I think that the key points to consider are: security, performance, and CAPEX vs OPEX
Security: Having HCI on-premise allows you to keep your current security policies. For some customers having sensitive data on the cloud is not even an option due to their policies. If you go to the cloud you must remember that you are responsible for the security of your data, not the cloud service provider and new policy schemes may be needed.
Performance: You have to evaluate if the cloud provide the bandwidth, throughput, and availability that your operation requires vs. on-premise.
CAPEX vs OPEX: Even though there are some schemes that allow you to have HCI on-premise as EaaS (Everything as a Service like HPE GreenLake) most of the customers own their HCI infrastructure so depending on your expenditure convenience you will favor one or the other.
Infrastrucutre Solutions Architect-Hybrid IT at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
User
2020-05-27T08:29:00Z
May 27, 2020
Cloud v HCI
In essence, Cloud 1st Strategy or whether to use Hyperconvergence Solutions does depend on the Customer Business Drivers moving forwards to the future, and then more importantly, analysis of the Applications, Data, and the Dependencies, so we can truly analyse :-
1. What Apps and Data can move to the Cloud – Including a true Analysis of Security and Data Sovereignty
2. What percentage of the Infrastructure needs to be On-Premise, across Multiple Sites, incorporating Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance
* There will be Data that is NOT suitable for Cloud Transition
So, for Apps and Data that conform to a NON-Cloud Strategy, I;e, they run On-Premise/Multi-Site/COLO, platforms such as HCI really make their mark around :-
1. Consolidation of footprint – Power/Cooling/Networking and Compute/Networking/Storage into a Node format which forms part of the HCI Cluster. Nodes can be added and scaled to grow the Cluster to keep pace with the Customer Business Needs. This is the case of SimpliVity, where INTEL XEON or AMD CPU Options/Nodes are deployed, a Cluster is formed to provide the HCI element, and the Cluster is built from the SimpliVity Nodes, and scaled to add on-demand growth
2. dHCI Technology takes this further by allowing Industry Leading commodity Servers to be used for the Compute Element, Networking products from the HPE Aruba/Mellanox/Cisco vendors to form the iSCSI element of the build, and finally high performance Storage, such as the HPE Nimble AF/HF Platforms to offer the Storage Tier.
* This type of HCI, allows the Customer to independently scale Compute to meet business needs, or even, scale the Storage without having to increase or change Compute. dHCI offers true Flexibility/Agility/Scalability
Finally, HCI Platforms such as the dHCI Technologies, have integration into HPE Cloud Volumes/AWS/Azure, so we can truly leverage Apps and Data requirements across On-Premise and Cloud
There are several benefits of both Cloud and HCI that can be leveraged to the advantage of the feature rich HCI stack user hybrid style. The first is that many applications have not been designed for the cloud and require an on premise stack that can save data in the cloud and offer the same simplicity as cloud operations. If you select an HCI vendor that supports all of the Hypervisors and all of the clouds you can make your applications leverage each technology to your best advantage and lower OPEX costs by up to 60% without rewriting your applications to be cloud friendly. You can also simplify the entire stack and enjoy 5 microsecond latency and not make storage API calls that leave the kernel and introduce even more latency while they access storage from SAN and NAS devices. You can also serve up applications using FRAME technology with this stack that allows you to deploy solutions for remote workers in minutes that are fully secure. AOS offers full encryption and FIPS level 140-2 and better security built into the HCI stack right out the box, no need to go bolting on complex Frankenstein solutions like NSX that require several residents with deep knowledge of 8 different VMware stacks to operate the whole enchilada which increases your OPEX costs dramatically. AOS based HCI eliminates separate SAN, NAS and Object store silo's, it also eliminates system security and server with virtualization silo's and condenses them into one stack, so simple 8 year old children can administer it in a few mouse clicks. Mature HCI based also offers BC/DR benefits that will allow you to use the cloud for what the cloud os good at, BC/DR. Mature HCI vendors also offer their entire HCI stack for AWS and Azure so that you can drag Virtual machines from on prem to the cloud seamlessly. The San Jose based HCI vendor that does this is 4 years ahead of its competition (Dell-EMC) who only work with one Hypervisor while they work with any Hypervisor and all the cloud stacks concurrently. Nutanix Acropolis Operating System is the wave of the future and it runs on any hardware on their HCL from any server vendor. The HCL list is long. It is also a cluster based architecture that can be expanded one node at a time and they have GPU nodes as well. Nutanix Software Defined Valhalla is here today, so advanced everyone will think you are with the gods!!
Solutions Architect/Team Lead - Business Data and Data Protection at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2020-05-26T13:13:43Z
May 26, 2020
HCI is on-prem, so it's simpler and easier to manage and integrate with applications and your network. Something like a Nutanix can give you a lot of functionality of the cloud without having to deal with the massive headache that is designing your network and applications to be able to utilize the cloud effectively (for Infrastructure). SaaS is a fantastic use of the cloud, but infrastructure-as-a-service hasn't matured in process or manageability yet to justify. It will always cost more to be in the cloud, and it will always be more difficult to get to it.
Product Manager / Business Strategist at Eaton Corporation
User
2020-05-27T16:32:57Z
May 27, 2020
HCI is on prem and requires support to keep it running. There are times when there may be an power outage where it may be difficult to the get HCI up and running again after a crash. HCI is costly, some 3 node clusters nearing $100k, but HCI is also available below $50k. Cloud is pay as you go, and cloud can grow with the end users requirements. However, over time, the cloud (opex) may exceed the cost of the HCI (capex). The other issue is on-prem (HCI) should have better performance as it is in-house and the end user is in total control of the security,
Product Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
MSP
2020-05-27T13:56:18Z
May 27, 2020
Why Cloud vs HCI?
The best option for Cloud is a hybrid Cloud and the best option (on premises or cloud) for performance, resilience and so on is HCI.
If the demand analysis points to Cloud: It should be addressed whit Cloud. Otherwise, if the demand analysis points to HCI: It should be addressed whit HCI.
Pre-sales Consultant at Beta Information Technology
Real User
2020-05-27T10:55:32Z
May 27, 2020
I think there is no one answer for this question
You may go both HCI and cloud together because it depends on the services you want to utilise
Sometimes the cloud is more expensive than HCI like if you want to design a 10 server each one with minimum of 128 go memory and 12 or more core it will cost you a lot in the cloud As Capex or Opex
But for like high transaction web services it will cost you less specially the cost of internet and high availability you will consider for this web site
Hello community,
I am currently researching Hyper-Converged solutions. Which solution performs better: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure or VMware vSAN? Which solution do you prefer and why?
Thank you for your help.
CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH
May 2, 2023
In the early days, Nutanix had the better solution, by now especially when you use a vSphere hypervisor I would go with vSAN for better integration and with ReadyNodes no complex config anymore. Also, I had several customers who complained that Nutanix got very expensive on the first renewal vs. massive initial discounts, however, I can't judge if that is true.
Enterprise Solutions Specialist - System Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
May 2, 2023
Both can get you the performance you might want, however, you should also consider what else you get with the solution. For Nutanix, you're stuck on Acropolis if you start with that. It would be best to run either VMware or Hyper-V on top of that so migration isn't a gym show, plus the renewal cost will be very high.
vSAN is a fine option, just ensure it is designed well with enough nodes to tolerate any amount of disk failure.
Both options have their unique value but the most important thing is the data. You'll need data protection solutions like Veeam, Nakivo, or Zerto.
For an all-in-one high-performance solution with built-in data protection consider HPE SimpliVity with VMware. You'll also likely buy fewer nodes than the others with SimpliVity.
Hello community,
I am a Principal Engineer at a large tech company.
I am currently researching HCI tools. Which tool performs better: Nutanix HCI or VMware VxRail? Which tool has better scalability?
Thank you for your help.
Product Consultant (Presales) at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Jan 16, 2023
Hi Suresh,
In order to answer your question it is better to understand your requirement. Nutanix HCI supports all major hardware vendors, and hypervisors like VMware, Hyper-V, and native Nutanix AHV) and has award-winning post-sales support.
Now VxRail is a Dell product offering based on PowerEdge servers running VMware only with VMware vSAN. It is limited to Dell hardware and a single hypervisor VMware.
Moving forward as Vmware is no more part of Dell and has been part of Broadcom no one is sure what will be next.
Other than that, there are key differentiators to make decisions and that's where Nutanix shines, you can DM me if you need one to one explanation.
Farhan Parkar
We’re launching an annual User’s Choice Award to showcase the most popular B2B enterprise technology products and we want your vote!
If there’s a technology solution that’s really impressed you, here’s an opportunity to recognize that. It’s easy: go to the PeerSpot voting site, complete the brief voter registration form, review the list of nominees and vote. Get your colleagues to vote, too!
...
Dear PeerSpot community members,
Welcome to the latest PeerSpot Community Spotlight, where we sum up the most relevant recent postings by your peers in the community.
Check out the latest questions, articles and professional discussions contributed by PeerSpot community members!
Trending
Here are some topics that your peers are discussing at the moment:
What is your recomme...
Dear PeerSpot community members,
This is our latest Community Spotlight for YOU. Here we've summarized and selected the latest posts (professional questions, articles and discussions) contributed by PeerSpot community members.
Check them out!
Trending
See what your peers are discussing at the moment!
What were your main pain points during the SIEM product purchase process?
What...
As we find ourselves (hopefully) pulling out of the worldwide pandemic, there have been some very interesting trends taking place in the global economy and how it has affected digital business enterprise in today’s emerging economy. HCI will continue to be an effective way to grow business and increase market share in the global marketplace. HCI is widely considered to be the easiest way to sca...
Hi community members,
Here we go with a new Community Spotlight. We publish it to help YOU catch up on recent contributions by community members.
Trending
What open-source HCI solution do you recommend?
How much time does SSO save?
What are the main technical differences between Microsoft Power Automate and Blue Prism?
Articles
Top HCI in 2022
What is Web Design? The Ultima...
I think that the key points to consider are: security, performance, and CAPEX vs OPEX
Security: Having HCI on-premise allows you to keep your current security policies. For some customers having sensitive data on the cloud is not even an option due to their policies. If you go to the cloud you must remember that you are responsible for the security of your data, not the cloud service provider and new policy schemes may be needed.
Performance: You have to evaluate if the cloud provide the bandwidth, throughput, and availability that your operation requires vs. on-premise.
CAPEX vs OPEX: Even though there are some schemes that allow you to have HCI on-premise as EaaS (Everything as a Service like HPE GreenLake) most of the customers own their HCI infrastructure so depending on your expenditure convenience you will favor one or the other.
Cloud v HCI
In essence, Cloud 1st Strategy or whether to use Hyperconvergence Solutions does depend on the Customer Business Drivers moving forwards to the future, and then more importantly, analysis of the Applications, Data, and the Dependencies, so we can truly analyse :-
1. What Apps and Data can move to the Cloud – Including a true Analysis of Security and Data Sovereignty
2. What percentage of the Infrastructure needs to be On-Premise, across Multiple Sites, incorporating Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance
* There will be Data that is NOT suitable for Cloud Transition
So, for Apps and Data that conform to a NON-Cloud Strategy, I;e, they run On-Premise/Multi-Site/COLO, platforms such as HCI really make their mark around :-
1. Consolidation of footprint – Power/Cooling/Networking and Compute/Networking/Storage into a Node format which forms part of the HCI Cluster. Nodes can be added and scaled to grow the Cluster to keep pace with the Customer Business Needs. This is the case of SimpliVity, where INTEL XEON or AMD CPU Options/Nodes are deployed, a Cluster is formed to provide the HCI element, and the Cluster is built from the SimpliVity Nodes, and scaled to add on-demand growth
2. dHCI Technology takes this further by allowing Industry Leading commodity Servers to be used for the Compute Element, Networking products from the HPE Aruba/Mellanox/Cisco vendors to form the iSCSI element of the build, and finally high performance Storage, such as the HPE Nimble AF/HF Platforms to offer the Storage Tier.
* This type of HCI, allows the Customer to independently scale Compute to meet business needs, or even, scale the Storage without having to increase or change Compute. dHCI offers true Flexibility/Agility/Scalability
Finally, HCI Platforms such as the dHCI Technologies, have integration into HPE Cloud Volumes/AWS/Azure, so we can truly leverage Apps and Data requirements across On-Premise and Cloud
Hope this all helps.
There are several benefits of both Cloud and HCI that can be leveraged to the advantage of the feature rich HCI stack user hybrid style. The first is that many applications have not been designed for the cloud and require an on premise stack that can save data in the cloud and offer the same simplicity as cloud operations. If you select an HCI vendor that supports all of the Hypervisors and all of the clouds you can make your applications leverage each technology to your best advantage and lower OPEX costs by up to 60% without rewriting your applications to be cloud friendly. You can also simplify the entire stack and enjoy 5 microsecond latency and not make storage API calls that leave the kernel and introduce even more latency while they access storage from SAN and NAS devices. You can also serve up applications using FRAME technology with this stack that allows you to deploy solutions for remote workers in minutes that are fully secure. AOS offers full encryption and FIPS level 140-2 and better security built into the HCI stack right out the box, no need to go bolting on complex Frankenstein solutions like NSX that require several residents with deep knowledge of 8 different VMware stacks to operate the whole enchilada which increases your OPEX costs dramatically. AOS based HCI eliminates separate SAN, NAS and Object store silo's, it also eliminates system security and server with virtualization silo's and condenses them into one stack, so simple 8 year old children can administer it in a few mouse clicks. Mature HCI based also offers BC/DR benefits that will allow you to use the cloud for what the cloud os good at, BC/DR. Mature HCI vendors also offer their entire HCI stack for AWS and Azure so that you can drag Virtual machines from on prem to the cloud seamlessly. The San Jose based HCI vendor that does this is 4 years ahead of its competition (Dell-EMC) who only work with one Hypervisor while they work with any Hypervisor and all the cloud stacks concurrently. Nutanix Acropolis Operating System is the wave of the future and it runs on any hardware on their HCL from any server vendor. The HCL list is long. It is also a cluster based architecture that can be expanded one node at a time and they have GPU nodes as well. Nutanix Software Defined Valhalla is here today, so advanced everyone will think you are with the gods!!
HCI is on-prem, so it's simpler and easier to manage and integrate with applications and your network. Something like a Nutanix can give you a lot of functionality of the cloud without having to deal with the massive headache that is designing your network and applications to be able to utilize the cloud effectively (for Infrastructure). SaaS is a fantastic use of the cloud, but infrastructure-as-a-service hasn't matured in process or manageability yet to justify. It will always cost more to be in the cloud, and it will always be more difficult to get to it.
The cloud is amazing if you use it right.
HCI is on prem and requires support to keep it running. There are times when there may be an power outage where it may be difficult to the get HCI up and running again after a crash. HCI is costly, some 3 node clusters nearing $100k, but HCI is also available below $50k. Cloud is pay as you go, and cloud can grow with the end users requirements. However, over time, the cloud (opex) may exceed the cost of the HCI (capex). The other issue is on-prem (HCI) should have better performance as it is in-house and the end user is in total control of the security,
The main benefit is about the elastic and fast deployment of the cloud vs the time with purchase and deliver of HW for HCI.
Why Cloud vs HCI?
The best option for Cloud is a hybrid Cloud and the best option (on premises or cloud) for performance, resilience and so on is HCI.
If the demand analysis points to Cloud: It should be addressed whit Cloud. Otherwise, if the demand analysis points to HCI: It should be addressed whit HCI.
I think there is no one answer for this question
You may go both HCI and cloud together because it depends on the services you want to utilise
Sometimes the cloud is more expensive than HCI like if you want to design a 10 server each one with minimum of 128 go memory and 12 or more core it will cost you a lot in the cloud As Capex or Opex
But for like high transaction web services it will cost you less specially the cost of internet and high availability you will consider for this web site