Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

My major use case is the Nutanix distributed file system based on the NDFS file system, which allows customers to consolidate and reposition.

The most valuable features are the user-friendly dashboard and that we don't need to move resources manually when adding new nodes into running clusters.

In the future, I would like Acropolis to add support for publishing external storage.

Acropolis is pretty stable - it works perfectly within the production environment.

This solution is scalable - I can go up to a 64 node cluster from a 3 node cluster. In one organization, I configured around 316 nodes, distributed across file locations, the biggest implementation even in Asia-Pacific.

The setup was straightforward, taking between 15 days and a month.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature is Move, which allows you to migrate virtual machines from VM to AHV.

I've been using this solution for three years.

The stability of this solution is good.

I have no issues with the scalability of this solution.

The technical support is very good.

The initial setup was a little difficult - I used Foundation VM to image the nodes, and it was difficult to use this feature.

Licensing is available on a monthly basis with no additional fees.

I would rate this solution as ten out of ten.

The Cloud version of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is not available in Estonia. We used it for a simple bookkeeping system.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS has improved my organization because it has a fast delivery speed.

The solution is well integrated with other vendors.

The process of migrating from old hardware to new could improve.

I have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for approximately six years.

The solution is stable. On the customer's side, it was perfect, it was running very smooth without any issues.

The solution is being used in a large company and there are approximately 1,000 users using this solution.

I have had some interactions with the technical support from India remotely, and they were quite good and understood what they are doing. It is online support and it was good.

We have used other hyper-converged systems previously but there were some technical issues and the vendor did not take care of the solution well.

The initial setup was not complex. We built it for a five-year period and we will need to replace it with something similar when it is ten years old. It takes approximately one day to implement the solution and then you can use it.

We have one person from the seller side and a second person from the customer side for the deployment and maintenance of the solution. It's covered by Nutanix support too.

The price of the solution is expensive. However, the price to performance is good. The cost for development and installation is very low.

It is very good to have an on-premise cloud system, it works well.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a ten out of ten.

A majority of my clients are those who are looking to either move away from VMware or clients who are looking for maybe a little more out of HyperV. Naturally, they look towards the top of the list. We have seen a lot of customers drop VMware due to the cost. 

We're also seeing a lot of customers who want a couple of features, similar to VMware with the capacity of a cloud, et cetera. They want that, however, they don't have it to their HyperV. Instead of moving to VMware, they work with Nutanix.

There's a mix of multiple features that I like. A lot of our clients like the fact that it is easy to update and upgrade their clusters via an interface using LCM. 

The initial setup is quite simple. 

The solution remains stable across versions. 

Technical support is great.

We haven't come across any issues. Our clients haven't seen any issues with Nutanix at all.

There should be a little more access to Nutanix files. As it is right now you have one type of Nutanix file at no additional cost. Most customers have a little more than a one-byte file server. An initial byte size could be a little more than one terabyte.

I've been using the solution for maybe five or six years. 

Even when we do initial deployments, before we run the update for the newest versions, even the older version is quite stable for us. When we move to a new version, of course, it becomes even better.

The scalability is quite good. With the introduction of some smaller branch office nodes, it has given a lot of our customers the ability to scale from a small setup and then to grow up accordingly. For instance, we have some customers who may start off with some of the larger clusters and then scale by adding small branch office nodes. It's very flexible. 

At this time, we have about 35 deployments of the product.

We have plans to increase usage. We have customers who are in a cycle right now of increasing the capacities via the expansion of nodes. We also have clients who are adding on or upgrading from other Nutanix options.

We've never had any issue in terms of getting Nutanix support. We have a team of trained Nutanix engineers at hand, however, we do, from time, reach out to Nutanix directly both for our work cluster, as well as on behalf of our customers. 

We've never had any instances of a long waiting time. They're always responsive and get back to us on anything that has to be escalated. It's quite a smooth and simple process.

The implementation process is extremely straightforward. It's no more than two to three days to do entire migrations for VMware. We utilize the Nutanix move tool to help us with our processes as well.

We are partners and we partner directly with Nutanix. We're also resellers.

I'd advise the solution is definitely something that a company should go for. One of the major things is that Nutanix allows you to move from VMware to Acropolis and it also allows you to move back. There is no harm in actually trying out Nutanix Acropolis and seeing how it works out.

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

One of the most beneficial features that a customer would get from this solution is simplicity and ease of use. Another major benefit is the simplified licensing, where you can buy based on your needs. The third benefit is definitely since it's a leader in its technology, people have the comfort of depending on that technology for their critical business models.

There are a few improvements needed to make the solution better. There are some limitations on the hard add side when you are planning to add more memory or CPU on a running machine already removing something. That's something that is still lax. 

The second thing is compatibility. Nutanix is compatible with third-party hardware, but it's still very limited, and it's not very flexible on that side. Give people the ability to reuse whatever investment they have down the hardware. The other HCI providers are a bit flexible on that side, so that's a negative side of Nutanix right now.

We have had a partnership with Nutanix for one year.

There is no limit to the scalability of the solution. With Nutanix, when it comes to expanding or scaling up your requirements, be it horizontally scaling up, or even if you have more services, maybe vertical scale-up, it's very, very simple.

The solution takes a few hours to deploy, and we finish it in a three node cluster, within four to five hours. That's maximum.

We deploy the solution to the customer, and we provide support after deployment.

In terms of the solution's licensing, it's quite comprehensive. You have a combination of picking and choosing what exactly you're looking at. Customers can reduce their costs and buy the licensing based on their needs, rather than just buying everything together.

It's about quality as well as commercially. The solution is not cheap. Compared to its competitive market, it is at a higher stake.

The solution is a high-end product. Depending on what you are using it for, it can be very simple. However, if you have a complex environment, you may need to subscribe to a consulting service.

Nutanix gives you good comfort to not only create a private cloud but also gives you the ability to manage the public cloud instances from a single console. Simplicity is very, very important, and I think Nutanix gives you that comfort when you do the right sizing and implementation.

It feels like plug and play like you're adding a mouse or a USB to a laptop. It's that simple.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We are hosting many companies' IT. We provide IT services for our customers.

In terms of its version, I am not a system owner, so I don't know, but I guess we are regularly updating to the latest version.

Its low maintenance is a key feature. It is easy to install, upgrade, and scale by adding more blocks. 

Compute analysis is really easy. It takes hours instead of days.

The self-service side of the product needs to be improved. We should be able to add two-factor authentication and more security layers to it.

We would also like more tiering of the storage if that's possible.

The company has been using it for about two years.

Its stability and performance depend on what kind of hardware you put in the nodes. Its performance is average. It doesn't have high performance on the storage side, but it is good enough for mainstream users.

It is really scalable. It is too easy to scale. We have around three people who use it right now.

We didn't have any issues that we had to escalate to their technical support.

We are using Hyper-V with Storage Spaces Direct. I don't know if it can be called hyper-converged, but it is almost hyper-converged. VMware with vSAN is also hyper-converged, but we're using it without the NSX module, so it is not a software-defined network. It is semi hyper-converged for me. As compared to these two, Nutanix is easier to use and easier to manage. It is more complex to get VMware and Hyper-V up and running than Nutanix.

It was really straightforward. We were up and running in hours. It was really easy.

Its deployment was handled internally.

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.

I would advise talking to Nutanix to get the right hardware from the start and only buying certified hardware. You can use the Nutanix capacity planning information that exists to get the right sizing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

The features that I have found most valuable are the user-friendliness of that hypervisor. Also, people who are not agnostic about the hardware can go with Nutanix. It has a user-friendly dashboard and interface.

Pros, it's an OEM kind of a hypervisor. It can fit to any size. Pros are that any enterprise company can fit in with it, and that budgets are also not heavy on their pockets. So, these are the pros of Nutanix.

In terms of what can be improved, their local people in this region are not good, to be frank. They don't support any inquiry. They don't support anything we need, especially for projects. So either we need to bypass them or we need to get support from the other regions.

I would say that applies from the sales cycle to the support.

The sales cycles is a very closed group kind of thing. Cons, region-wise, sometimes it's a monopoly. And the pricing factor is there. Plus, they are not open and transparent.

Procurement can be an issue as well.

Plus I don't see any updates happening in this region in terms of what's cooking in the head offices. It should be updated and alerted to the partners. For example, recently Nutanix has done many things in its acquisitions. What new features are going to be added? Certainly partners and other people should have a right to know. And they may gain advantage, an edge, over the other products when they are pitching this.

As for what I would like to see in future releases, maybe the cloud things which were very recently added. What is the roadmap for the cloud and what are there exactly? These things are very new to Nutanix now. That should be more transparent. What is their good part, like Azure or AWS? I would like to know these things. They just need better documentation in general.

I began using Nutanix Acropolis AOS about five or six years ago.

Their stability depends on how agnostic they are. It depends on if I'm using super micro hardware or it depends on if I'm using HPE. So, it's stable. I don't think we are having any issues. It is mostly a stable product. The main issue with stability would be related to the hardware, not to the actual solution.

Scalability depends on the customer. If the customer is savvy they can just add maybe SSDs or something which the KC doesn't support, or something which is out of the box from the hardware which was procured previously. Then we would face issues in the scalability. Or maybe a limit to that addition which was purchased some time back.

We don't require support, as we have in house expertise.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have worked on many products, including VMware and others. It is not complex. I would even say the portal is not so complex.

I would say that it's a simple to use product. It fits all sizes and it is budget-friendly.

One thing to keep in mind is that only experts can use it. It has to be in the proper hands, instead of going to XYZ people just for some cost savings. So lift-and-shift and migrations might be tricky, because it is not like a VMware.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Nutanix Acropolis AOS a nine.

We can troubleshoot customer issues (e.g. crashes, performance issues etc.) very quickly and efficiently since we know exactly how the infrastructure should behave and what performance values are to be expected.

Nutanix delivers full visibility down to a single virtual disk (e.g. a VMDK file) and every single hardware component. Predefined health checks are executed during a support case which will in most cases already narrow down the root cause considerably if not point it out directly.

Most of our customers actually don’t manage their Nutanix environment at all since common tasks such as LUN provisioning, zoning, permission settings etc. don’t apply any longer.

• Very easy management (e.g. daily tasks and also major upgrades)
• Simple and fast to implement as a partner
• Very mature and stable with outstanding Nutanix support if needed (we are a L1 and L2 support partner as well)
• Potential to replace 80-90% of all customer use cases we see in Switzerland

We've been partners for nearly three years, and have been building Nutanix based customer solutions during that time.

Customer Service:

The Nutanix customer service is outstanding and easily the best from all vendors we work with. Usually an answer is provided within the first 10 minutes and the staff is very skilled. thanks to the high degree of standardization we are able to quickly resolve most issues (we know the whole stack).

Technical Support:

Outstanding! We get an answer usually within 30 minutes often this solves the issue or at least show progress.

Positive

Our company is fully committed to new technologies and ways to build data centers using hyper convergence, software defined networking etc. We did not (and have no plans) to sell traditional solutions.

It used to be more work about one and a half years ago. Today, the whole installation process is fully automated and orchestrated. Since NOS 4.5 everything needed is pre-installed at the factory and only the desired hypervisor image (ISO files) need to be uploaded. Then, the cluster will stage itself automatically. The size of the cluster is secondary to the implementation time except for rack and stack of course.

Since we are a Nutanix partner we implement and give support ourselves for customers directly and for other partners as well.

I don’t have any figures available at the moment. Nutanix is most attractive when comparing the full cost (TCO) including CAPEX and also OPEX. Regarding licensing, we most commonly sell the pro license which covers the vast majority of customer user cases.

It is especially interesting to see the development of customers starting to see the included KVM based hypervisor (Acropolis) which results in significant cost savings for hypervisor licensing (e.g. vSphere or Hyper-V) depending on the customer use case.

As a VMware partner we also evaluate VSAN in our lab as a possible alternative but this solution lacks many of the Nutanix advantages. I compared VSAN to Nutanix some years ago when Nutanix was purely a storage layer.

Today, Nutanix offers end to end management, visibility and standardization which offers maybe the biggest benefit. I am personally also not a big fan of the VSAN object storage approach (as opposed to the Nutanix or EMC ScaleIO block based implementations) which causes many bottlenecks and architecture limitations.

This is the Nutanix management web interface.

We primarily use the solution for our hyper-converged infrastructure.

The solution is easy to use.

The product is quite scalable.

I have found the solution to be stable. 

The product is very easy to install.

I haven't used the solution for that long and therefore don't really have any deep knowledge about it.

It would be ideal if it was more secure. 

I've worked with the solution for six months.

The stability of the product is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability of the product is very good. If a company wants to expand it, it can do so.

We only have two teams that use the solution in general. 

I've never contacted technical support. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are, having never worked with them directly.

I did not previously use a different hyper-converged solution before Nutanix.

In terms of the implementation process, the process is pretty simple and straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. A company shouldn't have any issues with it. 

I didn't have too much exposure to the setup, however, my understanding was that the deployment didn't take long, and it only takes less than half an hour for a single node.

For us, it required two managers and eight engineers in one team to handle the deployment.

I can't speak to the pricing aspect of the solution. I was not exposed to that part of the product.

We are an end-user of the product.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using currently.

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

It is great. Some of my colleagues have been permanently glued to Nutanix. I would recommend the solution to people who are interested in networking-related products.

The solution is primarily a backup product that works with Nutanix. 

We tend to use it for our customers. If they find some errors, we go to troubleshoot or we cooperate with the Nutanix team to get things sorted.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the fact that it doesn't need any downtime even when you are updating the product. 

The solution offers HA, high availability.

The solution is easy to set up.

We find the product to be very stable. 

The scalability is quite good.

Nutanix offers good pricing.

Technical support is helpful. 

There is a feature in Nutanix called fault tolerance that could be improved. It exists in the VMware hypervisor, whoever, it does not exist here. It really needs to. 

To run a fault tolerance feature in Nutanix you need the time to reset the VM and to repair or to recall the backup VM. Therefore, you need a little bit of downtime. Conversely, in VMware, with the fault tolerance feature, if you want to use the fault tolerance feature, it doesn't require any downtime.

I've been working with the solution for three years. 

The stability has been very good so far. If there are any errors, we always get alerts. We haven't had a problem with any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The scalability is good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. It's not a problem. You don't have to worry about downtime either, as you don't need to have downtime in order to scale up. You just expand the nodes to the cluster and go from there. 

Technical support is okay. Usually, we try to handle it for our clients. When there is an error on the customer side, we go and find the error. However, if the error is beyond our reach, we query a case to Nutanix and they can have people onsite. We phone them.

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. I wouldn't describe the process as overly complex or difficult.

The pricing is not too high if you compare it with other products, as it already has software and hardware together, and it doesn't need too much other equipment. The price seems reasonable.

We provide server and hardware support. We focus on Nutanix and offer it to our clients. We are a distributor. We are a partner of Nutanix in Malaysia.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. If a company doesn't want an overcomplicated solution or if they want to use the hardware with a similar solution, this is a good bet. It's easy to set up and use with Nutanix products and you don't need too much in order to begin scaling.