Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

For our company, basically, we run all of our production VMs on it. Also, we have two demo networks that we do a lot of testing and whatnot for.

From an operator's perspective, we released from two to one person managing it, and pretty much the main benefit is the ease of use, ease of install, and ease of protecting, et cetera. 

From a grander view, it's allowed our customers to actually reduce the amount of software that they have to purchase. Not only do they have to purchase the hypervisor, and if they're in VMware, in most cases, they're purchasing disaster recovery tools and a whole bunch of other things. However, Nutanix has it all built-in so that users have one area to manage and maintain.

There are lots of different pieces. From a Disaster Recovery perspective, it is very valuable. Some of my customers are getting into Flow. We don't use Flow, however, we're testing it. Flow is their micro-segmentation, which is very useful for protecting your VMs and the traffic that goes to them. From an automation perspective around deploying virtual machines, Calm is pretty good as well.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution is very stable. 

The product scales very well.

Everything has room for improvement.

I could probably name quite a few things from a Nutanix perspective. The area of improvement that they're working on now is more of the files index and more of the API integration into those. From on-prem to public cloud, they already have AWS Nutanix clusters, however, a lot of customers are going to be utilizing a public cloud at some point and they're basically deploying Azure Nutanix clusters as well soon. That's an improvement that they're working on. That said, from an administration perspective, the software's pretty big. It would be great if they could add more features and API integrations to the higher-level products.

I'd like it to be more API-based. They need more additional features around their APIs and additional integration in some of the automation platforms that are out there. Nutanix is a solution where the hyper-converged portion of it is mature. They're working towards the cloud integration portion. 

I would like to see more improvement in that area of being easier to manage, or easy to implement, and easy to orchestrate in an AWS or an Azure type scenario.

I've been using the solution for about three years. 

It's probably the most stable, hyper-conversion environment I've seen on the market. I base that on the storage portion of the hyper-conversion environment.

The solution scales well.

To expand the clusters, you don't really have limits as you would in other products from a scalability perspective. There are still best practices around how big you want to scale it. However, the expansion process is pretty simple and straightforward.

I have probably about 10 people utilizing it within my company and their roles range from infrastructure admins to solution architects that do testing as well as some engineers that we do consulting with. If you look at our customers quite, it ranges. It depends on the products they deploy, however, they might have infrastructure admins, DBAs, or automation engineers. It just depends on how big the deployment is and what products they're using.

We have four clusters. For customers that have 250 to 300 hosts that are running, it's pretty much one person to manage and maintain that system. You can pretty much maintain it with one FTE.

Internally, we will likely expand usage. We have plans to actually spin up on clusters within public cloud infrastructure to protect our systems. From an expansion perspective that just depends on where our business goes and how many more resources we need. From a customer perspective, expansion is going to be more when they start utilizing more of the cloudlike features such as Kubernetes or databases service through Era, or even Calm. That's where things will expand.

Technical support is very good. It's probably one of the best.

I see a lot of technical support. I see a lot of the people or older legacy companies that have been around for a while, and technical support will usually go downhill.  There's probably a handful of them that are really good. 

If you look at their scores online, they're always rated pretty high and it's hard to do that.

We were on VMware, prior to this product. It was getting to the point of being a hassle to maintain, and this solution simplified things considerably.

The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult. It's straightforward and takes about two hours to deploy.

The deployment for my company, and we're a smaller company, with a total of 60 VMs at most, took about a week total. That involved moving off of VMware to HV including the migration of the virtual machines. That was just done due to the timeframes. You could do those at night. Ultimately, the cluster and everything was set up within a day and ready to go. Then, the move process for those VMs just took a little bit of time to move into. I have other customers who are running migrations that take a little bit longer, however, you're talking 2,500 to 3000 VMs. That's more of a two to three-month process to get those moved. That said, the migration goes pretty quickly and that's pretty small from a migration perspective with a whole new platform.

I cannot speak to the exact pricing of the product. However, as a partner, we do have access to reduced costs.

There are additional costs. Nutanix is a software-driven company. They do sell hardware, however, in most cases, you bring your own hardware. The cost of the solution might be a little bit higher than what you would look at from just a straight out VMware, however, you're getting a lot more and you're reducing the fact that you don't need VMware in that mix. 

The hypervisor that's provided with Nutanix is free. As the costs roll-out, Nutanix is actually a better TCO than any of the other solutions in the market that are even comparable.

We actually evaluated quite a few different hyper-converged infrastructures prior to bringing on Nutanix as a partner and they are the best in the market from that perspective.

I'm a partner of Nutanix. I'm a user, however, I'm also a seller of Nutanix.

We are on version five. I can't remember the exact version number. We have both five and six. I have multiple clusters that are running within our infrastructure and then I have multiple clusters that are running within my customers' infrastructure.

While we currently use Azure for our cloud, we will likely use both Azure and AWS in the future.

I'd advise potential new users to do their homework and make sure that they don't necessarily listen to what the manufacturers are saying. Go find out for yourself.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I wouldn't say it's a ten. I'm a pretty hard scorer. There are features and functionality where VMware makes things easier. Other solutions make things a little bit easier from a deployment perspective or something along those lines, however, that's just due to the fact that they've been in the market for a long period of time and their solution set has built or has grown from that perspective. They are highly ranked as they reduce the amount of maintenance and administration that you have to keep it running.

We have multiple verticals in our company and each has its own ERP applications that are business critical and mission critical. Our company is based in India, we are customers of Nutanix and I'm the executive vice president. 

Nutanix has given me an opportunity to create multiple VMs and it's really very resilient for failures. Even if there is a single node failure, the VM gets migrated automatically to the healthy node. I can also take any number of snapshots and restore them at any point in time. The solution offers cloning and it's very simple to create a clone of any server. These are the great features of Nutanix. In addition, it's user-friendly, and in contrast with some solutions, you don't need to know about the technology. Anyone knowing the basics of VMware or hypervisor can start creating VMware, adding the server, and deploying it on the go within a few hours.

The problem with Nutanix is you cannot have or attach external storage so there are some limitations when it comes to increasing space. If you have a three-node cluster and want to increase storage, you have to add one more cluster. I can't attach an iSCSI drive as a solution. I'm hoping that the AOS 6 version will have plenty of improvements.

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable. 

There is a limitation on scalability. If you have four nodes and want to expand you can't. You have to buy another 3-node Nutanix box.

Technical support is excellent. If there is a critical issue, they get back to you within an hour.

Deployment is pretty easy because once the hypervisor is loaded, the Nutanix team carries out the deployment. Once you have the prism of the queue, then it becomes very easy to work on the Nutanix box.

Pricing could be improved especially with the effects of the pandemic, where the IT sector is not doing so well. Nutanix is relatively new to the industry and if they want to promote it they will need to reduce the cost.

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

The solution allows us to make use of high IOPS requirements.

We used to go with a traditional architecture, storage and server. Now, with Nutanix, we have 30,000 IOPS, up from 1,000. 

A great feature involves real-time hardware changes. There is no need to shut down any VM during the hardware changes.

The solution does not lend support when we connect with a few dongle licenses. There is a need to make use of certain third-party USB switches through which we can have USB access. USB dongle-based licenses do not allow us to directly locate the USB ports on Nutanix. Other than this, I have no complaints.

We have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for the last four years.

The solution is certainly stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

I do not recall contacting Nutanix's support within the past four years. Nutanix sends us daily alerts and messages. A year-and-a-half ago I encountered a RAM failure, but there was no need for me to log a case with Nutanix, as the call was automatically logged and an engineer was sent to deal with the problem. 

We previously made use of Scale Computing and HPE SimpliVity.

The initial setup was quick. Previously, the operations involved three days of downtime but, with the solution, the initial migration from traditional architecture to Nutanix lasted three hours, instead of three days. It was so much quicker. 

We handled the implementation on our own. 

The pricing is quite good in comparison with HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Scale, and even traditional architecture. We found Nutanix's pricing to be the best. We did not incur license fees as we did with HPE Simplivity's VMware licenses, so this kept the costs down. 

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS as a nine out of ten. 

We have three clusters of Nutanix. We are using Nutanix Clusters for all of our Intel-based workload. The majority of applications are Oracle databases, application servers, our file services, email hosting, etc.

The machines provisioning times have reduced drastically. The single pane of glass management provides ease of management.  Storage 

There are a lot of features in Nutanix that are different from other hyper-converged solutions, such as site-to-site replication. VM-based site-to-site replication is bundled with the software licensing. For the DR, it has the availability groups, which is one of the key features that Nutanix provides.

Its performance management is pretty good, especially the software-defined storage that Acropolis provides is pretty good.

As far as the availability is concerned, it has RAID nodes, so the availability is pretty good. In case of failure, the system automatically shifts machines from one node to another. Their failure debugger is very good.

The only problem is that not many operating systems are supported on the AOS hypervisor. They need to probably increase the support on multiple operating systems. As of now, a very limited number of operating systems and patch levels are supported on AOS.

In terms of additional features, a lot of backup solutions have integration with AOS, but not many backup solutions provide a solution for VM backup. So probably, in the next release, they can make the backup solutions compatible with AOS for VM backups. It would be great.

We've been using this solution for the last three years.

The solution is rock solid, no software issues or compatibility issues may be because we are using it over 

It is primarily a scale out solution. New nodes can be added pretty easily and workload can be divided on the fly including that of Software Defined Storage that comes with Nutanix Hyperconverged Solution. 

I am very satisfied with their support. Nutanix has probably one of the best support in the hyper-converged industry. Whenever there is a problem, they usually fix it within hours.

VMWARE and Hyper-V are good alternate solutions but if you are using AOS on a Nutanix Hyperconverged solution, than AOS provides better integration with the solution. If the requirement is to fully leverage Nutanix Hyperconverged solution than AOS is the go to hypervisor.

Its setup is very straightforward. You just have to plug in the nodes and power them up. That's it. It will automatically rebuild itself and be available. It is shipped pre-configured.

There are three variants in AOS pricing. 

The Evaluation included VMWARE and Hyper-V. The software defined features required including software defined storage, Performance throughput, scale out architecture etc which were not directly related to hypervisor selection but more geared towards Software Defined Data Center put Nutanix Hyperconverged and to fully leverage its functionalities put AOS in front.

I would rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a nine out of 10. It is pretty good.

We have a lot of homegrown applications using the solutions within the generation and distribution within the company. These internal teams that develop that software, they are primarily on a different architecture. The ones we use are Java and Oracle with Weblogic as the application server and the other one used is Lan Stack. We have been using this configuration for more than 60 years.

The solution has single-window management, the ability to create VMs and monitor their usage on the fly, and the ability to add more resources if required. There are a lot of tools the solution comes with and the performance is good.

The ability to create clusters faster would be nice to see in a future release.

I have been using the solution for more than one year.

In terms of scalability, adding a number of nodes, I find that it will not be any issues. Upgrades are very easy, I can run compatibly check and then download the upgrades that are available. It is just a mouse click.

I have been quite happy with the support from Nutanix during the past year. They have well-equipped support staff always on the phone when I am in contact. They know my architecture, subjects that are important for me, and the staff is quite conversant with the tool that they use.

The implementation was straightforward and we are currently only using a fixed node cluster. 

The pricing is fair for the package.

In terms of the solution overall, there are positive responses from my side.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a nine out of ten.

We've implemented Nutanix as part of a hardware refresh project. We've replaced two chassis with 28 Server blades, two storage devices, and four SAN switches by 12 Nutanix nodes.

First, we had moved some development and test workloads before sending production workloads. The first wave was successful and we couldn't wait until moving more workloads to Nutanix. We were anxious because this HCI was something we have never experimented with before and at the end of the day, it was the best thing we've done in our infrastructure.

We couldn't have chosen better, as we were able to reduce our data center footprint by two-thirds, reduced the management tools and teams, eliminated the SAN complexity, increased the IOPS metrics, and increased the overall performance by 40%.

We were also able to reduce our support contract with a third-party vendor that manages our environment due to the footprint reduction and also the SAN and Storage decommissioning.

The virtualization environment is now much easier to manage and maintain, there is only one vendor to call in case of issues and one single console to manage everything.

There are lots of great built-in features such as the one-click upgrade, data protection, data locality, very fast and non-disruptive snapshots, single pane of glass, etc.

We are applying patches and upgrades every quarter using the one-click upgrade feature and we have never run into an issue. The updates go smoothly with no outages at all, and we do everything including firmware updates, AOS updates, foundation updates, hypervisor updates, all at once and it goes perfectly fine.

The data protection is also a great feature that is very easy to set up and includes lots of options for snapshot retention. The consistent snapshots are great for Windows application and database servers.

I think some of the tasks that must be done using CLI could be added to the web interface.

I think it is kind of frustrating, opening a CLI session going through all the CLI commands you have to run to accomplish that task and then get back to the web console to continue doing what you were doing. It would be much easier to have that same setup option available on the web console.

Also, I believe that running several different commands through a CLI can increase the chance of typos/mistakes, resulting in a bigger issue.

We have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for one year.

We used a different product before this one, and we moved to reduce complexity.

The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very competitive and TCO is very low compared to three-tier solutions.

We evaluated VMware vSphere with VSAN and NSX, as well as Azure Stack.

We mainly use it for virtual machine workloads on Application servers. We want to use it for disaster recovery and the way they replicate between sites. It has already got these features, but we just haven't implemented or tested them yet.

We have just put it in, so I can't say anything about that yet.

In general, being able to patch and not having to pay for SanDisk is the best thing about hyper-converged.

We had a few problems with the foundation machine that you can use to build your systems out. We've got it working now, but it should be improved.

I have been using this solution for two weeks.

It is stable so far. It is pretty new, and there are no issues.

It is scalable. I can add or take nodes away really easily. We did that, and it works great.

It is only two weeks old, and there are probably hundreds of people using it.

They are very good. They know what they're doing. I would rate them a nine out of ten. We had a couple of different guys trying to help get us set up. One said one thing, and the other one said another thing. Neither of them was wrong, but they weren't on the same page. That's why they don't get a 10 out of 10.

We did not use any hyper-converged solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. Nutanix pretty much brings somebody along for the foundation of your system, which makes it really nice. This is one of the features we liked in Nutanix.

Its price is fine. I can't really complain about that.

Take a look at the network requirements for the solution. It tells you a lot about the efficiency of it.

I'd give it a nine out of ten because it works. It does what they say it does. It is hard to get a 10 out of 10 for me, but it is a pretty good solution. If I rated other companies I've worked with, they'd get sevens or sixes. I like Nutanix. They're doing a good job.

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.