Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

• Distributed storage fabric

We don’t need to be SAN or virtualization experts J

• Manage virtualization layer with Hyper-V

I have used it for three years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 10/10.

We previously used DataCore, but scaling it is too difficult.

Initial setup was too simple. Our datacenter was on in two hours.

Pricing and licensing is so correct compared with other solutions.

I have not evaluate other options because for the past three years, Nutanix has been the leader in hyperconverged solutions.

Choose Nutanix for the simplicity and performance ahead of other products.

The converged storage infrastructure is a great benefit that removes the necessity of a separate storage network.

The web-based management portal (Prism) is very robust and easy to understand.

There is very little to manually configure, for the Nutanix or (in our case) VMware OS, once the scripted installation has completed.

Very knowledgeable support engineers.

For us, the Nutanix 3060 was a fantastic solution because it was an exact fit for the purpose of refreshing our hypervisor (VMware) infrastructure. For example, our existing VMware licensing allowed for a total of 8 sockets, which fit perfectly since the 3060 consists of (4) nodes with (2) sockets each. Our fiscal planning called for the replacement of two of our hypervisor hosts and an HP P2000 G3 SAN however, we were able to justify a Nutanix 3060 appliance due to the hyper-converged features. We also went from a 1G iSCSI storage network to 10G and we didn't need to purchase a 10G switch for the storage traffic since we connected the 10G nics in the Nutanix nodes directly to our end-of-rack switches. The simplification, cost-savings, and across the board performance increase made the Nutanix a great decision.

The Nutanix uses controller VMs for disk I/O, metadata, etc. and they can consume significant resources so be sure to account for the additional CPU and memory the controllers will need. There is one controller VM per node so Nutanix and/or your reseller can help you calculate what additional resources you'll need.

The Nutanix OS (NOS) is proprietary so, out of the box, you will need a Nutanix Support Engineer's (SE) help to configure the appliance. This doesn't take long and I haven't needed to make any adjustments since the configuration was performed.

We have (2) 10G ports per node (you can have 4) so all of the network, vMotion, storage, etc. traffic goes through the same nic. This hasn't been an issue for us and the 10G nics handle all the traffic quite well with no bottlenecks. In fact, we are still seeing 0ms read and write latency with 40% resource utilization.

Our Nutanix has been in production for 1 month.

There was some sort of communication breakdown with the Nutanix SE and our reseller. I mentioned before the installation is done with a Nutanix SE due to the proprietary installation but I was not made aware of this until after I tried to perform the installation myself. Once I became aware (after reading a lot of documentation) and contacted Nutanix Support, the engineer who helped me was extremely knowledgeable and got the installation back on track.

No stability issues.

No, however we do not have any short-term plans to scale out beyond our current Nutanix appliance.

I have not needed to contact customer service.

Outstanding on every level.

We were using HP servers, switches, and SANs for our hypervisor solution. The hyper-converged infrastructure became a more attractive option since there is less to manage separately. The management portal (Prism) manages everything centrally and can be configured for your SNMP solution.

The initial setup is somewhat complex and needs to be coordinated with a support engineer. Given the amount of proprietary technology (NOS, features, and Nutanix has their own optional hypervisor solution (Acropolis)), it isn't surprising nor a frustration.

As I mentioned previously, the installation was done by me with the help of a Nutanix SE.

This is a pricey solution considering it's essentially a fork lift upgrade but the features, redundancy, and performance made it the most attractive solution for us.

We looked at Simplivity as well but decided on the Nutanix because it was a better fit for our VMware licensing. We were able to simply replace (4) of our existing VMware hosts with (4) Nutanix nodes in a single appliance.

• Metro availability
• Fingerprinting
  

Metro availability with synchronous replication is most appreciable for my customer. Its benefit is high avaibility in production.

Maybe more functions for Prism with VMmware, for example, cloning VMs in Prism, exactly like Acropolis.

I've used them for almost three years.

One time, with IPMI not reachable for CVM. I troubleshot this problem with Nutanix US support.

It's at a high level.

No previous solution was used.

It is small but complex. Howerver, if you have a good skills with virtualization solutions, and Linux systems, you can install it without any problems.

I installed the solution alone. My advice is to read the Nutanix documents before your installation.

I have am immediately gain, as it has lower hardware maintenance costs, and lower electricity consumption.

I have evaluated SimpliVity OmniCube.

• One-click hypervisor and firmware upgrade
• Snapshots and clones
• Compression and deduplication
• Backup and disaster recovery

It's easy to manage with the one-click hypervisor and firmware upgrade.

We can also store data more efficiently with compression and deduplication.

I have nothing to suggest.

I've used it for two and a half years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It's good.

It's good.

We did, and we switched because Nutanix is easier to manage and configure.

It's simple, just a few clicks are needed to configure it.

We used a mixed team.

You should look into this product if you are looking for a good piece of technology.

The features that are most valuable to our company would be the ease of use and configuration. The Nutanix software automatically balances and vMotions the VMs to other nodes on the cluster as resources are needed. The Nutanix Cassandra intelligently moves around the metadata as needed. it’s practically a set it and leave it product.

Our whole infrastructure is maintained by two people. This is how simple it is to use Nutanix. Hyperconverged is the way of the future.

One thing I would like to eventually see from Nutanix is the ability to install the Nutanix OS on any hardware, making it hardware agnostic instead of depending on their expensive servers. NOS is what makes the whole Nutanix cluster work so well.

Our company has been using Nutanix for a little over two years. We decided to implement the Nutanix solution when we decided to virtualize our entire infrastructure.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Scalability is well thought out as well; you can scale out in every direction.

Nutanix support is second to none, their technical support is very knowledgable as well. Though you do pay a pretty penny for it.

Deployment is simple and does not take much time. As long as your network infrasturuture is set up correctly, creating new LUN containers is just two steps. Adding another block only takes a few clicks as well.

We had a vendor do the initial configuraiton and implementation for us. Everything was very straigthforward. The only thing is if you want to add another block (either because you need more space or more computing power), make sure to downgrade/upgrade your NOS software to the same as your current software, or it will not work.

This was the only hyperconverged solution we considered, simply because they were the most mature solution that we felt was right for our environment.

• Small footprint
• Scalability
• Price when compared to other computer/storage solutions is better value

We are using it for an internal VDI solution and proof of concept for other possible projects.

None, everything is working great and I don't currently have any suggestions.

We installed it in the middle of January 2015.

No issues encountered.

I've had to contact them a few times about minor first use things and they responded quickly and with great detail.

It was very easy, and very smooth.

They sent an engineer to help us set it up on site, and he walked us through the implementation.

We were pretty cut-throat on the pricing but we also bought it at the end of the year so we most likely got a good deal so they could make their numbers. We also only bought one year of support to keep the price within the project budget.

We investigated several other products and went with this one due to their demo and in depth sales pitch.

For the industry they are in, Nutanix is some amazing stuff. Even if we don't expand our footprint with them, I will personally be keeping up with their technology.

All the software-defined, hyper-converged, and cloud-based infrastructure provide our network with VMs and storage.

It centralizes management, so we can build clouds anywhere. Regardless of the hardware platform, it still works.

The processing power is OK, but for the future it needs to be better. Replacing all the hard drives with SSD would dramatically improve performance.

• Very good compression
• QoS is very good

It's highly scalable because it's all in the cloud.

We often use technical support, but usually we grab an account manager who sends an entire team.

It was very easy.

The solution you choose will depend on your budget. If you want to build a hybrid cloud, and have a good balance between cost and performance, then Nutanix is good option.