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Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

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 Kubernetes Engine NKE
Ranking in Container Management
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (6th)
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE is 8.2%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 20.0%, down from 21.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Prasanthraj PN - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient deployment and management with easy resource allocation, yet faces challenges in integration and compatibility
Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE offers easy and fast deployment, management, stability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. The resource allocation is very simple. If we need to expand the memory, storage space, or processor core, it is very easy to manage through our central control. These features are what stand out the most.
Prasad Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient deployment with resource optimization and multi-region stability
There are several areas where OpenShift could improve. The interface has numerous UI bugs that need addressing. Furthermore, the latest version has deprecated the deployment config, which has its own advantages compared to the deployment container. Lastly, there is no built-in auto-scaling plugin at the OpenShift level; this needs to be addressed as it's available at the cloud provider level, like IBM Cloud.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can do a lot of provisioning."
"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."
"We can add some add-ons and plugins to the product if we need to."
"The solution is embedded in the hypervisor and there are no deployment costs."
"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."
"The most valuable features of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) are its simplicity and efficiency during the initial cluster creation phase."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"My experience with Nutanix's technical support is excellent."
"I think it's a pretty scalable tool...The solution's technical support has been pretty good."
"I have found the ability to scale up is most valuable."
"The most valuable are security features, particularly when operating in the cloud."
"Everything is packaged into OpenShift Container Platform."
"More tools are available in OpenShift Container Platform to maintain and manage the clusters."
"OpenShift is a user-friendly container platform with a solid GUI that helps you follow what is going on and gives you an overview of all your clusters. It's more user-friendly than the Kubernetes itself. The interface helps you learn the platform and provides access to some features or specific comments."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability on demand, which allows for potentially lower costs, and Built-in resiliency."
"The product is stable, reliable, and easy to use, from a well-known company, has a large volume handling capacity, and more and more organizations are moving to OpenShift."
 

Cons

"It's mostly for lab purposes; we haven't seen a lot of traction in the market from enterprise customers yet."
"In the next release, I would like to have automatic dynamic scaling, both upscaling and downscaling."
"Areas for improvement in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) include upgrading management capabilities and enhancing the user interface for improved usability."
"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."
"We need a backup of production clusters."
"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."
"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."
"GUI lacks sufficient information to help with understanding the installation and process."
"It can take 10 to 15 minutes to deploy a microservice. The CI/CD process takes a long time, and if it's because of OCP, that is something that can be changed."
"There should be a simplification of the overall cluster environment. It should require fewer resources. Just to run a simple Hello World app, it requires about seven servers, and that's just crazy. I understand that it is fully redundant, but it's prohibitively expensive to get something simple going."
"OpenShift Container Platform could improve by having better integration."
"The solution does not work on a route-wise NFS."
"It is difficult to deploy the OpenShift cluster in a bare-metal environment."
"The price needs to be improved in OpenShift Container Platform. When I choose this, the product is the first factor that we have to make a long analysis to compare the real cost for the other services. However, price is high."
"Getting the solution quickly and troubleshooting quickly are both areas where I think it needs some work."
"Setting up OpenShift isn't easy. I rate it three out of ten for ease of setup. We're deploying it in three phases. They're in the second phase now. The total deployment time will be five months. We expect to complete the deployment this March. There are 13 people on three teams working on this deployment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The platform is averagely priced. I rate the pricing as four out of ten."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The product's licenses are included in the software version deployed in our data center."
"While deploying Kubernetes clusters on Nutanix is cost-effective, there may be additional costs for remote branch offices where Kubernetes is less common."
"I rate NKE's pricing a six out of ten."
"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."
"I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it."
"If you buy the product for a year or three, you get a lot of discounts...I feel that the product is worth its cost, especially since setting it up can be done with just a few clicks."
"The product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten. There is a subscription called OpenShift Plus, which offers additional features and products the vendor provides to complement the OpenShift Container Platform. These include ACM, Red Hat Quay, and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation."
"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"We paid for Cloud Pak for integration. It all depends on how many VMs or how many CPUs you are using. They do the licensing based on that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
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 Nut...
What is your primary use case for Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
I have been working with the Nutanix Kubernetes platform for the past five years. Currently, I am supporting JetBlue Airlines in America, which uses a Nutanix environment and Nutanix Kubernetes Eng...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
The current licensing cost for this solution is around $23,000 per year, per month. Regarding the current licensing cost, I would rate my satisfaction around seven or seven and a half; there's alwa...
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Karbon
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.