Kubernetes vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] comparison

Kubernetes and Nutanix are both solutions in the Container Management category. Additionally, 98% of Kubernetes users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

Kubernetes

Read 79 Kubernetes reviews

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98% willing to recommend

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine N...

Read 14 Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] reviews

100% willing to recommend

Kubernetes

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine N...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 1, 2025

Kubernetes and Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE compete in the container orchestration category. Kubernetes seems to have the upper hand due to its open-source flexibility, scalability, and adoption across various cloud environments.

Features: Kubernetes highlights scalability, self-healing capabilities, and cross-platform flexibility, making it suitable for complex and diverse cloud environments. Its rich community support and integration with multiple platforms increase its versatility. Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE provides simplicity in deployment, reliability, and straightforward management within its single console, complemented by integrated virtualization features.

Room for Improvement: Kubernetes could enhance management simplicity, strengthen its security integration, and offer more intuitive dashboards. The complexity requires better documentation and user interfaces. Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE could expand its scalability features, improve disaster recovery options, and support high-performance applications better, with more automated processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kubernetes offers adaptability across hybrid, private, and public clouds, providing unmatched deployment flexibility. However, support might be inconsistent due to its community-driven nature. Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE ensures reliable and consistent on-premises support, closely tied with its ecosystem, although restricted to on-premises deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Kubernetes, being open-source, has no licensing costs, appealing to those seeking cost-efficient solutions with notable ROI from reduced infrastructure expenses, though optional tools may add costs. Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE presents competitive pricing when bundled in the Nutanix ecosystem, offering valuable features without additional charges but with limited flexibility compared to Kubernetes.

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Kubernetes

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Container Management (3rd)

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine N...

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Leonardo Brito

Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube

Migration to managed containers has accelerated microservice deployments and reduced downtime

I am using add-ons for EKS Kubernetes that stand out to me. The useful add-ons help with administrating multiple clusters and accounts in AWS. My company uses Kubernetes for microservices within the organization. I advise others to look into using Kubernetes and not to pursue other options. Kubernetes is something I want to emphasize before we wrap up. I have given this review an overall rating of 80.

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reviewer2741271

Nutanix Administrator at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Has provided seamless upgrade experiences and robust technical support

I have heard there are many features added in NKP that are not available in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE, such as load balancer features. The unified control plane feature is not being used in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE. We are currently using a third-party tool for load balancing, but going forward, NKP will include load balancer, ingress, and egress features, making infrastructure management much easier. There is no auto-scaling feature in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE; however, NKP offers it. In NKE, we created additional worker nodes and increased CPU and RAM capacity, but it required manual intervention. Concerning policy-driven governance in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE, we have the ability to implement RBAC at the cluster level, which helps maintain security by not granting full admin privileges to every end user, thus restricting access effectively.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution is easy to use."

"We use it for various large microservice-based architectures and web services. That's the ideal use case, but it's suitable for any kind of service that can be decomposed and needs to be scaled. Of course, it's much easier to deploy services that are stateless. It"

"Kubernetes' integration with AWS Lambda is great. I barely had to write any code to connect from EKS to Lambda, so Kubernetes is programmer friendly."

"The scalability seems quite good."

"The most important feature is container orchestration."

"I rate Kubernetes nine out of ten."

"Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down."

"Kubernetes is scalable and the elasticity is sustainable."

More Kubernetes pros

"We can add some add-ons and plugins to the product if we need to."

"The technical support is excellent."

"The solution is easy to manage. You can get everything in a single platform. It is also easy to work with Terraform as a code."

"The most valuable features of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) are its simplicity and efficiency during the initial cluster creation phase."

"We can do a lot of provisioning."

"Nutanix's support is really good."

"The product integrates well with our infrastructure."

"The solution provides no downtime features. If we face issues, we create a new port, deploy it there, and then drop the existing one. This way, we avoid NKE downtime on our website."

More Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] pros

Cons

"I think that the GUI dashboard in Kubernetes is very simple and that there are no great options."

"Setup was not straightforward."

"One area where Kubernetes could improve is troubleshooting. The current process for troubleshooting and installation can be challenging, especially with a large ecosystem. Better tools and artificial intelligence capabilities developed to assist with troubleshooting, configuration, and support would be helpful. This improvement would be particularly beneficial for large enterprise customers."

"It would be very interesting if they could introduce a template engine to set dynamic values in the deployment time. It would be ideal if it could be native in Kubernetes as it would be much easier."

"I would rate the stability as five out of ten. If any containers take more space, sometimes the cluster goes down."

"We faced a challenge while migrating and upgrading versions of Kubernetes."

"It would be nice if they could make it easier for developers and infrastructure staff to automate some of the pieces that they have to do manually at the moment."

"This product should have a more advanced built-in scheduler that uses real application metrics in the scheduling strategy."

More Kubernetes cons

"There is no auto-scaling feature in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE; however, NKP offers it. In NKE, we created additional worker nodes and increased CPU and RAM capacity, but it required manual intervention."

"NKE could benefit from additional features that support more advanced Kubernetes functionalities and configurations."

"I have issues with the product's interoperability."

"One major issue we faced was that appliances couldn't migrate from VMware to the tool. However, this seems to be a common problem across platforms. We've seen the same issue when migrating from VMware to RHV or other solutions. It's not specifically a Nutanix problem but rather an issue migrating appliances from one VM infrastructure to another. Some kernel-level and storage-level issues impact this process."

"The product lacks some virtualization capabilities, making it an area for improvement where the solution can focus on providing users with more virtualization capabilities related to disk systems."

"I would like to have more nodes for availability and storage."

"Nutanix has limitations compared to VMware, particularly in testing and industry tie-ups with different OEMs. Deploying virtual machines, especially for industrial automation, can be challenging due to compatibility issues."

"We need a backup of production clusters."

More Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kubernetes is open source. But we have to manage Kubernetes as a team, and the overhead is a bit high. Compared with the platforms like Cloud Foundry, which has a much less operational overhead. Kubernetes, I have to manage the code, and I have to hire the developers. If someone has a product, a developer should know exactly what he's writing or high availability, and all those things may differ the costs."

"You need to pay for a license if you buy branded products. For example, if you take the services from Azure, AWS, or Google, the price of the Kubernetes cluster is inclusive of the service that's being offered to us on a pay-and-use model."

"Kubernetes is open-source."

"If you're using a public cloud, the cost depends on the number of nodes you are planning to deploy Kubernetes on."

"The management layer is free, which is perfect. You don't need to pay money for the management layer, but in AWS develop service, you need to pay. I think it is €75 per month for the management layer. It is free here, so you can have as many Kubernetes clusters as you need. You are paying just for the workload, that is, for the machine, CPU, memory, and everything."

"There is no licensing fee."

"Pricing isn't a major concern for us. Since we resell Kubernetes services and focus on providing support, integration, and education, we don't usually have pricing issues. Our customers are more concerned with getting the right support and services than the cost. So, the value we provide is more important than the actual pricing. Pricing might change in the future, but it’s not a big issue for us right now."

"The price of Kubernetes could be lower. However, it is less expensive than VMware Tanzu. Additionally, technical support is expensive. The overall cost of the solution is approximately $1,000 annually."

More Kubernetes pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The platform is averagely priced. I rate the pricing as four out of ten."

"I rate NKE's pricing a six out of ten."

"While deploying Kubernetes clusters on Nutanix is cost-effective, there may be additional costs for remote branch offices where Kubernetes is less common."

"The product's licenses are included in the software version deployed in our data center."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kubernetes?

There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?

I have had a good experience with pricing, but the setup costs are high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kubernetes?

Kubernetes can be improved, though I cannot specify exactly how at this time.

See all answers

What do you like most about Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?

The most valuable features of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) are its simplicity and efficiency during the initial cluster creation phase.

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What needs improvement with Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?

In terms of features, I cannot comment technically, but the real value is the consolidated out-of-the-box solution that Nutanix offers. Nutanix has built great branding and a lot of credibility and...

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What is your primary use case for Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?

I have experience with OpenShift, Kubernetes, and Nutanix, as we are one of the largest Nutanix resellers in the Middle East. We handle Kubernetes on the cloud as well, so we manage most of the Kub...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 19% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Kubernetes

Compared 12% of the time

Portainer vs Kubernetes

Compared 10% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad vs Kubernetes

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 7% of the time

More Kubernetes Competitors

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]

Compared 26% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

Rancher Labs vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]

Compared 5% of the time

Docker vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]

Compared 4% of the time

More Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

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Kubernetes

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]

January 2026

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] report

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Also Known As

Nutanix Karbon

Overview

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Kubernetes builds upon 15 years of experience of running production workloads at Google, combined with best-of-breed ideas and practices from the community.

Kubernetes

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] offers easy deployment, efficient resource management, and seamless integration with existing infrastructure, supporting virtualization and configurable RBAC.

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] simplifies Kubernetes cluster deployment and management, offering robust features such as health checks and seamless upgrades. It integrates with existing systems, supports virtualization, and provides a unified console. Automatic load management and scalability contribute to its stability. Though migrating via VMware poses challenges and documentation updates are needed, potential enhancements include dynamic resource scaling, advanced backup options, and improved disaster recovery. NKE is ideal for microservices, container management, and application modernization, playing a vital role in DevOps settings.

What are the key features of Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]?

Easy Deployment: Simplifies cluster setup and management for quick ramp-up.
Resource Allocation: Efficiently allocates computing resources for optimized operations.
Seamless Upgrades: Handles updates without causing downtime.
Integration: Works with existing infrastructure, allowing virtualization support.
Console Management: Offers a single interface for robust management features.

What benefits should users look for in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL]?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides a reliable Kubernetes platform with reduced operational costs.
Scalability: Ensures stability and growth alongside increasing demands.
Support Features: Includes robust technical support for a seamless experience.
Efficiency: Enhances workload management in DevOps environments.
Configurable Options: Allows tailored RBAC and scalable virtualization benefits.

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] is deployed in industries focusing on microservices and application modernization, serving development to testing environments. It integrates with hardware and API tools, supporting DevOps workloads and infrastructure management. Primarily used on-premises, it supports large-scale application deployment leveraging network capabilities.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen

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