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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Rackspace OpenStack 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

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
200
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (2nd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th)
Rackspace OpenStack
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 9.1%, up 8.9% compared to last year.
Rackspace OpenStack, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 7.4% mindshare, up 4.2% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.1%
VxRail10.4%
VMware vSAN8.5%
Other72.0%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Rackspace OpenStack7.4%
FlexPod XCS12.5%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.1%
Other69.0%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

JD
Dsi at OFFICE PUBLIC DE L HABITAT DE ROUEN
Hyper-converged storage has improved performance and now supports high redundancy for our VMs
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) was transparent because we were on a regular infrastructure before. We went on NCI and were able to improve performance, but it did not really change how things worked. The performance was really better for applications and access times to the data. I regularly looked at the analytics to see what was going on in my servers and what it was saying to optimize performance. It was pretty interesting because it could analyze and give insights on how to get things working better. In the latest versions, the Prism interface has been replaced by Prism Central. This requires another machine to be deployed to manage the servers.
JD
Office and marketing manager at a non-profit with 201-500 employees
Cloud storage and email have supported our association but usability and search still need work
Rackspace OpenStack can be improved because it wasn't clear that you have to cancel 30 days before; otherwise they charge you for the month. I didn't really feel there was anywhere I could go if I had questions in order to live chat or reach out to someone; if that exists, it wasn't made apparent to me. Being able to search keywords and having what you're looking for come up, whether it's an email or in the drive, could definitely be improved, and making it work better with cell phones and improving the setup to be more user-friendly would be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The flexibility of Nutanix is very, very good; you have the freedom to use any kind of major vendor for a hyperconverged installation and the system also supports VMware, Microsoft Azure, AWS, and has good integration with Google GCP Cloud."
"We now increase the capacity of our datacenter without having to add more square footage, while increasing its horsepower, allowing us to run more servers utilizing less space than before."
"From a performance perspective, I have not had any issue as of now and from a latency and performance position, it has done quite well."
"Technical support is okay."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS makes it easy to use and manage projects and it has a good reputation."
"The machines provisioning times have reduced drastically."
"I definitely find the reduced power consumption very valuable. Another aspect I really like, when one compares Citrix to VMware, is the interface where you talk directly to your VM from the present software."
"Most beneficial feature is simplicity, ease of use."
"Rackspace OpenStack impacted my organization positively in that the drive helped me keep files in an organized folder, and obviously we needed email addresses to be able to communicate with each other and for outsiders to be able to email us."
"Rackspace OpenStack positively impacts my organization by making processes easier since I do not need to manage all servers manually because it efficiently manages server operations and maintains proper data, which saves time."
"The open-source nature of OpenStack provides significant value."
"OpenStack allowed for mass uploading of images to Akamai cloud services."
"It created a reusable library with OpenStack features."
"The most valuable feature is the customization, and with the customization you can really give the customers what they want."
"Customer Service: Top. Technical Support: Top"
"Administrators are very comfortable with the functionality and services OpenStack offers."
 

Cons

"The improvement needed is for elastic clusters, meaning the ability to depart and join nodes in an automatic way."
"The technical support is not great, but it's good."
"It is a CentOS-based operating system, but CentOS releases security patches almost every week or every other week. However, Nutanix releases their upgrade at three or four month intervals. According to my organization's SLA, if a critical patch is released during that time, then I need to implement the patches within 30 days. If it is a standard patch, then I need to patch it within 60 days. Since that is my SLA, I cannot meet my SLA for security because Nutanix will not release the upgrade within these 30 days. Between the critical patch release and the Nutanix release, my customers say they are vulnerable and I am accepting the risk while the SLA is breached."
"We would like to see it support other systems outside of the compute stack from which it was built."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) has really become very expensive."
"It's lacking in some features but overcompensating in others."
"Usually, there are separate administration teams that take care of servers, but in our organization, servers are usually looked after by the application owner. However, the application owners cannot reinstall the software, OS, and other things. That only aligns with the role of the HCI administrator. If these rights can be provided, it will be very easy."
"The solution has more features than required"
"We are moving from Rackspace OpenStack to CloudStack due to the requirement of human resources and technicality. There are lots of moving parts in Rackspace OpenStack."
"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say the support. Rackspace might have some good support but the open source OpenStack doesn't have support because there are too many versions coming and too many people are customizing it."
"As a beginner, I find some difficulties in understanding Rackspace OpenStack, as it can be complex without a foundational grasp of cloud and networking concepts."
"The seamless integration between MySQL services and the rabbitMQ database can be revised during the debugging phase."
"So for the main stability, there have been a couple of issues that I've experienced."
"The pricing of Rackspace is quite high in the Vietnam market."
"OpenStack's UI, while user-friendly, could be improved to offer a more intuitive experience."
"It should have a single dashboard for cloud management and on-premises systems"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is expensive."
"The cost of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is reasonable."
"The solution could be a little less expensive."
"Its licensing model is easy, but the bad thing is that we need to pay for the whole capacity at once. With VMware vSAN, we only have to pay for the capacity that we are using, which is not the case with Nutanix. So, we have more overhead for the licensing cost with Nutanix."
"The pricing is very competitive when compared with other vendors. As long as Nutanix goes forward with the same price and same type of offering, it will definitely have a large number of customers adopting the same solution very soon."
"I know Nutanix and VxRail have similar prices and licenses. Nutanix is a go-ahead if AHV is used as hypervisor because it is already embedded in the price."
"The overall cost depends on the contract of each customer and the discounts they have, but the price for the three-tier architecture can be slightly lower."
"They offer multiple tier licensing which means that lower level licensing will have less features."
"I use it as an open-source tool."
"The pricing is low."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business93
Midsize Enterprise76
Large Enterprise88
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...
What makes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) worth using?
NCI is a product with many tools and services but the one that, in my opinion, makes it better than similar products and worth using, is the full-stack lifecycle management. This capacity allows u...
Have you received reliable help from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's support when you contacted them?
NCI is one of the best out there. For any software, no matter how good it is, technical support makes it or breaks it for me. You may have an amazing product but if there is not anyone to help you ...
What needs improvement with Rackspace OpenStack?
For Rackspace OpenStack security features, we currently opted for ShapeBlue one, which will be installing CloudStack. ShapeBlue is helping us in training. So, we are moving away from Rackspace Open...
What is your primary use case for Rackspace OpenStack?
I mainly use Rackspace OpenStack for my virtual environment, for the KVM environment, such as hosting VMs. That is what we use it mainly for. You can say it is just like VMware; we are using Racksp...
What advice do you have for others considering Rackspace OpenStack?
I help my clients with Rackspace OpenStack as a consultant. I work with my clients as a consultant with Rackspace OpenStack. I am not involved in the purchase process of the platform. The pricing f...
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
OpenStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
X.commerce
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