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NetApp HCI [EOL] vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NetApp HCI [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
200
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (6th), HCI (3rd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot
Oct 31, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

MB
Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.
Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022
Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.
OB
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
Infrastructure efficiency has improved significantly with quick server provisioning, though physical to virtual migrations need a streamlined in-house tool
From my experience with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), there is one area that needs improvement. When moving a critical infrastructure from a physical machine to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), we currently have to use a third-party tool to convert the physical machine to a VM. We have to use VMware converter to perform this conversion before moving it to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using NetApp HCI has made things a lot easier to set up."
"The most valuable aspects are that it's an all-in-one solution and it's very self-contained."
"It has reduced our hypervisor footprint by around 20%."
"The ease of deployment is a positive feature that allows us to scale easily."
"It has automated a lot of workloads. It has automated us from ticketing a large number to a very small number."
"Now you don't have to be a storage administrator to provision or do anything, and any VMware system administrator, with the ease of a button, would get storage provision, which makes their lives easier."
"The most valuable feature, currently, is the density of the system as hardware, as I'm able to leverage the density of the product and remove bigger hardware which requires more space, cooling, and power costs, and there are cost savings, obviously."
"The benefits for our organization are the performance that we're able to get out of it, as well as the guaranteed minimum performance from a storage perspective."
"I definitely find the reduced power consumption very valuable."
"It is a good solution and it is easy to work on their platform."
"The simplicity when it comes to building your own automation has been excellent."
"It gives us a single dashboard to control multiple sites and multiple zones. It helps to do things on a single platform and data sharing is quite easy. The network and the security are easy to manage."
"SRM capabilities for replication have been proven reliable and very useful for our organization."
"The cloud features in-site offering, which I found to be very interesting."
"A great feature involves real-time hardware changes."
"It is now our single most powerful server that is easily scalable and has an HTML5 site that manages all aspects of the system."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the implementation process improved."
"There have been some drive type of issues where we have to apply a new code level. Storage nodes kick certain drives until they act as though they have failed when really they haven't. You just have to reinsert them, then they go on about their happy way. It's sort of a bug."
"The networking needs improvement."
"Because of the repeated failure of the motherboard that we experienced, we have doubts about the stability of the solution, but I'm sure that in the near future it will be a great, reliable solution for us."
"They could improve the packaging."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate to multiple sites."
"It would be great if they took something like kernel storage and integrated straight into the NetApp as well."
"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."
"Nutanix needs to improve network features like Passthrough – SR-IOV. It could be improved by supporting SR-IOV, if they had that support, I would not have needed to implement the VMWare vSAN."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) has really become very expensive."
"They could improve the graphical user interface."
"This solution would be improved with built-in integration with Rubrik."
"For the company process, the price is too high."
"One of the improvements I would like to have is related to naming. It is getting confusing because they are using three-letter acronyms, which are more or less misleading. What I do not like is that they changed names and reused names. They had a meaning in the past and they are still using the names for something similar."
"When operating a system which has a large capacity and large block sizes in random write, the performance will slow down a little bit."
"If you're willing to spend on hyper-convergence technologies be prepared to pay more and be locked down to a specific hardware vendor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."
"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
"The licensing fees are renewed annually."
"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
"The price of Nutanix is lower than other products."
"We are aware of the pricing since we renew every year, at almost $100,000 per year."
"Many of my customers have issues with Acropolis' licensing model because they are charging the customers based on two things— the CPUs and the capacity in the solid stack disk — and that's a problem. Nutanix's competitors are not licensing that layer, so this is something that they should change. They should abandon this licensing model because it's too complex. Technical support is bundled with the subscription."
"While cost may seem higher than your traditional 3-tier architecture, you need to look at the bigger picture. You're not just buying hardware here. You're buying a complete environment."
"The solution could be a little less expensive."
"Nutanix price is high because it bundles all the components into single deals rather than allowing you to select the features that you want/will use."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Answers from the Community

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot
Oct 31, 2019
Oct 31, 2019
The biggest difference is the ability to scale compute and storage independently. NetApp can scale up the storage without the need for extra CPU (and hence VMware licenses for ESX). Nutanix does have a storage node, but it has limitations. Another key difference is the NetApp uses an inbuilt method for the central storage plane and doesn't use VSAN which saves on licensing. Cost wise, Nutanix i...
2 out of 15 answers
AG
Regional Manager at VAD
Mar 13, 2019
it depends on your needs NetApp Is Very Good , but expensive as it's All Flash , based on SolidFire Storage . It will support only VMware but Nutanix can be ALL Flash or Hybrid , also can work with Hyper-v , VMware or Nutanix AHV
it_user951444 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect with 5,001-10,000 employees
Mar 13, 2019
The biggest difference is the ability to scale compute and storage independently. NetApp can scale up the storage without the need for extra CPU (and hence VMware licenses for ESX). Nutanix does have a storage node, but it has limitations. Another key difference is the NetApp uses an inbuilt method for the central storage plane and doesn't use VSAN which saves on licensing. Cost wise, Nutanix is almost always more expensive than alternative solutions.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business92
Midsize Enterprise77
Large Enterprise82
 

Questions from the Community

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Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
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