Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Reviews

Prism Pro is the heart of our organization. If Prism Pro dies, then our system dies.

We are in the gaming industry with approximately 85 servers. This solution increased our productivity and reduced our time performing server checks.

We also use Prism Central for our monitoring on the administrative side.

Nutanix Cloud Manager has increased our productivity higher than what it used to be. We used to spend four hours on server checking. Nutanix gave us three and a half hours back from those four hours to do normal work.

The system gives you an aggregate of how you will be using the system.

I really appreciate the Life Cycle Manager (LCM) feature, which provides upgrades to clusters. Offers a single-touch upgrade, where you just click "upgrade", then do nothing else.

The dedupe is amazing and reduces space. For example, if you have a file server with a document named April 2013, then somewhere else in your file system, there is another file called April 2013 with similar information, it will combine those two files. If there are two files that are one gig each containing the same content, then Nutanix analyzes that data and makes it into one document. Therefore, instead of using two gigs of storage, you are only using one. It can also combine multiple files from different global locations.

Recently, I have had quite a few issues with Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT). When you do a full update from LCM, your NGT doesn't automatically install on your VMs. You need to go back to Prism Central and select a list of VMs, then install NGT. You need to go to each of those VMs, then restart them to get the NGT installed. Also, there are some VMs that we have on our system that we used to run on an old environment, which was Hyper-V. Previously, we had VMware, so some of our VMs are Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit. However, the NGT no longer allows for installations on those.

We constantly get packet drops. We are actually looking at upgrading them in the future. While Windows 7 is not supported anymore from a Microsoft perspective, Nutanix could allow NGT to still be installed since people still use Windows 7. I have five VMs currently running on Windows 7. This is not a major issue. The VMs still work, but you get an alert in the mornings, saying, "Hey, NGT is not installed." When we go there, we try to install NGT, but it won't allow us since Windows 7 is not allowed anymore.

We have been using Prism Pro for three to four years and the Nutanix Cloud Manager version for the past few months.

Even if you forget about Nutanix for five days, Nutanix will take care of itself. This takes the strain off the business since you don't constantly need to worry about Nutanix this or Nutanix that when monitoring an environment. You get an email or a report at the end of the day, saying, "Something is not working," or, "Some system services stopped here," or, "Storage is running low here," or, "Memory is not being utilized properly."

The stability is very good. In the past three years, it has not shut down. Maintenance is not really required, as long as you do your LCM updates every two to three months. 

We can scale it.

Currently, there are about 980 users on all nine of our casino properties. 

We can go a few more years with the package that we currently have. Right now, the solution is running perfectly. We may have to look at increasing memory in the next year or so. While our CPU and space are fine, it is the memory where we need a bit more. Right now, we have about 28 terabytes but are using about seven.

I deal a lot with the Nutanix support, especially if I don't understand something, I just start a call with them. They have local support in South Africa. So, if there are any issues or problems during the upgrade, their support team can be contacted with just one email, and they respond immediately.

From a support perspective, no other solution comes close to it. If you have a support issue, Nutanix is there. Obviously, they don't come onsite, but they log into your system and do full checks. On top of that, they help you understand the problem. They don't just go and fix it, then say, "Okay, it is done." Instead, they are like, "This is not the problem. This is what caused it. You could have had a power dip (or whatever) that could have prompted this."

I would rate Nutanix technical support as 10 out of 10 because they are well-versed in the solution. I have had plenty of experiences with the support. If they don't know something, you are guaranteed within the next hour that they will learn it and get back to you. I've had plenty of experiences with them and the support is top level. 

Nutanix has a strong community called Test Drive, is a community forum for people who use Nutanix. If you have a problem, there is a whole knowledge based on everything. You just type the word and it brings up all the articles on that subject, giving you step-by-step instructions.

Positive

We previously used Microsoft Hyper-V and were on physical. With Hyper-V, if a shift was nine hours, then it took up four hours of time from the person who did server checks. This means logging onto every server, checking resources, CPU usage, space, and the events monitor. 

With Nutanix, there are no server checks anymore. You just log into your environment for ten minutes in the morning, then you get a report saying something like a VM is high on CPU usage and another VM is high on memory usage. You can then investigate those particular VMs. You don't really have to go through everything, due to the reporting on Nutanix's side. It shows you everything that you need to know about every server in your environment. 

I used to use HP 370s. If I had to do an update within HP, it would take me about five hours of work. This meant that I had to mount an ISO for set up, put my VMs in maintenance mode and then ensure afterwards that the maintenance mode has been turned back off, update my VMs, and then make sure that the software is working. Now, with LCM, we do an inventory check for available software and firmware. It updates without affecting our environment. I don't have to do anything. Nutanix does it for me, in terms of migrating VMs and switching clusters off from maintenance mode.

The initial setup was simple. You get a completely blank Nutanix environment. You just install your Nutanix software. You give it your IP addresses, communicate to your environment, and that is it. It is so advanced that it can take your whole Hyper-V environment and migrate it into your Nutanix environment via Move-VM. From that Move-VM, there is a communication point between Hyper-V and Nutanix so you can make a connection from your Hyper-V onto Move-VM as well as from your Nutanix onto Move-VM. So, you can pull all your VMs through with no downtime, which is amazing.

We bought it from a partner who supplied us with experts. 

It has saved us a lot to focus on other tasks since you can really let Nutanix run itself. Employees can focus on other projects, so productivity has increased immensely.

The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive.

You get many functions by just buying one solution. You don't need to continuously add in this or that, then next week you need to add more storage or space. Instead, it is always there. It is economical compared to other products. For example, HPE is all about add-ons. Whereas, Nutanix comes as a whole solution. They aren't coming up with a new monthly cost. 

If you send them an email, which says, "I would like to investigate the reporting of this tool where we monitor only the memory usage of the device." They don't come up with another story about, "Oh, that is an add-on service. You have to pay for that." It is a complete solution. You get everything at once.

There was a good pitch to move towards Nutanix. I was part of the panel. They were cost-effective compared to the other solutions that we looked at. 

We looked at Microsoft Hyper-V, Azure, and had VMware previously, but we disconnected from both those solutions. We had a 3PAR solution from HPE, so we also looked at them. However, Nutanix was the most economical solution and its functions were way above Hyper-V in terms of adding resources, monitoring VMs, reporting wise, and latency. Deduplication was the main thing that we looked at since file service plays a major role in our environment.

We did look a lot deeper into Azure. In fact, certain divisions of our business, from a head office level, started using Azure for more complex stuff, such as linking with Smartsheet. For the unit casino level, we all have Nutanix.

I have worked on Hyper-V quite extensively, but it doesn't come close to Nutanix. Nutanix has a completely informative dashboard to view your entire environment on one page. You don't need to go to a server, then pop up your resource monitor and have a look at whatever. Using Nutanix, you have a health page and homepage. Your homepage will give you your full description of the health of your environment. If you want to run a health check, then it tells you about your services, password checks, and VM utilization. That check runs for about five minutes, then it gives you the full rundown of your entire environment. From your home page, you can see everything in your environment. Whereas, with Hyper-V, you need to click on each cluster, then from each cluster, you need to look for your resources. That takes awhile. But, with Nutanix, it is quick.

I also like Azure, but Azure is a bit more complicated to use than Nutanix. From a user perspective, Nutanix helps the user. They don't complicate the user with 5,000 functions. If you get a good product, you just want to know what it does. You don't need to know where the info is from. Nutanix brings the full functionality to you, and everything works.

I would rate this solution as a strong nine out of 10. 

Don't look any further. Nutanix is second to none.

It is a part of our automation tool.

It has helped us with our automation. That is the biggest benefit of it.

It is quite easy to get started and be up and running. I would rate it highly in that aspect because you can create lots of things with a small amount of effort or in a small amount of time. These faster outcomes are important for everybody. We do not have any special needs for speed, but everybody needs speed.

Nutanix Cloud Manager’s built-in playbooks have freed up time for our IT team to focus on other tasks or projects. You set it up and then you forget about it, but it is hard to provide any metrics because we have some work to do to use it all the way. We are expecting to have about 20 hours a week of time savings when we are done. That is the expectation, and let us see if we end up there.

Nutanix Cloud Manager is a part of our automation, so it needs to be there. It is important.

I can compare it to Azure. Nutanix is way simpler to start with. It is simple to use. It is not a simple tool, but it is simple to use.

The ability to use the APIs and talk to it through APIs is the most beneficial feature for us because we have to do automation.

Its licensing can be better.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager for about two years.

It is very stable. We have been using Nutanix for 13 years. We have not had any downtime because of Nutanix.

I have not thought about it. If Nutanix Cloud Manager scales with your cluster as a whole, it is then good.

We do not have plans to increase its usage for this use case.

In general, Nutanix's customer service is good. It was better a couple of years ago, but we know that the company is growing. You can feel that as a user, but it is still good. When you get the right technician, you will always have things sorted.

We get the response on time. Sometimes, you might need to prioritize your ticket a bit, but it is working fine.

Positive

We did not use any other solution in the same way that we are using Nutanix Cloud Manager.

We are a heavy Nutanix customer, so we just ended up with it. Its ease of use was important because it made things easier.

It was easy. We did the trial and started using it.

We take care of the deployment. I am a consultant.

We have time savings, and time is money.

It is a nightmare to keep up with all the licensing. I would prefer everything to be at one price.

We evaluate a lot of things.

I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager an eight out of ten. I have not yet explored everything in it. I am not sure about everything it can do. It might be a ten, but I do not have that much experience with it to give it a ten.

Nutanix Cloud Manager's biggest use case is compliance management, which includes configurations and drifts.

Cost estimation is another use case, but I don't know whether Prism moved that service because I've not used this product for cost estimation for the last eight to ten months. I've used other products for cloud health and other aspects.

The biggest generic benefit is the business value. There is no direct dollar benefit. The benefit is that the clients see MTTR reduction happening. They see low P1 or P2 calls or cases, but this decline happens over time. These are the benefits, but Nutanix Cloud Manager doesn't give you the benefits upfront. It's a journey because the system matures as you resolve low alerts. The outcome of this journey is the business value. For a small customer, it can take two months. For a mid-sized customer, it can take five to eight months. For a large enterprise, it can be twelve to eighteen months. There is no straight dollar productivity or dollar value benefit they will get. They cannot quantify those benefits. They can only say that their MTTR reduction happened, their system uptime is high, or their systems are more resilient.

In terms of the speed of the outcomes received using Nutanix Cloud Manager's low-code automation, I'm a supplier, I'm a GSI, and for me, the outcome is straightforward, which is a productivity improvement. The people who are doing day-to-day services don't need an automation engineer to automate their daily mundane tasks. With Nutanix Cloud Manager's low-code automation, I can just click and automate a task if the number of times an instance is repeated is high. It's a very simple left shift of the resources. An L1 engineer can do it for me, and I don't have to deploy highly skilled engineers. I can use their time to do more projects and provide value to the customer, so the low code in Nutanix Cloud Manager is always linked to the left shift of engineers.

The way we deliver it to our clients is that we don't tell them it's Nutanix Cloud Manager. We sell the functionality. If a customer wants to have end-to-end observability and AI ops built up for it, it's irrelevant to them whether I'm deploying NCA, or I'm deploying anything else. All that matters is the service, the functionality, and the cost for that functionality.

The most valuable feature is less or no implementation time. It should be up and running at any point in time so I don't spend time in transformation. I should spend more time in the operations cycle. The time to market is something that is very important. When it comes to operations, it should bring in the highest level of automation. I don't want teams to keep on troubleshooting in terms of whether it's a false alert or not.

I've seen that Nutanix Cloud Manager has fewer false alerts as compared to other products, such as SCCM.

Nowadays, we see systems breaking a lot. I know that the current features of Nutanix Cloud Manager help to monitor the container world and modern applications, but as more microservices are getting deployed, more micro-management of those services needs to be done. If NCL needs any improvement, it's in the microservices area because, over time, you will see more microservices getting deployed. Monitoring of those is an area that needs to be looked into.

I know this product from the time when it was launched as Prism. I have been using Prism and Beam since 2015 or 2016. Being a System Integrator, I deployed it in a lot of customer environments.

It's a highly stable product, but it's yet to be proven for very big customers.

It's good for up to mid-sized enterprises. For us, a mid-segment company has ten thousand virtual machines. They are running somewhere around 400 nodes of containers for elements. One of my big customers is running 6,600 Nutanix nodes.

There were multiple solutions that were built, integrated, and deployed. All the incident correlations used to happen in BigPanda, SolarWinds, and ServiceNow, and the automation engine used to pick up those events and triggers and then automate them. They were there, but I required resources with multiple skill sets. With Nutanix Cloud Manager's low code solution, with a single click, an L1 engineer can do a task. My life is easy, and their life is easy. There is a productivity gain.

In terms of the comparison of Nutanix Cloud Manager with other solutions, as a supplier, every product is good for me. We just need to find the best and low-cost solution that delivers the functionality, even if that functionality is delivered by a small tool.

ServiceNow CMP is a comparable solution. It does the monitoring and other functionalities, but it does not look into the niche, modern technologies that are there right now, such as the containerized environment and multi-cloud container-native architecture. ServiceNow CMP needs another automation engine to deploy it because while it connects workflows to your end-to-end playbooks, it does not run them, whereas, with Nutanix Cloud Manager, I'm getting everything in a box.

I'm a Chief Architect. Based on the customer's requirement, I do the big-picture stitching for the customer. Once our solutions team picks up the products, I can influence product usage. I'm currently handling database-as-a-service in the UK and Europe. I influence the selection of the products but not deployment.

My advice would be to go for it without asking. As a mid-segment enterprise, you get everything in the box. You don't need to spend more money. You don't need to first spend money on VMware, then on SolarWinds, and then on your automation engine. 

Prism is used a lot in terms of server and service monitoring, but it's not used for observability. It feeds into observability, but I'm trying to explore if it can be used for observability in a service model.

I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

I work at a distributor. We use it for partner-facing demos, and it has been really great. My mission is to help partners see the light with Nutanix, and that's where I use Nutanix Cloud Manager the most.

It's highly capable. In an organization, you can make it easy to use, but you still have advanced features. You're not simplifying or dumbing it down. You're still enabling an advanced user to design solutions and leverage the full product suite. It's highly capable, so you have that great ability to be successful for a lot of different users. You can have a very low-level, simplified user experience and you can also go advanced. In terms of organization, that's really key. As you get into hybrid cloud IT environments where there's a lot going on, Nutanix storage is very powerful.

The speed of the outcomes received using Nutanix Cloud Manager's low-code automation is very fast. The beauty of it is that because it's low code and no code, even as a beginner, I was able to go in and walk myself through it. I didn't need a lot of coaching or instruction to get there. It was fantastic.

In terms of the importance of these outcomes, it's not just about delivering an outcome. Anybody can deliver an outcome if you offer enough time, but delivering that outcome more reliably and faster enables that business to benefit a lot sooner. They then see the cost get lower. They see efficiency go up, and they start to really benefit from technology as opposed to seeing technology and IT in general as a cost center and as a liability.

It's awesome for helping teams address their current automation needs while planning for future expansion. That's because of the way that it enables a broad variety of users to accomplish what they want in a very efficient and simple way. It brings an iPhone user experience to IT, and that's a really powerful story right now.

The best part of it is that when you use the product, there's no secret proprietary magic that you experience as a user. The real genius is under the covers, so it makes the user experience very straightforward and easy. It's a wonderful solution to teach partners about. The ease of use is something a lot of suppliers talk about, but Nutanix does it better than anyone else.

Nutanix has room for improvement around the partner tools and making them approachable and easier to learn.

I've been using this solution for about one year.

It's highly stable. I haven't had any issues. It's very easy to run, and it keeps running. I don't have to do much with it. That's the beauty of it.

The details around scaling, like Prism Central and scaling the resources, are highly technical and get highly specific per use case, but it's always scalable. You can always find the documentation very easily, and it's very straightforward to do so.

Their support is terrific and world-class. Nutanix always talks about their NPS scores, their success, and their commitment to customer service, but I've seen its boots on the ground level. People try to help me even if it's outside of their role. Ever since I stepped into this role, it's been a really wonderful surprise to see Nutanix try so hard to help us. I'd rate their support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I supported other suppliers in different roles. In my IT career, I worked with a number of different suppliers, typically more on legacy three-tier work, such as fiber channel attachment and the like. All those suppliers struggled to evolve to support modern workloads, and that's where I feel that Nutanix has always been ahead of the game. I chose this role to support Nutanix on purpose. It wasn't by accident that I ended up here.

I can't say that I had this same level of experience with the competitors. We are an HPE shop. We have a huge HPE presence, which is great, and I have experienced a few other hyper-converged providers. I've done some VMware training over the years, but I haven't really gotten my hands on them in the administrative sense. It's not as deep as with Nutanix.

Simplicity is a key function for helping a customer really benefit from technology. You can have technology for technology's sake, but suppliers are really stuck in a world that's proprietary. Even to navigate an administrative tool, you see a lot of proprietary terms, whereas a generalist can sit down and run Nutanix very quickly.

In my role, I didn't really decide on Cloud Manager myself, but in talking to partners and end users, it's a very strong consideration. There are a lot of competitors in the space that Nutanix plays in, so the value that Nutanix brings has to be superior in order for them to be effective, and, of course, they are. That goes back to simplicity and the efficiency that comes with it.

I was involved in its setup for our lab. It was very straightforward. We had some help from Nutanix. Nutanix is always falling all over themselves to help us, which is wonderful. It only took a little while. We just did it via a remote session, and it worked out great. I'm located in Minnesota. My lab is in Georgia. The help from Nutanix was in another place, and we had no issues at all. It was very smooth.

It's not necessarily from leveraging NCM or NCI itself just because of the way that it works for us, but our ROI is tied to our partners and to customers in a way. Their success is our success, and that's why we're gaining a lot of momentum with new partners. We're reactivating dormant partners and trying to broaden the Nutanix message. There are a few core partners that do it really well, and that's great, but we try to broaden things, and we have success with it.

For customers, the ROI is primarily around efficiency and simplicity. So as an example, Life Cycle Manager isn't just a great tool for updates and upgrades, it's a way to have happier staff. It's a way to give your staff weekends back, which is great for the staff. They're happy, but it also means you don't pay overtime. There's a win-win there. There's a great symbiosis if that happens when people adopt the technology.

I've never heard a customer ask for a higher price. Everyone says everything is expensive, and that's true. Nutanix is really smart to understand that the most important fact is the value to the customer, not the price tag. 

While you do get some sticker shock sometimes, as soon as you show this and you prove the value, all of a sudden, it looks exceptionally affordable. We've had wonderful success when we get a buying decision in front of an economic buyer, like a financial leader. They start to see the TCO benefits of Nutanix very, very quickly.

Sometimes it's about the little things. It's about what your experience is like and how much time you spend trying to learn how to use the product. It's about how much time and money is it going to cost you to understand their proprietary terms for things as opposed to having a generalist sit down and be off to the races. That can save a lot of hassle and frustration but also time and money. With these projects, it is important to get outcomes, get that workload deployed, and enable a business or a customer to focus on what keeps their lights on, which is probably not managing infrastructure. That's how I see it. 

I'd rate it a nine out of ten. There's always room to improve, but as far as what's on the market today, it's a unique value add.

Our first use case is for ransomware. We have two more use cases that we identified. The second one is going to be for DR, and the third one is going to be for capacity.

Currently, we do ransomware on-prem. We use a shared cluster in our disaster recovery site. With Nutanix Cloud Manager, we hope to use the NC2 clusters in Azure and move all the ransomware activities from on-prem to the cloud.

We are an insurance company. Data security is our top priority. We take ransomware very seriously. We always want to be careful and make sure that our data is secure, whether it's on-prem or in the cloud. We go through ransom activities at least once a month on-prem, and that's what we hope to do with Nutanix Cloud Manager as well. We hope to continue to provide data security to our business and to our customers.

We use Nutanix Cloud Manager's built-in playbooks. They absolutely freed up our team's time to focus on other tasks or projects. We were looking to use these playbooks for a while. From an automation perspective and from a day-to-day management perspective, creating these playbooks definitely freed up our engineers to focus on more strategic tasks and more solutions than day-to-day activities. They saved about 40% of their time. As we move forward and use more playbooks, we see more and more time freed up. It freed up at least six to seven percent of our engineers' time.

The ability to do Layer 2 stretching across data centers is valuable. The migration of VMs from one location to the other is also valuable.

There should be more APIs to integrate with different vendors and to integrate with the existing solutions that we use on-prem.

I've been using this solution for about a year.

We had some hiccups with Nutanix Cloud Manager, our on-prem networking solutions, and all that, but as we went on, we overcame all those issues. There has been no showstopper whatsoever. All the issues that we came across were just small things that we had to work through. Nutanix's support has been very helpful. They worked with us all the way to help us overcome all these issues, and so far, it has been great.

We are looking forward to it. We only have a small NCM platform built, but as we move forward, we look forward to using it for other use cases. We definitely want to explore expanding our NCM presence in Azure or in AWS.

Their support was excellent. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We used Azure's cloud-native management. We still use it to some point to manage our Azure entities in the public cloud. Other than that, we haven't used any solution.

The setup was easy. We had help from Nutanix support, which was excellent. We got wonderful support from people who gave us a hand along the way. It wasn't very difficult, and within two or three days, we were fully functional to some extent. As far as the ease of use goes, our engineers love it. They use it every single day. I've not heard any complaints from our users. The user experience that we always look for has been great so far.

Learning is wonderful. There's so much available on Nutanix's portal in terms of the KB articles, knowledge base, user guides, and admin guides for Nutanix Cloud Manager. To have all that available to our engineers online is a great help.

I'm sure we will see an ROI. We've only been doing it for a year. It takes time, but I'm very confident that as we grow and mature, we will definitely see some positive returns.

https://www.peerspot.com/produ...When we started to look at Nutanix Cloud Manager, the cost was a major factor. Management comes into play. Hosting on-prem is getting expensive. We did find a lot of cost benefits to using the NCM and NC2 clusters in Azure. Being a Microsoft partner, we always get a big discount. When we use Nutanix Cloud Manager in Azure or AWS, there is an ease of management. We have a single pane of glass to look through and manage our on-prem entities and Nutanix Cloud Manager. It becomes very easy.

The pricing was very good. We were very pleased with what we were offered by our account manager. Because of that, we expanded Nutanix Cloud Manager, and we hope to expand even more. Right now, we are in Azure, and as we build up more and more within the NCM platform, we hope to expand into AWS as well.

We chose Nutanix Cloud Manager because of the pricing. Also, the features and the capabilities that it offers within the Nutanix ecosystem were very attractive. We've been using Nutanix on-prem for almost six years, and to be able to extend them on the cloud was a no-brainer.

We use Calm for on-prem automation, and we are looking to use Calm for our cloud automation as well. We have PoC flow for Microsec on-prem, and we hope to extend that out to the cloud as well as we segregate the traffic between on-prem and cloud entities.

Nutanix Cloud Manager is very easy to use. Our users and engineers have become very knowledgeable in a very short time, and as far as the cost goes, it has been very effective.

We only started using it about a year ago, and there's a lot more we need to use Nutanix Cloud Manager for. We haven't fully explored all its capabilities from an automation, AI, or machine learning perspective. We hope to use all the built-in features within Nutanix Cloud Manager.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager a nine out of ten.

We have a group of sister companies with different types of applications, from web-based to server-installed. 

We segment our clusters into different areas for each company to use, from development to staging to production. 

Currently, we mainly use the production area, and our staging is off. With the new NCM, we may use a different hardware or environment. 

Since moving to Nutanix, the development and support teams prefer it more.Due to differences in hardware and workload deployments.

One of the solution's greatest strengths is its "Single pane of glass" feature, which allows users to access all pertinent data in one location immediately upon logging in. Additionally, the solution's ease of deployment and mobility are notable aspects that I personally find appealing.

During my attendance at Nutanix, I personally discovered a significant benefit. Although we currently operate a separate division for our public cloud infrastructure, we have yet to leverage the potential of integrating it with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) or Nutanix Clusters (NC). 

What I've learned is that we can seamlessly migrate and manage the details displayed on NCM's dashboards, consolidating everything into a unified environment. 

While we haven't taken advantage of this opportunity yet, I am eager to take full advantage of it in the future.

Our sister company currently uses an outdated database technology, Sybase, which presents challenges in migrating to a newer database. Despite our efforts to encourage them to move to a different database, the company's 25 years of code and data basic make it difficult to do so. 

We are open to any level of support or guidance that can help us manage the Sybase database, even if it's not a fully managed solution. 

Direction on how to scale, improve, and optimize tables and queries within Sybase would be greatly appreciated.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for less than a year.

The company has been using Nutanix for the past four or five years and has gone through different versions. However, we have been using NCM for about a year to a year and a half.

I am satisfied with the stability of the system. Our engineers have had no issues accessing it and I have not received any reports of bugs or accessibility problems.

This solution effectively addresses our current automation requirements, especially with regard to repetitive tasks that the team needs to learn how to automate. 

As our company expands, we are interested in shifting the bulk of our workloads away from the public cloud and into our private cloud clusters.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) offers a lot of automation capabilities that we can take advantage of in the future. While there are already some basic automation features like Nutanix Move, there is significant potential for additional automation within NCM. 

This automation will greatly assist us in scaling our operations without the need for manual repetition. As we continue to explore NCM and prepare for transitioning away from the public cloud, we can leverage a substantial amount of automation to streamline our processes.

The scalability of the system is straightforward, even from a hardware standpoint. 

Simply adding servers to the data center and integrating them into the cluster is a remarkably effortless process. 

I have not come across a solution that offers such ease of scalability.

I have had the opportunity to engage with Nutanix support through various channels, including email, meetings, and post-installation calls. Even when we added two nodes to our infrastructure last year, Nutanix engineers were on-site to install the cluster, and I must say, they provided excellent service.

The support we received from Nutanix through emails has been excellent, with detailed and concise information provided.

Our experiences with Nutanix's account management and technical account management calls in early 2019 were extremely productive. They were highly focused, aiming to gather detailed information about our environment and workloads. This allowed them to effectively assist with scaling out, gaining a thorough understanding of our environment, and troubleshooting as needed. The level of support provided by Nutanix has been consistently outstanding.

Although I am not directly involved, from my observations, everything has been great, including the engineers who assisted us in adding nodes to our cluster. They were very helpful and knowledgeable.

I would rate the technical support a nine and a half out of ten.

On a personal level, I would rate Nutanix at a nine and a half. However, this rating is based on my limited direct involvement and is not a comprehensive assessment from a Nutanix perspective. Taking into account the algorithm used to evaluate performance, my interactions with Nutanix have been highly positive.

I did not participate in the initial setup process.

We have experienced a significant return on investment (ROI) through our implementation of Nutanix. Initially, we started with two Nutanix systems, using them in our staging environment. However, as COVID-19 emerged in 2019, we acquired six additional nodes and deployed them in our production environment. Almost immediately after putting them into operation, we witnessed the tangible value they brought. The returns generated from this implementation have been substantial.

We initiated a gradual migration process, gradually transferring workloads into the Nutanix environment. As our workload demands grew, we reached capacity in the system by the end of last year. To accommodate this expansion, we have already acquired and installed a new cluster. Additionally, we have a dedicated disaster recovery (DR) site, and our objective is to transform this DR site into a fully operational production site by deploying another new cluster there.

On one side, we have our production environment, while on the other side, we have our disaster recovery (DR) setup. As we continue to witness the positive impact and returns on investment (ROI), we anticipate further growth in our Nutanix infrastructure. Initially, there was some hesitation and uncertainty, but once we experienced the immediate benefits and ROI, we realized the immense value Nutanix brings to our operations.

Implementing Nutanix brings both cost and time benefits. With an initial investment, the focus shifts toward recovering and maximizing the value of that investment. In contrast, when relying solely on the public cloud, there is a constant ongoing investment and potential challenges in controlling costs. While efforts are made to maintain control, it can still be a never-ending endeavor. However, by adopting Nutanix, engineers can quickly grasp and adapt to the system, making informed decisions and judgment calls more efficiently. This ease of learning and system familiarity empowers them to navigate and optimize the infrastructure with confidence.

With the ease of use and automation provided by Nutanix, our engineers can make informed decisions on workload management such as migration, reduction, or scaling up. This saves them time and provides opportunities for personal and professional development.

We evaluated AWS as a file management system, and it appears to be a possible solution.

When it comes to setup, both AWS and Nutanix offer attractive features from a management perspective. However, AWS can sometimes be a bit confusing, requiring repetitive actions and causing potential challenges. 

On the other hand, Nutanix, particularly with the support of NCM and its accompanying university resources, simplifies the transition from learning to live environments. 

The comprehensive coverage in the university program facilitates easier implementation in the actual environment, further aided by features like the test drive, which allows for experimentation without concerns about breaking anything. This emphasis on ease of use was the primary topic of discussion.

From my personal preference, having everything consolidated in a single pane of glass is important, and Nutanix excels in this aspect. 

While AWS has recently introduced cost statistics upon login, Nutanix had already implemented this feature earlier. 

Not only does Nutanix provide a comprehensive overview, but it also allows for effortless navigation into deeper insights with just a click. In contrast, AWS requires more extensive digging or clicking to access detailed information, making the process less user-friendly compared to Nutanix.

I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten out of ten.

I have about 85 virtual machines that rotate between cloud and on-premises. I use the tool for databases, applications, and service communications. I use the solution for my complete infrastructure. Since I work in a Casino, we have a lot of work on the databases with respect to our gaming applications and their servers. Our applications also run on workstations. Therefore, I use the Nutanix platform to store all our applications. I use it for file servers, email servers, DHCP, DNS servers, and domain controllers.

I like the solution's duplication feature. For example, there is a file created by an employee from the finance department. However, there are other employees working on that file, say from the surveillance department and gaming department. It’s about five people who work on that same file. So, Nutanix cross-checks all five versions and saves them as a single file. It saves document space by consolidating all five documents into one.

I also like the fact that the solution manages itself. It has one interface where you can basically see all your servers. So, you can manage your servers and see whether you are falling short on space or disc usage. Also, in case your RAM only uses four Gigabytes of memory instead of eight, you can extend out the over-provisioned mail and save your cluster for four Gigs of RAM.

The solution also helps you save costs. In case your servers use less space, you can cut down your hard drive by 100 Gigabytes which you can provision for another server or create another server on the cloud.

While using Nutanix, we need to switch off the VM in case we are doing an update. We have to turn off the VM if we are updating the memory or hard disk space. In a normal scenario, we switch off the VM, update it and then update the RAM. Once updated, we need to switch on the machine and wait for the RAM to initialize. The same goes for hard drives as well.

I would like them to improve the solution so that we can operate it live without switching off the VM. Switching off the VM causes downtime. It would be great to log back without switching off the VM and affecting the services.

I have been using this solution for four years.

The solution is stable.

Nutanix is a scalable solution.

I contact customer service and support at least two times a month. Their services are quite excellent since their response time is exactly the same as the SLA provider.

I have used Hyper-V before Nutanix. 

The solution was very easy to install. We had only three nodes to install since we moved from Hyper-V. The deployment process took us around four days to complete since we had to recreate the VMs on the Nutanix platform and move them over from Hyper-V. We created a VM called Nutanix Move on our Nutanix environment. Nutanix Move enables you to take a machine from the Hyper-V environment and convert it to the OS used in the Nutanix platform. I had 85 machines and downtime was an issue while deploying the solution. I had to do the switching over mostly during the night or early hours of the morning.

However, the process was quick. We recreated about 20 VMs a day which is quite impressive.

The pricing is lower compared to Hyper-V.

I would give a ten out of ten for the solution. Nutanix has saved our company from doing multiple general server checks which used to take around three to four hours in our old environment. Nutanix gets the checks done within 20 mins at the most. The solution's capabilities are endless. It is a stable product that will sustain your environment. It is really good and works like magic. Apart from Nutanix's pricing aspect, our company decided to use the solution because of technological advancement.

We use Nutanix Cloud Manager to manage all of our Nutanix infrastructure. We have six data centers throughout the world, and we use it to manage all that infrastructure for VMware. We're currently moving to AHV and are managing those as well.

From a resiliency of the infrastructure standpoint, we don't chase outages and major problems like we used to on other arrays such as CMC storage or Dell storage. Our folks have a lot more free time handle to the normal workload instead of troubleshooting.

The ease of use is a valuable feature. For us, it's a consistent interface. It's very easy to train our employees on it, and it's a newer generation interface. It's homogeneous, and every product and subset tie together, giving a very similar look to everything.

We do implement Nutanix Cloud Manager's built-in playbooks. Currently, the biggest one we use that's been very helpful is cleaning up snapshots. As users do snapshots of their virtual machines, it then goes back and cleans those out. We don't have a mess lingering out there.

Because Nutanix Cloud Manager's eScripts are based on Python, it allows me to bring developers in who are Python-centric. They are able to get up to speed quickly and develop the automation pieces we need for our own private cloud and build servers and applications on-premises.

In some ways, Nutanix Cloud Manager abstracts out certain items in a simplified manner, which makes it good for training. At other times, to get to the next technical level, we want to actually dive in, and Nutanix Cloud Manager sometimes restricts us from actually diving into the deeper technical pieces. There's no advance button that lets us do more advanced things without having to drop out to the CLI to do the command line piece.

I've worked with Nutanix Cloud Manager for more than five years.

So far, we've been very impressed with the stability. In the Nutanix ecosystem, everything is clustered, highly available, and fails over. It takes care of itself.

We have very few users who are using Nutanix Cloud Manager at present, but we do have all of our infrastructure running Nutanix on the storage side. From that scale, we're handling thousands of servers with no issues there. In about three months, we will be switching over all of our VMware folks to Nutanix Cloud Manager via ServiceNow. Then, we'll be able to see the full impact of our users using Nutanix Cloud Manager.

I would give a ten out of ten to Nutanix's technical support. We've had excellent support. They always know two or three other people they can call on to help with certain portions of an issue. There's very good networking within the company.

Positive

We're a VMware shop and have vRA, which we used for all the automation on the VMware side. We also used vRealize Orchestrator. Initially, we chose Nutanix over standard disc arrays because we came out of the storage market. As Nutanix has added products, we've seen value in them and went in that direction.

When we bought the storage system and disc encryption, they came with other licenses. Nutanix Cloud Manager was an add-on. When we looked at the cost of other solutions and the opportunities that Nutanix Cloud Manager gives us to tie directly into Nutanix, it just seemed to be the right fit.

It might be too early to tell as we just started using Nutanix Cloud Manager for our private cloud about four months ago. Once we get fully off of VMware, we should definitely see an ROI.

The price is probably right where it should be. It's not vastly expensive, and it's not too cheap. We get very good value for the price with what we're being offered with it.

Nutanix Cloud Manager is a walled garden, and you have to do all of your editing within the interface. Our developers become frustrated with not being able to use other tools such as Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and CSE pipelines. These are outside of the Nutanix Cloud Manager interface, and the developers would prefer to use them instead of using the NCM interface. In this sense, Nutanix Cloud Manager has been a struggle to use. The NCM interface could be improved.

The setup is fantastic because you can click a button and deploy it. It's already part of the existing piece, and it's like adding a module. Compared to the setup of other cloud management solutions, Nutanix Cloud Manager's setup is much easier. We just spent about four months upgrading a VMware product, and there were bugs. It was a nightmare. With Nutanix Cloud Manager, it's click-and-play, and we haven't had any issues at all.

The learning curve is a lot easier because it is based on Python, and we have developers who already know it. We don't have to retool. Many of my developers have been up to speed in under a week.

If you're considering Nutanix Cloud Manager, my advice would be to go through the entire POC in-depth to see the value in it. Initially, it may look very simplistic, but when you dive into the code, you will see the depth of the product.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager a six because the automation tools are still in the early stages. There are things that need to be fleshed out in the private cloud as well as the public cloud. I don't see anything badly wrong with it, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement as an industry in general.