Nutanix Database Service Reviews

I have 19 companies that have implemented S/4HANA, and I provide them with hosting services in two countries: Honduras and El Salvador. 

Nutanix Database Service optimizes our virtual platforms, giving us higher availability. We have billing databases where we bill around 11 million transactions per month. We haven't fully implemented the solution, so we don't know how much it will reduce the time needed to provision a database, but 5 percent would be enough. By converging all my databases on a single platform, I can monitor everything with fewer resources.

I wanted a tool that offers enough monitoring for everything related to load balancing in my databases. This seems to be a highly valuable feature of Nutanix Database Service.  We want our database admins to have greater control when monitoring so that the databases we use today are more flexible, and the storage capacities can also be monitored.

We only deployed it last month and haven't used it on a wider scale, but so far, it's perfect. Judging from the migration alone, Nutanix looks much faster than VMware. It has increased the uptime.

I migrated from VMware to Nutanix Database Service this month. 

Nutanix Database Service is highly stable.

The scalability is excellent. Nutanix Database Service has everything I need.

I rate Nutanix customer service 10 out of 10. It's excellent.

Positive

We previously used VMware but switched to Nutanix due to the price.

We are being helped by a consultant called MTC from Venezuela.

The licensing model for Nutanix Database Service is excellent.

I rate Nutanix Database Service 10 out of 10.

We are a service provider for Nutanix using a cloud platform to deliver Database as a Service to our customers to compete with AWS and RDS.

We deliver databases as a service, so the Nutanix Database Service makes scaling and deployment simpler and more agile for our customers. It has reduced the time needed to provision a database by 40 percent. 

The ability of Nutanix Database Service to automate database admin tasks has helped lower the cost of DBA operation through a simple and efficient deployment. Lower personnel costs mean lower operational costs of services and support. We also make a passive income with this product, so it affects us positively. 

I like how easy it is to implement MySQL, SQL, and open-source database platforms.  Our developers use Nutanix Database Service to refresh databases directly from their development environments. For instance, we can upload more than 500 databases with just twice the CPU load. 

We use MariaDB enterprise versions. It has simplified our work and enabled us to deploy customers who use these solutions.

It would be helpful if Nutanix added a billing system for databases. We need to automate this with a separate solution. We are service providers, so it would be easier for our customers if there were a built-in system that we could use for billing.

We have used Nutanix Database Service for two years.

Nutanix Database Service is stable.

Nutanix Database Service is scalable.

I rate Nutanix support nine out of 10.

Positive

We have been Nutanix customers for eight years. It was a simple procedure since we have used Nutanix services for so long. We didn't use any specific strategy for deployment or any third party.

We make passive income using the Nutanix Database Service, so the financial return was very good for us.

I rate Nutanix Database Service nine out of 10. It isn't perfect and still requires some development. 

Our main requirement was to simplify our database operations and management. We have a large number of databases and we have DBA teams that support and provision databases. The idea was to look into a database as a service. Similar to their offerings in AWS and Azure, where you can provision based on your requirements, and automatically everything will be handled by the platform, reducing human errors and waiting times. This is why we looked at Nutanix.

The time to provision the database went from taking a couple of days to now taking a few minutes. That is the immediate impact we saw. It helped the team to focus more. They can now be focused on support rather than spending time provisioning, which is a repetitive activity.

Additionally, one of the features we really like is the patch management. Patch management was always a challenge for us because we had to schedule. We have to manually apply the patch, and there is a process for it. Now with NDB, this is all automated. There are hotfixes that automatically get applied, there are other major updates that are all managed by NDB. It reduces the team's effort. They can now focus more on fine-tuning and improving the database we have.

We are saving around eighty percent of the time spent on provisioning and recovery with this product. 

Another benefit is the recovery. That's one of the features that I like a lot. It gives us the capability to recover data within minutes. It has a time machine similar to Mac's time machine. You can go back in time and recover your data almost immediately. The traditional way of doing backup and restore usually takes hours and you will have to restore the whole database tool to recover only a little bit of data.

Nutanix helped automate database admin tasks like provisioning, recovery, and patching.

With the ease of provisioning, Nutanix has really helped to expand and fast-track the provisioning of the applications.

There will always be room for improvement, there is nothing perfect from day one. There are some technical challenges that we have with NDS. I believe with time it will be sorted out. 

They focus more on increasing performance and resiliency. They make your normal databases as a managed Service, like SQL, and Oracle Database and I believe there could be improvements for resiliency and high availability technologies. They could seamlessly provide that for those databases. 

I have been using Nutanix Database Service for three to four years. 

Stability is excellent.

Scalability is built into the platform, it's excellent. 

They have a very good response time. Engineers that connect to support are experienced and knowledgeable compared to other vendors.

Positive

We see ROI in the automation that saves admin time. 

It's a little expensive. They should reduce the price if they want a bigger customer base. 

I've seen something similar to NDB from the AWS and Azure offerings in the cloud. We wanted something on-prem. We went with Nutanix because we're a bank. We need data resiliency in our data center as part of our compliance.

I would rate Nutanix Database Service a nine out of ten. 

We used to use Oracle ODA and it was difficult to provide test and development database snapshots for the whole Dev team. It's easier with Nutanix. We switched to Nutanix because of its scalability and simplicity. 

Oracle is fantastic but it's really difficult to deploy. With Nutanix, I can deploy an image and I can replicate it to my Dev team. All of my servers have the same CPU, RAM, disk, and cloning. Nutanix is much easier than Linux or Oracle ODA. 

Snapshots take up a lot of disk space in Oracle. My team and I really like that Nutanix duplicates the size of the snapshot.

My organization has improved with Nutanix because now, the Dev team can use CI/CD. Before, it was a monolith application and now Dev cut the application into microservices and began to deploy with continuous implementation, continuous development, and quality assurance. This was impossible with Oracle ODA, it was a monolithic application.

The API and monitoring features are good. Nutanix is good for my use case. I don't see the need for it to improve.

Our developers use Nutanix to provision and refresh databases directly from their development environments. It affects developer productivity. They're a lot faster. They can create all Dev databases on demand. When they want something, they execute the code and they have the environment, clean, fresh, and usable.

With Oracle, it took around one hour to refresh the database and now, with Nutanix, it takes a quarter of that time. 

Nutanix has helped to automate tasks. I schedule a refresh for a clone every morning for the team for troubleshooting purposes. 

It has simplified my life. It simplified tasks. 

I can check the status of my database from my monitoring tool, the report teams can refresh the database with API, and close the database with API. It's very useful and powerful.

I have been using Nutanix Database for two to three years. 

Their support is great. 

It's expensive but it's a good price. We have a regular license program because it's really expensive. 

We run Nutanix on HPE hardware because Oracle is only one vendor with one CPU. Oracle's licensing model is a CPU model and Nutanix's hardware is multiple CPUs. 

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

It's a cost-effective database and Unix solution.

It helps in automating things and in reducing costs. Overall, it is helping improve the productivity of the team. We have eliminated traditional tasks, such as manual backups, manual restorations, as well as manual scripting that we used to run. Now there is automated scripting and a large level of automation that we have put in place with the Nutanix DBaaS.

When it comes to reducing downtime it has given us good reliability. We can patch the databases without much downtime, so that has had a big impact. We also have the snapshot backups available and that has also improved on downtime. However, there is still a lot of migration happening. Once we have it in use as a full-blown solution, I think the benefits will be greater.

Our availability standards have risen to at least 99 percent. Previously, with the other platforms, it was 95 or 96 percent; there was more downtime.

Also, with this stable platform, the number of incidents has decreased. Our problem management has improved a lot, as there have been no recurring incidents. We are still further consolidating it, but even now, it has helped us free up IT staff. We have been able to do away with at least two different platforms. The skill sets that we required for both, for 24/7 support, were immense. That has come down significantly and we have reduced 25 percent of the staff.

This is a very well-integrated setup that has made an immense difference. With individual estates, what happens is that there are too many dependencies on multiple people. If a major incident happens, you need to call an application and a database person. Here, it is an application plus the Nutanix person, that's it.

One of the most valuable aspects is the operations perspective. The features are suitable, especially on the database side, as our operations and upgrades on databases have improved a lot. You can also allocate storage to it easily.

The data analytics are also good along with the data reporting. We report certain IT data on a weekly and monthly basis, and it helps a lot with that, giving us consistent data.

It is also a single platform, all in one place, and that is the reason we went for this solution. Earlier, we had multiple platforms, the database and the OS, but this is a single platform that helps us with what we are doing.

Overall, it is easy to use, but up-scaling was important. We are well-versed in virtualization, Oracle Databases, et cetera, but even when Nutanix DBaaS was a new product for us it was still very effective.

There is room for improvement in the automation. It is customizable and we can create our own solutions, but if there were a central repository of automation scripts that we could use, that would be good.

Secondly, the graphical user interfaces could be much more user-friendly. They are already user-friendly, but they could be simpler so that we do not need L3 staff to handle them. If they were simpler, we could also have some command center or L1/L1.5 associates do some housekeeping activities on it.

Also, something we are not very clear on with Nutanix is whether it is also integrable with cloud platforms like Azure and AWS. Right now, we are using it more for traditional infrastructure. But tomorrow, if we have other components, can we also get a hybrid view? That is something that we need to look at.

It's important to have a hybrid cloud environment. At any point in time, you're going to have on-premises and different public cloud environments in use and, at times, a hyper-converged infrastructure. A hybrid environment offering is something that would work well in the future.

We have been supporting it for the last one and a half to two years. We did a PoC with it and then we started using it for one of the customers that we support.

It is a really stable product.

It is scalable.

We are planning to use another Nutanix product for our end-user computing space where we would use virtualization. We are doing away with the legacy middleware and legacy integrations and moving to more hyper-converged infrastructure solutions.

The technical support is effective. The tickets we raise with them are addressed within the SLA that we have. There are two types of tickets: one is informational, and they have a good knowledge base as well, and the other is a priority ticket and they handle them in a timely way.

The knowledge base could be strengthened. Also, more L3 teams would be useful.

Neutral

Prior to using Nutanix, our virtualization layer was VMware. On top of it, we had our OS and the database. Now, we have been able to eliminate the OS database and have it under one platform.

We switched because of the amount of overhead we used to have. Linux would go out of support and we would have to upgrade it. That meant we also had to upgrade the hardware. Now, we have this appliance over the existing hardware and that has helped us in eliminating costs.

We were involved in the proof of concept as well as the final deployment of the solution. We did need assistance from Nutanix at the time. It was a collaboration. The setup was complex because it involved working with a new set of technologies and because the ways you work with Nutanix, as a product, were very new for us. We did not have too many case studies or references. But now, after having used it for some time, the teams are comfortable with it.

Our current model is 90 to 95 percent on-prem. We are not into cloud. Going forward, we will have to move into cloud. We have two data centers and the Nutanix environment is set up in primary and secondary modes across them. All the applications that the business users use are pointing to the infrastructure that is present in these two data centers. The estate would be about 2,000 servers.

The deployment was done in phases. The PoC took about a month's time to see the results. We divided the next stage, going into non-production first, and then we took the corresponding non-production environments to production. It took us at least three to four months overall.

The deployment included project managers, two or three architects, and a team of around 10 to 12 associates.

Our IT department, a team of around 12 to 14 people, actively uses and supports the platform. If there are any releases with certain additional features, there is maintenance required, but that doesn't necessarily require downtime or impact services. It is easy to upgrade the solution. You test it out in the dev environments and then do a release in the production environment.

In house team

Our business case includes a return on investment. In terms of what we expected, we are not there yet, but we have achieved 65 percent of what we intended to do. We thought that, out of a few million, we would save X amount. On that, we have achieved 65 percent. Probably, if we leverage the estate for all our environments, the ROI will be better.

The pricing is competitive.

We also looked at an HPE platform at the time, but from a cost perspective, Nutanix was ahead.

I would recommend this product for any medium to large enterprise. It's not that relevant for a small enterprise because of the cost.

With the enhancements and the features that have been added in the new releases, it's getting much, much better.

At my company, I use Nutanix Database Service to set up and version machines, install and configure precomputed machines, and establish connections between databases and application services.

The most valuable features of Nutanix are its robust infrastructure management tools, including a powerful firewall, analytics for system performance, and convenient automation. 

There is room for improvement in the pricing structure, especially given the complexity of our business model involving multiple data centers and a variety of services. While the user-friendly GUI and branded plug-ins for HPI solutions make management easier, there is still a need for simpler operational tasks.

I have been using Nutanix Database Service for two years.

Nutanix's stability is excellent. It has consistently performed well over time, supporting multiple operating systems without any significant issues. It aligns smoothly with our company's varied use cases. I would rate the stability as an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability as an eight out of ten.

My experience with Nutanix technical support has been great Whenever I have contacted them directly, there have been no issues, and the support provided regarding mechanics has been very effective. I would rate the support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with various products from different vendors before Nutanix, including Cisco's UCS, IBM's Internet, and HPE servers. When choosing Nutanix over other solutions, the decision was based on the HCI features, especially for edge computing with one to three nodes.

The initial setup was incredibly quick and straightforward. It took just a matter of minutes to deploy and prepare Nutanix for usage.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Database Service as an eight out of ten.

We are using the Nutanix Era solution for managing our Microsoft SQL Server, which hosts a database that is approximately five terabytes in size. We also use Nutanix Era with a PostgreSQL server.

This product simplifies the deployment of multiple database engines, which is important to us because we are in an environment where we cannot rely only on a single database engine. We have a large demand for different databases including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Microsoft SQL Server. When we receive a request to deploy a database server, it's very easy for us and in that way, Nutanix Era is very useful.

We manage workloads for both PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server, and the performance is good. It is flexible in this regard because it simplifies both the deployment and administrations of workloads from these different databases.

As part of our operation in production, we have to be able to replicate our SQL database. It is approximately five terabytes in size. One of the ways that Nutanix Era has helped is that with a single click, we can clone the database in less than 30 minutes. This clone can easily then be pushed to our development environment. In general, it has reduced our deployment times.

We save a lot of data in our production database and using Nutanix has improved the performance. We are able to create different clones and work with them separately. Also, copying and synchronizing the logs from clones is something that is very easy to do. The impact of the boost in performance has been good and everybody is happy with it.

Using this solution has decreased the time that it takes us to clone or take a snapshot of a database. We can clone a large database in between 10 and 15 minutes, whereas a snapshot can be created in less than five minutes.

Nutanix has helped to reduce the time required to manage our database workloads, although it is difficult to estimate by how much because I did not use another solution for the same purpose. I can only say that overall, we have spent less time on database management, and it has helped to reduce off-hours work. Because everything is working fine, we do not need to work on the database during our off-hours.

As we have needed to spend less time concentrating on database management, it means that we have been able to spend more time on other IT services. We can work on other things, which leads to better overall performance for the IT department.

Nutanix has increased the team's ability to troubleshoot issues. Because it is easy to manage, we can quickly see whether there is a problem in our operations. When we find out which operation has the problem, we can resolve it using the information available in the log files. The use of the log makes it easy for the team to conduct the troubleshooting process, and this has a positive impact on our business because we can solve problems quickly. In turn, we can readily get back to other operations in the IT department or more generally in the organization.

The Time Machine is the most valuable feature for us. Using it means that we don't have to take regular snapshots, yet we are still able to restore the database quickly in the event of a problem.

We use Nutanix Era to perform in-place backup and restores of our databases. Taking about one hour to complete a restore, this product has reduced our overall downtime.

We are able to create multiple backups during the day without affecting our production workloads, which is important because we receive and manage sensitive data, including personal information, and when we have a problem we can easily restore the previous backup. The RTO is very short.

The creation of multiple daily backups is also good in terms of limiting the amount of possible data loss. This is good for our operations because when we do have a problem, we don't lose any data.

Managing databases can be done through a single pane of glass, which means that we don't have to make use of many interfaces to manage different database engines. From a single place, we are able to see what's happened in our environment.

The updating of the database engine is something that can be improved. For example, assume that we are using PostgreSQL out of the box, and it is version 10. If we want to migrate to version 11, 12, or 13, then it is not very easy to do that using Nutanix Era. This is an area that I would like to see improved because I have had many problems with it. In one situation, I was trying to deploy PostgreSQL version 12 and it was very difficult to achieve. If this were improved then it would be very good for the solution.

The problem is not tied directly to how long it takes to perform updates. Rather, it is not easy to do. Database engines differ in this regard because Microsoft SQL is easier to update than PostgreSQL. With PostgreSQL, for example, upgrading the software profile requires several steps. You have to manipulate too many things, create VMs, import them into Nutanix Era, and deploy a new cluster. If the process were automated by the software then that would save a lot of time.

We have been using Nutanix Era for two years.

The stability is very good and this has a good impact on the IT department. We can rely on this solution to create snapshots and clones, easily restore databases, and update software.

Scalability-wise, it is very good. We can upgrade easily and Nutanix is always creating new solutions to solve problems related to databases.

We have two users with administrative roles, although, for deployment and maintenance, one person is enough. It certainly doesn't take many people to maintain this solution. I am the IT Manager and I have a system admin, as well.

We have more than 10 database workloads and we are planning to add more databases in the future. With that, our usage of Nutanix Era will also increase.

The technical support is very good. When we have had to communicate with them, in perhaps less than an hour we've gotten a response and been able to resolve our problem.

In general, the support is able to address problems easily and solve them quickly, which is very good.

In addition to Nutanix Era, which we have to back up and restore our databases, we use Veeam as our general backup and restore solution.

The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment takes less than an hour.

When we deployed Era, we had everything saved inside of it. All of the software profiles and computer profiles are saved. You can either create a new one or modify an existing one. Everything is in place so all that we have to do is deploy to our server and after that, it is easy to deploy the database.

We used an integrator to assist with deployment. Their name is Exxoss and our experience with them was definitely good. They assisted us very well and everything works. It was a good experience.

Our return on investment comes from the fact that we don't need very many people to manage or administer the platform. Essentially, our costs have been reduced because we used to have different people working on different databases. For example, we have not had to spend extra on a person to administer our Microsoft SQL Server. One or two people can manage a large number of databases.

In terms of time savings, this has allowed the teams to concentrate on other subjects, rather than spend time troubleshooting and resolving other database-related issues.

Overall, our return on investment is very good.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We did not evaluate other options but this is because originally, we planned only to use a single database engine. We did not plan on using a solution to manage different database engines. Once we heard about Nutanix Era and how it worked, we were very happy and went straight to it.

My advice for anybody who is looking into using Nutanix Era is to go ahead and implement it. This is a good solution that will help the IT department to manage and troubleshoot the database workloads. It reduces the time needed by teams for troubleshooting, deploying a cluster, or deploying a single-node database. It makes life easy for database management and it is one that you can rely on.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Nutanix Era is that it makes the job of our IT staff very easy.

In summary, this is a very good product but perfection does not exist, so there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use cases for our clients are storage and data management.

What I like about this solution is that it's more reliable compared to other solutions.

The downside of this solution is that it's more expensive than its competitors. 

The other thing is that the scalability part of this solution should be improved.

I have been working with this solution for about four years.

I would rate the scalability of this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the technical support of this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Neutral

My impression is that the initial setup process is a bit complicated but manageable. It's a good product and it's easy to manage. The deployment time depends on the amount of data the client is gonna be storing. 

Usually, it will take one or two people to carry out the deployment.

I would rate this setup process an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

My impression is that this solution is really expensive. The licensing is based on a yearly basis since a monthly basis is hard to maintain.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one o 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.