionality is made in the software. The resources are made in the hardware from existing vendors. It is a cloud-built and run-on-your-own setup. If you go to the cloud infrastructure, you also have hardware provided by the cloud provider, and you install Nutanix NCI software on this hardware. That is the way you can scale. If you want to have it in your data center, you can even have it run by a local MSP. We offer something like this, so it is more flexible. It is like traditional hardware, but you can add to the actual existing hardware if needed. They do not have to be the same types of nodes, so you can mix and match the way you need them.
How are customer service and support?
Their support is extraordinary or exceptional. It is good. I would rate their support a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
In terms of the deployment model, there are options for on-premises or on the cloud. You are free to choose. A lot of customers start with on-premises and add a cloud later on, but we do have customers who started directly in the cloud.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers a variety of cloud operating models across on-premises, edge, as well as multiple hosted, managed, and public clouds. On the strategic consulting level, this is one of the key benefits because you do not have to run or select different cloud vendors. You can have one platform that helps you to run applications everywhere. However, most customers we work with still come from the approach of making their own IT infrastructure and not buying it. They are moved to the buy model, from the make model, by the C-level to reduce the cost. C-level mostly thinks that the cloud is cheaper. Another reason for the move is to get rid of multiple technical levels in their IT organizations.
In terms of maintenance, everything you run needs maintenance, so there are updates going on. Most of these updates are done with a simple click, but you should know what is running in the backend, and you should know what you are doing. A fool with a tool is still a fool. It is not as simple as the marketing statements are, but it is much simpler than the old traditional way of running IT infrastructure.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is not cheap, but if you look at the return on investment and the total cost of ownership, it is worth the price.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
In our selection and evaluation process of various solutions, we found that Nutanix is the best solution on the market, so the decision was made to only support this solution with our customers because other solutions do have more or less drawbacks.
The main benefit of Nutanix is that they are doing things in a simple way. For example, Nokia had smartphones, and then came Apple with a smartphone. Apple consolidated and simplified the use of a smartphone. Nutanix is inheriting these principles of convergence and making things simpler.
In terms of comparison of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure application and database performance versus a standard SAN solution, in most situations, Nutanix is above the expectations of our customers. They are surprised by the better performance. You can have the same performance as its competitors, but you would need more resources, which means more hardware. It is not that they cannot do it. It is possible, but you need to buy more hardware.
What other advice do I have?
There is a culture of over three to five years of planning in most organizations. They know there is a budget of one million dollars, and they want to use it to the maximum for the next five years. Most of the time, customers buy too much hardware or too many resources. Nutanix offers them a change in the way they consume hardware and licenses, but changing a customer's business culture takes time. Most customers do not realize this in the first use case, but you can help them if they understand better what they really need. After the first implementation, most customers realize that they are over-provisioned. They bought more than what they needed. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure allows you to buy as you need. You do not have to buy for five years, and you always can add resources based on your need. You also have the information about when you need them. For example, the systems will tell you that if you add more, you will need more resources. This is the benefit, but most customers do not trust these statements in the beginning. This is a learning process, and the lesson learned is that instead of over-provisioning, how to use resources wisely and how to discuss things with the procurement department so that they give you the money when you need more resources, not every five years. It might be every year and so to have a fixed growth. There are a lot more benefits. For example, there is no aging hardware. If your hardware is aging, you can just replace it or add additional hardware to the infrastructure when you need it. There is also no loss of value where you buy something and it loses value over time. When you spend one million dollars on the hardware, its value is reduced every month. At some point in time, it is at zero.
This solution is different from the way we did things in the past. My advice is that if you are feeling the pain over and over again, that means that you are doing something wrong. If you want to change things, you have to do different things. You cannot do the same thing over and over again hoping that the outcome will change. Nutanix is one way out of this. They help you to reduce the time to run your own infrastructure and increase the stability and availability of your infrastructure.
Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
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Updated: August 2024
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