Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Reviews

My main use cases for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are for managing resources in the cloud. 

I'm currently using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to manage my infrastructure. I'm using the self-service functionality from Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

We are using the runbooks feature to help automate management with very simple runbooks. The impact of this feature is that it automates deployment, so we don't have to do any manual processes to provision machines or configurations. This frees up our engineers to focus on other projects without having to manage and operate requests hands-on.

We use cost governance. This feature helps us manage costs and avoid cost overruns. It also gives us the ability to do a showback to the business, showing how much it's costing. 

It allows us to forecast budgets for projects much more easily than what we had before, which was nothing.

It's easy to use. Self-service is beneficial because it's easier for developers to assign themselves resources. It's easy to control resources and govern the resources, and it frees up support to focus on other things without having to help developers. It allows developers to self-service on their own. 

It saves time. I don't have any metrics, but typically, before, a developer requesting resources would have a three to five-day turnaround time, sometimes even longer. Now they have the ability to self-deploy on their own, which makes it immediate instead of waiting three to five business days.

Our requirements are very simple. There is nothing not working for us. It's not complex, but the benefits are that it's really easy to use. We are probably the customer who has the least number of problems. However, costs are always a concern.

I've been using Nutanix for a long time, and other complaints I had in the past were that their ecosystem with other OEM partners was more limited. It's good that they've grown and expanded to other vendors and OEMs. We were an HPE shop, so it was good when they brought in HPE as an OEM. It was very important for us, and it's good to see that they're extending that. Our Nutanix is on HPE.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for four years.

I don't believe we've had any significant issues with the stability and reliability of the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) platform. Any issues were minor, just something that goes with learning the product and how it works. Nothing major has caused downtime.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) scales well. We haven't had any growing pains with it.

The process of expanding its usage is smooth in getting the different teams on board with how it works, so it's primarily about training.

I find Nutanix support to be great, excellent. I have nothing bad to say about it. Nobody is perfect, but I'd rate it a nine.

The handoff with support and the knowledge of the support engineer is significantly better than experience with other vendors. I've always had a good experience. I'm sure we've had a minor issue here and there with getting issues to the right person, but nothing specific comes to mind.

Positive

We were already a Nutanix shop, so we weren't really looking at other solutions. It was something that we were aware of and had a use case for. Outside of that, we were looking at Terraform or some other scripting processes, but it made more sense to leverage Nutanix's integrated solutions.

The challenges that we had were mostly on our side, getting the runbooks set up properly. There was nothing really with the technology that was a challenge. We have a hybrid deployment model. Most of our workloads are on-prem. We mostly focus on on-prem workloads, but we do have use cases in Azure.

Playbooks and automation definitely freed up engineer time. This allows us to focus on other projects and not have to get hands-on, reducing operational costs.

It goes in cycles, but depending on the project, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has freed up 40-50 hours per project in terms of deployment. That's a week's worth of work that could be done for something else.

Licensing is always a hot topic. We haven't had any challenges around licensing and costs. Everything was within budget and our expectations. It's a hot topic because renewals and licensing costs are high. Managing costs is always a concern, as we're always being asked to do more with less.

The product is great, and I have no regrets using Nutanix. I would do it all over again. I'm not looking at any other platforms, but costs are always a concern. It's not cheap, but there are savings and return on investment when coming from a non-Nutanix shop. If you're coming in as a new customer, greenfield, it's great. If you're migrating away from something three-tier architecture where you already have storage platforms, it's harder to justify the costs because you already invested in something else.

I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) an eight out of ten, as everything can always be improved, but nothing really comes to mind.

I would recommend it to other companies considering Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to make sure they do proper planning upfront and understand their use cases. A lot of times, our challenges are that our internal customers, who are going to be consuming, don't know their requirements, which slows down and potentially produces a poor experience. Ensure that you understand the requirements and do proper planning with the customer.