Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Reviews

We have multiple projects and multiple groups of developers that need an isolated space to deploy VMs and do testing against code, so we use the automated deployment of applications and VMs to spin up their unique environments.

It made it a lot easier to spin up these tenant environments with little to no administrative overhead.

It's super fast. It does what you tell it to do quickly.

I would like to see it be able to apply a category to a project, and then have that category applied to all the VMs that are deployed within a project. I've been asking for that for about three years.

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

It has a rock-solid foundation. The only issue that I've ever seen is the software code not being fully vetted before it was deployed.

It's as scalable as the overall infrastructure. It's great.

Their support is excellent. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

We are using both this solution and Ansible. There are different components within Nutanix Cloud Manager. I've used a part of it but not all of it.

I was involved in its deployment. It's straightforward and built-in.

In the government space, we don't look at returns.

We have the ultimate license, so I don't know what it would cost individually.

If you're going to pick an automation platform, pick one and stick with it instead of having everybody look in different directions.

I would rate it a ten out of ten.

Some people use a hybrid environment with a combination of on-premises and cloud resources, while others are moving towards a multi-cloud approach. The multi-cloud aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations is becoming increasingly popular. That's also our primary use case. 

The ability to cross between different clouds is a valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations. This allows users to take advantage of pricing for storage in the cloud and switch between different cloud providers or vendors without incurring egress fees or movement fees. So, that's the reason why we like to use it. It also provides ease of use to change workloads between cloud providers or vendors.

There is room for improvement in the initial setup. It is quite complex to setup and requires professional services.

I have been using this solution for around a year. 

Nutanix has very good scalability as long as you are not limited to just their features. This is a common issue with virtualized solutions, where the more features you want, the more you have to pay. However, all virtualized solutions can scale well, including Nutanix.

In my opinion, Nutanix's ability to scale well is due to its partnership with different vendors. They now offer regular BYO(Bring Your Own) computing and storage, which is not limited to only Nutanix appliances anymore. Other vendors, such as HPE and even Cisco can now be used, and you are not required to use Nutanix appliances. This has helped Nutanix to scale even better than before.

So overall, the ability to use different vendors and not be locked into a Nutanix appliance has been a big advantage for users.

The customer service and support team is good. 

Positive

Most of the time, customers need to bring in professional services as they don't have the expertise to do it themselves. It's not that intuitive as there's always something missing, which can cost more if a mistake is made.

Nutanix is priced in between VMware, and Hyper V. Hyper V is the cheapest, while Nutanix falls in the middle. However, Nutanix is not cheap, as it has many good features, but you have to pay for them. This is the same with VMware.

Nutanix is cheaper than VMware but not as cheap as Microsoft's Hyper V.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for cloud management. We use it as a private cloud for internal client infrastructure. 

The most valuable feature of the solution is its simplicity. We have one panel from where we can see and manage all operations. This is very different from other vendors. The customer finds it very easy to work with.

They have a big community. 

It's stable and reliable.

The solution expands easily.

Support is extremely fast. 

I cannot recall any specific features that need improvement. 

Nutanix likely has a big backlog of requested features from their clients. 

We'd like the demos to be longer - maybe two to three months. Some clients need much more time for a POC. 

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability is excellent. We don't have any issues with the software. I'd rate the stability ten out of ten. The only issue we ever had was with an HP adaptor, not with this solution. It was a simple hardware problem. 

The solution is very scalable and very easy to scale. I'd rate the ease of expansion ten out of ten. We don't need a physical installation. The cloud makes it very simple. 

We work mostly with enterprise-level organizations. 

The technical support is very fast and easy to work with. They are helpful and responsive. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I'd rate the ease of setup nine out of ten. It's very easy. We did need to do some specific configuration, and users do need some experience with web-based applications as they must be deployed via the web. 

The setup is very different from other vendors that tend to separate hardware, software, storage parts, et cetera. In Nutanix, everything is available in one window. 

We deployed the first time two clusters with ten others, and it took about one week. We did have a network team working with various solutions at once. 

The second time, we deployed with 11 nodes, and we managed to deploy in five to seven days. 

There were two people, engineers, that were managing the deployment process. 

Its pricing is okay. I'd rate the pricing six out of ten. We can make local payments in our country and avoid customs fees. If you have to buy hardware, you have to pay customs for the devices, and that can be up to 30% of the price. However, with Nutanix being on the cloud, you don't have to worry about that.

We are a solution partner and have existing customers. 

I'd rate the solution to others. They should buy it. It's very simple for modern infrastructure needs.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We have installed a physical Nutanix box and we have created the server on it. Our infra is running on that server. We have Citrix infra, so we configured our Citrix in Nutanix only.

We were facing some issues with a vendor accessing our VDI, but after we installed Nutanix, that issue was resolved.

Among the most valuable features are 

• the one-click upgrade
• that Nutanix is very easy to understand
• that it's very user-friendly.

We have been using Nutanix Prism Pro since 2018.

In terms of its stability, it is a good solution.

The scalability is also good. We have around 4,000 users across India and we are planning to increase our node in six or seven months.

Currently, we need no more than four or five staff to operate the Nutanix infra.

We have faced some issues during operations, but when we log a case with Nutanix support, they help us to resolve them. Their technical support is very good. The support they provide is extraordinary. If we raise a P1 ticket, they will respond within 20 to 30 minutes.

Positive

We used VMware but we migrated to Nutanix.

We are not facing any problems with the solution. Nutanix is good when compared to its competitors. My advice is to go for it. We have another office in India, where they have a VMware setup, and we are going to migrate them to Nutanix there as well.

We consider it our "private cloud," and all of our workloads are deployed on it. Through our application, we offer secure cloud storage. Most of our customers are law firms or financial institutions and they really care about the security of their documents and they really care about document workflow. Because of that, we have to abide by government rules and regulations. For example, if you're a German law firm, you don't want to store your documents in Australia, you want to keep them in the European Union. 

Our product is set up in multiple regions, so we've deployed the solution, on-premises, in each region. We have an instance in the U.S. to service U.S. customers. We have an instance in the United Kingdom to service customers there, and We have one in Germany to take care of the European Union. We also have one in Australia, where we take care of Australia and the Asia Pacific region. In each of those regions, we have data centers that we lease space from. In each region, it's a centralized solution. Our entire application that the end-user interfaces with runs on top of Nutanix.

Nutanix Cloud Manager has allowed us to scale really quickly. For example, during the COVID pandemic, everyone was working from home and a lot of people started buying our product because it allows them to work from home. We grew really quickly and we were able to scale our infrastructure really quickly because Nutanix has invested a lot of time into that.

The most valuable feature is the ability to automate. Nutanix has made it really easy to automate everything that we do. That's important to me and our organization. We can get more done every day by automating tasks.

It's hard to think of anything that needs to be improved. One issue, though, is that you can set up DHCP but it's a little bit clunky. I wish they would streamline and centralize the management of DHCP.

I have been using this Nutanix solution for about nine years. We have been using the Nutanix Cloud Manager version for the past several months. 

NCM is super stable. We're very happy because that translates into our uptime which is pretty great. Our customers are happy with how available our application is.

It's very scalable and we're very happy with how we've seen it scale. We don't have any concerns about that.

The technical support is amazing. Nutanix invests a lot of time and money into making sure that their technical support is top-notch.

Recently they have implemented a series of solutions that make it very proactive. They analyze our environment, including the version of their software that we're running and the hardware. They analyze every little detail. If they detect an issue, they let you know. They're using artificial intelligence to aggregate all the data and to parse through it. As a result they say, "Hey, you have an issue in your environment," and then they tell you how to explain it. 

The second way that they're very proactive is, under certain circumstances, they'll automatically open a support case and automatically collect the logs from your environment. So if something happens in the middle of the night, before it becomes a problem, they'll open a case with support and collect the logs. When I wake up, someone from Nutanix has already been assigned to the case and they've already reviewed the logs, and they'll generally have a good solution.

And one of my favorite things about Nutanix support is that they're very willing to teach you. When I'm working with them I'll ask them a lot of questions about what they're doing or about the situation. They're more than happy to explain it all and to teach me so I can understand the situation better and become better at my job.

Positive

We used to use Microsoft Hyper-V, which is good, but it's difficult to manage and it's difficult to scale.

The solution was purchased before I came to the company, but when I arrived I realized that it hadn't been implemented in the best way. I spent a couple of years fixing the architecture so that it would follow best practices. They had inadvertently painted themselves into a corner and I took away the paintbrush and the paint and fixed things so that it would work and scale better, going forward.

The initial deployment was pretty straightforward, but the people involved just didn't have experience with Nutanix at scale. They didn't necessarily do it wrong, they just didn't do it with the end goal in mind. They had tunnel vision in which they said, "We have a task that needs to be performed and we have to get it done as quickly as possible." It was a very task-oriented implementation. What I was able to do, with my experience, was take a step back and say, "Let's look at the big picture. Where are we going to be in five years?" I was able to architect a solution that would make sure that we could get where we needed to be in five years and in 10 years.

We make sure that we follow best practices from Nutanix. When deploying the product, we make sure that our cluster size—how many physical Nutanix servers we purchase and group together—follows best practices. We make sure that we plan for the ability to perform an upgrade in the environment and we plan for potential hardware failures. We've also started purchasing specialized configurations to match our workload. All of these things are a part of how we architect and deploy the environment.

We have about 250 Nutanix servers around the world. Our application consists of four or five independent offerings and those 250 nodes are spread across those four or five offerings. There are three of us who manage the environment. I'm the architect who created and implemented the solution. I also ensure that we have enough capacity to continue to grow and to take on new projects. Another member of our team does a lot of the project work: Here are the tasks that we've been assigned. How do we get from point A to point B? And the third member of our team focuses on upgrades and hardware break-fix.

We've absolutely seen a return on our investment. One way is through our uptime—how much of the day, week, month, and year our application is running. Because Nutanix is scalable and it's distributed, we're able to easily perform upgrades and keep our application running. Because of the design and implementation, we've been able to make sure that we're always running the latest version of the software, which means that we have all the latest bug fixes and security fixes. In uptime, upgrades, and security fixes, we've seen a huge return on investment. 

I've worked at my current company for four years and our business has just exploded. A lot of that increased business is due to the fact that our Nutanix environment is so stable. It's very reliable and predictable for our customers, and that translates into a better user experience. As a result, another way that we've seen a return on investment is in increased sales.

We use so much of Nutanix that we decided to do a long-term licensing agreement with them. That saved us a lot of money, but it was a difficult journey to understand what we were purchasing and to convince finance and upper management that it was something we should do. Nutanix has taken our feedback and they've worked on streamlining it and making it easier to understand and communicate to non-technical people.

We looked at all the players in the market. We interviewed them and looked at their features and we felt that Nutanix had the best offering.

Nutanix's main competitor is VMware vSAN. Nutanix built their product from the ground up, and because of that, they were able to do some really innovative things to make sure that scaling and automation are taken care of. VMware wedged vSAN into its existing offerings and, because of that, it's really clunky, difficult to set up, and it doesn't perform as well.

When we first started evaluating Nutanix, our upper management had a hard time understanding what it was and what it would do for us. It's different from a lot of traditional solutions and you have to approach it differently.

As you understand that this is the next generation of infrastructure—that it's the next generation of virtualization, the next generation of private cloud—it's a little bit easier to say, "This is going to be different. This is going to be challenging in some ways, but as far as security and compliance go, and as far as performing upgrades goes, nothing could be easier. And when it comes to getting support, they have your back. Nutanix is a company that cares about your experience and your thoughts and improving things. I've never met a company that does a better job. It is different, but it's way better than what I've used in the past.

Nutanix has invested a lot of time and money to make it a really good and solid application, but there's always a little bit of room for improvement.

The solution is a management portal for the entire solution. You can have a look at your configuration and do different kinds of configuration monitoring management. You have the infrastructure implementation workflows on top of it, so that's the portal that will manage these underlining nodes.

It's a stable solution.

The solution scales well.

Technical support is helpful.

It's easy to set up.

Licensing could be more flexible in future releases.

We've used the solution for two years. 

It's a stable solution. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The solution can scale as needed.

I can't speak to how many people are using the product right now.

Technical support is great. They helped during the setup and were excellent. 

The solution is very straightforward. The deployment took about five to six days. It took about a week's time.

Anyone who is comfortable with any virtual edition of a solution with five to six years of experience will be able to manage it. I can manage the entire solution myself.

The solution is easy to self-deploy. During the initial setup, we worked directly with technical support, and they were quite helpful.

I'd like them to offer a more flexible licensing model.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using.

I would recommend the solution to others. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten. We've been very happy with it. I'd advise potential users should first run a POC and then go for it.

Cost Governance is a SaaS solution that helps customers optimize public cloud services. Most customers don't have a clear idea about workload sizing. We measure the usage compared to what has been defined and recommend ways to optimize.

You can use Cost Governance to perform cost governance in multi-cloud environments. It supports the three big public cloud providers — Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform — and private clouds for Nutanix environments. 

Cost Governance helps customers improve cloud performance and save money. Many customers have idle public cloud resources. Maybe someone creates an object and forgets to delete it when they are no longer using it.

The solution detects all the unused resources and recommends removal. It can even remove objects automatically, which translates to huge savings. It can also save you lots of money by suggesting that you use a pre-paid reserved instance instead of buying on-demand cloud resources. 

The solution has automated reports and workflows. You can configure it to automatically send out reports to the business units responsible for managing cloud costs, so you don't need to log into the tool to get information. Cost Governance's user interface and dashboards are beautiful. The customers love it because it's easy to use. They can run it and get a report an hour later to immediately see the savings.

Azure has a public cloud offering, and it also has a CSP model that allows Microsoft partners to provide Azure as a service to their customers. Cost Governance only works on the standard public cloud, not the CSP model. When I was at my previous company, we frequently got requests for Azure CSP support. We also got some requests for Alibaba Cloud and Oracle Cloud, but Azure CSP was the biggest one.

I start working with Cost Governance (formerly Beam) a little more than a year ago. They don't have that many products because Nutanix is about a decade old. They've only begun to increase the portfolio in recent years. I was a portfolio specialist for a year, so I know most of the core solutions well.

It is Software as a Service, so there is nothing to scale. We can target customers with a small cloud footprint or customers that are huge. There is no need to scale anything because it's SaaS.

Of course, Cost governance is my first choice because I was selling it. However, I was competing with solutions from VMware and other vendors. At that time, we believed our product was much better, and our customers gave us feedback that this was the best solution.

I rate this solution a 10 out of 10 for ease of deployment. Setting up the solution is straightforward because it's SaaS. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial by going to the website and registering your public account. It takes a couple of hours for Cost Governance to gather information and perform the computations. You don't need a dedicated person to deploy, manage or maintain it. Typically, each organization has someone who oversees public clouds and cost management. 

Customers need to consider the total cost of ownership and how much they'll save using this solution. It has some advanced cost comparison features that aren't being utilized by many customers at the moment. You provide a specific workload, and the solution tells you where the workload will be the cheapest in your multi-cloud environment, including the private cloud.

For example, if you want to build an ACM, Cost Governance can say that will be cheaper if you deploy on-prem or in Azure. Most customers are not there yet, but if a customer is in that process, the value for the money will be a perfect 10.

I rate Cost Governance an eight out of 10 for pricing. There are different plans, so you can pay monthly or yearly. You can also sign a three-year contract. It's quite flexible.  I can't give it a perfect 10, because customers always want a cheaper solution.  

I rate Nutanix Cost Governance a nine out of 10. I stopped short of rating it 10 because the lack of support for CSP was costing us some sales to big companies that had those types of contacts with Microsoft partners. Cost Governance's one shortcoming is a lack of support for specific environments. When I left the company, they planned to add support for those cloud environments, but I'm not sure if they've been publicly released yet. 

We have been using this solution mainly for our high-performance computing use cases. We had a requirement of creating multiple VMs and keeping the file server in the same nearby location. The VMs will turn all the data and their inputs and outputs will happen through the file server. We wanted something that supports virtual machine files, blocks, from a storage point of view.

The most valuable features of Nutanix Prism Pro are the user interface is quite easy to understand and it provides easy management for administrators. It is reassuring that the data is secure, even if something was to happen to it, the data can be recovered with the built-in option in the tool.

Nutanix, as of today, they do not have many of the features that VMware hypervisor provides, such as the memory layer. Nutanix is not known in the virtualization world, it is known only in the file server world. Due to this, many of the software vendors who provide their virtual appliances, do not support Nutanix as a platform. Their partnering has to improve, when the software vendor does not support Nutanix, we have to deploy Windows into the projects.

The solution could improve by reducing the alarm sensitivity and have categories that show only the critical elements on the console. Not everything that triggers the alarm. I understand these alerts but if my manager was to look at them he would be concerned not understanding they are minor alerts.

Additionally, if they could make templates to allow the provision of the images from the dashboards, instead of doing multiple steps would be a good benefit.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

The solution has high file and server availability, it is very stable. We had an incident with our data, due to the data getting corrupted from an endpoint issue, not from an infrastructure problem. However, through a server snapshot file, we were able to recover more than 20 terabytes of data in this solutions' native features. We did not need to obtain any other recent configuration transform data, the feature was already provided. This was really helpful.

We have scaled Nutanix Prism Pro at least 300 percent after deploying it and we are still not at the bottleneck point. Our current footprint is quite large, we are not seeing any challenges. However, each cluster will have to be kept at a finite number. If the cluster size should is too big, your maintenance window will increase for a very long time. If you can keep cluster size to a minimum, then it will be easy for you. For example, if you have a hundred node cluster and have to do maintenance, then the patching will be happening on a single node layer. Patching all the servers one by one will take too much time for us. It makes sense, in the design phase, to keep those clusters to a smaller figure, approximately 20 nodes.

We have purchased Lenovo appliances. Due to this, our primary call for support has to go to Lenovo, and then they will pass us off to Nutanix. We cannot raise a call directly with Nutanix for assistance.

The initial installation was straightforward. We brought up the whole cluster in approximately two days.

We had peer support from the OEM vendors for the deployment. 

The solution is a bit high in price for what we are receiving as features. I feel they are overcharging us at approximately 25 percent. That is something that they should change.

We explored Horizon, Cisco, HP, and many others. However, Nutanix won because the file server layer of Nutanix is more mature compared to the other competitors.

Nutanix Prism Pro is a good tool but is not for every use case, there will be a few constraints that might not make it become a single layer but it can be one of your hypervisor layers in your infrastructure.

I rate Nutanix Prism Pro an eight out of ten.