Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

We have a very large deployment of our own, and we also sell a fair amount of it to our clients.

We deliver VDI systems over this and other similar technologies. We only work with hospitals. This is all in healthcare. We've essentially created private CloudOp architecture that we sell to hospitals for specialized VDI environments, and this is the product that we use.

In terms of the version, we have very significant installations of it for our clients. It is part of a product and service for which we work with our clients. I would assume we have the latest versions.

It is less expensive than VMware products. It is also a little bit more flexible, but it really comes down to price for us. 

The software-defined networking should be improved. It is quite substandard as compared to the VMware variant. The software-defined networking is quite limited, and we usually use other products to do that. We're aware that Nutanix is working on that and will be coming out with better solutions, and we can't wait because to do a fully software-defined architecture, the abstraction layer needs not only software-defined storage, which you have, but also the software-defined networking piece.

We have been using this solution for about four or five years.

It is quite stable. We had no problems with it.

So far, it hasn't been a problem for us. It is able to do all the expansions that we've needed.

It is adequate. It is no better or worse than VMware's support.

It was straightforward.

We started with a combination of consultants and Nutanix's professional services group, but now, we're supporting it all internally.

It is less expensive than the VMware alternative.

You need to understand abstraction and virtualization properly to be able to deploy it properly. You should look at it as a real alternative to VMware.

I would rate it as an eight out of 10. It is less expensive than the VMware alternative. I wouldn't say it is better than the VMware alternative. If you consider VMware's software-defined networking piece, VMware has an advantage, but its cost is significantly less. For that reason, I would give it a high rating.

Our primary use case is for moving to HCI architecture. We have plenty of applications which are mainly homegrown in a LAMP environment. We were looking into restructuring our DC and DR environment and moving from the Spark architecture to an Intel-based platform. We started with a sort of POC for some of those applications in the LAMP environment and moved them to HCI architecture, where they have been running for almost two years now. Now we want to move the rest of the applications into similar architecture so it can be auto-scaled. Since we are from a UPT industry, there are certain state-based and country-based regulations that limit our ability to move our data to the cloud. This is why we want an on-premises solution like Nutanix. Right now, Nutanix handles our virtualization and we use Dell for our servers. 

This solution has helped my company move to HCI architecture. 

One of the most valuable features is how well this solution performs. It's stable, aside from some patch issues, but it's great from a virtualization and scalability perspective. 

The patch updates of Nutanix Acropolis could be improved. I'm work on the corporate side, but I get feedback from our IT team that patch updates and other updates are taking a significantly longer time. This definitely needs to be resolved. We are in discussion with Nutanix regarding certain configuration issues we are having, so maybe something can be changed to ease these patch updates. 

We have been using Nutanix Acropolis for almost one and a half years. 

This solution is stable, which is one of the reasons why we are looking to move our entire set of applications into this architecture. There are a couple of issues in terms of patch updates, but overall, the performance is good. Our IT deployment and infrastructure management team is comprised of five or six people, one manager and mostly engineers. 

Since this solution is an HCI platform, it automatically scales. The only problem we are running into is that there is a significant amount of software licensing involved. There are approximately 500 to 1,000 people using this solution because one of our key CRM applications is running on it. 

Technical support is quite good. They are proactive and take initiative when it comes to resolving issues. In India, things like these are handled through local channel partners, so I believe that Nutanix support works hand-in-hand with the local channel partner to resolve our day-to-day issues. 

Installation is pretty straightforward. It was initially done by the vendor, but now we are adding more code and our in-house team handles those installations. 

We initially implemented through a vendor team. 

Our Nutanix license is for five years. There is a support arrangement there, but that aspect is more or less taken care of during the initial installation. 

With HCI architecture, whenever we do any kind of auto scaling or scaling of servers and resources, there is a significant amount of software licensing involved. This is getting a bit problematic for us, so we are looking into some sort of private cloud appliance of Oracle PCA architecture. A lot of applications that we have—ERP as well as custom developed software—have Oracle as the back end. This means that, for HCI, the number of server codes we are using increases each time we add new applications. Oracle licenses are based on code, so the scaling we do significantly impacts our overall TCO. 

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution to others, however, if you have Oracle Database or Oracle licensing in general, then you need to think about how many licenses will be required—based on that, your overall TCO may increase significantly. Otherwise, in terms of virtualization, scaling, etc., everything is fine. 

My primary use case is to deliver cloud services. This is for our cloud infrastructure. Nutanix is deployed on-premises, but I have six locations that I manage remotely, so it's like they're cloud-based. 

Nutanix has improved my company because it's 100% stable and the simplicity of management is amazing. It's my favorite product. We set it up here in Israel, then remote technicians in Africa just plug in the cables, start it up, and everything is running.

One of the most valuable features is the One-Click Upgrade. When I need to update the system, I do it with one click. This product is amazing because everything is easy to manage, from network management to snapshots. 

Nutanix needs to improve network features like Passthrough – SR-IOV. It could be improved by supporting SR-IOV, if they had that support, I would not have needed to implement the VMWare vSAN.

SR-IOV give the ability for a VM to use the physical NIC as its own NIC with all the network featuers on that NIC.

I have been using this solution for five years. 

This solution is very stable. I'm 100% satisfied with the stability. 

For maintenance, one person is enough. If you're looking at an IT environment, the same person who does the Active Directory can manage Nutanix as well. You don't need to hire a person who specializes in Nutanix. 

The scalability of this solution is linear. We have already done two or three scales in two of our locations. We just send two nodes to each location, they connect it, we run Auto-discover, and boom, it's configured. 

At my company, there are many people using our cloud products running on Nutanix. In Ghana there are more than 10,000 users; in Uganda, it's around 30,000 people; in Israel, it's about 200 people; but in London, there are around 20 million people using it. Because we provide cloud services to mobile network operators, each mobile network operator has millions of users and to manage the traffic, we use Nutanix. 

Currently, we have five clusters, twenty-four nodes, and we have plans to increase next year. 

I have a direct phone number that I call and someone immediately answers—you can't get better support than this. I've never needed real support, only clarification on how to use it better. For example, we wanted to do an upgrade and we were on an old version in one of the clusters, so we contacted them for guidance. There were a few steps on the upgrade, so we asked to make sure we were doing it correctly. We got an immediate answer, ran the upgrade, and everything was okay. Their support is great. 

The initial setup is very simple. You turn on the servers, enter the IP configuration, and that's it. You're good to go. The whole deployment—fixing the cables, mounting the equipment under the rack, setting up the cluster—is simple and once the equipment is plugged in, it's up in 15 minutes. 

I implemented through an in-house team. I didn't need any external support. For deployment, I did it all by myself five years ago, but today there are two people to manage the full IT. These two people also run Nutanix. 

I'm a telecom, so I don't see a direct ROI on the IT. I use Nutanix to run a product that brings me money, so the return on investment takes a few months. For example, I have to buy a server (VMware), pay out, I run some virtual machines to run the product, and from that income I calculate ROI. It's not regular IT, so you can't compare it with other scenarios. 

I purchase a license for this product every five years. At the beginning of our work, we purchased the Ultimate edition that included everything. Over the years, they developed some features that require licenses, like Nutanix Flow. But we keep purchasing our five-year license with all the features included. 

I use VMware vSAN as well. I outsourced a team of five to help me configure the servers. I'm not sure if it's better or not because we just started the new cluster of VMware vSAN, but I needed to pay for their knowledge. One product that we are implementing requires the use of VMware. That one product is the reason why we implemented VMware. 

I would rate Nutanix Acropolis a ten out of ten. It's an amazing product. If you are looking into implementing Nutanix, I recommend going to their website (my.nutanix.com) and enjoying the information there. 

We replaced our three-tier-solution with Nutanix and kept our VMware ESXi licenses. These will be gone with the new cluster.

We use it for general virtualization, host our Windows fileserver virtually, and do VirtualDesktops with Citrix there.

We have two nodes equipped with one nVidia M10-GPU each to get 3D-acceleration to boost the CAE-Terminal servers. This means that VMs like AD-Domain controllers, Exchange-Servers, SQL-Servers, and various Application Servers are running side-by-side with our SAP-Systems leveraging the  SAP ASE Database (no HANA, yet) virtually on vSphere 6.

We were content with the previous solution, which was NetApp Storage and Dell Blade-Servers for compute. We did not miss a thing besides the performance. Now, after three years in production, we would not go back to that solution.

Nutanix gives us fewer headaches with managing and other administrative operations. Having a single-vendor-solution is much more straightforward. We don't have to deal with VMware because it simply is not necessary, besides setting up new GPU-machines.

Creation of VMs can be done with Prism Element, the web management for each Nutanix Cluster. Nutanix also covers any problems we have with the ESXi software. 

The integration with their own AHV hypervisor is awesome. Talk about invisible infrastructure.

The most valuable feature is the integration of all parts in Prism Element, the browser-based management tool. It gives you detailed information about the environment, helps you drill down on alerts, and keeps the solution up to date with LCM (Life Cycle Manager).

When using Nutanix AHV as a hypervisor, it is the management tool for that too. When you chose another hypervisor it just does basic tasks like VM creation, reconfiguration, and start/stop. It is just enough to keep everything in this "single-pane-of-glass" tool.
Going AHV is just easier. No additional management for VMs. Everything you need is done with Nutanix Prism Element or through an SSH connection.
We are beginning to leverage Powershell and their REST API to do things which integrates more tightly with our own process.

I would enjoy an advanced mode where experienced users can leverage their knowledge to do advanced things currently only allowed using the command line tools on the CVM.

While using the Shell is okay for such advanced things like take a disk image as a ground for a Calm blueprint it would be easier to get it done via GUI. Even more so if you just follow the directions of a colleague.

Currently, that kind of task is limited to the shell.

We have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for over five years and are in the process of switching to a new cluster.

Unless you opt for the short-term support path (STS), stability is a given with LTS versions. You get not every feature available, immediately, but that is no concern for stable systems.

You cannot download older versions with known critical bugs. The Life Cycle Manager (LCM) supports you with checks to hint at known compatibility issues. I noticed the hint to update Nutanix Files in order to support the AOS upgrade I was planning. Directly in Prism Elements!

That is simply amazing. Of course, one would visit the "upgrade paths" and "software interoperability" pages in the support section of https://my.nutanix.com .

Scalability is the true nature of HCI solutions like Nutanix AOS. Just add a node. Done.

Nutanix support is the most amazing. Sure, you pay big bucks for that but it is worth every dime. Fast pick-up times even for lower rated tickets, great knowledge of the support team. If your question is not support related they connect you with a sales engineer to talk about it.

Positive

We used NetApp Storage in conjunction with Dell Blade-Servers for compute and we switched from vmWare to Nutanix AHV as a hypervisor.

My advice is to get your first cluster up and running with a partner experienced to do so. We got lucky with our Nutanix partner company but ask for their level of experience. Don't get me wrong: it is not hard to set up but you should have support from experienced consultants who are familiar if something goes south.
If anything goes south, call in to Nutanix support. Your partner can help with that

We implemented with a nutanix partner where we did the PoC with. The setup is quite straight-forward and done in a matter of 3-5 hours. 
Their knowledge was really helpful to guide through some of the questions that came up.

The pricing of Nutanix is not cheap but there are options available. Don't cut short on support contracts, as the (pricey) ultimate support offering is worth every buck.

You have to realize that Nutanix AOS is the basic platform for your environment. If you need to cut costs then use Nutanix AHV as a hypervisor free of charge. Most applications are running with that. If it runs on ESXi then it most likely runs on AHV, but check with your other application vendors.

We explored the options by re-iterating our previous solution and came short of delivering support for additional demands like VDI. Re-Iterating also meant up-staging storage because of the ONTAP-OS upgrade. So, a change was due, either way.

It is difficult for me to point to areas that need improvement. AOS is constantly on the move to new heights. It is considered even on a feature level with vSAN, while far ahead of that in regards to performance and resilience.

See Nutanix Principal Architect Josh Odgers CloudXC | By Josh Odgers – VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) #90 for a detailed explanation on that topic.

Again - can't say this enough - talk to Nutanix support if you have trouble determining the exact order in which product to update/upgrade. A call beforehand spares you a headache. Literally.
But, again, the support area is massive. Onboard with your block/node serial there and you are welcomed with an extra onboarding page on what is what. Best I have ever seen!

We use Nutanix Acropolis AOS for hyper-converged purposes. We install servers on this Nutanix Acropolis AOS.

The most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis AOS are storage and hyper-converged. The solution is easy to use and the administration is very good.

In the next release of this solution, they could improve by being more competitive with VMware. I would like all third-party solutions to work well with Nutanix Acropolis AOS.

I have been using Nutanix Acropolis AOS for approximately one and a half years.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is a reliable solution, it has not ever failed us.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is a scalable solution.

We have 5,000 people using the solution in the university where it is installed. They connect to the website which is connected to the Nutanix Acropolis AOS servers.

The technical support agents are very professional.

We were using VMware previously. However, we moved all of our guests to Nutanix Acropolis AOS

Nutanix Acropolis AOS initial installation was simple.

The company that installed Nutanix Acropolis AOS for us did it in a few hours, which included the storage and all of the HCI. Our experience with the installation was excellent.

I would advise others this solution is simple to use, it is good.

I rate Nutanix Acropolis AOS a ten out of ten.

What I like best about Nutanix Acropolis AOS is its simplicity. It's simple to install and simple to understand.

As Nutanix Acropolis AOS is on the expensive side, one of its areas for improvement is the price.

An additional feature I'd like to see in this product in the next release is for it to have integration with other cloud providers, e.g. Amazon, Azure, etc. Currently, it's only for private cloud, so it would be better if we can benefit from integrating Nutanix Acropolis AOS with other cloud providers.

I've been working with Nutanix Acropolis AOS for two years.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is stable, because we used it in a production environment. We didn't choose a test solution, e.g. we installed it in a stable environment.

The technical support for this product is very good. We launched a lot of cases with their support team and we received a lot of help from them. They also have a support portal that contains a lot of articles that help you resolve the issues more quickly.

The implementation process was easy for this product.

Pricing for Nutanix Acropolis AOS is higher. It's expensive. This is also one of the reasons why we were looking into other options.

I evaluated VMware and Dell solutions.

I have experience with Nutanix Acropolis AOS, and I have a lot of certification in Nutanix products. I'm a consultant. My customers are enterprise companies. I have a lab where I test the infrastructure before presenting it to a customer.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is my first hyperconverged solution. The client told our team to search for other solutions, so I did a comparison among three solutions: one from VMware, one from Nutanix, and one from Dell.

My advice to others who may want to use this product is to learn first from the Nutanix University. Nutanix has a great website you can use to be familiar with the basics of the product, then you can do the certification.

I'm giving an eight out of ten rating for Nutanix Acropolis AOS.

Our usage of Nutanix Acropolis AOS focuses on normal workloads for OSS-related applications of our operations support systems, e.g. customer facing systems, DNS, DHCP, and DPEs. The word we mention to our customers that describes this technology is OSS (Open source  software). This is not 5G.

One of the good features of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the Prism Central. It's a well-designed system. It's a central installation and management tool for more than one cluster. If you have several clusters crossing Europe, you'll have a very fancy, smart, and tiny tool to orchestrate this.

Another feature I find valuable in Nutanix Acropolis AOS is technical, e.g. the rebuild time from the resynchronization between the clusters is fast. If you have an outage caused by a disk failure or a server failure, the system works well and is very fast, because the technology of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is even better than other systems. The system works faster than others.

Whether this system is worth the money will really depend on your goal, on what you want to achieve. The flexibility of Nutanix is very, very good. You have the freedom to use any kind of major vendor, to use it for a hyperconverged installation.

You have the Acropolis hypervisor based on KVM, e.g. the Kubernetes virtual machine. You can also use OpenStack. The system also supports VMware and Microsoft Azure. It also has integration with a hybrid cloud, e.g. AWS. There's also a good integration between the system and Google GCP Cloud. Nutanix Acropolis AOS has finesse. It's very, very good.

The look and feel of the web GUI of Nutanix Acropolis AOS needs improvement, when compared to other systems, e.g. VMware Orchestrator. For example, finding important features of the system should be easier. The features should be made more visible and easier to find, rather than having to figure them out and reconfigure them.

Another area from improvement for the system is hardware integration. I had some issues with the integration with the hardware vendor, in particular, Dell. The integration was really tricky, but the reason could be between the two vendors: Nutanix and Dell, because they have different life cycles for the deployment. The integration issue could be because of the hardware, firmware of Dell, and Dell had a different life cycle for the renewal of an update of the firmware, for the servers like Nutanix. We also had some issues with some Dell-related drivers, and that consumed a lot of time.

A one-touch system for integration could be an improvement. Having a one-touch update is also a very good idea. For example, you'll just need to push the button for the system to be updated automatically, e.g. for updating the firmware, hardware, disk, etc.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS which was integrated with Dell was not running well. What was running well was less than 50%, and the other updates have failed because of issues between the firmware, the server, and the system. This is why hardware integration with this system needs improvement.

I started using Nutanix Acropolis AOS in 2017, so the total number of years I've been using it is five.

I find Nutanix Acropolis AOS stable. In the beginning, we had some issues with its stability, but now, stability for it is good.

The system is very scalable. It's similar to vSAN, but vSAN is a well-known, major vendor for virtualization, while Nutanix Acropolis AOS is better in terms of technical features.

Technical support for Nutanix Acropolis AOS was very good. Their engineers have very good skills, e.g. in every case, they will try to solve an issue.

Technical support from Nutanix was better than VMware technical support. VMware was also very good, but the Nutanix support team had more initiative. Nutanix takes more care of the open tickets. I'm giving them a thumbs up as they're good.

I was involved in the deployment process for Nutanix Acropolis AOS. The system is working okay. It's good. The deployment the first time was a bit tricky, but we had good support from our vendor. I was able to run the installation by myself, with some support. You have to do some preparation for the installation to be good.

You have two Nutanix Acropolis AOS license models. One model is coupled with the hardware appliance, e.g. it's the appliance approach, depending on the vendor: HP, Dell, and Supermicro carry these appliance permit licenses. The other model is the software only model.

We had the first model that was coupled with the hardware from a vendor. For Nutanix Acropolis AOS itself, the pricing was okay, especially because of its features and how you can use it for a lot of hypervisor technologies. The cost, however, when coupled with the hardware vendor was high.

On our project, the renewal was from the hardware vendor and it was expensive. The software was okay, e.g. it had normal pricing.

You can choose to pay the license yearly, or you can pay every three years, or every five years. It depends on how deep your pocket is.

I evaluated VMware vSAN.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is deployed on hardware, without a layer in between. It's server hardware installed.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS was good, e.g. from its performance running faster than VMware ESXi on a vSAN, so I'm rating it an eight out of ten.

Our company is a partner with Nutranix. We propose solutions like Nutanix Acropolis AOS to our customers.

We replace and patch HP servers at one of the biggest telecom providers in Sri Lanka.

The technology of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the most valuable feature. You don't need multiple screens to manage.

This solution is better than its competitors.

Nutanix Acropolis AOS is new technology in a competitive market. Pricing is too high for a new product and requires better discounts to be able to compete with IBM, Dell EMC, and HP.

Nutanix is a stable product.

Customer support at Nutanix is good, we have no complaints.

The initial setup of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is quite easy it takes about three days.

We used local people that were trained by Nutanix. Once deployed it takes two or three people to maintain the solution.

VMware licenses are quite expensive. Customers are getting cost benefits while using Nutanix. The licenses are billed annually.

We also work with SimpliVity and VMware.

If you are looking for flexibility, space-saving, power-saving, and the best ROI, this is the solution to use.

The solution is new in our market so there are no local representatives here.

Because this is a new product it is not yet certified with a lot of ERP vendors in this region.

I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.