We use Nutanix Unified Storage for virtualization with Acropolis and have approximately 120 servers on Nutanix.
Controller at Cooperativa Santa Clara
We replaced our entire infrastructure with the solution, greatly reducing data center space and consumption
Pros and Cons
- "We have virtually zero downtime with Nutanix. It updates itself, and we can easily move machines from one cluster to another."
- "While Unified Storage has evolved a lot over time, its database handling needs to improve a little. There could be an improvement in terms of costs. It's a little expensive for Brazil but still delivers a lot of performance."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
We replaced our entire infrastructure with Nutanix, greatly reducing data center space and consumption, which has helped the company. Everything we have today runs on top of Nutanix.
Unified Storage has reduced the number of storage nodes needed by about 60 percent. We had nearly two racks in the data center, and now we have less than half a rack. It has helped us put fewer resources into data center expansion, and by reducing them, we can put more computing power in the same space.
What is most valuable?
We have virtually zero downtime with Nutanix. It updates itself, and we can easily move machines from one cluster to another. Through its hyperconvergence, Nutanix performs comparably to traditional hardware or better.
I think that recently, about two years ago I imagine, Nutanix added a better feature on the platform and now it competes with the best on the market. I think the add-on feature they used is very good.
What needs improvement?
While Unified Storage has evolved a lot over time, its database handling needs to improve a little. There could be an improvement in terms of costs. It's a little expensive for Brazil but still delivers a lot of performance.
Buyer's Guide
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
September 2025

Learn what your peers think about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Nutanix Unified Storage for eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Nutanix Unified Storage is highly stable. We haven’t had any issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Over time, Unified Storage's versions changed, and its capacity also increased a lot. Eventually, you also need to upgrade the hardware version, but it is highly scalable and easy.
How are customer service and support?
I rate Nutanix nine out of 10 for support. Nutanix support is one of the best on the market. They respond quickly, and the technicians are knowledgeable and professional.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
It's easy and transparent to deploy servers on Nutanix. We started with some servers to test. Once we saw there were no major problems and the installation was quick, we implemented the entire load..
What about the implementation team?
We use a consultancy from Brazil called Tech Channel, which supports us to this day. We are here at the event with them.
What was our ROI?
The biggest benefits are performance, security of use, and a single management platform.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Nutanix's licensing model isn't too difficult, but the price is high for Brazil, and the software renewal is considerable.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Nutanix nine out of 10. It is extraordinary, and the price is okay.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Systems Engineer at ITIC
Unrivaled customer service and does everything better than its competitors
Pros and Cons
- "For somebody like me who grew up building what others call three-tier and I call traditional architecture, the valuable thing is that you can now buy it. You can have new deployments and infrastructure up and running with very little infrastructure behind it."
- "The biggest thing for me, which is a pet peeve of mine, is the integration with the hardware platforms."
What is our primary use case?
Everybody calls it three-tier, but we came from traditional Big Iron, so app hosting was on clustered Unix or Linux systems. It was nothing to have SAN, NAS, iSCSI, and all kinds of disparate storage in the environment. When we did a run-off of HCI products, we did VxRail, HyperFlex, and Nutanix. It was only a benefit to realize that there was a storage element that we did not account for.
I was trying to beat out having to have all these products to do VMware. In the long run, there was this benefit where we started to think about what other things we could do now that we had this storage. There were files, objects, or whatever you wanted to turn on, so to me, it was a huge win for no money. It was just available. You just took advantage of it when you needed to.
How has it helped my organization?
We scaled out the second or third cluster in anticipation of removing EMC CLARiiON products at the time, which then became Dell EMC CLARiiON products. We scaled out a ten-node cluster. It had 300 or 400 terabytes in it, so we were able to migrate from traditional SAN-based infrastructure. I got rid of the SAN-based infrastructure. I got rid of the refrigerator full of disks and power cooling. We did not have only storage; we could also run compute on it, and everything runs local. We did some storage-centric nodes for a while. They were fun, but they were just large disk arrays that presented themselves inside the cluster. I figured that it was easier to have FAT nodes with enough storage in them to take advantage of both compute and memory versus having any sort of storage-centric nodes, but you could not run any workloads on them. It was a nice Flex environment where you could move stuff into a cluster because it has a ton of storage, but when you tried to uplift it or were close to it, you discovered that some of these nodes do have limitations. In the long run, it was better to have all the compute nodes with memory storage and an all-in-one compute platform for our use cases. Now that disks are fast and everything like that, it does not hurt in the long run. There is no downside.
In the long run, there was money savings. In simple terms, you had to continue either to pay maintenance for the SAN infrastructure and storage environment and then present that to physical nodes that just get shared out when all of that is rolled into one bottle of wine. Imagine taking two-thirds of your infrastructure away with no impact. It is a no-brainer that you are going to save a ton of money. In the long run, you did not have to convince your customer. It would probably be termed as reinvesting into this product. Do not just buy one and consider it done. Start to do the evolution—no more stack delivery, which is also a benefit. You do not have to forklift anything in. Just buy a few nodes every year. It is easy. It is a no-brainer. It saves tons of money.
When it comes to latency or throughput improvements, most of our infrastructure runs on what you would consider just traditional factors. If we had a database or if people had hosted apps, it all ran in the local environment. We rarely separated the infrastructure where we had a database server living somewhere in the environment, and then we had the front-end web servers living somewhere else. A lot of times, they were just combined, but with the all-flash capabilities that Nutanix has in Unified Storage, if you want to move workloads in or tier it, there are no issues. Nutanix has solved all of the problems. I never experienced any issues. I never heard any complaints. No one ever came to me. We have moved things to it. It is hard to get compliments when you are the cloud for your customer, but very frequently, you get asked if something changed. If you ask them why they're asking, they say. "It is a little faster." When it works a little faster, I pat myself on the back. We have been using it significantly, and we never ran into any problems.
In terms of a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node, by being able to be clustered in the same process, we get some benefits from it as compared to traditional tiering. However, at least in my world, as soon as you make some savings, someone will take advantage of it. There might have been some savings, but I would not know. As soon as there is some space to be had, somebody needs space. The customers like it because any benefits that I somehow garner out of the infrastructure, or as I add, they win. If they give me money and I buy something, they instantly see a benefit. They never argue when I say that it is the time to buy. Nutranix MAKES it easier. It is not me. I just do the implementation.
What is most valuable?
For somebody like me who grew up building what others call three-tier and I call traditional architecture, the valuable thing is that you can now buy it. You can have new deployments and infrastructure up and running with very little infrastructure behind it. If you have networking and you buy the cluster, you are done. The flexibility it provides with growth is a no-brainer. It could be node-based or cluster-based. We have multiple clusters. We DR to different sites. We have now bought specific clusters for high-end compute for data analytics and data lakes. There is nothing that it cannot do, and it does everything better than ITS COMPETITORS.
What needs improvement?
A pet peeve of mine is the integration with the hardware platforms. Each one of them presents its own use case. They have let Cisco on stage and they are bragging about it. Generally, when you buy UCS products, they want you to have FIs. FIs are nothing more than just fancy and smarter switches with a GUI. Now that they are partners with each other, you get LCM. LCM did not exist for UCS before. HPE is similar, but the integration points could be made better.
At the surface level, they have done the handshake, and all those are wins. We are able to pick the platform of our choice and deploy it with the confidence that Nutanix is going to back it, but after having used almost all of the products that they have, except for Lenovo and Dell, I would still go with Supermicro. I would still go with the x nodes all day long. The flexibility is there. We only go to one vendor when something breaks. It just makes life easier. There is no short side to it. It is not deficient in some way based on the other ones. They are all equal, and there is more flexibility at a different price point. I don't integrate with extra partners and have to deal with whatever they have. In the long run, it would be just the devil in the details when it comes to hardware.
For how long have I used the solution?
It was the second cluster we wanted. We started using it in 2017 or 2018.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service from my partner and from Nutanix directly is unrivaled. At Nutanix NEXT 2024, somebody was on stage saying that he treats Nutanix as a part of his business, and that is probably the most apt way of phrasing it. I implement it. I see it as an extension of my knowledge or support, so I get to call people and people show up. I do not call hotlines and put in tickets. It is like having two extra guys on your staff that you do not pay for.
I would rate them a ten out of ten. If possible, I would even rate them an eleven. There is not one bad instance that I can think of.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used other products, but it would have been ad hoc.
How was the initial setup?
It is all on-prem. Its initial deployment was pretty straightforward. We had deployed a few clusters before, so it was not a big deal to get the cluster up, but it was interesting to learn the lessons. You think you have all the storage and you can outsmart the unified storage environment by creating a FAT VM, and then I will give it a bunch of storage space. What you realize is that you do not get the benefits of unified storage without using unified storage. Just because you have storage does not mean that it works the way it is supposed to. You learn those lessons. You think that you can outsmart these guys and realize that you cannot. In the long run, it was easy. Once the cluster was up and running, it was just making sure our licenses and other factors were in place.
It is very intuitive. There is a wizard guide for creating shares, objects, etc. It is pretty easy.
What was our ROI?
The biggest return on investment is that it frees up revenue and the data center space cost of dealing with power, cooling, etc because now I can just put more Nutanix in there when needed. It never outgrows itself. As these nodes get denser and smarter, racks stay the same. When I scale out, I never need ten more racks of equipment. I can just fill out some older nodes, and they are now denser, so I stay in the same footprint. That to me is the biggest benefit.
What other advice do I have?
We are not using Nutanix Data Lens. It is probably something I should do.
We are not using much to protect unstructured data in our organization. Most of the infrastructure data that we get is in huge datasets. We store that on larger storage platforms that are designed specifically to hold petabytes of data and then it is read into Nutanix clusters for analytic purposes. I do not have to deal with it. I am pulling from somebody else who hosts huge data frames.
I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
September 2025

Learn what your peers think about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Infrastructure Director at Treasure island
Cost-effective, has low latency, and good stability
Pros and Cons
- "Redundancy and availability are valuable. We have several nodes, so it stays up, and there is redundancy. Then there is availability."
- "There should be more information. If it gets used more by more people, they will have a bigger community to share ideas. It is still kind of newer. It is not as big as Dell and other companies."
What is our primary use case?
We use it for our application servers. We have company applications for the casino, hotel, and food and beverage.
How has it helped my organization?
The cost has been the main benefit. It is a cheaper cost than what we used to use, which was VMware and Dell. Now it is cheaper in terms of hardware and licensing, and that has helped financially. It being up and available helps too.
The throughput is really good, and it has low latency. I would describe it as good on speed and good on not being latent. We have not had any problems with data-intensive workloads.
Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage will eventually result in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. We are still migrating, so I cannot say that it has done that yet, but it appears that it will. We are still in the process of putting it in. Overall, it would be nice to reduce by 50%.
What is most valuable?
Redundancy and availability are valuable. We have several nodes, so it stays up, and there is redundancy. Then there is availability. We have all those nodes, so it is always on 24/7.
What needs improvement?
There should be more information. If it gets used more by more people, they will have a bigger community to share ideas. It is still kind of newer. It is not as big as Dell and other companies. It is still newer. The older it gets, the better it will get.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for about one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is pretty stable. We have not had any outages, so it has been stable so far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is probably pretty good. I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability. It seems that we can scale up pretty large if we want to.
We only have one main data center, but we are going to have a newer data center in the next year, and we are going to use it there too.
How are customer service and support?
It can be slightly improved, but mostly, it is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using VMware and Dell. We switched mostly because of the cost. VMware increased the cost by 110%, so it was not economical to have anymore, whereas with Nutanix, once you buy the hardware, the hypervisor is included for free, so it is a better deal.
How was the initial setup?
It is on-prem. Everything is on-prem.
Its deployment was easy. The tenants' move was pretty seamless. It was not necessarily a hard thing to do to migrate over. Now we were worried about the more intensive servers and databases and whatnot that may potentially have an effect on our company, but for all the smaller applications that are not as revenue-generating, they have been good so far.
In terms of the implementation strategy, we analyzed and defined levels of how critical and revenue-generating the applications were. We first did everything that was not supercritical, such as a very small database and whatnot, and then started to increase from there.
What about the implementation team?
We use Nutanix Consulting, not a third party.
What was our ROI?
The ROI is in terms of the yearly cost or maintenance cost.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated other solutions a little bit. We were not going to go to Citrix or anything else, so it was only Nutanix. That was our only option.
What other advice do I have?
We use NetApp MetroCluster to protect unstructured data in our organization. It has its own set of ransomware security. I do not have the exact details about it, but NetApp products have some ransomware capability to detect environments. These tools are very important for our organization. In our industry, there are lots of ransomware attacks, and they happen to all our competitors. That is why they are super important.
I would rate it an eight out of ten. It seems very good, but it needs to get slightly better.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
It supervisor infrastructure at Santa Clara
Reduced the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of the solution are replication and backup and our company needs a tool to help us with disaster recovery and the security of our data."
- "Some of the new features in the tool cannot be used with just one click, as was possible in the past."
What is our primary use case?
My company started off without Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor initially. After three years we migrated to Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor and started to increase it in our company's environment with other clusters during the designing phase.
How has it helped my organization?
The product has been helpful for my company because we deal with big projects in the data center infrastructure, and we see that with Nutanix Unified Storage, we can improve and get better results for the company.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution are replication and backup and our company needs a tool to help us with disaster recovery and the security of our data.
What needs improvement?
Some of the new features in the tool cannot be used with just one click, as was possible in the past. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.
The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads, such as AI or data analytics, is better in the present compared to the past. In the past, my company faced some small problems with the latency part, but nowadays, it works very well.
In terms of the use of detecting and blocking ransomware threats, I would say that my company applies some configurations to all the data so that the other people in the environment involved in the administration part can't delete them. If someone tries to attack and delete some data, then my company has a feature in the tool to enable the protection of data so that no one can delete any data.
Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. In the past, my company had more servers and appliances, but nowadays, we have reduced the number of appliances in the data center by around six percent. The reduction in storage nodes has affected our company's operation and business in terms of the cost of energy, environment, administration, and contracts for continuing the business in the data center.
In terms of the tools used to protect unstructured data, my company replicates the environment in one data center to another and one Nutanix cluster to another Nutanix cluster.
It is very important to use the data protection features offered by Nutanix in our company because we can have another point of data in a separate cluster of Nutanix.
My company analyzed a traditional architecture, but we saw a better solution in Nutanix because it is small, and we can run the same appliance everywhere.
The new solutions that users have been seeing for the past one or two years don't have features available in one click like they were in the past, but they do work, though it is not as easy as it was in the past.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution. My company did not have to stop anything in our environment due to any problem associated with Nutanix Unified Storage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
During the eight years that we have had the product in our company, we haven't seen any problems during the three times we used the tool's scalability feature in the environment. During some moments, we were able to improve the same clusters. At times, our company had to buy or order new clusters, but every cluster is actually used for replication, and it has never been a problem.
How are customer service and support?
During the eight years my company has used the product, I would say that we have had some experience with the tool's support team. Whenever my company requires help with the product, we have received good support. I rate the support team a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In the past, my company used to use some other solutions for replication purposes, but it was not a native solution of the appliances used. My company used to use another solution like a backup solution, which was a tool to restore a queue manager from IBM.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase was easy, especially because my company was planning to move some small workloads on it to see how it works and then continue with the other biggest work.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
What about the implementation team?
My company sought help from a partner company in Brazil named TechChannel to help our organization with the deployment.
What was our ROI?
The security of the data and replication are areas where I see an ROI from the use of the solution. I think the best ROI is in terms of security since we can save the data in other appliances.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Manager of Server and Storage Infrastructure at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has a simplified DR failover and the ability to deploy file servers vertically or horizontally
Pros and Cons
- "Nutanix Unified Storage does a very good job of unifying our organization's block, file, and object storage. It puts it all in one place. From one platform, we can deploy S3-type buckets. We can provide iSCSI-level block storage if we need to. It does a great job with home folders and departmental shares, which is what we mostly use Nutanix Unified Storage for."
- "The current hardware is not as dense as it could be. In our deployment, we have 2 PB per site, and we have to have 24 nodes. That's a lot of cabling and network ports that we use up. More dense nodes would be better."
What is our primary use case?
Nutanix Unified Storage will mostly be used for home folders and departmental shares. We do a lot of research, and we use this solution for research storage. There are several instruments that generate a lot of data, and we needed a place to store this data during analysis. We needed long-term storage as well.
Our previous system was a large lake of storage, and it worked well for shares and home folders. One of the things the researchers wanted to do once the file sets were placed was to analyze the data. We mounted those volumes on a server to be analyzed, and it wasn't performing enough. It couldn't keep up with it. With Nutanix Unified Storage, however, we can tailor different file servers for different workloads.
How has it helped my organization?
Nutanix Unified Storage will allow us to be more agile when deploying storage for the different use cases that we need. Also, with DR, the failover and failback between the two clusters are very simple in Nutanix Unified Storage compared to most solutions. You click, answer a question, and let it go. In other systems, you have to do a lot of reconfiguring and synchronization, which can take hours or days depending on the length of time that you need to fail back from. However, with Nutanix Unified Storage it's very simple. It makes life a lot easier for us.
What is most valuable?
One of the things that really sold us on Nutanix Unified Storage was File Analytics and Data Lens. We could always tell how much storage we were using, how many files we had, and even the age of the files, but we could never get a good handle on who was doing what with them. This has been a huge issue for us. For example, if someone moved a folder, we would not be able to tell who did it. We did not have a good way of auditing what was going on with the systems. This could become an issue in a ransomware attack. It would make it more difficult to figure out when we got infected and where we need to roll back to in order to recover. Nutanix File Analytics and Data Lens give us that information. In addition, Data Lens has a mechanism built in to prevent a ransomware attack from getting a foothold on the system. It can shut it down before it does a lot of damage.
Nutanix Unified Storage does a very good job of unifying our organization's block, file, and object storage. It puts it all in one place. From one platform, we can deploy S3-type buckets. We can provide iSCSI-level block storage if we need to. It does a great job with home folders and departmental shares, which is what we mostly use Nutanix Unified Storage for.
We can manage and run its storage from any location. Nutanix Unified Storage does a really good job of that, especially with the newest version of Files, 4.3. You can run it on NC2. That opens up a whole new possibility for us down the road when it comes time to do a refresh on the hardware. As our data centers age, it also gives us another option. We would have to decide whether we want to spend millions of dollars updating our data centers or looking at a cloud-based solution. NC2 provides a lot of advantages over just a standard native AWS or Azure deployment.
As part of our organization's ransomware protection strategy, our security department has a number of ransomware appliances that do scanning. We have antivirus running on the various shares and workstations. What's really exciting for us with Nutanix Unified Storage is that we get another tool to help prevent a ransomware attack. In case something gets through the security's appliances or something slides in through the back door, we have an additional tool to look for that ransomware attack and recover from it quickly.
Other than testing Nutanix Data Lens, we haven't gotten into it yet. However, it looks very promising. We're very excited about it, and so is our security team.
In terms of removing silos in our organization, Nutanix Unified Storage does a good job. My team manages the virtual infrastructure, and that was one of the reasons why we went with Nutanix Unified Storage over some of the other competitors. We're familiar with Nutanix and the platform. It's easy to deal with, and it makes managing a large system with a small number of employees a lot easier.
What needs improvement?
The current hardware is not as dense as it could be. In our deployment, we have 2 PB per site, and we have to have 24 nodes. That's a lot of cabling and network ports that we use up. More dense nodes would be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
We tested Nutanix Unified Storage for a couple of months before we purchased it. Last week, we spun up the clusters, and we're starting to deploy the file servers in the shares right now. We're in the very early stages of deployment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution scales pretty well. Once it gets denser nodes, it'll scale better. There are options when you hit limits, especially using objects. You can scale that out, and they have excellent tiering options as well. I'm pleased with it.
How are customer service and support?
Nutanix's technical support is excellent. That was one of the drivers in picking Nutanix. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used a large lake of storage, and it did well for us. However, as technology moved on, we found that it wasn't meeting all of our needs. Nutanix Unified Storage gives us more flexibility to provide better solutions for our users. We evaluated other solutions and went with Nutanix Unified Storage because of the analytics that it provides and Data Lens. The simplified DR failover was a big factor as well.
With Nutanix Unified Storage, you can deploy file servers either vertically or horizontally. For a large departmental share, we can size it, scale it out, and have a large number of servers so that you can have thousands of users on it. If we're doing an export or a share that's going to run on an analysis server and more speed is needed, we can scale vertically and add more CPUs to add more memory to the file server. This is something we couldn't do with our previous system.
How was the initial setup?
Once we had Nutanix Unified Storage racked, stacked, and everything cabled up, the actual deployment went very smoothly. We deployed 24-node clusters in about three days. We were ready to start building file servers and sharing on them. I was really pleased with how well it went.
What about the implementation team?
Our partner, Choice Solutions, helped us with the deployment.
What was our ROI?
At this point, it's too early to tell, but I think we will see an ROI. We will probably see a reduction in support costs. We will be able to provide better resources for our researchers, which is the main driver. They're the primary users of the storage.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for.
What other advice do I have?
My advice, if you're looking into Nutanix Unified Storage, is to definitely do the test drives. Do the research, and compare Nutanix Unified Storage with some others. Look at File Analytics and Data Lens, and compare how well DR works. Take a look at the various options that Nutanix Unified Storage provides and compare them to those offered by other solutions.
I haven't had enough time to really get a good feel for it, but from what I've seen so far, I'm pleased with Nutanix Unified Storage. Thus, I would rate it a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Director of Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The remote availability features are great and they have great technical support
Pros and Cons
- "Nutanix Unified Storage is easy to use. New employees are able to come up to speed fairly quickly with regard to the day-to-day administration processes."
- "With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees."
What is our primary use case?
We use Nutanix Unified Storage for our day-to-day operations in relation to production clusters.
We had a brand new build for our data center and implemented the solution there. We were not trying to solve a specific problem but liked the product and its features.
We have one block with four nodes in it, but our use case for our cluster is different because we run our own private cloud. We don't have traditional offices and have more web servers. We don't have file server services. Thus, we are not fully utilizing Nutanix Unified Storage for unifying our organization’s block, file, and object storage.
We use a solution with snapshots as part of our ransomware protection strategy. For backups, we use HYCU with different backup schedules and snapshots. We're migrating over to Veeam right now as well. If we had a ransomware-type scenario or a situation where the servers were encrypted and there was a DR situation, we'd rely on our solution to go back in time on snapshots until we found a recovery point. We'd then restore from there.
What is most valuable?
Nutanix Unified Storage is easy to use. New employees are able to come up to speed fairly quickly with regard to the day-to-day administration processes.
Because Nutanix is web-based, I can be in Illinois and check on the data center in Michigan. If we have a problem that one of my engineers can't solve, then they can call me, and I can take a look at it. The remote availability features are great.
I used Nutanix Data Lens a little bit, but my security engineer has been playing more with it. He has not said anything bad about it.
Nutanix Unified Storage helped remove siloes in our organization. IT doesn't have to operate as it did 10 years ago, where you had a team dedicated just to storage, one team that was just hardware, or one dedicated to certain applications. With Nutanix, everybody learned all the different ins and outs. We're bringing on a whole new data center and will be doing replication between the clusters and between the data centers. Everyone has come up to speed pretty quickly, and I don't have to pigeonhole a person. Everyone can jump from console to console and learn it fairly quickly.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using this solution for two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I'd the give solution's stability a ten out of ten. It's never been down.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would give Nutanix Unified Storage a ten out of ten for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support has been excellent, and I'd give them a ten out of ten. Anytime we've got questions, someone will get us an answer fairly quickly.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment was straightforward and only took a couple of hours.
What about the implementation team?
We hired Nutanix professional services to handle the deployment, and they trained us on it after the fact. They have always provided excellent service.
What was our ROI?
We have definitely seen an ROI in terms of uptime and the quality of the software. If we have issues, we reach out to support, and they respond quickly. We'll have a response within 30 minutes, and that is worth more than anything else. Our account reps and resell vendors have been great too.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price.
What other advice do I have?
Nutanix Unified Storage fills a need, and it definitely works well within the Nutanix stack. It's not a waste of money. I would rate it ten out of ten and recommend it.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
IT Operations at a engineering company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Single-vendor approach simplifies our storage operations and management
Pros and Cons
- "The most important point is the simplicity of the API integration. We can leverage the API integrations and connect our hybrid-cloud network environment with Nutanix's cloud storage."
- "I would like to see the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. That could definitely be a major breakthrough in providing a unified, seamless experience for end-users. It could reduce costs as well as human effort."
What is our primary use case?
We are using Unified Storage for our hybrid cloud connectivity as well as virtual machine deployment and migrations. We use it to create different tiers where we store our important data, for our data classification policy. Apart from that, we are using it for our production SAP HANA platform. All our use cases are related to our field which is energy and utilities.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution has definitely improved things a lot for us. Earlier, we were using legacy infrastructure with a heterogeneous environment with storage platforms from different providers. We had to approach each vendor for every type of work. But after migrating to Nutanix Unified Storage, everything has been streamlined and simplified, through the single-vendor approach. We are able to accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migration.
And with the advanced features—the data protection, data tiering, et cetera—we have been able to get rid of data silos.
What is most valuable?
The features that are most important to us are related to integration with the cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, although it supports Google Cloud as well. But the most important point is the simplicity of the API integration. We can leverage the API integrations and connect our hybrid-cloud network environment with Nutanix's cloud storage.
We also use Nutanix Data Lens to boot our virtual machines and to create zoning.
In addition, we can manage and run the storage from any location. The solution gives us the capability to operate the complete unified platform from the cloud. We can create the logical chunks in the storage, and we can map the different types of pools to any resource, residing in any environment, irrespective of location.
And for managing unstructured data, like audio, video, and images, we create different types of tiering or pools in Unified Storage. On the basis of those pools, the data is classified and we use the classifications to connect the storage pools to their respective endpoints.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. That could definitely be a major breakthrough in providing a unified, seamless experience for end-users. It could reduce costs as well as human effort.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for about three and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is perfect. We haven't faced any high-priority or critical issues where the storage platform has been degraded or users are facing difficulties. We are satisfied with the stability and code releases.
In terms of resiliency, with high availability and redundancy, Unified Storage works on a cluster model. With the help of this solution, everything has gone well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
An important point is that this storage is scalable on demand. It's very elastic. We can add and remove clusters without any downtime. We haven't faced any challenges with the flexibility or scalability. We have completed seamless integrations with third-party tools, including monitoring tools.
We have it deployed across multiple locations and have more than 10,000 end-users.
How are customer service and support?
We get tremendous technical support from the Nutanix team, 24/7.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we used traditional, legacy storage solutions provided by different vendors, including CommVault and Dell. There were problems because we worked with a very heterogeneous network. We were facing a lot of complexities in terms of compliance and defining processes because we had different types of storage devices in our environment.
We found that Nutanix Unified Storage has a complete and rich set of features that can support a cloud-native platform as well as all the workloads that we operate on different cloud platforms. In addition, it's a very cost-effective and stable solution and includes an extensive set of security features for data protection.
After moving to Unified Storage, we got rid of all those complexities. Everything is simplified. We have a single-vendor approach for all of our storage.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved in the full deployment, including migration, implementation, and operations. The initial deployment was a very straightforward process. We followed the complete life cycle approach suggested by the vendor. With that approach, all the phases went well.
Maintenance of the solution includes patching, checking the efficiency of storage, and checking alerts. These are part of the day-to-day operations. We have about 10 people involved in the maintenance.
What about the implementation team?
We worked directly with the vendor.
What was our ROI?
We have seen return on investment over the last three years and we are quite satisfied with it.
The solution has reduced our operational, capital, and licensing costs. It has also reduced the human effort and our headcount in managing the operations compared to our old storage models.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Nutanix's pricing is definitely much better when compared to other storage providers. That was one of the main reasons we switched to this platform.
To anyone who is concerned about the price, I would say that Nutanix is very robust, stable, and unified, with a complete set of advanced features. If you look at the features, Nutanix has the upper hand when compared to other vendors.
The licensing model is very easy with Unified Storage and our operational cost has been reduced drastically.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated another product from a similar vendor whose storage platforms we were already using. The main differences were the cost, simplicity, ease of management, and having a single pane of glass dashboard for each module. The seamless integration and simplified licensing model were also important.
Nutanix also provides very robust security. The encryption is perfect. The data is fully encrypted with an advanced set of encryption keys and policies. We are very satisfied with the encryption and data protection provided by the solution.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to organizations that are planning to migrate to a unified storage solution is to go with Nutanix Unified Storage as this is the most trusted and stable platform I have ever seen.
We haven't had any challenges using the solution. There have been no problems with the implementation, integration, or in terms of operations. That is also true for operational support, technical support, patch management, and license management.
We are also using Nutanix clusters for our traditional workloads and Prism Element and Prism Central. We are using them because they are a part of hyper-converged technologies and save us a lot of costs. These clusters have unified storage, network, and compute, providing an integrated platform that simplifies management.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Section Manager for Platform Team at Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission
Removed siloes from our organization’s storage and the life cycle manager help to consolidate different vendors
Pros and Cons
- "The life cycle managers of the PCMs are very impressive, and I like them. They make our lives easy when managing patches and security updates when they come in. A life cycle manager helps to consolidate different vendors."
- "Security is an area for improvement. When there are vulnerabilities, there needs to be a faster approval process. The solution needs to automatically target the vulnerabilities and not waste too much time."
What is our primary use case?
We run our VMs on Nutanix Unified Storage. We were trying to reduce the data center footprint and shrink the bandwidths on the number of storage units that we were using. We also wanted to avoid having to deal with different vendors when there is an issue. We have a 700 TB environment.
We use Varonis for ransomware protection. It's very expensive, but it does a very good job. Varonis monitors file pattern changes and maintains well-known dictionary sets.
What is most valuable?
The life cycle managers of the PCMs are very impressive, and I like them. They make our lives easy when managing patches and security updates when they come in. A life cycle manager helps to consolidate different vendors.
Also, because the management is simplified, I can depend on one or two people. We are able to reduce contractors and FTEs. We used to be a team of more than ten people, and now we are a team of six. As such, we are able to save about $400,000 a year.
We have to run mandatory disaster recovery processes every year. It's very important that Nutanix Unified Storage is able to manage and run our storage from any location.
Nutanix Unified Storage removed siloes from our organization’s storage.
What needs improvement?
Security is an area for improvement. When there are vulnerabilities, there needs to be a faster approval process. The solution needs to automatically target the vulnerabilities and not waste too much time.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been Nutanix customers for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
NUS's stability is very good.
How are customer service and support?
Nutanix's technical support is good. They go the extra mile to help us out with health checks as well. Therefore, I would give them a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
NUS's initial setup was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
Our partner, CAS Severn, helped us with the initial deployment process.
What was our ROI?
I believe that we have seen an ROI.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend trying Nutanix Unified Storage. I rate it a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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Updated: September 2025
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