2019-10-15T09:40:00Z

Nutanix and vSAN: Which is best for cloud services?

Hello,

We have to make a big investment in hyper-convergent infrastructure to offer services in the Cloud (SAAS, IAAS).

We are looking at two technologies:

  • VMware with vSAN 
  • Nutanix (only AOS component as we already have VMware vSphere as hypervisor and NSX and vRA for automation)

Which one do you recommend? And why?

Thanks,

Nicola

NC
User at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
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PeerSpot user
21 Answers
it_user1130133 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer - Midrange Hardware Standards at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2019-10-15T14:09:35Z
Oct 15, 2019

If you are locked in on VMware vSan, VMware makes more sense.

If you have an open mind about open source systems, Nutanix might make more financial sense. since you could utilize the Acropolis hypervisor included with Nutanix.

Both systems have the capability to run a very large environment successfully.

Product comparison that may be of interest to you
FL
Transition Manager at Capgemini
Real User
2019-10-15T12:59:39Z
Oct 15, 2019

Both techs are mature and will fit your specifications. To be honest you have to consider the full scope to make your decision:
- Which certification/skills are yet available in your operation/support team?
- What are the other component, HCL, support matrix?
- Which approach are you going to use for deployment, release management, provisioning, automation?

Do not ask to tell if Mercedes is better than BMW without other information than the company name.

FC
IT Manager at a legal firm with 11-50 employees
Real User
2019-10-15T12:12:21Z
Oct 15, 2019

We use neither of the technologies below, but in my previous investigation, I thought Nutanix was better then vSAN but everything is relative by the scope: which services will be offered? VDI? Virtual APPs? Citrix?

For VDI/Citrix infrastructure, Nutanix is better.

JW
Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
2019-10-16T03:57:53Z
Oct 16, 2019

Hands down VSAN.

I am certified in all three platforms (Nutanix, VSAN, and VxRAIL). There was a time where I would have pushed toward Nutanix over vSAN but those days are behind us.

If you were looking at doing Hyper-V SSD, I would highly recommend you do Nuntanix instead.

The only reason to look at Nutanix anymore is if you are doing HCI without VMware at all.

And if you are doing vSAN, you may really want to look into VxRail. It is like the easy button for vSAN maintenance and management. VxRAIL has a lot of the add-ons for vSAN already part of the package.

NO
Solutions Coordinator at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
2020-03-02T21:42:16Z
Mar 2, 2020

This really depends on your use case and which interface you are comfortable with.

You also have to consider the skillset in your environment, as you mentioned that you already have vSAN, vSphere, NSX and vRA).
If the above VMware Licenses have years of support ahead, then there is no need to invest in a different solution. HCI from VMware works fine but it is a vendor lock-in option, Nutanix gives you the choice of hardware and Hypervisor.

Sometimes we have to show all the cards and you make the decision.

MP
Account Sales Manager at a insurance company with 11-50 employees
User
2020-02-06T12:35:13Z
Feb 6, 2020

I think that if your hyper-converged solution is VMware (vSphere, NSX, and vRA) could be the same vSAN or Nutanix. But you can have a solution that is cheaper without losing performance and security with Nutanix if you will use AOS + AHV.

Nutanix consumes more on-premise infrastructure than public cloud and I recommend doing a hybrid cloud. Creating a public cloud is good but it isn´t differential.

Why?

Nutanix is the first hyper-converged (the inventor) solution and its way is different than the others. Nutanix has adapted as the customer uses the public cloud in a private-cloud because Nutanix was born with a cloud-native philosophy. VMware with vSAN is a transformation of virtualization to give an SDS solution. For this, I think Nutanix is better for cloud solutions (hybrid and private).

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
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FH
IT Admin at Felda Prodata Systems Sdn Bhd
Real User
2019-10-17T08:05:43Z
Oct 17, 2019

From my understanding both solutions are great. As I’m familiar with Nutanix, I will support this solution as since I’m hosting around 300+ VMs on this solution, I can sleep well at night. No expected downtime almost.

There is a solution provided by HPE to avoid customers making a big investment in HCI. Instead, they can convert it into pay as you grow services instead of big investment in the start.https://www.hpe.com/my/en/services/flexible-capacity.html

It is called HPE Greenlake. HPE is also partners with Nutanix to bring the solution to the customer. So, customers can host their own private cloud on Prem with OPEX expenses. No big investment in the start and can save a lot of company expenses.

Dell EMC also offers the same services as vSAN services. If I’m who were to make the decision, I would engage HPE and Dell EMC to do a requirement study and present it to me. The most beneficial services that meet my cost and objective will be selected.

DO
Cloud Solutions Sales at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2019-10-17T08:04:11Z
Oct 17, 2019

Before giving out a recommendation it is important for me to understand more of your ideas. There are a lot of great solutions in the market, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Please give more insight into your cloud idea:
- Private, public or hybrid cloud? Multi-hybrid cloud?
- Which workloads are planned? massive consolitation, mix of VMs and containers, known workloads (private Iaas with Cloud-like consumption) vs unkown workloads (Public or private cloud with mature self-servive), licencing aspects (no details please!), e.g. Oracle on this platform?
- Plans for scale & growth
- Is there a chargeback business plan in place?
- SLAs for backup, restore (RTO&RPO), Uptime, number of locations planned, distance between locations
- Anything else that is useful to us (and you are allowed to talk about)

it_user822354 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre-Sales Consultant
User
2019-10-15T14:12:05Z
Oct 15, 2019

vSAN is the best solution based on their current environment.

EB
Director Sales and Market with 51-200 employees
User
2019-10-15T13:14:19Z
Oct 15, 2019

It has many aspects about this, but ease of use and TCO are far better on Nutanix in most cases. If you are considering micro partitioning and cloud services I would say it's even more easy to go the Nutanix way.

But again I don’t know your starting point and needs.

AO
Senior System Administrator at Royalcement
Real User
2020-03-03T12:02:40Z
Mar 3, 2020

Nutanix is intelligent hyper-convergent

KM
Senior Services Engineer at KENAC COMPUTER SYSTEMS
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
2020-02-04T13:20:48Z
Feb 4, 2020

Both Technologies are equality quiet good.
Nevertheless one thing you have to put into considerations is that you literally have a VMware environment already setup.
Going ahead with vSAN might prove to be the best option especially when it comes to the necessary VMware solution upgrade that will be continuously being introduced.

TV
HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged & Storage Sales Specialist - Africa at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Vendor
2019-11-19T11:12:54Z
Nov 19, 2019

The best solution for your existing VMware environment is HPE SimpliVity!

If you need to achieve the following there is no 2 questions about what the best technology solution for your environment would be

HPE SimpliVity includes:

1. SPEED - uncontested performance
2. Data Protection - superior redundancy
3. Real TCO cost saving - 90% capacity savings across all storage and backup combined
4. Backup solution built into the technology already (no 3rd party backup product needed)
5. Artificial Intelligence built into the technology already (HPE Infosight self-managing, self-optimising and self-healing capability resolve 85% of 1st and 2nd line support calls)

HPE SimpliVity is available on CAPEX, or alternatively, OPEX via HPE Greenlake (pay-for-what-you-use) Financial Models

1. HPE Greenlake "free's up" your CAPEX for alternative projects
2. Provides you with the Financial flexibility you need
3. Puts you in a position where you can manage your budget much more accurately and save cost

YN
Senior Information Technology System Engineer at State Informatics Limited
Real User
2019-11-18T12:19:30Z
Nov 18, 2019

Well, I would suggest, if you are very conversant with VMware and already have the required licenses, it would be best to go for VMware in this case. But if you opting only for Nutanix AOS, it is not wise to make mix match Nutanix and VMware.

Nutanix should be used as a complete solution end-to-end to really know it capacity. It has all the features that VMware has.
My suggestion would be to go for a full complete Nutanix solution.

TV
HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged & Storage Sales Specialist - Africa at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Vendor
2019-10-17T05:51:35Z
Oct 17, 2019

I recommend HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged for this requirement reason being:

1. Uncontested SPEED and performance (60 seconds to backup, clone, move, restore a 1TB VM).
2. Superior Redundancy – no other HCI technology can provide FTT #3 (multiple HDD failure tolerance) with only 2x systems like HPE SimpliVity does.
Backup is built-in already with AUTO Rapid DR
3. Significant TCO Saving – HPE SimpliVity saves customers 90% capacity saving across all storage and backup combined

Please kindly visit the following 3 min customer story which should be very interesting to you

"Propelling Sunway into the Digital Future with HPE SimpliVity” – link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ7omczJ9Qs (3mins)

HPE SimpliVity Bundles Promo attached provides you with a complete solution with VMware license & support included!

AT
VP Corporate Sales with 5,001-10,000 employees
User
2019-10-16T12:37:14Z
Oct 16, 2019

I'm not a huge fan of either, but what is the goal? Is it speed? More than 1M IOPS? Is it automatic fail over with no touch fail back? Is it
increased App performance?

If I knew what was driving the decision I could better help.

AO
Senior System Administrator at Royalcement
Real User
2019-10-16T09:07:37Z
Oct 16, 2019

I recommend Nutanix because I already have the second solution with the same configuration and it very stable.

it_user1205097 - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Sales Manager at Scale Computing
Vendor
2019-10-16T07:32:10Z
Oct 16, 2019

I would seriously consider a 3rd option, being Scale Computing. They can really provide you with a system that will drastically reduce your TCO, simplify operations, yet providing scalability and reliability throughout your solution. Feel free to check their website www.scalecomputing.com or give them a call at 877-722-5359

AM
Network DSR at HP Enterprise
Vendor
2019-10-15T20:43:50Z
Oct 15, 2019

If you are a VMware user, it would be great to try SimpliVity as your hyper-converged solution, not only for your Data virtualization platform (high compression and deduplication rates) but the ROI rates related to data efficiency.

it_user1129827 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Product Marketing Manager at DataCore Software
Vendor
2019-10-15T17:43:12Z
Oct 15, 2019

Both of these are competitors of the company that I work for so I do not feel that I can respond to which is better than the other for Cloud without seeming to be potentially biased. My best PERSONAL advice would be to strongly consider your cost of acquisition, ownership, the ROI, the workloads you intend to support and that your current infrastructure is reliant on.

it_user847542 - PeerSpot reviewer
Commercial Account Executive with 51-200 employees
User
2019-10-15T17:30:30Z
Oct 15, 2019

My belief is that Nutanix provides customers a much less complex and less expensive total Cost of Ownership experience.

From what I’ve seen in my experiences, the vSAN solution requires significant administrative overhead for maintaining optimized performance, where Nutanix maintenance is much more automated.

There are other advantages but this is what I focus on most when differentiating the two.

Related Questions
EZ
User at gobernación de cundinamarca
May 4, 2023
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.
2 out of 4 answers
Yves Sandfort - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
QJ
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.
NC
Content Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Dec 18, 2022
Have you had many issues with this product? Was their technical support responsive and effective?
See 2 answers
DG
Tech blogger
Dec 18, 2022
NCI is one of the best out there. For any software, no matter how good it is, technical support makes it or breaks it for me. You may have an amazing product but if there is not anyone to help you use it, what can you do with it? Luckily, NCI's support is highly rated by customers for a reason. They are very helpful and always answer our inquiries in a timely manner. I have worked with competitor solutions of NCI and their support was not as responsive as NCI's. Every time my company has contacted the technical team of NCI, we were given detailed solutions, so I rate it very highly in this matter.
Beth Safire - PeerSpot reviewer
Tech Blogger
Dec 18, 2022
NCI's support may be the best technical support from any company that I have contacted, ever. We have not had many issues with the product, as it works quite well, and our specialists have learned its specifics by now. However, in a few instances, we needed support from NCI. Every time we contacted them, they explained to us in great detail what caused the issue, how to fix it, and how to potentially avoid it happening again. They are absolutely reliable and will either explain the issue themselves or connect you with a team member that specializes in your issue.
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