Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Reviews

My main use cases for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) involve managing infrastructure and looking at dashboarding performances.

I am currently using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to manage my infrastructure.

The specific functionalities I am utilizing with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) include offsite replications, between site replication, load balancing, and regular management creations.

We haven't started with self-service, Intelligent Operations, or cost governance yet; we haven't looked at that too much.

What I find most valuable about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the single pane of glass.

A single pane of glass means one place to go look at everything.

The biggest benefit Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has provided my company is a more overall encompassing area where I can go look at and review workloads and get an early jump on any indications of problems.

The biggest case and need regarding full stack visibility for operations to create a single pane for the entire virtual infrastructure, including both Nutanix and non-Nutanix environments, is monitoring, alerts, and reporting.

It makes it easier than having to find the individual servers, and I can have an executive summary for myself.

It cuts down the number of tools that we have to use or go to, allowing us to see anything else that's going on while we're managing our infrastructure, providing a single place where we could start consolidating.

I don't know yet how Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) can be improved; I'm still new enough into it and still reviewing it.

For the use case that I use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for, it works fine and great; I don't have a specific improvement aside from general feedback.

Better AI would be a feature I would want to see in the next update.

I've been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for about a year.

The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent; we've never had a problem, and we were pleasantly surprised with how well the image upgrades went.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company; it's been fine.

I don't know that we're big enough to see that kind of scalability or improvement with self-service because we're such a small shop, but it is nice not having to call an engineer.

The customer service and technical support I've received have been phenomenal.

I would rate the customer service a 10, absolutely.

Positive

Having come from a VMware shop straight over to pure Nutanix, I find Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to be more intuitive.

The biggest differences between VMware, Cisco, and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the UI; I feel the UI is more intuitive across the board with Nutanix, and that is the biggest difference.

The initial setup of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) was seamless and perfect.

Nutanix sent their partner to help cut us over and assist with the transition, which was flawless.

We actually saw a decrease in our budgeting and cost management coming from VMware over to Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), with a year-over-year decrease of about 10% to 15%.

For me, the biggest return on investment when using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is product stability, having everything in an all-in-one package with cloud availability there and not having to manage multiple tools.

I've seen more efficient IT management from using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), with efficiency improvements increased by about 10 to 15%.

Better pricing would help improve Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

Having come from a competitor, I appreciate the pricing model of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM); it's very easy to understand, so I wouldn't change anything.

I didn't consider another solution before adopting Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

NCM Security Central has helped my team have visibility into our security posture across our infrastructure.

We're just now exploring low-code automation driving remediations, such as Xplay or Crossplay, since we've only had Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for about a year.

The cost governance feature gives me a projected path, allowing me to get ahead of potential cost escalations and understand why they may be happening. I can better manage my budgeting standpoint for the next year and stay on top of those costs.

It's another tool for managing multi-cloud costs; I use it in the same aspect as everything else, as a report I can review to future plan my organization's costs.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a nine.

My main use cases right now involve migrating two of the most critical server VM servers that we have; one is our secure server, which has a lot of data in it, and the other one is an application server that hosts the critical application for my business.

I am currently using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to manage our infrastructure.

I'm using the local storage in Nutanix, and I'm using the move and the prism sensor to administer the closet.

Regarding specific functionalities, we already have micro-segmentation in Security Central to analyze the traffic that's crossing between those servers to be able to firewall application policy between those applications that are working on those servers.

I really appreciate the console, the centralized administration, and the ability to quickly attach storage between operations.

Management of our infrastructure has improved because it's simpler to administrate, and it's easier to understand what is happening with each server in our environment, allowing us to analyze the data and consumption of each component operating within it.

The cost governance feature allows our CTOs and CEOs to have an overall structure of knowledge about what is functioning and what we are doing in our infrastructure.

We are not using a lot of self-service because we are new in that area, but we understand that we could integrate that feature into our local development to allow us to test and operate our local infrastructure.

Until now, I have not encountered many challenges; during implementation, we had to focus on the data we have, ensuring we validated it to be clear on what we could migrate before and after the migration.

I don't see a need for improvements in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) at the moment; however, I would appreciate better performance.

I would like to see integrated analytics in the dashboard that accurately displays graphics, such as CPU usage, the overall health of the infrastructure, and specific virtual machines that we refer to frequently.

I don't think the solution's cost visibility feature will affect us immediately, but over time I believe it will provide better benefits, help us reduce losses, and allow us to move forward with old projects and servers we are currently using.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for only a month, as I am a new customer in Nutanix, and I already implemented it at the beginning of last month.

I think Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the most reliable solution in our environment right now, and we are confident that despite any potential losses, we will not experience any downtime in other parts of our environment or services.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is very good for scalability; we are currently considering introducing Nutanix to other sites, perhaps in our co-location and possibly towards the end of the year for new acquisitions to enhance scalability.

I have received very straightforward and pleasant technical support from our partner so far; I haven't had to escalate any cases, and I am confident that with their and the provider's support, we will get a good response if we encounter any incidents.

I would rate customer service and technical support a 10 right now.

Positive

My deployment experience was very positive, as it was fast and straightforward, allowing simple integration into our existing infrastructure without affecting our operations or causing breakdowns while migrating servers.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing was good because our partner supported us by explaining the benefits and features of each option and what we could expect from the implementation. I understand that the Nutanix solution is cost-effective.

The biggest return on investment for me when using this product is the fast deployment and the rapid integration and migration without impacting our operations during the migration.

I believe we will see measurable outcomes from using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), including reduced costs and more efficient IT management in the future.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing was good because our partner supported us by explaining the benefits and features of each option and what we could expect from the implementation. I understand that the Nutanix solution is cost-effective.

We considered two other products before adopting Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

One was from HP, a simpler option, and we also looked at some from Dell.

The main differences between the two options were cost, the full package offered, and the level of support we would receive from the implementation partner.

It has made things much more efficient. I would say efficiency has increased approximately by 80%.

To maintain that rating of 10, it's important for us to receive good responses during any situations and ensure collaboration with the partner and provider while keeping the pricing consistent.

We are analyzing the impact of the Runbooks feature on automating our IT processes, considering that we think we will be working on making some dashboards or using some of them to advance the rest of our Nutanix project.

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) 10 out of 10.

We use it primarily for general workload for the virtual machines, reporting, and getting the capacity reports.

In terms of features, we have general availability with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), allowing me to manage my Nutanix cluster the same as I could on-premises, and the fact that I can quickly and easily stand up servers is very beneficial.

In Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), the planning feature in reporting is very useful, as you can create a particular scenario that provides potential resource consumption of your current cluster and can help interpret workloads, which is great for forecasting how long depend on the current capacity and whether you need to purchase new hardware.

We can give developers access to a self-service portal. It's very helpful. You can grant access and give people the power to manage issues themselves. 

We've found we've generally saved time by using Nutanix.

Nutanix gives us access to a single pane of glass by which we're able to see everything. 

It is important to mention that while Nutanix claims improvements in licensing over the past couple of years, I find it a bit annoying, as it still does not work as intended. If there are licensing errors, for example, being told I have 96 cores licensed but Nutanix Flow not licensed despite having assigned units, it complicates things unnecessarily.

We have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for about three years.

I assess the stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with a few issues where downtime occurred; once it was related to power when the whole console went down. 

We had two instances where a network outage caused cluster reboots, which I would prefer to see handled differently as the VMs rebooted to ensure data consistency. 

This behavior differs from VMware where VMs would not necessarily restart, and I am unsure if there is an option to configure the network to prevent this.

Scaling with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is not as straightforward as they claim, largely due to the assumption that you have IPv6 enabled on your switches, which we did not. We encountered challenges while adding extra servers to existing clusters; however, we sorted it out with the expertise of the support staff, even though it was beyond my knowledge and experience.

I would say my experience with customer service is a nine out of ten, as I never give a ten. I do not know what a ten is. There is always room for improvement, and they are definitely high quality. There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call. Since 2019, I've only had to escalate twice. 

Positive

We had used VMware. If I had to deploy the same and used VMware or Nutanix, I would choose Nutanix at the same cost due to the number of features.

For the first deployment of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), we had a third-party help us with setup, while for the next clusters, I handled it myself. The latest deployment involved a partner due to time constraints. It requires some knowledge and experience, however, once I watched the first setup, I was able to do it myself after that.

Migration is also possible to do by yourself. Between Nutanix generation six to generation nine, we were able to move VMs. 

For the first deployment of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), we had a third-party help us with setup, while for the next clusters I handled it myself.

The cost reduction has provided some ROI. 

For those evaluating Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) as a solution, I advise not to be afraid to move from VMware and to run some proof of concept, as that was my case. People tend to stick with known technologies, and I understand their reluctance, but change can be beneficial. Comparatively, having similar hardware and paying less with Nutanix while getting many features that work well is appealing. 

In our case, we pay for 60 features with VMware but use only ten, while with Nutanix, we get 25 features at a better price. 

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten out of ten.

My use case is for legacy cluster migration. We have removed the legacy cluster. We are using a Nutanix cluster to increase availability because it is a very good product with everything in one box: storage, network, and compute. We migrated from physical hardware, which was out of warranty and expired, and migrated the application to the Nutanix cluster.

The best feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is Life Cycle Manager. When upgrading your infrastructure, there is nothing to do. You just have to pre-check it, and the process is automated. It will check one by one for availability and fault tolerance. It is an auto-run job, and if anything finds an issue, it highlights it in the pre-checks, so that feature is very good.

When comparing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with other cloud management solutions, it is good because we are using many things, such as UCS Manager, VxRail, VMware, and vRealize in our infrastructure. The support and SLAs are good, and it is very easy to use, especially when upgrading. The administration is very easy.

Everything required is already in place. It's easy to use, and there is good customer support. For my use case, it's fine. There could be slight improvements in support because sometimes they are not able to understand the issue.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) since 2022 or 2023, when I was at HCL.

It is stable; I never saw any problems.

I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten considering our clients are enterprises.

Technical support is good. There is no issue. They meet the SLAs. They also have a feature for auto generating tickets. With the pulse monitoring feature in Nutanix, a ticket is generated. It's a good feature. We also immediately get an email from Nutanix.

Positive

As an administrator, I am using different products, but Nutanix continues to grow. More customers are deciding to go with Nutanix. They have deployed and migrated legacy clusters to Nutanix. We are still using a VMware hypervisor, but the usage of Nutanix is growing. Companies are moving to deploy Nutanix clusters in their infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) makes it faster to work. As administrators, we recommend solutions to the client, but the client needs to decide whether to go with UCS, VMware, Broadcom, Nutanix, Azure clouds, GCP, or AWS. Many cloud solutions are available in the market. We are working in IT support as administrators in multi-cloud infrastructure, where we are using Azure, AWS, Nutanix, and Broadcom products.

It is easy to deploy Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

Most companies have a hybrid infrastructure with on-premises and cloud environments. The cloud provider is Azure.

Its implementation takes months in terms of planning, designing, deployment, etc.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is cheaper than VMware and other products.

I would recommend Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to other users because it is easy and cheap compared to other products. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I am working in the lifecycle manager in the Cloud, which includes Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), and I'm working with the PCS at Tata Consultancy Services on project works, such as NCC upgrade, Foundation AOS number upgrade, and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) upgrade activities.

When comparing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with other platforms, NCM is very user-friendly, and we can work primarily in graphical mode. The functionality is very intuitive in NCM compared to other platforms such as Azure, AWS, and VMware environments.

During this two-year period, I have learned that Nutanix is a very interesting platform for enhancing our knowledge in the Cloud. For example, while upgrading the Nutanix storage, such as NCC AOS firmware and ID rack, we encountered multiple issues, and with help from Nutanix support, we learned exactly how Nutanix works. It is very expandable; we can save on it and upgrade at any time. According to my understanding, if something is going to expire, we can easily identify and rectify that issue on time.

The playbook is a very good platform because it contains pre-defined paths, and if we want to perform something, we have the playbook as a template which functions as a pre-defined activity.

The pricing could have some changes; compared to other platforms, pricing enhancement is important, and Nutanix does enhancements quarterly.

I have 14-15 years of overall experience in the IT field, and I have more than two years of experience with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

Stability is very good because we have NC2, and there are no issues while migrating any VM to other hosts.

Nutanix is a scalable solution.

I never need help from colleagues, only reaching out to Nutanix support when there's a significant challenge, but they provide SOPs and links to help resolve issues.

Positive

I would give Nutanix a rating of 9 out of 10 because I love working on the Nutanix platform. Though I don't have extensive experience, people are choosing Nutanix because of its user-friendly nature, with more graphical activity rather than command line interfaces.

In comparison to VMware, where you have to log in and run multiple commands, we can perform 80% of activities on the graphical user interface in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). I recommend my teammates and others to choose Nutanix because it is very user-friendly, and we have multiple ways to enhance our knowledge related to infrastructure. Every activity can be performed without issues if good practices are followed.

Our use cases for the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) include managing multiple sites and multiple customers under this site, as I delivered to multiple customers in Canada. 

The type of customers I see with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are primarily middle industries for technologies or manufacturers, as it is currently not for government customers.

The most valuable features I have found with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are related to Disaster Recovery, specifically the Nutanix Disaster Recovery solution with Prism Central, and Flow micro-segmentation. Flow micro-segmentation is part of the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) networking capabilities, and most scenarios are related to standard clusters with Disaster Recovery, including environments with both Nutanix AHV and VMware.

The importance of faster outcomes for their environment is significant; for example, when I delivered the Disaster Recovery solution, we included automation for auto-configuration of VMs and resizing of VMs, which replaced many tasks that were previously done manually. The implementation of automation solutions helps free up time for their IT team, allowing them to manage more of the application part rather than the infrastructure, especially for stability and automation tasks from Nutanix.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) could continue to improve its network with micro-segmentation, as their current solution for East-West traffic is not as mature as VMware's NSX, and they need to develop this area to better support the infrastructure. More integrations with other cloud storage would definitely be helpful, as many customers want to use their existing SAN storage solutions for backups or other functions when migrating to Nutanix.

I have experience with Nutanix since 2015.

I find that the support from Nutanix is very good, as I have worked with them many times. For the support aspect, I believe globally they provide good support; they respect their SLAs, respond in a timely manner, and can assist quickly by connecting remotely when needed.

The Nutanix setup, learning curve, and ease of use are essential considering that customers appreciate simplicity and centralized management, which is a significant factor compared to VMware's multiple products and interfaces.

I don't have a clear idea about the speed of outcomes from low code automation because after we complete a delivery service, the customer leads the automation part, but I haven't received complaints compared to other products like Ansible or Terraform, and what I have used has been responsive to their requests.

Regarding how I would assess Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for helping my team address current automation needs while planning for future expansion, I often deliver this solution to the final customers who manage their own environments afterward, but I have worked on automation tasks such as automatic resizing of VMs. 

In my experience, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a good tool for meeting automation needs; it is the easiest to use for automation, and from Prism Central directly, you can automate many tasks and integrate scripts for your application layer. My company is a partner with Nutanix. For the overall rating of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) as a product, I would give it nine points.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a unified cloud management platform that provides automation, cost optimization, self-service provisioning, and security across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Prism Center manages Nutanix infrastructure, monitoring, alerts, and lifecycle, while Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) adds advanced capabilities such as cost governance, automation, self-service, and security, as it is built on top of the Prism Center. It simplifies multi-cloud management and reduces cloud costs with optimization tools while enabling self-service and faster provisioning, improving security and compliance, and automating manual IT operations.

Regarding speed, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) automates deployment and includes logging task execution, such as blueprint deployment steps and runbook, which is helpful for debugging performance analysis for application performance and logging during automation. Because we have multiple nodes, we can use automations within two to three minutes. When running the automation script, we can deploy and collect the logs within two to three minutes. Without using automation scripts, it would take more time and effort for collecting requirement data and requirement deployments. Manual management is very difficult, so we develop scripting automation for deployment, collecting logs, and health checks, making it very speedy at two to three minutes.

We use automation for logging, collecting logs, and checking monitoring. The automation engine is powerful, similar to Calm, which is for automated application deployment, and I am using it in two and three projects. For expansion, we can use automation such as infrastructure and Terraform. Unified cloud storage is a unified software platform, such as NCM and VMware.

We can explain the platform types: unified SaaS, on-prem, and hybrid cloud management. VMware uses enterprise-grade hybrid management, and for infrastructure automation, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) uses Calm, blueprint, and runbook, while VMware uses infrastructure automation, blueprint, and workflow. For self-service protocol, NCM uses integrated multi-tenancy, but VMware is customizable. For cost governance, NCM uses Beam for multi-cloud cost tracking, but VMware requires vRealize Operations.

To compare Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and other components simply, NCM is a unified platform offering automation, cost governance, and operations through the UI. Compared to vRealize or Terraform, NCM stands out for simplicity and integrated cost analysis with Beam, and more benefits on one-click application with blueprint called Calm. However, tools such as Terraform offer more flexibility for DevOps-heavy use cases, and VMware may fit better in an all-VMware environment.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a very scalable deployment performance tool. The best features and key areas for improvement in Nutanix management are the user interface, enhancing onboarding with tool tips and guided steps, blueprint, and version control through Git integration. These are key areas to improve, along with third-party integration and license simplicity. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is very powerful, but it can be improved in areas such as UI usability, blueprint version, deeper cloud integration, and enhanced reporting by adding more AI-driven automation.

Five plus years

I rate stability as 8 out of 10 because I have deployed multiple projects, and neither my customers nor my team have complained.

I rate the technical support as 9 out of 10 because I know it very well.

I am working with VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing depends on customer requirements and is based on licensing. It is relatively inexpensive, falling in the medium price range.

I recommend Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to others because it is a very good platform for organizations that want to simplify hybrid or multi-cloud operations. It helps improve cost efficiency, which is crucial as customers check for that first. It improves efficiency and automates IT tasks, which benefits customers significantly. It enhances governance and security compliance, all from a single management platform. The customer base ranges from 3,000 to 5,000 users. My overall rating for this solution is 8 out of 10.

My use case with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) includes cluster management, cluster initiation, VM management, VM capacity, VM deployment, and day-to-day operations, as well as patch lifecycle management of clusters and the AHV.

Compared to other cloud management solutions such as VMware, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) offers a single pane of glass where a single service can manage everything, thanks to Prism Central and Prism Element metrics. The security level is a significant advantage because Nutanix supports multi-cloud from Prism Central and provides one-click upgrades through LCM. 

Additionally, we utilize a replication factor to rebuild data during disk or host failures to maintain high availability of production servers and workloads. Using the playbooks in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) significantly helps free up time for other tasks, as we encounter anomalies in our enterprise environment. The playbooks allow us to troubleshoot issues automatically without manual intervention, which in turn saves time.

As a professional certified in Nutanix for multi-cloud infrastructure, I believe there is room for improvement in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) regarding the data rebuilding process with the replication factor. It currently does not support parallelism, which results in longer rebuild times compared to external storage such as Dell PowerFlex, which has faster data rebuild speeds. My concern is that rebuilding data in Nutanix can take from one to 20 hours based on size, whereas Dell PowerFlex minimizes downtime. Despite achieving usable storage in Nutanix, I would advocate for enhancements in the parallelism of data rebuilding. The data rebuilding process could potentially be simplified, although improvements have been made by removing the RAID concept for a distributed architecture. In enterprise environments, reliance on storage remains high, and increasing the speed of the rebuild process would be beneficial. Those storage aspects can definitely be improved.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for three to four years.

I would rate the stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten out of ten, as it provides multiple features, including disaster recovery with a one-minute SLA, which is superior compared to other vendors that typically offer 15-minute SLAs. 

I would rate the scalability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a nine out of ten, primarily because of concerns regarding the data rebuilding process. 

I would rate it a ten out of ten for technical support. 

Positive

It's easy. With a proper plan, we can achieve it.

Pricing for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is based on the applications and workloads we use; it is somewhat high, but it provides a good subscription model compared to VMware's core per product pricing. I prefer Nutanix because it reduces the burdens by not having to manage separate VMs or services for storage and automation, which makes it a favorable option.

Currently, I am working on Nutanix Cloud, and in the future, we will be merging with Azure using LCM. In my organization, approximately 30 to 35 people work with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) as part of a team of around 60 that operates 24/7, including SMEs. 

We are a customer and also a partner. Our clients include very large businesses, particularly big online retailers in the US. I currently work in L2 and L3 level support, focusing on SME-level tasks and collaborating with senior members to leverage my knowledge and learning. 

I find the future of hybrid management crucial, and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) plays an integral role in maintaining hybrid solutions with its software-defined hyper-converged infrastructure, making it my choice over other clouds. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.