Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

Our primary use case of this solution is that it helped me solve all of my use cases. I can create an integrative private cloud in a data center, create a hybrid cloud, public cloud, and near-site data recording. For example, there are lots of sites that do not have the data there so I can create data because Nutanix also has got it stored on the nodes. So it takes care of storage on the nodes. I can build storage on the nodes, compute them, give the clients who already have a small data center within themselves but they do not have it externally. By using storage on the nodes in Nutanix I can give them the external.  

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. Also no issues.

One of the benefits this solution has had for my organization is the space consumption. Space consumption was reduced by approximately 40% because if I had gone with another kind of traditional, or open world solution, then I would have not saved my floor space. Another way it has benefited my organization is because of the energy consumption. Currently, energy consumption has been saved by around 30% to 40%. Plus the number of IOPS has increased,  I'm getting the highest IOPS in Nutanix. I had situations where I got applications that depend on public IP, RAM, and LAN. In both cases, I have some very efficient data that, more or less, in terms of resource requirement, I don't need resources for.

On-demand scaling is the most valuable feature, I can keep on scaling on-demand. Secondly, Nutanix allows me to create my own configuration. I can create my own configuration and I can get all of it as per my configuration. Number three is that in Nutanix if I do three or four nodes if I look at the traditional environment I have to really figure out the wave concept. Connect wave one, wave two, wave six, wave five. In Nutanix I don't have any of these issues. Lastly, deduplication. Deduplication and erasure coding.

As of now, Acropolis and VMware cannot talk to each other. Until we have some kind of interface, it would be much better for Nutanix if they built an interface which can talk. Otherwise, if I have a VMware stack and I already have a Nutanix stack, I can create containers, I create clusters on VMware, I create clusters on Nutanix. All of these clusters cannot talk to each other. Then it has to be then subverted as a parallel execution. What happens then is that I have to work in two different environments within my data center. Practically, they are two different data centers but physically and logically, they are one. If they cannot talk to each other that creates a lot of issues. That is something which Nutanix has to develop. For example, Oracle is using a function called GoldenGate. They have a feature called GoldenGate which allows them to talk to various different environments which must really help.

Nutanix will be there for the long run because if you look at it, Nutanix is not into the hardware business. Nutanix is mainly into the software business. For any business which is running on a hardware business, stability is a little difficult because hardware keeps on changing but since Nutanix is only into the software, and they only sell the hardware, I guess it is on Super Micro. They have greater stability than anyone else because they are purely into the software medium.

Nutanix's scalability is better than anyone else. The only area where Nutanix still lags in terms of scalability is the storage on the nodes. For example, Nutanix has to make its scalability, in terms of storage on the nodes for 100% ACI-based storage on the nodes, as of now it cannot go more than interact in a single bracket. Cannot go more than, up to one petabyte usable storage. If you look at other windows, they can go up to 2 petabytes, 2.5 petabytes and I think Nutanix has to look into that aspect. Many times, whoever buys the Nutanix solution, buys a high compute and storage or they buy only storage with low compute. So only storage with low compute really helps in terms of storing offline databases or storing unstructured databases. For example, when there was a lot of unstructured data coming in into my data center, two different centers, and two different cameras. All of this unstructured data I can store into storage-only nodes. Nutanix cannot go more than to 900 to 800 GB interact when I'm storing on the nodes. Then the customers are forced to look for a solution which can give better storage options than Nutanix. 

Their technical support is really good. They have been very helpful.

We wanted to have a data center of our own. I did a lot of research into Nutanix, spent around 77 hours, and presented a report. In government what happens is that anybody can go and buy a solution but keeping it maintained and sustained for a longer period is extremely challenging in government because people keep on changing because there are a lot of transfers. People keep on switching from one department to another department. They are not technically savvy. These are the two challenges. From a long term sustainability perspective I have to see whether will I be able to manage this entire infrastructure. Third was cost. I distributed my comparative study in three different areas and then sub areas in terms of technology, resources, training, scalability, and all that stuff. Finally, we found Nutanix is the best solution and that's how we went ahead with this solution.

The initial setup was not complex at all. It was very simple. I was monitoring the entire racking, stacking, cabling and all of that stuff. I was there while my team was doing that and we had, every day, two to three meetings while doing that and I learned that it's quite simple but it's not easy. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. If they develop the interoperability then it would make it a ten. 

I would advise someone considering this solution to not look at the market share. Look at the technical aspects in terms of the long term sustainability like licensing issues, easy scalability, hardware infrastructure, and storage compute. It should help in saving your OpEx costs in terms of floor space, energy, power consumption, and energy. Also look at latency IOPS and availability and if you can train your associates easily in the support aspect.

At the moment, I am using this solution for internal use. Its performance is quite good. 

The most valuable feature is its data locality, as well as the solution's performance. 

I would like to see a fuller integration with the public cloud. It would help the user enter the hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Prepping my environment with Turbonomic before migrating made the transition quicker and easier by right-sizing my VMs. It continues to offer great features in my new environment. 

• The simplicity Prism (AHV) delivers over other hypervisor solutions has dramatically alleviated the workload, reducing the work pressure from the current workforce.

• It has helped us to distinctly improve our organization and proved to be an effective solution.

• The level of statistical performance data that it can confirm in real-time is extremely useful. I can see what my VM’s hosts and guests are doing from a single pane of glass and identify issues before they would otherwise become apparent.

• The informatics support for this graphical software is up-to-date with the latest infographic web trends.
  

• Site-to-site deduplication needs some work. It’s not as feature-rich for a disaster recovery implementation, but my understanding is that it is slated for improvement in near future releases. 

• DRS-like functionality is also a much-desired feature slated for a future release.
• Third-party solutions are few and far between right now since Nutanix is so new considering the production of the software. Improvements should be made to compensate for upcoming software and solutions. 
• Regarding third-party backup solutions, the only agentless option is Commvault, which is expensive, complex, and requires intensive vendor training. We opted to use the built-in snapshot replication options from Azure.

Consider purchasing Turbonomic with or before Nutanix. They pair and play well together.

If you do use Turbonomic before going with Nutanix, make sure the company knows you intend to move to Nutanix. This ensures you license the proper features.

Do not dismiss Nutanix too hastily over one little feature or another. They are advancing, and it is worth your patience. The value brought in from simplicity, support, and time savings is worth a consideration. 

We are using it for hyper-converged deployments of VMs and SRM replication. It is performing very well.

SRM capabilities for replication have been proven reliable and very useful for our organization. 

We would like to see it support other systems outside of the compute stack from which it was built.

I would recommend this product to others.

Currently, we are using it for our VMware workstation. We use it to host our non-production servers.

It has seamless expandability.

Their Google operating system is more mature, so their results are much better.

I don't feel that I am receiving the performance which I am paying for.

We should have something called micro segmentation inside the Nutanix box, which can be easily implemented.

They should support more VM, which is not currently supported.

The technical support is very good.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The operating system is free.

We're using Acropolis as our own cloud platform. FutureTech, my company, has built a cloud which is called Jute Cloud and is offering services to customers in Kuwait, Bahrain, and in Jordan as well. We are offering infrastructure as a service, backup as a service, DR as a service, security as a service. All of that is based on Nutanix Acropolis.

In terms of performance, it is outstanding.

The TCO model of Nutanix is much more mature than other solutions, because everything is consolidated. We're getting the best value for our investments. We're able to build cost-effective solutions, so it helps us to generate better revenue, and better margins as well.

Flexibility. We're able to mix performance nodes with storage nodes easily. Unlike other vendors where, if we start a hyperconverged solution with them, we have to stick to a specific model, to a specific series with specific capabilities, with Nutanix it's very easy to mix and match the best solution, especially for a dynamic infrastructure like ours.

It would be fantastic if there was a built-in layer, in Nutanix, that acted like a cloud interface. So far, we need to integrate a cloud interface on top of Nutanix for billing the usage for specific customers' domains. It would be great if a cloud gateway was built-in, inside Nutanix.

Also, one of the very important things that I would like to see in Nutanix, but I'm not sure if it's in the roadmap or not, is to have some kind of caching optimization at remote sites, to build active-active data centers more easily.

The stability is really outstanding.

One of my biggest customers worldwide is called Agility and they have distributed data centers around the world. In my first meeting, I asked the IT Manager there, "Okay, so what do you think about Nutanix's stability?" He said, "You know what? My only problem with Nutanix is that it's very stable, so I don't know how my engineers, if one day they face a problem, will fix it, because it's very stable, unlike other vendors." 

We literally put the appliance in production, and we forget about it. It's a very stable environment. More than 70 percent of my sales are coming from existing customers. Customers start with a small workload and then they add more workloads because they find the platform very stable and they can depend on it. They can add more workloads to it. And they even refer the technology to other customers as well.

No other vendor in the market today has the scalability options that Nutanix has. We're able to mix different models, different capacity models, different performance models. It can do all of that. Other vendors cannot do that.

The support is very good, because whenever we have a support ticket, even from the virtualization layer, all we need to do is open one ticket with Nutanix, and they solve all of our problems related to hardware or related to hypervisor. We love that because it helps us to maintain our SLAs.

They are very responsive.

We switched to Nutanix Acropolis, because of the 3D architecture. The old architecture has a lot of disadvantages. For example, whenever there is a support ticket that needs to be opened, we used to check with the software manufacturers, and they would point fingers at the hypervisor layer or the virtualization software, so we would have to go open a ticket again with the virtualization vendor. Then, they would say, "No, maybe it's the storage." Then the storage guy would say, "No, maybe it's the SAN switch, not the storage," and we would keep on cycling.

With Nutanix, the best thing is that they support the whole solution. We're getting just one appliance.

One more issue was the storage itself. Regardless of how big the investment was - we could increase the capacity of the storage as much as we wanted - the problem remained in the IOPS. We found a very good solution for this in Nutanix, because whenever we're adding new appliances, not only are we increasing the capacity, but we're also increasing the performance. This is the best solution, especially for a dynamic workload.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are 

• support
• having a decent roadmap
• R&D.

Those are the most important factors. I put support first because maybe they have a very good technical solution but the support is very weak. That would be a very big problem for me, and production. And a vendor that is investing in R&D, it makes a lot of sense for me to use them.

I evaluated Cisco HyperFlex. It was very weak. We also compared EMC2. They have a hyperconverged solution, but I don't remember what its name was. We also evaluated Simplivity, which is now part of HPE. All of them lacked a lot of features compared to Nutanix.

For example, automatic sync is not there. To guarantee the performance in all of them, you have to go with all-flash nodes. Nutanix is more cost-effective because we can mix a hyper solution and still get better performance than all-flash from those vendors.

Do a demo. Don't just depend on the theoretical information in the information sheets, but go for an actual demo. Once you see a demo in action, you know exactly what the features are and how to do it.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis a 10 out of 10 because we're getting superior performance, support is very good, and it's a very cost-effective solution.

We are currently using Nutanix in a PoC environment to determine if it will meet our VDI needs, as well as our server virtualization needs. Our current production environment uses Citrix XenServer as the hypervisor. Nutanix plans to work with XenServer, but in the PoC, we have elected to test the Acropolis Hypervisor.

Our current production solution is complicated and requires many different management consoles to configure and monitor the solution. Inevitably, something gets missed and requires us troubleshoot resources. The Nutanix PoC appears to eliminate some of this confusion. The AHV integrates with the solution and most of the complexity is hidden from the admin's duties. 

Prism Central allows managing the cluster from a single pane of glass, and it allows a deeper dive into the solution.

Coming from a XenServer environment, I would like better integration of XenServer into the AOS and Prism Central.

We love the idea of having one box capable of doing a lot of work.

With the whole rack becoming a 2U Box, we had a smaller data center footprint and power consumption. Compute and storage became one, so it became easier to manage. There was no need to worry about SLAs, as it had great resiliency

• Nutanix Distributed File System
• Multi-hypervisor support
• Erasure coding
• Protection domain
• Acropolis File Sharing
• Acropolis Block Service
• Strong support

Our challenge has been to simplify our data center, reduce OPEX, easily scale out, and improve agility. Here are some improvements that we would like to see:

• Reduce our data center footprint.
• Reduce its power consumption.
• Make it easier to manage.
• Have an agile data center.

Power supply and memory will affect stability, same as any other hardware vendor.

Not at all. Scalability is within minutes.

They have one of the best technical supports in my experience.

Previously, we used three-tier architecture.

Initial setup is very straightforward.

We did the implementation in-house.

Estimated around four to five years, compared with three-tier deployment.

Work close with your InfraTeam and discuss with Nutanix the best way to achieve sizing and  price that are right for you. 

Licensing depends on the features needed.

We evaluated HPE SimpliVity.

Soon, it will be only software. Therefore, you can provide preferred hardware. You can inject it with Nutanix software as long as the hardware compatibility meets Nutanix requirements.