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Kubernetes vs Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 2025

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
Ranking in Container Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Kubernetes Platform...
Ranking in Container Management
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

RV
DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated deployments and self-healing have transformed how I run reliable chat services
For improvements, I would definitely suggest some enhancements to Kubernetes. While Kubernetes is very powerful, there are still a few areas where it could be improved. Our challenge is the learning curve and operational complexity. For new team members, concepts such as networking, RBAC, Ingress, and troubleshooting distributed systems can take time to understand. Better built-in onboarding tools or simplified abstractions would help. Another pain point is debugging and observability. While kubectl provides good basic visibility, deep debugging across multiple services, pods, and nodes often requires external tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, or centralized logging. Stronger native observability features would be very helpful. Networking and Ingress configuration can also be complex, especially when dealing with certificates, routing rules, and cloud-specific integrations. A more standardized experience across environments could reduce operational overhead. From a cost perspective, managing and optimizing resource usage at scale still requires careful monitoring and tuning. Better built-in cost visibility would be very helpful. For the needed improvements, I think that covers most of my main concerns. The biggest areas for improvement are still around simplifying operations, better native observability, and easier cost visibility. If I had to add one more point, it would be around standardization and developer experience. Sometimes different clusters, cloud providers, or tooling setups behave slightly differently, which increases maintenance efforts. More consistent defaults and opinionated best practices could help teams adopt Kubernetes faster and with fewer surprises. Overall, despite these challenges, Kubernetes is a very mature and reliable platform, and the benefits clearly outweigh the limitations for most production use cases. An additional area that could be improved is upgrade and version management. While managed services help coordinate Kubernetes version upgrades, API deprecations and compatibility with add-ons can still be time-consuming and risky for production environments. Better tooling and clearer migration automation would make upgrades safer and easier. Another improvement could be around documentation, consistency, and discoverability. Kubernetes documentation is very comprehensive, but for beginners, it can sometimes be overwhelming to navigate and identify best practice paths.
RashidAnwar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Project Lead at Tetra Pak
Centralized cluster deployment has improved remote site operations and supported hybrid application models
The initial setup was not straightforward. It was challenging, but then it was manageable. It is relatively easy, but we do have challenges. Not everything is straightforward. There are things that can be addressed. In a couple of cases, we needed some third-party expertise to ensure that we did it correctly. In most cases, we were able to do it on our own. When hosting something on Azure and connecting with an HTTPS link, there are some dependencies that need to be tweaked on Nutanix. Otherwise, it does not communicate with the on-premises infrastructure. There were a few tweaks that we struggled with for almost a couple of days. That was not part of the original design manual. We needed to make some tweaks within the cluster ourselves to achieve the goal. There were some shortcomings in the design that we had to customize ourselves to achieve, especially integration with Azure Cloud.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is its support for load balancing."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the auto-scaling feature. However, Kubernetes is not used alone; it is part of a complete deployment pipeline integrated with DevOps. This pipeline includes automation and deployment capabilities."
"Offers a crucial feedback process"
"The solution is easy to use."
"This product has a rich toolset from the community including CNI plug-ins, Helm packages, operators, dashboards, various integrations, etc."
"Kubernetes is a leading container orchestration solution, known for its simplicity and ease of use. Being open-source, it benefits from large community support, including enterprise support. Many companies offer their own version of Kubernetes, making it widely adopted and supported in the industry."
"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."
"I like the replication center and the configuration."
"The stability of Nutanix is exceptional; when operational, it performs flawlessly and demonstrates remarkable resilience."
"We have great support from Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) and the experience has been excellent; the relationship maintained with the team in India is particularly strong, and the support directly from Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) itself has been exceptional."
"Migration from public cloud to private cloud and vice versa is actually seamless using Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), making it very handy when providing a Kubernetes platform for customers needing on-premises solutions during application modernization."
"Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) is a centralized platform that allows us to deploy different clusters from a centralized location."
"Compared to Azure or Amazon, Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) is not as secure, but the new edition may improve these functionalities."
"The platform is stable."
"Before working with Nutanix Kubernetes (NKP), I was working on Dockers, which required separate setups for each microservice, application, or web server, but now everything is under one umbrella, allowing us to manage it all without going here and there."
"The platform is easy to set up, maintain, and update."
 

Cons

"They should update Kubernetes more regularly."
"It would be helpful if the UI were more graphical."
"They should make documentation simpler for learning."
"Some Kubernetes technical support would be helpful."
"This product should have a more advanced built-in scheduler that uses real application metrics in the scheduling strategy."
"Kubernetes should improve its consistency across different types of deployments. My customers tell me that they get much better performance when Kubernetes is deployed on VM versus PaaS services from Azure."
"I'm a beginner, and I recently started working with Kubernetes. As of now, I don't see any bugs. However, it would be better if it could be deployed without coding."
"Security could be improved. It would be helpful if there were other security modules built into Kubernetes."
"They have to improve their marketplace offering for Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) which is currently limited."
"In Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), I believe the migration process needs to be much simpler, similar to other Kubernetes platforms we are using, with all steps being clear and direct to facilitate an easier experience for everyone."
"Regarding the stability and reliability of Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), I sometimes worry about incidents that occur, but we don't receive a clear explanation of what happened."
"There were some shortcomings in the design that we had to customize ourselves to achieve, especially integration with Azure Cloud."
"There are some limitations with the non-air gap version as it requires complete internet access, which poses restrictions due to government regulations."
"A significant limitation of the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) is its requirement for extensive Kubernetes knowledge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you have a solid AKS and a solid DevOps process, you'll automatically get an ROI, not just in terms of cost but also in how quickly you can see your business application progress."
"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."
"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs associated with its use."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"I would say the solution is worth the money, but it depends on the required workloads, the type of workload, and the scaling requirements etc."
"Kubernetes is open-source."
"There is a license to use Kubernetes."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
I have had a good experience with pricing, but the setup costs are high.
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
Kubernetes can be improved, though I cannot specify exactly how at this time.
What needs improvement with Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP)?
Other areas of Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) that could be improved include backup, replication, and disaster recovery. Currently, we can create the Kubernetes cluster, but for backup or disast...
What is your primary use case for Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP)?
We are not the end users of this solution; we are a kind of cloud provider for the government. The institutions ask for a platform, and we create it while providing all the necessary infrastructure...
What advice do you have for others considering Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP)?
Regarding API-driven infrastructure of Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), I didn't quite understand that question. I don't think we utilize it, but I am unsure if it is there. My overall review rat...
 

Also Known As

K8
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Kubernetes vs. Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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