What needs improvement with Nutanix AHV Virtualization?

In our comparison during migration from another virtualization platform, we found a limitation with Nutanix AHV Virtualization, which is that physical server migration to the AHV environment is not supported. Server migration from physical to virtual must be supported by Nutanix AHV Virtualization, but it is currently not supported. Other than the limitation of not supporting physical to virtual migration, everything else looks fine.

I have some suggestions for improvement. We deployed the Nutanix cluster just a few weeks ago and faced challenges discovering the cluster, particularly with Windows servers. I installed a Linux VM to discover the recently added nodes, and my suggestion is that we need to make it more compatible with Windows as well. Apart from Windows compatibility, I want to emphasize the need to improve compatibility, as Linux is fine, but we sometimes face challenges when running commands with Windows operating systems, which causes delays in committing jobs. Nutanix AHV Virtualization is CLI-based, and improvements in GUI, making it more user-friendly, are necessary as we have faced issues committing changes through GUI.

Commercially, the pricing is out of scope for some small businesses and that can be the area for improvement.

Some of the upgradability aspects seem a bit challenging. I've had issues with firmware and system updates, which might be specific to our environment. For us, using Lenovo hardware seems problematic with Nutanix AHV Virtualization, which demands careful consideration during updates.

One issue we encountered is with third-party vendors who provide customized images in OVF format, a VMware virtualization format. When we customize these images for Nutanix AHV, some vendors refuse to support them, stating they've been altered. Another area for improvement is in the patching process. Nutanix releases product patches every three months, while the underlying systems like the backend operating system receive weekly updates, causing a gap. This delay in patching creates risk, especially for government projects that require timely updates.

The graphical user interface has too many menus that are not particularly useful. These menus often show options like host, memory, and disk, however, they fail to provide insight into what's happening. A streamlined interface would be beneficial.

There is an issue with the guest tools, which depend on the storage hypervisor IP. If the communication with NGT were IP-less, it would be more useful since enabling NGT can expose infrastructure details. Nutanix is aware of this and is working on it. Without resolving this, you cannot take application-consistent backups during VMs' snapshots, as NGT is not installed on a VM.

I must change the memory cards in at least two to three weeks.

Everyone desires to maintain competitive AHV pricing. AI technology has made significant strides. However, AI also introduces complexities in terms of security. It seems to function but when considering security, it adds layers of management. Integrating AI involves managing IT processes and ensuring they don't compromise security or provide unauthorised access. Unforeseen events may occur due to AI implementation, which require careful consideration. While AI streamlines certain tasks, it doesn't offer a universal solution to improve everything instantly. Incorporating targeted AI solutions within competing products is advantageous. In terms of financial considerations and functionality, integrating AI and Microsoft components into half of the Nutanix AHV evaluation is beneficial. When it comes to the core networking infrastructure, stability and reliability are paramount.

The support must be improved. Other technologies like Dell have their own service centers and different types of SLAs. Nutanix’s support team is not very efficient compared to others.

Honestly, there's a lot to work on the product, especially for someone like me who has worked on VMware. VMware offers a significant level of customization when configuring virtual machines, and that level of detail is not as pronounced on Nutanix AHV Virtualization.

It should focus on providing more detailed and helpful error messages. One area we'd like to see enhanced is better support for guest VMs, especially in a heterogeneous environment. However, there are no specific additional features that come to mind for the next release.

I haven't come across any limitations. Nutanix doesn't support externally attached storage through Fibre Channel. However, Nutanix doesn't support Fibre Channel connectivity. This, in my opinion, is a weakness. For instance, it does not support Cyber Talent. To clarify, you cannot connect external Fibre Channel storage or NAS storage resources with Nutanix. However, VMware vSAN supports such solutions.

The license is expensive. Also, It integrates well with Microsoft products but needs more integrations.

It would be better if the solution's replication to another site could be efficiently optimized.

Nutanix misses alerts sometimes. To improve this, Nutanix should integrate with Eskom, an existing monitoring tool. This would allow Nutanix to receive alerts from Eskom instead of having to install and configure its monitoring tool. This would be a great feature, as it would allow Nutanix to receive alerts for all physical devices and processes, even if Nutanix itself does not manage them.

The integration capabilities of Nutanix AHV Virtualization is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement. Nutanix AHV Virtualization is still a new product in the market with which integrating many products, especially Citrix products, is not possible.

There is no USB mapping at the moment.

I would like to see better decompression or degrouping of the VMs so that we can use a single number of SQLs with two servers. We don't need a huge number of DXSPs. The decompression should be better. In my experience with the VMware product, they don't have this type of solution. But we can do it with Nutanix AHV. In future releases, I would also like to see support for replication with the Centralized Data Reduction (CDR) application. This would allow us to replicate our data to a single dashboard without having to use ASRM or any other third-party solution. It would be a major improvement, and I hope that Nutanix will add this feature in the next version of AHV. VMware has a decompression function that Nutanix doesn't have, and I would like to see that function added to Nutanix in the next version.

Pricing is an area that needs improvement. In future releases, I would like to see a better pricing policy. The solution's scalability needs to be improved.

Nutanix has a Prism Central flavor and a Prism Element flavor. Prism Element is the very basic level. It provides management for Nutanix AHV. If we have to opt for a high level of capacity planning and need more analytics—like deciding on new purchases or budgeting, or if we need additional resources in the near future—we need to pay for Prism Central. I would suggest that Nutanix improve a bit on the analytics part of Prism Element so we can calculate those kinds of things within that flavor.

I'm already looking into possibly adding micro-segmentation features. It will help control traffic better and make everything more secure. The solution can be pricey.

The price of the solution can be improved.

The price of Nutanix AHV Virtualization could improve.

Many backup solutions that we use today are available for purchase, be it IBM, VMware, Veritas, or anything else. They usually have very good vSphere and Hyper-V support. Because there isn't much AHV deployment in place, we typically have issues with the integrations that AHV has with backup solutions. We would like to see AHV's backup solution integration improved so that we can take VM-level backups directly from Nutanix. The issue is that it provides a higher VM level for VMware and other areas. When it comes to AHV, however, you must purchase a separate set of third-party software, which can then supplement that backup via your IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. One issue we frequently encounter when using AHV is that if you want to install specific software, you must first gain compatibility. If you want to install an operating system, or OS, on top of your AHV, only a few operating systems are supported. That is one area where I would like to see some progress. VMware typically supports almost all of our systems, as does Hyper-V, but when it comes to AHV, we must apply specific patches in order to run it on top of AHV. Operating system support must be improved out of the box. If you want to install software, you must first ensure that it is compatible with Nutanix AHV; not all software is compatible. It is not possible to integrate it with everything. There is limited compatibility with the software that can be installed on top of Nutanix AHV, for example. If you want to install a specific operating system, you must first check to see if it is listed in the compatibility list; only then will you be able to install it, and that is one issue for now.

An improvement would be for Nutanix AHV to support VMDK, AOS, Hyper-V, and VMware.

A lot of tasks cannot be performed using the GUI, the graphical interface. They need to make it so that if you want to perform a task, you can do it using the GUI. So far, there are a lot of tasks you have to perform using CLI. When you compare it with VMware, you can perform a lot of tasks using your vCenter GUI however, in the case of Nutanix, it is not something that is very easy to do. You have to do a lot of things using the CLI. This is one of the areas they have to improve on.

There are times when consultants, construction, or building firms need to use Beam but it can be difficult. Nutanix marketplace can integrate with Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle, and SAP. Nutanix should focus more on databases because even though Nutanix has Jira, the central console or management tools are for different databases. If Nutanix can develop its own database solution it would be a benefit. Nutanix as a hypervisor or for the scaling up or down, the flexibility is quite good in its functionality, but for the database, it's very different. I hope Nutanix can develop its own database solution.

I would like to see more automation of Day One operations, such as DRS, and HA. AHV has managing controls but could be better. The disadvantage is that you must be familiar with Linux in order to delve deep into this solution if necessary. I am aware of one disadvantage for AHV at this time, which is that Nutanix does not yet have a disaster recovery solution for AHV. We use another solution. Nutanix has metro clusters for VMware but no production solution for AHV. It would be an advantage if Nutanix would include this option.

The management console needs to improve to make it easier for administrators. For example, to be able to reorganize our VMs, folders, and subfolders, similarly as it is provided in VMware. We can sort, manage, and organize VMs, folders, or subfolders in VMware.

Since it is tightly integrated, you want to have it as a single installable thing. But that is against its nature. The tight integration with AOS makes it what it is. AHV is mostly on par with ESXi. Since it comes together with AOS you must compare it to ESXI with VSAN to get the complete picture. It can do vGPU just like ESXi, can move VMs just like ESXi, and snapshots won't make it "stun" the VM as it does on ESXi. If you ever have a problem, hit up Nutanix Support. I've never had better support. Just do a Proof-of-Concept and have them wow you. Just to be clear: If you have the need for special hardware like FibreChannel-Cards or such and there is no networked-way around it (such as you could work with USB Dongles via an HW-Dongle-Server of network), you have to use a separate hypervisor. That said, you could still present NFS from the Nutanix Cluster to VMware or use an iSCSI-Connection in-guest or in-host from the Nutanix Cluster.

The solution could improve the call logging system to HPE, it is a bit tedious.

It's difficult to find something that needs improvement, for me, it's a perfect solution. I have not had any issues in the three years that I have been using it. I was faced with one small problem, but I had the resolution immediately. I don't see any issues with Hypervisor AHV. No one is the best in the industry, and there is something in which they are neutral. Currently, they have storage that is RS2 by default, and when I create one VM with the RA2 environment it will automatically create a second copy. My storage use is doubled; if I am creating a one TB virtual machine then my storage policy will take two TB from my cluster. I need a second policy for that. For Dev and for Testing. I don't need the backups. I am only doing R&D. I need one feature, in that I can create one storage policy without any redundancy factor where when I create my 100 GB virtual machine or 100 GB workload, that only uses storage of 100 GB. I would prefer this because unnecessarily, my space is being utilized for creating a backup copy. This feature I've got in ESXi, where I can define different policies for my storage and containers, is useful, but in Nutanix, there are only two policies, RS2 and RS3. Last month, I completed a session with the Nutanix UI team where I provided feedback for the UI upgrades. This would be useful.

Some of our applications do not support Nutanix. There are some compatibility issues and some of our software cannot run on it. It worked well in the beginning but after using it for some time, we found some limitations in terms of compatibility with other software. It has been okay because it does run our main applications.

There are some activities that need to be done by the GUI, but can't. The users should not be aware of this, only the engineers who are involved with the move of the system, sharing or reconfiguration. When we need to share, publish, or encrypt something, we still need to perform it using the command line. We need to exit from the COI for the GUI to fix some of the features. If we compare with VMware NSX the implementation is not quite as interesting.

Nutanix AHV is based on KVM, which is the open-source version. In terms of improvement, I think that they could have more partnerships with providers. We had an issue with a software called ClearPath from Aruba. Aruba has a ready image that works for VMware, as an example, but they don't have a ready image that works directly with AHV. We have to use the KVM version and customize it to work for AHV. It would be beneficial to have more partners to improve the service. Not just any providers, but well-known providers in the market. Also, more integration with ready systems would be helpful.

VMware has a vSphere client GUI and currently, AHV is command line only. AHV is easy for people who are administrators of Linux and Unix, but it's not easy for a normal user who connects using a web interface. There is no web interface with AHV. It would be great if they could provide a web interface. There is no dashboard, it works only with Nutanix Prism. I come from the world of Unix and the only thing that customer is asking for is the web interface.

As for any improvements, the only thing the customer has been asking for is that it should be like VMware where they have the Vsphere Client, whereas in AHV there is only Command-line. It's like AHV Client Web. AHV is easy for people who are administrators of Linux Unix but it's not easy for normal users who like to connect using a web interface because there is no web interface for AHV. It would be great if they could provide an actual web interface. The dashboard works only in Prism.

Support for more Red Hat solutions would be an improvement. As of now, Nutanix only officially supports three hypervisors. These are VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV. There is minimal support for Red Hat. It is very important that in the future, Nutanix supports bare-metal implementation. This means that you can install the hypervisor directly to the hardware. In the next release of this solution, I would like to see support for containerization.

Nutanix AHV, like every hypervisor, still has room for integration with the cloud. Nutanix is a very, very good product in regards to integration with the Amazon services, but it can be improved, especially in my country, Turkey. In this area, both Amazon Web Services and other solutions have different prices and different currencies. Nutanix actually promised to build clouds once they made the new generation moving the clients or the servers on-premises, and that's not working as advertised right now. So I believe that it can still be improved. Every service depends on this because the flexibility is what makes this product good in the first place. I use Vaults with three hypervisors in my projects. One is the Acropolis from Nutanix, SCC from VMware, and of course Microsoft Hyper-V. This user interface is easy to understand. The dashboard is mostly okay and gives relevant information for the users. It has a good user interface but it's not flexible. It's more flexible than VMware and Hyper-V which don't even compare. The mechanics and the user interface are good. I like how it looks, but it can be improved. For example, if they had a comment line option directly from the Web UI, I could use PowerShell add ons. That would make the UI more flexible for me. Overall, it is the best of the three options right out there right now. , Again, I would also like to see a comment line option for integration with other products. Nutanix already has a comment line integration with the publisher. I also run some mini-systems and I don't have the same kind of comment line options for Unix systems. If I'm working on another shell, for example, Bash or SSH, we need a solution for that aspect. Console command is many times a faster way to do it because with UI you have to wait, but with your comment line, you can script it and can automate it more easily. So I believe they need a Linux version of the comment line.

They need to work on the deployment of virtual machines. They need to streamline the process of templates and deploying virtual machines.

The solution is not suitable for all migrations. The solution should work to improve its stability for All type of VM's boot options

At the application level, if you wanted to change your hypervisor from VMware or another to AHV then there is a limitation in that you need to redeploy the whole application. For example, let's say that you are running Oracle ERP or Oracle Financial Business Suite, and it is on VMware. Then you switch to AHV and you migrate the virtual machine, it will be there, but all of the links that were created in the previous hypervisor will be broken. So, what Nutanix recommends is that you redeploy the application. This is quite a bit of work. For example, the ERP requires a lot of time to implement and get into synch and get running smoothly. The technical support for this solution needs to be improved in terms of response time. This solution should offer more orchestration and automation as we see in VMware. They can do more. I would like to see more use cases from Nutanix on future trend technologies such as IoT, data analytics, big data, smart cities, and more. They need to do more R&D with respect to these new technologies. This would make it easy for us to understand whether they are capable of such functionality, or not.