Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

In our company, we use the solution for workload management. Our company has chosen Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure as its best solution in the market on scalability, and it gets easily deployed in a hybrid cloud. In our company, we move the workload to on-premises or sometimes to the cloud. 

The solution has allowed our organization to reduce space in the data centers and the system to consume only an hour of power. Power consumption has been reduced by 50%with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure. 

The solution requires a limited number of components in the stack, software, and hardware. It's a robust and stable solution. Maintenance is not required for Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, which is operating in the best condition in our company. I personally believe Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure to be the best solution I have worked with in my 16-year career. 

In our company, we believe the solution has more features than required. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is used for basic security and performance needs; we don't need advanced features such as flow and embedded firewalls.   

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for seven years.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

It's a highly scalable solution. I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. Our organization has around 700 users of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure. Our company doesn't plan to increase the solution's usage in the near future. The solution is mainly used by IT experts. 

Useful documentation is available for the solution and minor issues can be easily fixed by our company team on their own. Our organization rarely needed to contact tech support, probably just once every six years. 

Our company uses the community edition of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure and the setup process was satisfyingly simple. I would rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. The deployment process of the solution can be finished within an hour. 

It's a cost-effective solution. Our company conducted extensive market research for enterprise solutions but found Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure to be the most affordable and suitable for our organization. 

I have used VMware, Proxmox and other competitor solutions, but at our company, we found Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure to be the best for our organization's use cases. The solution is faster and easier to manage than other competitor tools and doesn't require enhanced skills. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is an efficient solution that functions with limited resources. 

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure can be used up to 100% of its capacity, but our company is presently using 80% of the solution's resources. Our company manufactures iron casting products in the metal industry, and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is also used. 

For virtualization purposes, Nutanix Acropolis is used as a full-stack solution. For the Windows virtual machines in our company's server, Nutanix Acropolis is utilized instead of solutions like VMware Hypervisor. 

One of the main reasons our company adopted Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure was its data protection features. The solution is also used in disaster recovery through the automatic snapshots feature on the local site. Next year, our organization will try to join clusters in the network using the solution.

Network clustering will help our organization's team move workloads into the geographical cluster automatically. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is considered an ideal solution for disaster recovery where data protection remains embedded. The solution is capable of even capturing auto snapshots for remote sites. 

Next year, our company plans to test new features of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure that will assist in automated workload movements on two sides at a distance of 60 kilometers. I would recommend others use the solution for its exceptional stability, performance, hardware compatibility, and overall flexibility. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure allows the use of varying hardware for the same cluster. I would rate the solution a nine out of ten overall. 

We use the solution in a growing industry where the expansion of servers is critical. The expansion power is pretty accomplished. I can add a node or change hardware easily.

The web application on the servers has been a game changer. It was expensive before. It used to be a headache. It used to take weeks if we had a crash. Now, we can fix everything and put everything as it was within hours. 

The management is very easy. You can see everything within a single platform to manage your databases. Everything is there on a single dashboard. 

NCI's features helped our organization reduce downtime greatly. We use it effectively for replication as well. 

The ability to restore within seconds is great. It takes a few seconds to rewind back to a previous marker and have everything up and running again. 

We migrated other services over to Nutanix. For example, we migrated over from Microsoft Hyper-V. This allows us to manage everything from one single platform and to save on licenses. We no longer have to license all of these different types of hardware. 

It's easy to launch on demand if you are using a newer OS. 

The feature that is lacking right now is the backup. It does not have good backup feature tools, like having templates or being able to back up every two or three days. 

I've been using the solution for almost five years.

The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues. 

We have the solution in one central location. Everyone connects to it remotely. the number of end users fluctuates. It could be 200 to 300 users. 

It's very easy to scale. It's the main reason we chose it. It's easy to add nodes and resources. 

They assign you according to the time you call. If I'm calling after hours, I'll be assigned to someone in another country.

Positive

We used to use XenServer, Hyper-V, and vSphere among other solutions. We decided to consolidate everything under one console to save on licensing and having to check multiple places. It makes manageability and the ability to extend easier. 

I was involved with the deployment. There were five people involved. The deployment itself was pretty straightforward. That said, it did take some time. We gradually moved the servers. We kept both operating to make sure everything was running, then moved off the older servers slowly.

In the case of hardware failures, we'd inform the supplier. Otherwise, the software is upgraded every six months. There is very little maintenance required beyond that. 

We did use a reseller to assist us with the initial setup. Our experience with them was very positive. 

We can easily provision servers and add nodes on the fly without shutting down. There are no limitations either, beyond having the proper licensing. It's the easy extension of resources where we see the ROI. 

They were pretty aggressive coming into the market and the solution started as a cheap option, however, the price is now going up as they mature. 

We looked into Simplivity. The main difference was the cost between the two options. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall. 

I'd advise people to try it out. However, ensure that you lock in your price over the next three to five years so that incremental changes do not affect your contract.

We use it for the setup of multi-cloud infrastructure. Nutanix offers enterprise cloud, and then there are other clouds such as AWS and Azure.

It is a single platform to manage services. It starts at the infrastructure level, but Nutanix also offers other products that are more about services, not about infrastructure. Typical IT organizations know a lot about IT infrastructure, VMs, storage, and network. Nutanix is trying to reduce this workload and give you more time to think about services that are of benefit to your business because knowing about infrastructure is not of benefit at the business level.

Our clients run SAP HANA, Microsoft SQL databases, Oracle databases, and even MySQL databases on Nutanix. There are no limits. In 2012, they started with a high focus on VDI use cases because they were able to solve the problem of the traditional infrastructure solutions. Server virtualization and enterprise or mission-critical applications are also among the broad portfolio of use cases. I am sure you can run any use case on the Nutanix platform.

NCI’s features have helped our clients' organizations reduce downtime. One of the most impactful aspects is that once the SLAs of your services are declared or you know what your SLA requirements are, you can just implement or move the services to match the SLAs. This is one thing, and then you also have runbooks. High availability is not something you do once and it is done. It is a constant process of changes. You need to look at things, fix them, and test them. With Nutanix, you are able to do all of that. You have the ability to have runbooks where if there is an impact and something is down, you can specify how to start it again. This can be written in a runbook, so you have not only the technical ability but also the operational ability to recover from failures.

It helps to know the resource consumption. You know which resources are being consumed and which systems are over-provisioned. You can right-size them. You see the applications that are affecting other things. There is machine learning or artificial intelligence running at the backend telling you, "Look, these are the things we see." If there are any anomalies, you get messages saying that something is strange or going above the expected limits or below the expected reserve usage. You get to know if there is something going on that is different from the past. You can also do capacity management and planning. For example, if you have to run 20 more databases, you can assess if there are enough resources in your environment. In the end, you simplify things. You do not have to do the things that you did in the past but are of no value to the business, such as capacity management. If you are good at it, you will spend less on hardware, but it is not the business. It is just efficiency and consumption of resources, and it is automatically done for you with Nutanix. You do not have to do it.

For a client, we moved the complete IT infrastructure to the Nutanix infrastructure based on NCI. We moved hundreds of virtual machines or services. There is also a tool to do this, which belongs to AHV, not to AOS. AOS is for multi-cloud infrastructure. It is hypervisor agnostic, which means you can run the hypervisor you want such as AHV, Hyper-V, vSphere, etc. You can even select different hypervisors for different infrastructures. Generally, you move services at the hypervisor level, and it is easy to move services within the same hypervisor. If you want to move services across hypervisor where, for example, you decide on Nutanix and you also decide to switch from vSphere to AHV, there is a tool called Move that allows you to plan the migration process and deploy. 

This is a way into cloud consumption. Because the cloud is not about a vendor; it is an operational model, you can have your cloud in your data center, and later on, you can extend to a public cloud, which is a different approach. A few customers say that they have a cloud-first strategy, which means everything from the data center is brought to the cloud. Another approach is lift and shift, but it will cost you a lot of money in the public cloud. If you want to leverage and use a cloud, why not start with a data center? You can implement your cloud use case there, and if you want to extend your multi-cloud or hybrid cloud to public cloud suppliers or CSPs, such as Azure, GCP, or AWS, you have the same workbench in their cloud, so what Nutanix offers us is that in their public clouds, there is dedicated hardware, and they run the same infrastructure links that are in your data center. This way, it is easy for you to move workloads from your own data center to the cloud, which is a real benefit because there is no cloud login. It is not easy to move from AWS to Azure if you use their products, but Nutanix offers this flexibility and scalability.

It is easy to use. One of the things they have as a design goal is to reduce complexity and simplify things.

One of the improvements I would like to have is related to naming. It gets confusing because they are using three-letter acronyms, which are more or less misleading. What I do not like is that they changed names and reused names. They had a meaning in the past and they are still using the names for something similar. It is not related to the product. It is related to the naming conventions thing because this is driving partners and even customers crazy because the name is still the same, but the product in the backend is a completely different product. 

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for ten years. 

I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability. It is rock solid. It is not made by god. It is still man-built, so there are errors, but their support is excellent. If there are flaws in the new functions, they improve it really quickly. Afterward, it is okay.

The thing with the software is that you can test and test and test it, but in the end, the reality is that most software solutions get better after reaching the first customer. They get better and better by detecting errors. This is the same with Nutanix and other vendors. They track where the problems are, and if errors accumulate in a specific area, they have their task force internally focusing on these problems and fixing them. Pretty soon, in about three months' time, the problem is solved, and the fixes are released.

It is scalable. It is not difficult to add compute and storage on demand. If you run it in your own data center, you need extra hardware. If you need more resources, you have to add hardware and the whole process of adding this new hardware is simple. Mostly, we support scaling by adding more nodes to the cluster. There is also the possibility to scale up, for example, by adding some more disks to the existing system if there are free slots. It is also possible to get an extended RAM. It depends on the hardware. Some hardware vendors allow you to change CPUs.

Nutanix runs on hardware from different vendors, such as HPE, Dell, Lenovo, Fujitsu, or Supermicro, so you are independent of the hardware. You do not need any special hardware, so there is no RAID control. The idea is to use x86 servers, so you do get rid of all of the special hardware. You just buy what is available from Intel or AMD. You buy what is actually available, and all the functionality is made in the software. The resources are made in the hardware from existing vendors. It is a cloud-built and run-on-your-own setup. If you go to the cloud infrastructure, you also have hardware provided by the cloud provider, and you install Nutanix NCI software on this hardware. That is the way you can scale. If you want to have it in your data center, you can even have it run by a local MSP. We offer something like this, so it is more flexible. It is like traditional hardware, but you can add to the actual existing hardware if needed. They do not have to be the same types of nodes, so you can mix and match the way you need them.

Their support is extraordinary or exceptional. It is good. I would rate their support a ten out of ten.

Positive

In terms of the deployment model, there are options for on-premises or on the cloud. You are free to choose. A lot of customers start with on-premises and add a cloud later on, but we do have customers who started directly in the cloud.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers a variety of cloud operating models across on-premises, edge, as well as multiple hosted, managed, and public clouds. On the strategic consulting level, this is one of the key benefits because you do not have to run or select different cloud vendors. You can have one platform that helps you to run applications everywhere. However, most customers we work with still come from the approach of making their own IT infrastructure and not buying it. They are moved to the buy model, from the make model, by the C-level to reduce the cost. C-level mostly thinks that the cloud is cheaper. Another reason for the move is to get rid of multiple technical levels in their IT organizations.

In terms of maintenance, everything you run needs maintenance, so there are updates going on. Most of these updates are done with a simple click, but you should know what is running in the backend, and you should know what you are doing. A fool with a tool is still a fool. It is not as simple as the marketing statements are, but it is much simpler than the old traditional way of running IT infrastructure.

It is not cheap, but if you look at the return on investment and the total cost of ownership, it is worth the price.

In our selection and evaluation process of various solutions, we found that Nutanix is the best solution on the market, so the decision was made to only support this solution with our customers because other solutions do have more or less drawbacks.

The main benefit of Nutanix is that they are doing things in a simple way. For example, Nokia had smartphones, and then came Apple with a smartphone. Apple consolidated and simplified the use of a smartphone. Nutanix is inheriting these principles of convergence and making things simpler.

In terms of comparison of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure application and database performance versus a standard SAN solution, in most situations, Nutanix is above the expectations of our customers. They are surprised by the better performance. You can have the same performance as its competitors, but you would need more resources, which means more hardware. It is not that they cannot do it. It is possible, but you need to buy more hardware.

There is a culture of over three to five years of planning in most organizations. They know there is a budget of one million dollars, and they want to use it to the maximum for the next five years. Most of the time, customers buy too much hardware or too many resources. Nutanix offers them a change in the way they consume hardware and licenses, but changing a customer's business culture takes time. Most customers do not realize this in the first use case, but you can help them if they understand better what they really need. After the first implementation, most customers realize that they are over-provisioned. They bought more than what they needed. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure allows you to buy as you need. You do not have to buy for five years, and you always can add resources based on your need. You also have the information about when you need them. For example, the systems will tell you that if you add more, you will need more resources. This is the benefit, but most customers do not trust these statements in the beginning. This is a learning process, and the lesson learned is that instead of over-provisioning, how to use resources wisely and how to discuss things with the procurement department so that they give you the money when you need more resources, not every five years. It might be every year and so to have a fixed growth. There are a lot more benefits. For example, there is no aging hardware. If your hardware is aging, you can just replace it or add additional hardware to the infrastructure when you need it. There is also no loss of value where you buy something and it loses value over time. When you spend one million dollars on the hardware, its value is reduced every month. At some point in time, it is at zero.

This solution is different from the way we did things in the past. My advice is that if you are feeling the pain over and over again, that means that you are doing something wrong. If you want to change things, you have to do different things. You cannot do the same thing over and over again hoping that the outcome will change. Nutanix is one way out of this. They help you to reduce the time to run your own infrastructure and increase the stability and availability of your infrastructure.

Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten.

I use it for the app DB and infra-related services like Active Directory and file servers. And we run our Verint Enterprise Recording application on the platform.

I set things up for my internal customers who are the end-users.

The number of servers we need has been reduced with NCI's performance, and it reduces the space we need and provides energy savings on top of that. The major benefit is the consolidation of all the physical and VMware servers into the Nutanix AHV platform. That's the baseline of the entire application, the core platform. We no longer use our old HPE and Dell servers. The three-tier architecture has been eliminated. NCI has eliminated that complexity and the costs associated with it.

The architecture of Nutanix is the best, and the virtualization we get, out of the box, is an advantage. Also, dedupe and compression are done natively, inside the platform, so there are no additional licenses. That adds value to it.

In addition, it provides us with a single platform, which is pretty user-friendly, to manage our databases. It doesn't take much to manage the console.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for about five years.

It's stable. The design means we get an N+1 architecture for node failures. We haven't had any major downtime until now. We are good with the performance.

We have it deployed in multiple locations. It's a distributed architecture.

Their technical support is good, but they do have third-party system integrators. If you get one who is not that great, you will have problems.

Positive

I have worked with Cisco Hyperflex and HPE Simplivity but they don't have software that is equivalent to what Nutanix has. The others are still developing their software.

And Nutanix is far better than a standard SAN solution because it is an all-in-one solution. The read/write speed is far better than in three-tier architecture.

The initial deployment is pretty straightforward. One person can handle it.

There isn't much downtime due to maintenance. And updates are pretty easy, they're just plug-and-play. It's not complex. Adding compute and storage on demand is not a problem for me because my deployment is on-prem.

The ROI is definitely there, based on the consolidation. It reduces the workload footprint. That's the benefit. There aren't too many servers or storage. Nutanix becomes an all-in-one and enables us to accommodate more workloads because it has built-in dedupe and compression.

If they could further reduce the cost, that would be great. I would like to see the cost be less than the equivalent three-tier architecture.

My advice is to get away from the traditional approach and think in forward terms about an HCI model. Nutanix stays ahead in the market.

I haven't seen any drawbacks that would lead me to suggest any improvements to the functionality of NCI.

We use the tool to run VMs and to replace SQL with errors.

Our organization can save a lot of space because of the product. We used to have a couple of racks of equipment, and now we have only half a rack.

The most valuable feature is the solution's ease of upgrading. We can upgrade everything on one screen with Life Cycle Manager.

The product should improve its naming convention. The name of the solutions offered by Nutanix does not indicate what the tool does.

I have been using the solution for six years.

The solution’s stability has been really good. I haven't had any problems so far. Anytime there is a problem, it is invisible to the customer because everything continues to run on another node.

The product’s scalability is seamless. We have around 200 VMs running on our Nutanix cluster.

I faced a hard drive failure when I was doing an upgrade. It was two o’clock in the morning, and I was worried because there was a mission-critical task, and the clusters and the nodes were not coming up. It took me three hours to figure things out, but the support person fixed everything in 30 minutes. So from now on, anytime I have a problem, I put in a work order and let the support team take care of it.

Positive

Previously, we used Hyper-V. We switched to Nutanix because of its simplicity. Nutanix is simple and easy to learn.

Nutanix professionals visited us, asked about our preferences, and set up the solution. It was a great experience.

The solution helps us save 10 to 20 percent more money than other products.

We evaluated other hyper-converged solutions like Dell but chose Nutanix because we already used Nutanix’s AHV and hardware.

Apart from saving money, the product gives us peace of mind.

NCI made a big positive impact on our business-critical workloads. Our team is comfortable working with NCI because of its ease of use. With Life Cycle Manager, all our equipment stays up to date.

NCI saved us money because we don’t have to pay separate license fees for each separate piece. NCI helped consolidate the work to one person and free up our staff for other projects.

People will not regret choosing Nutanix, especially if they come from a more complex environment. The product will give them peace of mind and less headache.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We use NCI in the transportation domain. 

The tool is simple, stable, and easy to upgrade. It also requires few resources to manage, which simplifies our work. The solution's ease of upgrading is its valuable feature. AHV, provided by Nutanix, is excellent in performance and ease of use. It's based on an open-source product called KVM, which I also use for other services.

Data protection and disaster recovery features have been beneficial for our work. With these features, we're able to create a high-availability environment where if one node goes down, another one takes over.

NCI's pricing is expensive. 

I have been using the product for six years. 

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate NCI's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has 1500 users. 

The solution's support is excellent.

Positive

The deployment process usually takes around a week, depending on whether you need to migrate your systems to a hypervisor environment. It can be quite easy if you already have that setup, especially with something like VMware.

For me ROI is the tool's stability. 

Reconsidering the licensing packages could reduce the price, especially for companies that may not need all the bells and whistles. Many of the features are based on open-source software, so there's potential to offer more flexible pricing options. Additionally, with the right expertise, companies could potentially create similar environments themselves, reducing the need for extensive support and licensing costs. I rate its pricing a six out of ten. The tool costs around 300,000 dollars per year. 

I rate the tool an eight out of ten. I am exploring new technologies because the market was different when I implemented NCI six years ago. Keeping up with changes is important, so I'm currently evaluating new options. I am looking to KVM. You should use NCI if you can afford it. 

It is a universal public cloud. It caters to our current usage of a private cloud. It ensures performance and security, whether on-premises or in a hybrid setup, offering us a cost-effective solution. It has enterprise data services with consolidated storage data protection and disaster recovery. We are also running Microsoft SQL Server on the tool.

The tool facilitated the consolidation of our organization's applications by combining storage and completing configurations. This has enhanced the effectiveness and availability of our applications. Consolidated storage, data protection, disaster recovery, and virtualization contribute to its commendable performance and service delivery.

One valuable aspect is its efficiency as a robust platform. It can also be updated with a single feed. Mainly, there is an ease of managing all processes. It effectively minimizes downtime with features like container management and robust networking capabilities. Additionally, the data recovery process is remarkably fast, enabling us to swiftly retrieve and restore information within a short period.

The latency needs improvement, particularly in terms of storage. The current system has complex storage issues, compounded by legacy infrastructure-blocking incident software. To address this, an enhancement in storage capacity is crucial, which, in turn, would contribute to a decrease in latency.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It’s a stable solution.

The product is scalable. It accommodates around 200 users in my company. One administrator handles the administration part.

In my organization, we used VMware, and when comparing it with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, the latter stands out for its high performance and efficient and robust infrastructure. It provides high-speed live migration capability. We migrated from VMware to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

My team executed the initial setup.

I recommend the solution because it can converge the data center stack, including computing, storage, networking, and installation, all under one umbrella. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Our clients use Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for technology refresh, workload consolidation, and data-driven infrastructure.

Our clients run VMware and other enterprise applications on Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has helped our clients reduce downtime.

It has helped our clients reduce their data center footprint, increase their performance, and simplify management.

Our clients have migrated their services from different hypervisors to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

Hyperconverged Infrastructure is the most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

The pricing model for software and hardware subscription renewals can be improved.

I have been selling Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for ten years.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is extremely stable.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is highly scalable.

The technical support is excellent.

Positive

We previously offered a three-tier architecture but switched to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for its reduced data center footprint, improved manageability, and enhanced performance.

Initial deployment is straightforward. We have implemented hundreds of deployments. For example, in one deployment, we consolidated a physical and virtual environment that existed on a three-tier architecture and physical server onto a complete virtualized infrastructure on Nutanix Cloud.

Two people were required for deployment.

Our clients have seen a return on investment using Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure. One of our clients was able to expand his storage without having to purchase an entirely new infrastructure for his new application.

The initial cost is affordable but the renewal fees are high.

We evaluated Cisco HyperFlex, Dell VxRail, and HPE SimpliVity. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has better features, local team support, and hardware associations.

I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure an eight out of ten.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's application and database performance is more seamless compared to the traditional solutions.

Our clients value Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's ability to offer a variety of cloud operating models across on-premises, Edge, and multiple hosted managed and public clouds.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure requires maintenance.

Upgrading is easy to do. Adding storage on demand is a moderate task.

We have a lot of servers. Previously, they used to be physical servers. Managing all those physical servers was difficult. Many times hardware used to fail and there was a disruption of services. After we moved to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, life got a lot easier. We have deployed more than 80 VMs in a cluster.

We have many homegrown applications that we run on Nutanix. We have a customized web portal and applications. They are customized for our business.

Nutanix NCI’s features help our organization reduce downtime. We use RA3 stuff in our clusters. If there is any issue with the hardware, node, or something else, my cluster is up and running. Over these three years, we have probably upgraded the Nutanix software twice or thrice. We had to restart nodes multiple times during this upgrade, and none of our users felt that something was going on. They did not have any issues related to slow response or no response from the applications while we had to shut down one of the nodes, put it into maintenance, apply the patches, bring the node up, and then make it join the cluster. It was smooth.

It has helped with consolidation. Previously, we had more than 40 servers, and now we have only 6 nodes. It is a lot easier to manage these 6 nodes. With the hardware, if something goes wrong, such as the hard disk showing amber, I have to create a ticket, share the logs, and then the engineer will come and check. After that, the part will come. It can come at 2 AM or 4 AM. We have to be physically present. They will shut down the server, take out that hard disk, and replace the hard disk, and then we will have to bring up the service. We have to spend a lot of time.

They have a product for database management called Nutanix Era, but we do not use that. We have not deployed it over here. We primarily use this HCI for making VMs and running web applications and their databases. We have migrated database services but not through the Nutanix Era. We have our own system, so we used that. The purpose of migration was to have a single pane of glass for management. The downtime is less, and the service becomes a smooth service. The users who are using the service are happy.

A lot of features are there, but for us, on the server administration side, creating a clone of the VM is valuable because many times, we have to deploy security patches. For deploying these patches, it helps to have a clone so that if something goes wrong, we can discard that VM and put back the clone VM. That is a very cool feature.

Usually, there are separate administration teams that take care of servers, but in our organization, servers are usually looked after by the application owner. However, the application owners cannot reinstall the software, OS, and other things. That only aligns with the role of the HCI administrator. If these rights can be provided, it will be very easy. Previously, it was there, but after certain updates, we found that they have withdrawn those services. For example, you requested a VM, and based on the business use case, I approved it and gave you a bare-metal server. Now you are the owner of that particular VM, so whatever you need, you should be able to do over there, but currently, you have to request me for the installation of the OS that you need, and I have to do it. It is an overhead for the HCI administrator. If that can be offloaded to the VM owners, that will be much easier for us. I have already shared this feedback with Nutanix.

I have been working with this solution for more than two years.

It is stable. Its reliability is very good. In the last three to four years, we have not faced any outages. It is smooth on the hardware side and the software side.

We first thought of deploying about 40 VMs, and now, we are running more than 80 VMs, so a lot of scalability options are there. If you have a smooth augmentation, all the capabilities are there. 

We have plans to use our present data center for DR. We will build a new DC, and we will be deploying another set of Nutanix clusters over there. 

Their support is very good. Whenever we found any issue, we raised a ticket, and there was always an expert who had discussions with us and helped us. If required, they do a remote session and help us out. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have not worked with any similar solution previously.

In terms of the deployment model, we have an on-prem cloud. In terms of the initial setup, the Nutanix team took care of building the clusters. For such a solution, we create a service request, and they set up the entire cluster. After the cluster is ready, they hand it over to us for creating VMs and migrating applications to those VMs.

Its maintenance is easy. You can do it with a few clicks. There are interfaces, and you need to do checks for those interfaces. You need to look for the long-term support version and follow the procedure. Overall, it is smooth.

For the deployment and initial setup, there is usually one person from Nutanix. From the hardware vendor team, there are usually one or two people, and then there are two people from our side. One is from the software side, and one is from the network side for IP allocations and other related things.

We also evaluated VMware, but at that time, VMware was not mature, and it was not within our requirements. That was the reason why we chose this solution. Another reason was that our technical evaluation team found Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure to be more suitable for our architecture.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure a nine out of ten.

Our client was using ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V clustering, but patching and upgrading ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V clusters was very tedious. That was their pain area. We understood their pain area and positioned Nutanix there. Instead of the orthodox three-tier architecture, they chose Nutanix. The benefit of Nutanix is that there is a very simple upgrade path. It is done with a click. The storage part is simple. It has a very easy UI, which is a USP of Nutanix. The client is very happy.

We have multiple such clients, and our clients are happy with it. For more than 10 clients, I myself have done the deployment of the Nutanix cluster. One of them had a cluster with 24 nodes.

In a single pane of glass, you get all the insights about your infrastructure. Earlier, in the orthodox three-tier architecture, you had multiple UIs. You also needed multiple expertise to take care of things. It used to take more time to troubleshoot and identify where exactly the issue was. You had to get your analytics, get your logs, and then troubleshoot. All this is avoided with the Nutanix architecture. It is hardware agnostic. For example, if an organization has a contract for the HPE hardware or they have an HPE footprint or a Dell footprint in their DC, they can go with that particular hardware and have Nutanix on top of it. Nutanix does not force you to buy only Nutanix hardware. Other vendors, such as VMware, make you buy their hardware so that their product works fine, but that is not the case with Nutanix. It is hardware agnostic. 

The applications that are run on Nutanix are client-side applications. There are banking or financial applications. They also have Citrix on Nutanix for the virtual desktop. They also have Oracle Database and SAP running properly on the Nutanix hardware or architecture. You can put any application available in the market, such as Oracle Database, MySQL, or NoSQL, and you will not have any slowness or anything like that with that application. Every application works smoothly on the Nutanix platform. It is all tested. 

It is much easier to deploy Nutanix as compared to other solutions. It saves you deployment time. Usually, in a big organization, the planning itself takes around a month. You also need permissions, and then you deploy a solution, so deployment takes time, but that is not the case with Nutanix, which is an advantage. You can get all necessary permissions from your management and then in one day or half a day, you can have your cluster. If you purchase the whole Nutanix portfolio with Nutanix Karbon, Nutanix Flow, and other solutions, deployment is very easy. You can put it into production.

It reduces the downtime. A cluster has multiple nodes in the backend. If you want to upgrade the firmware or you want to upgrade AHV or the hardware, it will do that one by one. It will put some nodes into maintenance mode. It will move some of the virtual machines to other nodes in a cluster. It will take care of the redundancy part. It will take care of your data. The data also gets migrated to those nodes so that it is available locally. You avoid all the hops that are there in the three-tier architecture. It reduces the hops and the time to access your data and gives you the output. All this is taken care of in the Nutanix architecture.

Snapshot is one of the key features that reduce downtime. It gives clients more power to define their RTO and RPO, which is a valuable aspect of the Nutanix architecture. Even in the case of DC/DR, if your DC goes down, you can use the data protection domain and get your DR site up and running. It helps clients achieve their RTO and RPO.

Our clients could realize its benefits in a week. I have worked on more than 10 major deployments. They already had some pain areas, and they wanted to mitigate those areas. We positioned Nutanix and did the PoC, and they were already happy with this solution at the PoC level. We did not have to do deployment and put it in production for them to see its benefits. Based on my experience with Nutanix, in a week's time, they get to know its features and the fact that it works smoothly.

All applications have dependencies. They have some hardware or networking requirements. You need to have the hardware accordingly in your DC. By buying Nutanix, our clients have managed to avoid all these requirements. In a single box, they get all the things, so they do not have to worry about the backend. Their applications work smoothly. They can have any application. They can even have VDI applications such as Citrix VDI or VMware Workspace on top of Nutanix. It supports all the platforms. Our clients are very happy with Nutanix. They do not have to do any hardware upgrades. 

It eliminates the legacy infrastructure. That is the main purpose of HCI. For HCI, Nutanix has been in the number one position for many years. In the three-tier architecture, there used to be a frontend application, a middleware, and a backend database. On the hardware front also, you had to put your servers, your SAN switches, and your backend storage. You had multiple footprints in your DC. You also had more power consumption. Nutanix reduces power consumption, troubleshooting, and maintenance. You do not need a separate team for maintenance. Irrespective of the hardware, you get a single point of contact for any support. All these solutions are consolidated under one roof, which is very beneficial.

We have done the whole DC migration to Nutanix. The client had five to six racks, and they got reduced to two racks by using Nutanix. It takes very less space. It helps to reduce your DC footprint and power consumption. Troubleshooting is very easy. You can also reduce the number of hops. It eliminates the whole process where the front end puts the request to middleware, which then goes to the backend and fetches the data from the storage. You can have your data locally, and then there is just a single hop. You get the output faster. It makes your applications run smoother and faster as well while responding to a request.

Single-click upgrades are the most valuable feature. In the sector in which we work, it is tough to have downtime and arrange firmware upgrades. If something goes wrong, you need to do a fallback or troubleshoot more. That can be totally avoided if you are using Nutanix in the backend for your hypervisor or clustering part. That is one thing.

Another thing is that you get CVMs similar to the number of nodes. CVM handles your backend storage infrastructure. It is underlying your hypervisor. If you have seven nodes, you will get seven CVMs, which is a good thing.

The availability of your data is also valuable. Whenever you shift or migrate your virtual machines inside a cluster, your data also follows that. It creates multiple copies of the data and keeps it ready in the backend for redundancy, which is another good point.

With Nutanix Prism, you get a single dashboard for everything. It shows you whether your data resiliency is okay, whether your nodes are okay, or whether your networking part is okay. It is another USP.

Our client had some old Citrix Xen servers for which there is no direct migration. Nutanix has a move utility for Microsoft Hyper-V clusters or VMware clusters. You can easily migrate them using the move utility, but the Xen clusters cannot be migrated in a simple way. That is the only thing that is lacking, but nowadays, no one uses the Citrix Xen server for their clusters. Everything else is already there. Nutanix keeps on upgrading its hardware's or hypervisor's capability to be able to support new technologies. 

I have been working with Nutanix for more than four years. 

It is quite stable. It is very robust. You can compare it to any old three-tier architecture solution. It is a much better solution. It is a much better approach. 

It is very easy, and it is very scalable. You can scale it vertically and horizontally. It has good scalability. If you have proper resources but only the storage needs to be upgraded, you have that flexibility where you can only purchase a storage node and add it to your cluster. If you want more compute resources, such as more CPU or RAM, you can put more nodes and add them into the cluster. There is no downtime. It is very simple and smooth.

In terms of the end-users, there are more than 3,000 users at a single location. There are multiple locations. There are about four locations in India and then for DR, they have two or three locations. This is basically a banking client, so there are multiple locations where they have put the Nutanix clusters. Even on the DR site, they have Nutanix. They have a six-node cluster where all the data is replicated. It is a multi-site deployment with about 16,000 users.

Their support is also very good. If something goes wrong, they will provide support. You just need to raise a case with their support. They come online and fix the issue as soon as possible and get your production going. 

They also support you at the deployment level. Many times, we faced some challenges because of networking, which plays an important part in deployment. If something is not proper in networking, the deployment does not happen. In such cases, you can raise a case with Nutanix support, and they will help you with the deployment. 

I would rate their support a ten out of ten.

Positive

We did not use a different solution. There was mostly the three-tier architecture, and people used to replace or upgrade at the storage level, networking level, or server level until HCI came into the picture. With HCI, all those things went away. It reduces your DC footprint and gives you a powerful solution. There are different HCI players in the market, such as VMware vSAN and HPE SimpliVity, but wherever we have positioned Nutanix, clients have been happy. We had positioned HPE SimpliVity for a client, but in the next tech refresh, they got it replaced with Nutanix. 

We have had some clients who had their workloads on Azure and for their Oracle Database and SAP environment, they had purchased a Nutanix box from us. They had put their on-premise applications on Nutanix. When they saw those applications working so smoothly, they brought their Azure workload on-premises and bought another Nutanix box. I was a part of that migration.

Nutanix Prism dashboard and one-click upgrades are the points that make Nutanix much better as compared to other solutions. They give you a single pane of glass. The UI is very good. It gives you an experience similar to Azure or AWS UI. You can have all the insights about your hardware in a single pane of glass, and it is very easy for management as well to do regular reporting. They can make fast decisions regarding their futuristic plans.

Most deployments are on a hybrid cloud. Some of the deployments are on a private cloud. Our clients have Azure. They also have Nutanix Cloud.

The initial setup is very simple. You only need to get your foundation VMs set and then you can have it deployed. You need to get your appliance switch and connect all your client's servers to that switch. It is very simple. You can even start it and leave it. It will format all those nodes and make them ready. The networking part is also easy. Whether it is a plain network or you are putting in a VLAN, it is very easy. There are only a few commands, and then you can deploy it. 

For a 24-node cluster, it took us only about six hours, which is not the case with the three-tier architecture. It takes six hours just to plan how to position or get those nodes up and running in production. That is at the very initial level, and then it takes about a month's time to get the node cluster into production. That time is saved with Nutanix. In just six to seven hours, you can get it going in production.

We have a single person for deployment. I myself go to DC and do it. There is one more person to do the rack stacking of all the hardware. A single person is enough to get the clusters ready and put them in production.

In terms of maintenance, it does not require any maintenance that requires any downtime. It is very simple. If some new features get added, it will show them on your dashboard, and then you can upgrade to the newer version.

There is an ROI. With the three-tier architecture, you have to purchase separately for the storage, database, applications, etc. There is a software-layer investment, and then there is a hardware-layer investment. In the software-layer investment, you have to take backups and create a backup infrastructure. You also have to pay for the expertise. You need people for monitoring and taking care of your hardware. You need storage administrators and network administrators. With Nutanix, everything gets consolidated in a single box, and you also save the cost of expertise. There is a good return on investment.

Its licensing is fine. They provide the flexibility to choose from different options. You can go with the standard plan. You can go with the pro or platinum plan. Generally, our clients go with the pro licenses, but if you go for the platinum license, you get even more capabilities. Their starter license is also quite good.

About 95% of our clients go for the pro license, but we also have some clients who do not need enterprise-level features, so they go for the starter or standard license. They do not need to pay anything extra in addition to the standard licensing fee.

Clients usually evaluate a product when they have a pain area, they have a tech refresh, or they want to adopt a new technology. For example, if they are on the old three-tier architecture, they might be curious about HCI. We explain all the benefits of not only the HCI technology but also specifically of Nutanix for HCI. We explain how it addresses their pain area or needs. It has low overheads, so the cost of ownership is also low. They get a robust environment, and it is very easy to handle. It saves time. You do not have to go to DCN, mount storage, deal with SAN switches, etc. All those tasks are time-consuming. The maintenance and configuration take time. Nutanix saves you time. You can fulfill your needs or your clients' needs. The deployment is easy. Sometimes, our clients get astonished at the speed of deployment because they were expecting it to take weeks or months. It is simple but powerful. It is very easy.

Overall, I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10.