Nutanix AHV Virtualization Reviews

In terms of features, Acropolis is a good virtualization manager and that it is on-premise. I use almost every technology they provide.

Nutanix AHV, like every hypervisor, still has room for integration with the cloud. Nutanix is a very, very good product in regards to integration with the Amazon services, but it can be improved, especially in my country, Turkey. In this area, both Amazon Web Services and other solutions have different prices and different currencies. Nutanix actually promised to build clouds once they made the new generation moving the clients or the servers on-premises, and that's not working as advertised right now. So I believe that it can still be improved. Every service depends on this because the flexibility is what makes this product good in the first place.

I use Vaults with three hypervisors in my projects. One is the Acropolis from Nutanix, SCC from VMware, and of course Microsoft Hyper-V. This user interface is easy to understand. The dashboard is mostly okay and gives relevant information for the users. It has a good user interface but it's not flexible. It's more flexible than VMware and Hyper-V which don't even compare. The mechanics and the user interface are good. I like how it looks, but it can be improved. For example, if they had a comment line option directly from the Web UI, I could use PowerShell add ons. That would make the UI more flexible for me. Overall, it is the best of the three options right out there right now. ,

Again, I would also like to see a comment line option for integration with other products. Nutanix already has a comment line integration with the publisher. I also run some mini-systems and I don't have the same kind of comment line options for Unix systems. If I'm working on another shell, for example, Bash or SSH, we need a solution for that aspect. Console command is many times a faster way to do it because with UI you have to wait, but with your comment line, you can script it and can automate it more easily. So I believe they need a Linux version of the comment line.

I have been using Nutanix AHV for more than three years.

In terms of stability, Nutanix is actually very stable.

These days I don't worry about anything working or not.

Nutanix AHV is much easier than other systems. We can focus on the infrastructure and not the product so it gives us the flexibility to not worry about the scalability of the systems - we just need more modes to scale up. That makes it easier for system and engineers support.

I don't actually need any technical support. But I do hear feedback about it. For example, if a customer has an issue, such as some discs are broken, the support fixes it immediately. They don't even have to call the support center because they are monitoring the system. I don't do it directly, but I hear from and talk to customers.

I worked with VMware for more than ten years. The first versions of VMware to come out worked on Red Hat 6.3 servers and they were almost unusable sometimes.

Nutanix, in its first version, worked as it should.

The initial setup is nice, actually straightforward. The other systems are not easy. For VMware, for example, if you want to use full spec hyper-converged systems, including storage and the other options, it's very complex. Only the hypervisor option is easy with them. But the other options, including storage, are complicated. Nutanix and its products are very easy and pretty useful. And even migration is easy compared to all the other systems.

Some other firms were working with HP on their systems, but in the end, they migrated to Nutanix because of support issues.

On a scale from 1 to 10 I would rate it a 9 - I believe there is always room for improvement.

We are a system integration company and we sell hyper-converged infrastructure as the new model data center technology.

This is one of the solutions that we provide to our customers.

This solution can be deployed on-premises or in a cloud-based environment, but the majority of deployments are on-premises.

This solution has very good feedback from our customers in terms of the benefits that it provides. They have lots of automation and orchestration policies and procedures in place so that they can create virtual machines within a few minutes. Overall, it improves productivity. In fact, you can do a lot of R&D for your most critical kind of applications without having to procure a proper dedicated infrastructure for that. It helps a lot.

The interface is very good, and quite user-friendly. You can learn how to use this solution in three to five days.

They have lots of easy ways to provision VMs with just two clicks, which is something you cannot easily do with VMware. It is possible but quite lengthy and complex.

The automation functionality is strong.

At the application level, if you wanted to change your hypervisor from VMware or another to AHV then there is a limitation in that you need to redeploy the whole application. For example, let's say that you are running Oracle ERP or Oracle Financial Business Suite, and it is on VMware. Then you switch to AHV and you migrate the virtual machine, it will be there, but all of the links that were created in the previous hypervisor will be broken. So, what Nutanix recommends is that you redeploy the application. This is quite a bit of work. For example, the ERP requires a lot of time to implement and get into synch and get running smoothly.

The technical support for this solution needs to be improved in terms of response time.

This solution should offer more orchestration and automation as we see in VMware. They can do more.

I would like to see more use cases from Nutanix on future trend technologies such as IoT, data analytics, big data, smart cities, and more. They need to do more R&D with respect to these new technologies. This would make it easy for us to understand whether they are capable of such functionality, or not.

This is the only true hyper-converged infrastructure in the market.

This solution is very scalable.

I have not dealt with technical support for this solution personally, but the people in my organization, as well as from other places, have told me that it needs to improve a lot.

From what I have been told, they are quite capable of resolving the issues, but the response time is simply too long.

In addition to this solution, I am using EMC VxRail, Hitachi HCP, and occasionally NetApp. I would rate the Nutanix solution as the top one. My second choice is the Dell EMC solution.

The customer's requirements, as well as the budget, are what decide the suitability of a particular solution.

The initial setup of this solution is pretty much straightforward. From unboxing to rack and mounting and cabling, I think that it requires no more than three to four hours to get it up and running, maximum.

Obviously, it will depend on the size of the implementation. If it is huge then you will have to increase the number of hours. I am talking about an SMB environment. You will be able to create virtual machines within four to five hours of unboxing.

The most valuable feature of this solution is that there is no licensing fee. This means that if you don't have any virtual environment in your organization and wanted to go virtualized, and on top of that you want to go more than the data center, you don't have to worry about the licensing for the virtual infrastructure. It comes free of cost. If you want to choose another hypervisor then you need to pay a lot of licensing fees upfront, and then a recurring cost over the years for support and upgrades. That's the big difference between AHV and the others.

Nutanix is the only player in the market who is actually providing you with the hyper-converged infrastructure. You can either choose their own AHV hypervisor, or you can have VMware on top of it as a hypervisor to base the operating system. This gives a benefit over others who don't offer the same kind of infrastructure for both hypervisors.

You cannot mix it, that's one thing that is true across the board. However, you do have a choice of hypervisor. For some customers, they have already invested in VMware and they want to move to hyper-converged infrastructure. So, Nutanix would be comparatively a better choice, which can impact your previous investment and you can build your virtual hyper-converged infrastructure on Nutanix.

This is the number one hyper-converged solution in the market. No doubt about it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The solution's most valuable feature is Prism Central. It has a feature which allows you to upload the firmware software with just one click, requiring no downtime.

Nutanix AHV Virtualization's price is very high. 

I have been working with the product for seven years. 

I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten. Its scalability features support our company's growth by making the platform very easy to access with no downtime and no prerequisites. It allows expansion, similar to expanding the cluster.

Nutanix AHV Virtualization is easy to install and takes only a few hours to complete. 

I rate Nutanix AHV Virtualization's pricing a five out of ten. 

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

The solution is used for virtualization.

The dashboard of the solution is one of its strongest points.

Pricing is an area that needs improvement. In future releases, I would like to see a better pricing policy. The solution's scalability needs to be improved.

I have been using Nutanix AHV Virtualization for eight-plus years. I am using the solution's latest version. Also, I am not using it, but my team does use it. My company has a partnership with Nutanix.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten. There are some issues with the availability of the services, which we are trying to sort out.

Around 10 to 20 people, who are managers and developers, are currently using the solution in my organization.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten. It's not a very scalable product.

The support team is helpful, and I rate the support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was easy. For maintenance, ten engineers are needed.

The pricing depends upon the licenses, considering the number of devices.

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

The solution is being used for our internal purposes. 

The performance is the most valuable feature. 

The pricing must be made cheaper.

I have experience with Nutanix AHV Virtualization.

It is a highly stable solution. I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is highly scalable. Ten people are using the solution. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

The initial setup is easy. One staff is required for deployment and maintenance.I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. 

The deployment is done in-house. 

The solution is expensive. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. 

We use AHV to manage our virtual environment. The AHV is the hypervisor that we use to create virtual machines. AHV has another layer called AOS, which means the Acropolis Operating System from Nutanix.

AHV is based on a well-known hypervisor called the KVM hypervisor. KVM hypervisor is an open source hypervisor from Red Hat. Nutanix took KVM and added many features on top of it that weren't available. For example, moving virtual machines from KVM to another KVM wasn't possible without many configurations.

We're using the most updated version of AHV. It's deployed on-premises.

There are some issues with the interface and integration. The AHV management console is a web-based console. Sometimes the interface doesn't capture the mouse or keyboard strokes from the managing console to integrate with the virtual machines. Sometimes the type strokes aren't captured from the interface. To fix the problem, we have to close the interface and rerun it.

There's another problem with the scaling. If the main operating system is low scale, we can't see some parts of the virtual environment. For example, the screen won't be displayed because the window isn't big enough, so it's outside the scope of the screen.

The solution is stable. When we have a number of nodes and run the AHV hypervisor, we create a cluster and can create a virtual machine anywhere. If we want to move the virtual machine from one host to another, it's simple, straightforward, and stable. There's no interruption of the virtual machine. For example, we can run a ping to the virtual machine continuously, move the virtual machine from one node to another, and the ping won't drop.

There's no interruption of services when we move from one host to another. I think it's because the environment doesn't have many virtual machines.

It's scalable.

Technical support is good.

Deployment took less than two days. 

We have three years of guaranteed support. When we need troubleshooting or help with maintenance, we call the company or the resellers will send the engineer that deployed the environment to solve the problem.

We purchased the solution with three years of support. It's a one-time purchase. After that, we will need to renew support. The licenses are perpetual, which means they don't expire. Even if we don't have support or don't renew the support service after three years, we will still be able to use the solution.

I have compared the solution with VMware and Hyper-V.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. 

For someone who is planning to implement this solution, my advice is that if you're interested in it, buy everything that's Nutanix. Don't try to mix up different solutions from different manufacturers because you'll lose many features. If you want an all-in-one solution, go for the Nutanix all-in-one environment. Don't try to buy from other manufacturers.

Nutanix AHV's most valuable feature is NetFlow. Its performance and speed are also very good. 

An improvement would be for Nutanix AHV to support VMDK, AOS, Hyper-V, and VMware.

I've been working with Nutanix AHV for three years.

Nutanix AHV is stable.

Nutanix AHV is scalable.

The initial setup was straightforward as we used Nutanix Foundation to deploy the AHV computing and solution orders.

Nutanix AHV is low cost.

I would rate Nutanix AHV as eight out of ten.

This is an HCI platform. You can use it in a physical environment that is not virtualized. Another use case can be as an application server in an application deployment. For instance, if I want to deploy a write-intensive application and I want to have a platform to implement this, the HCI solution has Nutanix can be a good solution for that.

The one-click upgrade is the solution's most valuable feature. It allows you to perform upgrades even when you are in production. Without having to wait for a maintenance window, you can perform your upgrade. It is a non-disruptive operation.

The initial setup is simple.

The solution scales very well. 

A lot of tasks cannot be performed using the GUI, the graphical interface. They need to make it so that if you want to perform a task, you can do it using the GUI. So far, there are a lot of tasks you have to perform using CLI. When you compare it with VMware, you can perform a lot of tasks using your vCenter GUI however, in the case of Nutanix, it is not something that is very easy to do. You have to do a lot of things using the CLI. This is one of the areas they have to improve on.

I've been using the solution for six years. 

The scalability is very fast. When you want to perform a scale-out, I mean having another server within your capacity, it's very simple. You just have to add a node, connect it to the network and that's all. Even when you want to perform a scale-out operation, you just have to migrate your VM, shut down the server, and do your upgrade. For instance, you can have additional node memory. After that, you will power your server again and that's all. You reconnect it on the network and that's all. It's very fast and simple if you want to scale. Customers find this very easy to do. 

I've never reached out to technical support. Therefore, I can't speak to how helpful they are. 

The solution offers a very easy initial setup. If it's a basic set of tasks,  it's very simple. However, for more advanced tasks, you must use the CLI. That can be uncomfortable for some users. 

The deployment is very, very fast. When you perform an installation, the basic installation takes generally two days. You can deploy a cluster, and, after that, you have some tasks to perform. That might involve migrating some existing VMs, some physical VMs, performing the network integration and so on. It takes a few days to implement your cluster.

I'm not sure of the exact pricing, however, it is my understanding that at this point, we just have to pay for the renewal for the support. It has a perpetual license. Normally, all the licenses in Nutanix are perpetual. We just renew the support after three years.

We are Nutanix partners. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.