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Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

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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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (8th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (2nd), Public Cloud Storage Services (3rd), File and Object Storage (3rd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
SwiftStack [EOL]
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
NISHANTPANCHAL - PeerSpot reviewer
Principle Technical Specialist at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Unified storage has simplified private cloud operations and delivers strong security and ROI
Regarding areas for improvement, I think Data Lens could be enhanced from Nutanix's side, but it has been a long time since I logged into that console, so I do not remember much. It is a SaaS-based offering on the Nutanix portal. It is not something you deploy on-premises; it is not on-prem access. You connect your cluster to the SaaS-based Nutanix and then access the Lens console. I need to check it since it has been almost two or three months since I logged in. Nutanix Enterprise AI actually needs to improve a lot if I compare it with any other product such as NVIDIA and other offerings in the market. Nutanix Enterprise AI still requires a lot of work. I did not check that in much detail technically, but whatever I thoroughly checked, it still lags behind in many features. When it comes to AI-related features, I think the ecosystem of Nutanix is not as big as NVIDIA because NVIDIA has its own inferencing system and model training platform such as NeMo, NeMoTron, and others. Nutanix does not have such things. It can be built using NVIDIA CUDA libraries, but what I saw when I was testing the product is that you can run NVIDIA NeMo and PyTorch and two other things, but as a software, Nutanix does not have an end-to-end platform. That is something Nutanix should focus on.
it_user1759539 - PeerSpot reviewer
System administrator at a library with 11-50 employees
A nicely-done product that provides a lot of graphs and reports to see what's happening in the background and makes configuration easier
It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It makes things ten times easier."
"Pure Storage has the right business model and will be around for a long time."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the dedupe and compression are excellent, and performance is good too."
"The support from Pure Storage Flash Array is amazing."
"We can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years. It simplifies storage for us."
"The solution has great efficiencies because it has scalability."
"What I like most about this solution, is the speed, resiliency and scalability."
"The simplicity of management is valuable because, in more traditional environments, the platform updates are much more complex."
"The most valuable features of Nutanix Unified Storage are the unified dashboard and the ease of administration."
"Offers high performance, full control, and strong security for mission-critical workloads."
"We transitioned from a three-tier architecture to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). With the Files offering out of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), we were able to migrate those shares with a smaller footprint."
"The migration from VMware to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is less complex and less troublesome, and the replication and clustering are very good."
"The biggest advantage we find with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the performance, due to it being hyper-converged and using all-flash nodes. The storage is very responsive, and it's significantly easier to manage from the Nutanix Files platform that comes along with NUS Pro."
"The reliability and availability are the most valuable features. Reliability is important because it can run my workloads. I need to be able to take advantage of the VMs that are executing on the storage. It has to be reliable. It's also important to have the storage available for scaling VMs on demand."
"The biggest return on investment for me when using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the management aspect since it's easier to manage."
"SwiftStack is also quite flexible when it comes to hardware. It depends, of course, on the use case and the kind of hardware you want to buy. But you have quite a bit of choice in hardware. The SwiftStack software itself does not impose anything on you."
"Their support staff is second to none; they're the best support staff I've ever worked with, with any vendor of any caliber, in the past 20 years."
"It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."
"We have had three years of 100 percent uptime on the system."
"The impact on our business was that we launched a new product which has allowed us to generate additional revenue for our business with it."
"The biggest thing about SwiftStack is freedom; it's freedom from vendor lock-in, freedom from one cloud provider, and freedom to scale when you want, how you want, and when you want."
"The graphs are most valuable. They have a lot of graphs and reports that you can run to see what's happening in the background to configure OpenStack Swift."
"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."
 

Cons

"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"The solution needs an integrated NAS platform, file platform."
"I'd like to see a move towards individual VMs for what the performance of each VM is in a VD infrastructure. I can see the overall volume, but I would love to see things in a more granular level on the VM side."
"Based on my experience with various technologies like EMC, NetApp, and Pure Storage, one area for improvement is compliance certifications. NetApp excels in this area, particularly in the American Army or defense sector, where NetApp has approval, whereas others are striving to achieve the same. NetApp also delivers security, ransomware protection, and scale-up capabilities more effectively."
"I would recommend improvements in the graphical user interface, specifically a detailed hardware view that would allow us to see the individual drives and individual controllers more easily, as currently, they are presenting only a higher-level view."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption."
"Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"While Unified Storage has evolved a lot over time, its database handling needs to improve a little. There could be an improvement in terms of costs. It's a little expensive for Brazil but still delivers a lot of performance."
"The documentation on the support site needs to be improved."
"The biggest thing for me, which is a pet peeve of mine, is the integration with the hardware platforms."
"The product does not offer one console."
"Improving quota policies would be advantageous, particularly by offering the option to implement blocking instead of just issuing warnings."
"Nutanix needs to improve their cybersecurity options at the storage level."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees."
"While the stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is good, the need for manual intervention can be a drawback."
"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."
"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."
"Management UI can be improved and have more functionalities."
"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface."
"We find the pricing rather steep."
"[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key."
"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS."
"The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"In terms of other contemporary arrays, Pure is something you need to have a use case for, as it's not priced for you to buy one off-the-shelf. If you have a use case, heavy lift Oracle Databases, any type of noticeable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or need low latency and high throughput, you should consider all-flash at least and probably Pure Storage."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"The price of the solution is not expensive."
"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"The solution is expensive."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization."
"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."
"The product is pricey."
"While the price may not be the most affordable, I believe it offers good value for the benefits it provides."
"The solution's pricing is better compared to other products."
"I am not the one who makes the calls, but it seems to me that it was very competitive. Other solutions would have required dedicated hardware, so an additional CapEx has to be put in place. In that sense, it was definitely a more competitive option to go with Nutanix Files."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is competitively priced. There aren't any competitors that can do much better for the same price."
"The product has an annual licensing fee."
"The pricing and licensing are capacity-based, so it's hard to put my finger on them, because so many different vendors charge in different ways. We are still saving significantly over any of the other options that we evaluated because we can choose the best hardware at the best price, then put SwiftStack software on it. So, it's hard to complain, even though a part of me goes, "It would be nicer if it were less expensive.""
"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."
"All in, with hardware and everything else - and I hate to say a dollar amount because it's been awhile since I computed it - I know I'm under the $300 to $500 per terabyte mark. I call that my "all in" price, which has replications built in and protections built in."
"We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"Dollar per gigabyte, it costs us more because we are storing more. However, if you look at it from a cost per gigabyte perspective, we have dropped our costs significantly."
"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."
"It's pricey for us because we're a nonprofit. I'm not privy to any amount or cost, but I have been told that it is pricey. There are no costs in addition to the licensing fees, and it seems to come with the support."
"The pricing model is great and makes sense. We have talked about how to get into more of a frequent billing cycle than once a year. That would be an interesting concept to add into the product, having the ability to have monthly billing instead of having to do a one-year licensing renewal. However, the way the license works by charging for storage consumed is definitely what makes them the most competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise69
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
The pricing for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is subscription-based with capacity-based licensing and has moderate to...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
One area for improvement I noticed while using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is expanding advanced analytics and pred...
What advice do you have for others considering Nutanix Unified Storage?
My advice for others looking into using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is to clearly understand your storage requireme...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines
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