One feature that is very good is the backup and validation process that's built into Era. It saves a lot of time and gives you some kind of assurance that when you actually pull a backup, it is done correctly and you will be able to restore it. In other backup systems, because they are not database-aware, that validation process is not as easy because you have to actually restore the backup to see that it worked. With Era, it actually validates on the fly so you know you'll be able to restore.

The deployment process is a lot easier, due to the fact that with Era you can actually script a deployment. If you have a lot of deployments of the same type, say for instance you have a user request coming in to say they need a basic database schema, you can just run that as a deploy script and it automatically sets up everything. It takes about five minutes and the users have access to their database. In the past, we had to go through a whole setup and deployment process, which for us, took about half a day. That's a lot of time that we save.

Setting up a development test and production environment is quite easy and it saves a lot of storage because the dev and test databases are non-data clones of production, where only the changes are saved. For example, if you have a two-terabyte production database then it saves a lot of space because you don't have to have a two-terabyte test database as well.

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.

We have an enterprise-level backup product that we're required to use, so we don't rely on Era's version. But occasionally that other system goes down and I wouldn't have any automated backups except for what I have with Era. For us, it's a great fallback, but for other companies, it could be an awesome first-line backup. It's very elegant the way they designed it. It's quick and it doesn't take up nearly as much storage space as traditional backups. It would definitely help to save on tier-one storage. For other companies, that would be a big selling feature.

When it comes to performance and flexibility with Oracle workloads, it's excellent.

The patching is the most valuable feature. We spent a lot of time and effort on the patching of our SQL instances after hours. With Nutanix Era, you can schedule and automate them during your normal operational hours (during the day). You schedule all the patching, then everything happens automatically with minor tickets from the engineer. So, our patching, which took four hours, went down to an hour for the engineer. This is much better for us from a return on investment perspective.

From an always-on availability perspective, it has simplified the process quite extensively. While this is not such an important feature for us, it has simplified things as a centralized access point to all our instances.

With all the advanced logging that takes place within Nutanix Era, it definitely has increased the visibility of our team into the actual processes which are running, what are being consumed, long-running queries, etc. Within Nutanix Era, it is a simple view.

The most valuable feature in Nutanix Era is that the clients can use it for automatization as well as virtualization.  

There is no extra charge for other things. There is a scaled-down deployment. They get only the features that the client is issued.  

Overall, the solution is very good. It's easy to use and simple to handle many actions, such as VM cloning, testing, and prediction.

It's a vast solution, so it depends on what the customer needs. We provide the Kubernetes cluster, and if you want a particular server, we provide the files. We use Karbon, Era, AHV and Prisim Central. We are also now in the process of testing out the VDI feature as well.