Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

We use our cluster for three scenarios:

• Virtualized Infrastructure
• Citrix 3D Terminal Services
• Clustered File Server (Windows-based).

Any task with our servers which is painless because the system runs really fast.
Our users are glad to be migrated to Citrix, although giving up the local admin rights there (yes, there are some local admin users still in place), because it performs so well.

• Single click actions is definitely the most important. They were not even aware that they wanted this.
• Performance was the main point for buying it. 
• No virtualization-vendor lock-in is another main point.
• But if you ever had good support, Nutanix Support will overwhelm.

There are various areas, but all points that I could mention are under development and get to you free of charge with another single-click cluster-upgrade.

To name some: Native File-Services are under heavy development and Container Services just came out.

No, also the system does daily self-checks and comes up with warnings. Support can fix this without system downtime. Over time you learn from support sessions to fix thngs yourself. The tool chest (already there inside the Controller-VM) is really impressive.

We had no requirements to scale it yet.

A 10 of 10. Simply that. Responsive, callbacks, top knowledge, easy escalation, and fast connection to development (during our PoC-phase I had a conference with developers in a few days).

Traditional storage on NetApp with ESX-Blades from Dell. We switched because of the simpler setup and easier scalability.

Initial setup was in a half workday. This means the first VM was up and running.
And it would be half on hour without racking and cabling.

We had consultants to guard us through it although we could have done it ourselves. It is good to get things straight initially. Their expertise was well set.

We do not estimate numbers for administration, rack powerage, and such. We use IT to do our business, not vice versa. You get nowhere if you want to measure the street instead of driving on it. But I was quite firm with netapp and the blades and had no huge admin effort. The timely effort for nutanix is even less now.

Setup cost is minor, pricing is quite a bit (we have a 7-node-cluster for about 450K EUR with 2 vGPU-nodes for Citrix) but that includes hardware, software, and support. I would also license Prism Central in Pro Edition because you get capacity planning. This makes sense even for a single cluster setup.

We evaluated the successor models of our former systems. New NetApp Filers and new Blades, but the pricing was similar so we went with the better solution. We never used NetApp Vendor support (we did it ourselves with support from a netapp partner) and Dell Server support was poor (I can google manuals myself). Buying Nutanix includes superior support. You should call Nutanix support if you are doing a ProofofConcept!

Always check compatibility matrix before you upgrade to get a clear view what comes after your upgrade. I recently found that AOS 5.1.4 and 5.1.5 will not let you upgrade to 5.5.x as of now see (https://portal.nutanix.com/#/p... Login Required). 5.6 is your upgrade path if you are on 5.1.4 or 5.1.5.

System stability and performance to ensure a 24/7 operation with fantastic pro-active support. The 1 to many solution will fulfil your DR requirements.

We increased stability and availability to 99.999%, and increased performance on our software platforms and databases drastically.

• Availability
• Scalability
• Performance
• Redundancy
• Excellent Monitoring and Admin Portal

There is a hard coded IP in the 192.168.5.x range which comes with Nutanix. This needs to be a variable, not hard coded, as this may clash with customers current IP range.

No.

No.

Customer Service:

A nine out of 10.

Technical Support:

A 10 out of 10.

Xen.

It was complex, as we needed to move from a Xen environment to Acropolis. The migration process was not easy.

We implemented through an in-house team and a vendor team. The vendor's expertise was a two out of 10.

This is still to be determined.

Even though Nutanix is expensive, it is well worth it!

Yes, we did look at your traditional hyper-converged solutions.

• Simple to use
• Ergonomic

We were able to remove the following equipment from  our infrastructure: 

• EMC VNX5300
• Cisco Switch FC
• FalconStor
• Cisco UCS Servers
• A lot of cabling 

So in the end there is much less complexity to manage.

Snapshot Management needs improvement.

Ten months.

Very few, it has now been running for five to six months without any problems.

No issues.

Excellent, thiis the best area. Very efficient.

SAN, EMC VNX5300, FalconStor, Switch Cisco FC and CISCO UCS Servers.

Simple move, two to three days max.

Needs to be negotiated.

HPE Simplivity.

Using a hyperconverged system, network backbone, becomes more critical.

• Prism 
• One-Click

Now, we can worry less about the technology and focus on other business value initiatives.

A fantastic product that could spend a bit more time in QA between releases.

Five years.

None.

Compatibility issue with Nutanix and Zerto.

None.

Customer Service:

10 out of 10.

Technical Support:

10 out of 10.

We switched from a legacy 3-2-1 solution to HCI due to its ease of use and scalability.

Very straightforward; no issues.

We implemented through a vendor team, although the setup was so easy that we could have handled the process in-house.

We have realized a 3:1 ROI.

The upfront cost can be higher than traditional solutions, but the ROI can be quickly realized for most organizations.

SimpliVity and Dell EqualLogic.

A great product from a great company with world class support.

Nutanix Prism.

Nutanix provides the best migration to cloud platform. It has helped our company aggregate most of our workloads into a centralized platform improving the efficiency for the IT team and infrastructure resources. Throughout the journey, Nutanix provides the best support that we have ever had, from solution providers and vendors, adding big value to our operations and support our SLAs with our customers.

We have achieved great stability and scalability with Nutanix. We are currently running Hyper-V in Nutanix. After setting it up, we are very happy with the provisioning of new VMs as we do not need to worry about space requirements.

Three years.

Implementation was a breeze.

Initially, we had some issues with the deployment and it was resolved in future updates by the great technical support from Nutanix.

We have not faced any issues with scalability. It is one of the best features.

An eight out of 10.

An eight out of 10.

Not applicable.

Initial setup was little bit troublesome, but we received very good technical support from Nutanix

Not applicable.

It really is worth the price you spend.

No.

• Single pane of glass view for all components.
• Excellent after-sales support.
• Easy updates and upgrades.

Reduced hours wasted on troubleshooting failed updates.

• Uptime
• HA
• Redundancy
• Disaster Recover (DR)

Three years.

None, except when they sent an engineer who was still new.

None.

None. It scales seemlessly. The hardest part is negotiating for the budget to do so.

The customer service is excellent.

The technical support is excellent.

3-tier infrastructure. We switched due to the complexities of multiple vendors with multiple points to blame.

It was straightforward. We used their professional services to assist with the deployment.

We used both an in-house team and a vendor team.

Not applicable.

The after-sales support is amazing and worth investing in.

None.

We have used Nutanix for three years now and have scaled and upgraded four clusters in that time with no issues.

Hypervisor-agnostic: I can use a VMware or Hyper-V license, if I already have one. But if I use a similar solution as Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) that comes embedded in a Nutanix solution, I can manage all my virtual environments with everything that I need without spend more money on licenses.

Hyper-convergence makes the whole datacenter simpler. I don’t need to manage servers, SAN, and storage as I used to, but instead, manage everything from one simple and complete dashboard. I can manage my resources to get any information I need to monitor and scale.

For the past three years.

No.

Sometimes, I had to install it twice to place the solution. Errors in the middle of installation require you retry, then it goes well. Other than that, it is very simple and does not requires deep knowledge.

No.

An eight out of 10.

We had very good technical support from Nutanix during the implementation and post implementation.

I worked with Dell EMC VxRail, but this product is tied with VMware ESXi which requires expensive licenses. It is also a great solution if you have already those licenses. VxRail has a limit in scalability (64) in the 3.5 version.

I know Nutanix and VxRail have similar prices and licenses. Nutanix is a go ahead if AHV is used as the hypervisor because it is already embedded in the price.

I have some customers who tried Cisco HyperFlex and HPE HC380 instead of VMware vSAN. None of these were so attractive as Nutanix when they compared hypervisor flexibility, scalability, and support.