Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Reviews

In my organization, we use Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for the production servers, while Dev and QA environments use VMware. In Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) dashboard, we primarily observe memory utilization, storage utilization, and alerts and monitoring through graphical representation. Every three months, we perform patching activities for AOS, AHV, and firmware.

In Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), we utilize two flavors of the cluster, 01p and 02p. One mainly deals with Prism Central, and the second handles DR activity for disaster recovery. We have experienced numerous advantages with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), including file sharing for enterprises and users, VDI user profiles for home directories, and backup targets via Nutanix Object or cluster or Prism.

The solution is also used for cloud Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) purposes for S3 apps and bucket apps. Additional uses include block storage for databases, infrastructure purposes, cost governance, IT self-service, and optimization purposes.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) offers numerous beneficial features. The Nutanix File System includes two flavors: SMB and NFS file systems, which are used for storage purposes, data transferring, and data manipulation. A significant advantage in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is its role-based access control model, RBAC, free governance, cost compatibility, and free access to all infrastructure platforms. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) serves as a cloud admin or storage admin for various organizations.

Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained.

We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential.

Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.

For how long have you used the solution?

We have experienced stability issues.

We have different types in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS): Nutanix Files, Nutanix Volumes, and Nutanix Objects. Various file systems and volumes aid scalability through independent and linear growth.

Compared to other vendors, cost governance is exemplary. While all platforms are expensive for single users, Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very cost-effective. Nutanix offers fully automated cluster management, managing all tasks efficiently, with no budget problems, handling the entire infrastructure, and offering efficient file systems including SMB, NFS, S3 bucket, and blocks.

Positive

Compared to VMware, adopting Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) allows clients to save money. An advantage from VMware to Nutanix is its operation in cloud infrastructure and dealing with production. Prism Central serves as the centralized part for the Nutanix system.

The solution supports cloud on-premises and hybrid model deployment.

We have a total of three members: one on-site member and two offshore members.

From the scenarios learned from my team, I have participated in every P1 and P2 issue carefully. With my knowledge in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), Nutanix Prism, Nutanix Cluster, NCM, and NUS, I can provide solutions to requesters. If an issue is beyond my expertise, I involve higher authorities. I give myself a seven to eight rating for solving issues.

From my experience with issues, I have participated in P1 and P2 incidents and learned from them. I can provide solutions or involve higher authorities when issues are beyond my scope. I rate myself eight in problem-solving.

We have not implemented AI in our organization currently. We are using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), Nutanix AOS, AHV, firmware, and ESXi. Additionally, we use Cloud Manager and Unified Storage only. We have not transitioned to AI yet.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is primarily used for storage purposes such as files, objects, and blocks. Nutanix Cloud Manager is an advanced technology for multitasking performance, creating multi-cluster management handled by Prism Central, which is the centerpiece of the Nutanix ecosystem. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

We are using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for many purposes, including dedicated private cloud and an MSP model, similar to AWS and Azure, in a multi-tenant environment. We provide services on top of that and have many customers for whom we provided the private cloud setup in their data center. We also have a colocation facility, so we build for many customers in our data center only.

We are using Nutanix File Analytics to deal with cybersecurity features such as ransomware threats. Nutanix File Analytics performs well for this kind of requirement. We had an issue last year, and File Analytics was able to quarantine the file before it negatively affected our systems. We are satisfied with that capability. My customers are also using File Analytics.

I am using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) feature called Data Lens. It is good, but it is still not that mature. I have enabled it for a few of my customers, but it is not being actively used, or perhaps the technical people from Nutanix need more technical hands-on personnel in the field.

The most beneficial aspect of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for me as a customer and reseller partner is its simplicity. Since I started working with Nutanix, the only consistent thing I can identify as key is simplicity. A lot of things are easy for deployment, management, and operation. It is easier compared to any other private cloud platform.

Regarding areas for improvement, I think Data Lens could be enhanced from Nutanix's side, but it has been a long time since I logged into that console, so I do not remember much. It is a SaaS-based offering on the Nutanix portal. It is not something you deploy on-premises; it is not on-prem access. You connect your cluster to the SaaS-based Nutanix and then access the Lens console. I need to check it since it has been almost two or three months since I logged in.

Nutanix Enterprise AI actually needs to improve a lot if I compare it with any other product such as NVIDIA and other offerings in the market. Nutanix Enterprise AI still requires a lot of work. I did not check that in much detail technically, but whatever I thoroughly checked, it still lags behind in many features.

When it comes to AI-related features, I think the ecosystem of Nutanix is not as big as NVIDIA because NVIDIA has its own inferencing system and model training platform such as NeMo, NeMoTron, and others. Nutanix does not have such things. It can be built using NVIDIA CUDA libraries, but what I saw when I was testing the product is that you can run NVIDIA NeMo and PyTorch and two other things, but as a software, Nutanix does not have an end-to-end platform. That is something Nutanix should focus on.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for ten years.

I have many customers using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), even with their Oracle storage, and they do not have any complaints about stability.

For the performance of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) in ML workloads, I did not test it because we have some setup going on for AI and ML here in our data center, but we are building on Dell hardware with DDN storage. I am not sure about how Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), which is a Nutanix Storage component, will perform with low latency and higher throughput, because in AI use cases, you require low latency and higher throughput. That particular area still needs exploration.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is easy to scale. You just add a node, and in one click, you can expand whatever storage you want to expand. It is not that difficult.

With Nutanix Data Lens, customers require more technical guidance. We are doing our level best, but the product can do much more, although it still lags in a lot of places.

Nutanix support is always excellent; I have no issues with it.

Positive

For Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), the initial setup and deployment process is not that difficult; it is quite straightforward.

I deployed one cluster expansion of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) this morning, and it finished within fifteen minutes.

I see ROI in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). If somebody invests, then definitely they get ROI because of the infrastructure footprint and other factors. With Nutanix's single license, whether it is pro or ultimate, a customer does not need to buy separate licenses for security products such as micro-segmentation, data-at-rest encryption, or other features. Kubernetes is also covered. With Nutanix license, customers are getting many more things and saving costs from other portions.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) helps to reduce the total cost of ownership in general. However, I am getting complaints from customers about the renewal cost being a bit on the higher side. Because VMware, after the Broadcom acquisition, has already increased their prices. Customers are now moving towards Nutanix, but at the same time, they are also concerned about the renewal cost. It is not cheap; the renewal cost is also expensive. Customers usually complain about the higher renewal cost.

Most of my customers are using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) on-premises only. Cloud adoption is still happening in Kuwait, but it is not very widespread.

Regarding Nutanix on AWS Marketplace, Nutanix on NC2 is a new, good offering. You can have a Nutanix cluster running on AWS without the need to buy separate hardware, providing the same Nutanix console and experience, but the hardware is from the public cloud. I rarely see any customer using Nutanix on public cloud right now in Kuwait. There is a big reason behind it; the users in Kuwait are enterprise companies running a heavy amount of workload. If they go on the public cloud, they need to spend more. They have already invested in their disaster recovery site, so they see no use for public cloud for DR. They are very data-sensitive and prefer to keep their data locally, which offers them more control and security benefits. Thus, I do not see much Nutanix on the public cloud.

We operate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for production purposes, but we are about to migrate to another solution, which is open source for us and has a lesser licensing cost compared with the NKP, because NKP requires a little bit of OpenStack license, which cannot be used as a core-based license for us. This kind of flexibility towards any kind of reuses is why management is planning to migrate, since it involves a host-based license and has become quite costly for us.

We use Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) as Nutanix Object, but this has been free, because with Nutanix NCI, there is one 1 TB object storage that is free, so for now, we are using that 1 TB object storage.

I have been working with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects for around six months only, as we are just using it for testing purposes.

We use Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects for BRP purposes, which means there are some use cases where WORM capability is required for a database. Multiple nodes can write to one particular object storage, meaning one point of storage, through which we can use Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Object Storage for multiple nodes. For example, we are using MongoDB, which connects to this particular storage only.

My primary objective with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects is to use it for a multi-writing purpose, as we can write from multiple nodes to one specific object. This happens at a clustering level, but that cluster will not allow us to create a particular object point that facilitates writing in a multiple node way. That is why we require this for multi-writing purposes, which we have currently for UAT, and it was resolved successfully using the objects.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is NVMe storage for us, as we have already purchased one NVMe storage with the NKP and NCI licensing. All nodes are using the NVMe, so performance-wise, this is quite better than others.

In my opinion, the main benefits that Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) provides for us, maybe for our company, are based on its performance. My Nutanix platform is built on NVMe, and performance-wise, it is quite better than any other storage option. This is beneficial as our cloud environment incurs its own cost, but this object storage we are using on a free license basis, which means I do not require any cost on that right now, making it quite advantageous for me, and the performance remains good.

Functionality-wise, we have improved a lot using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), as previously we faced significant latency and other related issues.

When talking about potential areas of improvement for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), I feel that the price could be lower. A fixed price of one crore is standard for any server, whether from Nutanix, VMware, or any other solution. As we operate in a financial institution, we require additional support, so we might avoid open-source options, which presents a challenge.

I do not think any further improvements are required for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects at the moment; currently, the product is quite good compared to market standards. There have been discussions regarding AI/ML capabilities, but right now, there is not much improvement needed in my environment for those features.

I do not really see the need for additional functions in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects, as we only require WORM capability and normal operations from that object storage, which satisfactorily meets our needs.

I acknowledge that the price of the product can be too high, and it would be beneficial if pricing were more flexible for end users.

I have been working with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects for around six months only, as we are just using it for testing purposes.

I would rate the stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) at 10 out of 10; if the hardware was not capable, that would be an issue, but from a software perspective, it is quite stable for me.

For scalability regarding Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), it depends on the license; we only have 1 TB, and extending those capabilities relies solely on the license we have available to use.

For technical support, I would rate them an 8; they are quite supportive, but getting a specific technical person on a call is quite challenging, often requiring about four hours to reach someone knowledgeable. The initial support engineer tends to take logs and then provides answers later. Currently, there are challenges with the technical team.

I confirm this, as it was taken over by the Nutanix team from D2iQ, resulting in challenges in transferring the technical documentation. Over the past year, there were many glitches in the support aspect, but improvements have been noted since then, and the team has successfully resolved previously encountered engineering challenges.

Nowadays, the situation is indeed much better than it was a year ago.

Positive

The initial setup for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is a simple process for me.

We managed the setup in-house with our team without requiring consultants or integrators for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) setup. The only part that involved a license, and the documentation was quite easy to implement, so we followed the document and successfully implemented it.

The full setup for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) was quite simple; we only needed to make one call and within two hours, we had it deployed. Although two hours seemed long, port opening was a bit challenging, but after that, everything went successfully.

We managed the setup in-house with our team without requiring consultants or integrators for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) setup. The only part that involved a license, and the documentation was quite easy to implement, so we followed the document and successfully implemented it.

When comparing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects, I have not encountered many competitors in this space. Hitachi is a notable competitor, as they provide good technology related to object storage, and we are exploring those options as well. VMware is another option, but we are phasing out our interactions with them, especially since they offer their own licenses, which we prefer to avoid.

I do not have much concern about the cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects, because we are using those at a lower level. My front-end operation is quite different, accessing that particular point after six or seven nodes, meaning six or seven hops, so after these hops we reach those file objects, which is not a concern for me right now as it is connecting via wire.

Regarding Data Lens, I have not used it yet; I have heard of it but I am not using anything related to it.

License considerations for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are my first concern, as right now management lacks the capability or interest to invest any further in IT equipment. They are trying to avoid high-priced servers due to their recent double price jump—in previous times, a server cost around 50 lakhs, but now it is close to 1 crore rupees, so they are not looking to buy such high-maintenance, expensive servers right now.

We purchased Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) solution directly from Nutanix; we have some third-party vendors, meaning channel partners through which we have implemented the solution. We received quite good technical support from both Nutanix and third-party channel people, and they have been quite supportive with considerable technical knowledge. Initially, we sought their help when issues arose, moving to the engineering team if they could not resolve them. They are quite responsive, with the support team resolving issues directly on the first call or raising cases as needed for technical support.

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) at 10 out of 10 overall, with no challenges noted.

I'm using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for hybrid cloud storage, specifically for backup and cyber storage, video surveillance, and other purposes related to this software-defined platform.

The best features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are its simplified management, scale, and performance. Data services can be easily consolidated, which help in disaster recovery services, replication, and reducing complexity and costs associated with this architecture. 

High throughput and low latency are of high significance for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) in AI/ML and data analytics, providing exceptional interference batch files that meet the high performance computing storage requirements.

Areas for improvement in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) include enhancing AI features, providing certifications for Nutanix AI, and improving weekend support responsiveness.

They can update their platform by integrating more AI and machine learning capabilities.

They can also improve their training and certification programs. These programs should not only be for their employees but also for the vendors they support or the individuals working with their technologies. By enhancing their offerings, they could provide even greater benefits. Additionally, there should be certifications for Nutanix AI. 

Furthermore, their support on weekends should be improved. For tickets submitted during the week, their response times could be better. It would be beneficial if they could enhance their support services to provide assistance over the weekends as well.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for more than a year.

I would rate the stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) at a nine, as it's very stable, although manual interventions are sometimes necessary if a host or data store goes down. While the stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is good, the need for manual intervention can be a drawback. The system does provide alerts, which allows us to respond and address the issues. Overall, it works well, but this manual aspect is something to consider.

With VMware, when a virtual machine (VM) experiences an issue, all the servers and other components typically migrate to another host. However, if any storage goes down, we must handle the situation manually.

I find the scalability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) to be excellent, and I would rate it a ten based on my clients' requirements. We have multiple clients using Nutanix. Our clients are enterprise businesses.

We have about 2,000 Nutanix experts in our organization. There are many people with good hands-on experience in it. I've been using Nutanix for over five years myself. In my previous company, I used it for migration and server management, as well as for unified storage management.

They offer quick and effective support without prioritizing ticket severity, focusing on providing solutions as fast as possible. 

I would rate the technical support for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) an eight out of ten, as they are quick and responsive during weekdays, but weekend support may require manual outreach. The support availability can be improved on weekends.

Positive

It's relatively easy to deploy in the environment. It's not as complex as VMware, but it still requires some effort. 

The deployment time depends on the architecture of the client's environment. We typically work with different architectures for QA, development, and production environments. The time frame largely depends on the client's approval process. While it doesn't take much time to complete the deployment and migration, the complexity of the client's infrastructure can add to the duration. For example, in my last company, we did a complete migration from VMware to Nutanix which took approximately three to four months because it was a large environment. We had multiple projects, which added complexity regarding applications and business dependencies, so we needed to handle things one step at a time for all the storage systems.

If it's a smaller environment, then it can usually be completed in a month. We can efficiently migrate everything, but larger environments definitely take more time as we need to manage business and client approvals and determine acceptable downtime.

In terms of maintenance, Nutanix regularly releases patches and updates. They provide support for these as well. We have team members experienced in patching and updating. Whenever a new version is released, they inform us about supported versions and any changes. Nutanix consistently updates their environment, which is very helpful.

I estimate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has saved us 30% to 35% in total cost of ownership. I believe Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) results in a budget-wise cost efficiency of about 25% to 30%, although I'm not directly involved in the financial aspects.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) helps reduce the total cost of ownership by efficiently managing data and snapshots, allowing for continuous monthly cleanups, generating capacity reports, and helping identify unused resources, leading to approximately 15% to 20% reduction in data price consumption. Additionally, we are able to identify unused services, especially when we restore them, which enables us to clear out unnecessary data. Overall, this approach is very effective for us in terms of cost management.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is cost-efficient, providing multiple features in a single purchase, unlike VMware, which requires multiple licenses and charges for different components.

I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) due to its user-friendly environment and cost-effectiveness, as it provides a comprehensive solution for networking, storage, and compute on a single platform with timely upgrades and useful KB articles.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) at a ten due to its effectiveness and ease of implementation, achieving results that are effective 99% of the time.

Our main use cases for this platform are that it holds all of our production virtual machines and all of our SMB shares.

What I appreciate about this platform the most is that it takes up very little rack space and it is pretty easy to use.

It takes up very little rack space and is very easy to use. We had three racks of storage and went down to one. 

Even the Unified Storage was all in a four-node cluster, however, it was all hybrid converged. This year we bought three new nodes and they are all the same with Nutanix Files and two AHV 80-terabyte license increases.

I have seen changes in the latency; from our new nodes to our old nodes, it is about twice as fast.

My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads is that we have many SQL Servers and they perform much better than they did when we used hybrid converged previously.

These features have improved our company because we went from having three different hypervisors down to one. We had three racks full of storage and now it is just half a rack.

Since we just deployed the new instance, it is so much better than the old one that I cannot think of anything to be improved on specifically.

I did not know that you were implementing all the separate storage areas now. That was the biggest thing to be improved, so not having to do it inside the node yet have external pure storage or something similar.

I would them to have more communication with other platforms, and it appears they are already doing that.

It would be beneficial to see something NetApp in there.

It's still pretty expensive. 

We started using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) in 2018.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) as very stable, other than a single node failure.

The scalability with the growing needs of my company has met them. I know if we run out of space, we can just throw another node in a matter of hours and be whatever size we want.

My thoughts on the customer service and technical support are that it has been pretty good. It used to be better than it is now. We have had some cases that have been open for quite some time with no resolution.

Positive

I used a solution prior to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) that does the same thing, which was NetApp and we had some Synology NASes.

I switched because the Synologies are really not very enterprise-grade. NetApp was just very expensive for what it did.

The initial setup was pretty good. We only had one hiccup during deployment. 

It has helped me reduce my total cost of ownership significantly.

I do not have percentages, however, we priced out some other solutions and this was cheaper and easier to manage.

For me, the biggest return on investment when using this solution is that we do not have to have much support staff to run it. It is just me and one other person for three companies.

Efficiency has been improved. We bought three other companies. They used to have their own IT departments. Now it is just us doing all the same functions.

My experience with the pricing, the setup costs, and the licensing is that it is still pretty expensive. Compared to buying three or four vendor solutions, it is much cheaper.

I did consider other solutions before choosing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS); we looked at VMware and NetApp.

I chose Nutanix because it was cheaper than those other solutions.

We do not use them in a hybrid cloud environment; everything is on-premises right now.

My impression of the cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) when dealing with unstructured data, such as ransomware threats, is that we have not really gone very deep into it yet, but we do have all the security features turned on, including encryption and data-at-rest encryption.

We are not using the Data Lens high-cost feature of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS); we are using the smaller version of Files Analytics.

Our experience with it has been that we have not had many chances to really make reports yet, but we have been able to figure out what is happening with storage usage.

I am pretty happy with the product. I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a nine out of ten.

The main use case for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is as a target for data protection.

A company can benefit from using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) by narrowing down the number of vendors they work with. Instead of using a NetApp filer or a Windows file share, NUS is a good choice because it's leveraging the Nutanix file system, which has been around for a long time and is really solid and secure.

The features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) that I find most appealing are the objects, which we use the most, and then files are second. NUS has those two components, and the objects are what we work with primarily. What I appreciate about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that it's simple, easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to install. It's a part of the Nutanix stack, allowing you to manage everything in one console. 

Having a single vendor experience and utilizing space on a Nutanix cluster that may not be fully used is beneficial. You can stand up objects, which is S3 compatible, and send data there. The flexibility of it is really important. You have your normal file share or an object, and it's advantageous to have one solution for both.

From what I've heard from customers that I work with regarding workloads, everybody seems happy with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Customers mostly use it for file shares, and they are content with it because it's resilient, easy to work with, and easy to maintain. I

It is more stable and scalable compared to the Windows file server.

My impressions of the cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) when dealing with unstructured data, such as ransomware threats, are positive. As a platform, Nutanix is secure. If you use the features of their product called Flow Network Security, you can protect the NUS environment from ransomware by applying zero trust principles regarding access to your NUS.

I mostly use Data Lens for the security features more than the cost features regarding how it impacts data management costs. It would do a pretty good job of analyzing costs since there was an element in an acquisition Nutanix made that included a security piece and a cost piece. They haven't done much with the cost piece, so it's there a little bit but not as much as with security.

I can't think of any improvements for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) as a platform. It works, and it's simple. I use it for specific things, and I'm used to it, so there aren't any issues that bother me. I don't use it for AI, so there may be other things that matter more. As for backup and recovery, it works great—it's performant enough for my uses and simple to manage. 

Since it's part of Prism, I might suggest integrating the management console into Prism instead of having a separate console; that's the only change I would recommend, and it's not a significant issue.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for a while, but it's challenging to specify as I help customers who use it, while I don't use it myself anymore.

The stability and reliability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are excellent. Its robust file system allows you to lose nodes without losing any data, which is key in its construction, and it has been really reliable.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very scalable. You can buy in blocks of storage. This means you don't have to buy everything upfront; you can buy what you need and add more as you grow, which is advantageous.

Nutanix has always provided great customer service and technical support resources, and I rate it a nine out of ten. It's not perfect; it's pretty good most of the time.

Positive

I work with other solutions besides Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), such as Windows file servers and a bit of NetApp and Dell - not too many overall. The main differences between those products and Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are that NUS runs on its own file system, which is faster, more robust, and easier to scale. Those are the significant differences.

My experience with the deployment of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that it's very easy to install. Nutanix has a VM you need to pull down, give it resources, and then it's all set to go. It's very fast and not difficult, with not many steps involved.

From my perspective, the biggest return on investment when using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the speed of onboarding. You get a very quick return on investment since you don't have to spend a lot of time setting it up or backing it up. Its simplicity is the best ROI.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can reduce the total cost of ownership since it's easier to set up and manage. You need fewer man hours to run it, which contributes to lower TCO.

The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are competitive with the market.

Overall, I give Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a rating of nine out of ten. To make it a perfect ten, I would suggest making it a unified console by integrating the console into one system; that's really the only minor criticism I have.

We are a university in Morocco, and we use Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) mainly for file and object storage. We store student home folders and faculty data as well as research datasets. Additionally, we have an e-learning platform, and the e-learning platform content is also stored in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) files and storage.

Furthermore, we use Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Files as a persistent volume for Kubernetes workloads.

One of the features we find beneficial in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the ransomware protection. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has a list of file extensions that are blocked by default, around 250 extensions, which protects us from ransomware attacks.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has helped us reduce operational costs compared to our previous solution like Dell EMC. We migrated our workload to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), eliminating all the support costs and complexity management.

I hope Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) will improve the clarity of the licensing uses and enhance the reporting and analytics, which are not sufficient.

The reporting feature lacks sufficient information, which is something I would like to see improved in future releases of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

I have been working with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for about two years.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) solution has proven to be very stable, with no unplanned major outages and no disruptive upgrades. During upgrades, we experience consistent performance and smooth failovers during disaster recovery. I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

We expand our usage of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Objects; for example, we started with two workers, and as our e-learning platform gained more content, we decided to scale, so we now have six workers.

The scaling process was very smooth; it took just about five minutes with two or three clicks.

Customer service and technical support from Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are the major points for us. They have been very helpful, responsive, and technically strong. For instance, when we faced a major outage where Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Object was unreachable, we created a ticket, and they responded in less than one hour, fixing the issue in about ten minutes.

I would rate the technical support at nine or ten out of ten, specifically around 9.5.

Positive

We were using Dell EMC and we moved to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

The deployment of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) was easy and straightforward, guided well by Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and their local partner.

In terms of return on investment, we have reduced operational costs by eliminating all support contracts and also reduced power and rack space usage.

We decided to move from Dell to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) primarily due to dissatisfaction with Dell's support during outages, which often took considerably long to resolve, sometimes even up to two days. After contacting Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) commercial team, we were informed about their strong support, and upon using the solution, we have been very satisfied with it.

The pros of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) compared to EMC technologies include the fact that Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file, object, and block storage are all integrated into one platform, allowing us to manage everything from a single interface. There is also seamless integration with the native Nutanix HV and Prism, and we experience good performance for our workloads. The cons include unclear licensing and the need for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) expertise for advanced configuration, as we were not trained sufficiently for that. A significant pro for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is its scalability; we can scale with ease.

Overall, I find the cybersecurity features, including the strong ransomware protection, effective when dealing with unstructured data.

I recommend that organizations considering unified storage plan their sizing carefully before deployment, especially for data growth, enable disaster recovery or data protection from the beginning, and ensure that their team receives proper training during deployment. I provide this review with an overall rating of nine out of ten.

My use case for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is software-defined storage.

The best features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are its excellent performance. Compared to other vendors' storage solutions, expertise is not required. It is very simple with very good performance. 

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has helped my business in the remote location branch office, which is a very good feature for this product. However, I am not satisfied with its performance in the data center.

The CVM consumes more memory and CPU, as it will be allocated a minimum of 32 GB. For a large data store, they are unnecessarily consuming extra resources through the built-in CVM. Otherwise, the product is very good. In the remote location, they have excellent future backup capabilities, and it has nice features compared to other products.

I have two years of experience with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

We are not using AI or machine learning.

We have more than 200 boxes we are using with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). That is a very big number on the Nutanix side. The number of users ranges from 6,000 to 7,000.

Support for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very good. I would rate it nine out of ten.

We are facing one issue when moving from VMware to Nutanix: while upgrades are very easy, when going backward, we don't have any tools and downtime is required. From a maintenance perspective, there is minimal downtime needed. It is much better compared to the VMware product.

The deployment for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very easy and uncomplicated.

I have no idea about the pricing of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) as I'm not the decision authority for pricing. Generally, compared to other products, this has better pricing, but I don't deal with the price side.

The main competitor I compare Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) to is VMware VSAN. In terms of technology and performance, they are similar. The only concern is the CVM consuming more memory and CPU. Apart from this, everything is fine.

Automation is available with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), but it has not reached the expected level of simplification. The product still needs more improvement. Regarding the cybersecurity feature for unstructured data, specifically ransomware threats, that's handled by a separate team, and I'm not very technical in that cybersecurity aspect. I have no knowledge about the Data Lens high-cost feature. Overall, I rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) eight out of ten.

Our use cases for Nutanix Unified Storage include file shares, which are easy to set up without having to have a server do that same thing. We don't have to keep on continuing to upgrade operating systems. It's easy for replication and disaster recovery, as we have two files clusters that replicate data back and forth, and it's good for DR purposes.

The cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage when dealing with unstructured data and ransomware threats are very good. We have that feature turned on, and it has helped protect us from ransomware attacks. It provides good detection capabilities.

We're in Azure. We use files as a target for hybrid and on-prem things, and also for storage in our Azure environment. It works well in regard to securing workloads and all that stuff. It works effectively in securing workloads.

It has helped reduce our total cost of ownership in regards to spinning up another virtual machine just to handle a share. We also use it with Varonis, which enhances security management. The API hooks into different products, such as Varonis, giving us insights into what's going on, which is why we don't use Data Lens as much. Nutanix Unified Storage has saved us approximately 5,000 to 10,000 dollars over five years. Previously, we had a SAN that was very expensive to maintain due to power consumption.

We're not doing a lot of AI tasks yet, but we're looking into that. From a latency perspective, we haven't experienced any issues. The cluster is pretty resilient, and we appreciate the ability to upgrade to new versions of files without any downtime.

The most valuable feature of Nutanix Unified Storage is the ease of setting up file shares. As a global company with data centers around the world, our files clusters are accessible globally. Managing and setting up shares for our over 12,000 employees is straightforward.

It would be beneficial if there were a migration tool for the new way of syncing data for data protection. Currently, we have 30 days' worth of snapshots going back and forth for data protection. A migration tool to transition to better syncing for DR would be valuable, as otherwise, we lose 30 days because of the storage requirement.

To improve the solution further, there could be different ways of integrating or connecting different systems to it. They should make it easier, along with providing different ways of visualizing files and storage space.

We have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for unified storage for a little over six years, mostly files, and we have some objects and use objects as a target for backups.

Nutanix Unified Storage is very stable. Our uptime is at 99.9%.

I was talking to our sales manager for a region. He said that Nutanix is one of the top tech support companies out there. They have great customer service. I said that I don't think I've ever had a bad experience with support in the last five, six years with them. They are very knowledgeable, and if they can't solve the problem, they find the answer within a day or so.

I would rate their technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

We were previously using a SAN that was over 25 years old with aging hardware.

The setup is easy. It's similar to any Nutanix cluster that we have for hyper-converged systems, making it easy to manage.

Within a couple of hours, we had it imaged and set up. It was really easy.

The biggest return on investment is the flexibility. As you grow or as your storage grows, you can grow the licensing. You don't have to pay for all the terabytes upfront. We are also looking at reducing our data footprint because we don't need data from 23 or 30 years ago. We are implementing policies around reducing that storage.

The pricing is fair. 

Before choosing Nutanix Unified Storage, we considered EMC solutions. Since we were already a Nutanix customer for hyper-converged needs, we decided to stay with Nutanix as their solution fit our requirements. EMC was too expensive. We already knew Nutanix, so it was just an easy transition.

We are not using the Data Lens feature of Nutanix Unified Storage. We are more focused on protecting our data and ensuring it's secure in that area. While we have that feature available, we don't currently utilize it.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a nine out of ten as there's always room for improvement.

Our use cases for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) today involve working at an engineering firm with CAD drawing, among other things. The main uses for SMB storage include massive amounts of data, close to two petabytes worth of data, which consists of tons of graphics or layering. Architectural or engineering environments require layer upon layer of files to work cohesively as one for the actual final product or engineering design. Therefore, we need flexible, fast storage in order to allow the engineers to perform their duties.

The qualities of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) improved our company by giving us the flexibility to expand as we grow. With our old traditional storage environment, SMB, it's very chaotic to try to expand, whereas with NUS, you can just add another node. You expand a cluster on the fly, and it's done; you don't have to reconfigure anything, run tons of cable, or worry about fiber channel or any other backend storage rates or protocol nodes. It's just a quick, easy expand on the fly—no interruptions to the business. The same goes for any type of data protection and replication factory for a DR scenario; it's automatically happening. You expand at the primary and at the failover site, and then you're done. Ease of deployment and expansion is key.

What I appreciate the most about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the fact that it's flexible; it's not all hardware-driven. Your FSVMs allow you the flexibility to scale up or scale out. You don't even have to go 100% with each node to start off. You can start off with 60% of the node coverage. In my case, I have an eight-node cluster, so I'll start off with five FSVMs initially, and then I'll scale up for resources, however, if I have the need to scale out for additional FSVMs, I can do that. In a typical SMB type storage environment, it's physical protocol nodes; you buy it, you're done, you don't have that scalability.

My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads, such as AI, in a hybrid cloud environment is shaped by the fact that we're an engineering firm dealing with AutoCAD, which involves very heavy GPU-based applications. When you drag that mouse, it's immediately writing to storage, it's immediately writing to NUS, all those different layers, all the reference points it has to access that data instantly. The performance we've already seen to date is significantly better than a traditional SAN array that presents SMB shares to our end users, and I'm curious to see how that's going to work moving forward. I anticipate that as we expand more and more nodes, it's going to get better and better and faster and faster.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved involve the limitations I've seen in Files Analytics, specifically to the number of FSVMs today that File Analytics can analyze. It's either two or three, and if you want to build out multiple FSVMs, you should expand them; instead of doing a couple of FSVMs with lots of shares, breaking it down more granularly would help. If you want to implement a version of micro-segmentation where you can create FSVMs tied to specific VLANs to really lock down the data logically, the problem is that File Analytics can't hit all those FSVMs. Anyone wanting to see what's going on in their environment might benefit from unlocking it so that File Analytics can hit any FSVMs in the cluster, which would be perfect. This isn't the case today, however, it would be something for Nutanix to consider for the future.

At my prior company, I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for two years, and at this company, it's only been three to four months. We're actually deploying it out to the enterprise. The first time using it was Nutanix Files version 1.0. I've gone all the way back to the early version, and now I am deploying the latest version.

Regarding the stability and reliability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), I find today that it's fine, just as with anything else. It's based upon Nutanix's principles for HCI environments, bringing lots of flexibility and redundancy. If you have your DR, whether you're doing async or any type of replication, the failover is as simple as it was for VM. It's amazing and much easier than any product I've worked with in the past.

Technical support holds their standards high, which is great. If I have an issue, I can open a support case and, depending on severity, have someone assist me quickly—sometimes as fast as an hour or within eight hours. Typically, I'm chatting back and forth with the support engineers within two to three hours. Support is great.

For customer service and technical support, I would rate them a nine out of ten. In my past, I've encountered situations where I've worked with support engineers and sometimes known more than them, which led to hastening the escalation to a level three person. However, that's not their fault; they don't know my background or details. Often, I'll run through everything I've done, and if they understand I've already performed their steps, they will expedite my case.

Positive

I did not use another solution before choosing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) as we already had one in place. The solution we used was IBM ESS, which is by far the worst storage solution ever. I have even worked with Dell Isilon, which I thought was bad, however, this is by far the worst. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is cleaner, flexible, and easier to run.

My experience with the deployment of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is simple; it's just deploying any Nutanix-type cluster. Once the cluster is up and running, you go through the interface with a couple of clicks to deploy your FSVMs. You do have to be cognizant of IP spacing since you have your backend IP for the iSCSI traffic, and your front-side IPs that will share that SMB information. If you're doing a distributive clustering, even if it's simple, you need to reserve those IPs for that process. Other than that, it's click, click, click, done.

The biggest return on investment for me when using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the management aspect since it's easier to manage. If a person is familiar with the Nutanix platform itself, they get that single interface through Prism Central or Prism Element, which is seamless and very intuitive. This contrasts with using a Dell product or IBM product, where management can become quite niche, often requiring command-line interactions. With Nutanix and NUS, it's all accessible, and they put a lot of emphasis on the UI.

Regarding the reduction of our total cost of ownership, it involves more about billing the departments, and while we're not there yet, Files Analytics can help us identify data being stored by each department, allowing us to bill accordingly. In the long run, this will make the business more cognizant about what data they store, thus reducing waste and ultimately saving the company money. If you bloat everything, you're paying for that bloat, and getting rid of it will make us more efficient, streamlined, and cost-effective in the long run.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that, while I'm not the CIO and I'm not the money man, I find it comparative and cheaper. Especially compared to the current structure of the storage environment that our company had been leveraging, you don't have to overpay for storage and you can build out as needed. You can add those costs to the production value of the business sector, so it makes sense. You can scale out as needed, instead of over provisioning or over buying up front, knowing you're going to grow over an extended period.

I considered other solutions before choosing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). We have one solution today that was only active for two years, which should tell you a lot since we bought this $10 million storage solution that we're already pivoting away from. It's still under warranty for another three years. We are moving everything to NUS, which illustrates our shift to a better, simplified, robust, and scalable solution.

I can't really assess the performance of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for high throughput and low latency requirements in AI workloads because we haven't really gone down that path yet. That's something we'll look for in the future, and I'm sure a lot of other companies are the same way. However, I enjoyed watching the presentation this morning, and I'm looking forward to digging into the potential AI with our NUS environment.

My impression of the cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) when dealing with unstructured data ransomware threats is still developing. We haven't deployed all that yet. We just deployed 7.X AOS version, so we're seeing all the added features and stuff that are available. My security team will look at and analyze that as well. I see the potential, especially with the API calls, that we also use a third-party product, Rubrik, that's tied in. I think we're going to actually work and enhance that functionality for us, and I'm interested to see what it's going to be in the future, yet I can't say this is working great for us today since we haven't gotten there yet.

I am not using the Data Lens high-cost feature of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) yet. We are deploying everything on-premise due to our business needs. The data has to be close to the user; we can't experience latency. Even if there are great pipes between locations, there's always going to be some latency. Thus, it's crucial for our compute and data to be in the same data center, especially since dragging the mouse automatically writes the data. There's no caching, so it's instant write and instant read in our applications and environment today. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has been scalable and has met our growing needs, which is one of the reasons why we chose it. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this solution an eight.