Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Reviews

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.

I am selling Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). Before, it was a Prism Pro license and the cluster was AOS. NCM has been the offering for the last three or four years, and I have been selling it as a product for the last seven or eight years.

For cluster management, operation, reporting, alerting, cluster runway and forecasting, there are many use cases including multi-tenancy, storage management, and compute management. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) serves as a single pane of glass to manage the entire infrastructure. You can manage everything from there without needing to depend on multiple consoles, which effectively eliminates many silos.

For low-code automations, we use Runbook and configure several runbooks. We have been quite satisfied with the results.

In challenging customer scenarios, low-code solutions or infrastructure as code are still not widely adopted by many customers. Frankly speaking, they do not have a requirement for it. They have sufficient IT staff and their changes are not dynamic or at that scale. Some customers are using these features and are quite happy with them. It has been able to reduce operation time at a certain level. Specifically for nighttime activities, such as VM memory spikes, these runbooks are capable of increasing memory on the fly without any human intervention.

We are using many Nutanix products. We are using data at rest, advanced replication, NUS. We are now deploying Nutanix NKP and also evaluating it. We are using NDB and Nutanix Files. We are using most of the products offered by Nutanix.

The setup is very straightforward, and licensing is also very clear to understand. If I compare it with VMware vCenter, VMware vCenter now seems outdated. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has a new design and is easy to navigate. It feels as though you are working on a public cloud such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

There is no complexity. It is very straightforward. You simply download Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and deploy it. You just configure your IP address and one to two hours is sufficient to use it.

Price-wise, if I compare Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with VMware vCenter, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is cheaper and has similar or more offerings than VMware vCenter.

At the moment, we are satisfied with the automation provided in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

When it comes to integration with Terraform, there is still a lot of improvement needed. Specifically for infrastructure as code tools such as Terraform, there are many areas where improvement is needed.

I want to highlight one area specifically: one feature for the MSP model. I want complete rebranding of Nutanix. For example, I want to build my own console where my customers can log in and create their own tenant. From the admin side, I can allocate them certain CPU, memory, and storage, and they can manage their resources but not through Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). It should be a totally separate product. The challenge I am currently having is offering cloud services using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). Many customers have their tenant, but the problem is that on the same console with the admin account, I am managing the entire infrastructure. On the same console, customers are logging in with their accounts with limited permissions. The challenge from the security side is that it is a risk because both are logging in on the same IP address. We need a separate setup for a tenant, specifically for MSP.

I have been using the solution for the last seven or eight years.

There is no complexity with stability. It is very straightforward.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a scalable product.

Support is really good.

Positive

Price-wise, I am satisfied because as a partner, whatever Nutanix offers price-wise is acceptable to me. However, what is happening now is that very small SMBs or small companies are slowly removing Nutanix because of the renewal cost. In the last six months, I had one customer to whom I sold Nutanix five years ago. When renewal was due, the price was too high, so they migrated everything back to three-tier infrastructure, such as standard Hyper-V servers and storage.

Setup is very straightforward, and licensing is also very clear to understand. It is easy, and troubleshooting-wise it is also easy to manage.

We are utilizing oversubscription features and CPU oversubscription features, and we are selling these to customers.

In our case, we are making good money because we operate as an MSP.

Price-wise, if I compare Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with VMware vCenter, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is cheaper and has similar or more offerings than VMware vCenter.

VMware vCenter

I have been selling Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). Before, it was a Prism Pro license and the cluster was AOS. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has been the offering for the last three or four years. I have also reviewed NVIDIA reference architecture. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

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.

My use case or my client's use case focuses on multi-location cost governance, multi-cluster management, and cost governance. In the case of low-code automation, we have certain customers who are specifically using that, and for that detailed use case, we need to take concurrence from the end customer.

The best features in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) would vary from case to case. The good features include support, which has always been 100% accurate from Nutanix, and they provide a very nice response with the various product portfolios. In NCM, we get operational automation along with cloud visibility, a part of a single VM, blueprints, playbooks, cost governance, network security planning, and all, which are the most things we are blessed to be a part of NCM.

From a playbook's point of view, it is very helpful for triggering our equations, booting out if-and-but rules and regulations, creating multiple numbers of VMs that could be created with a timeline on the start date and end date, and automating project-wise mapping along with cost governance, which makes sense for automation within a playbook.

For recommending the product, it would give long-lasting forecasting along with the blueprint, playbook, and SQL management, which is the reason to consider it for customer recommendation; however, a customer with a multi-location who doesn't want to go with a central console of management might refuse centralized management, but there is no such point we will consider as a reason not to be in a reference.

In Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), there are no features that have room for improvement.

I have seven to eight years of experience working with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

I would rate Nutanix support a 10 out of 10.

Positive

When comparing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with other cloud management solutions, the major key point is how we will achieve proficiency about the data. In comparing NCM with other solutions, there would be Ariba and some VMware competitors that are using analytics, which should be considered in the comparison. Whatever the functions and features provided with NCM, and by doing a proof of concept, how they achieve it from an organizational perspective, makes a right benchmark for that, but it varies from customer to customer, so I cannot comment on what rating or number it would be, as it would be based on the features that the competitor has provided. The pricing is not cheap; it is based on how a customer would adopt it, and there are various flavors, so I cannot comment if it is cheaper or on the higher side, as it is based on the feature the customer is looking for, with the price point of view coming from that.

There would be customization possible based on the case study pointer and how a customer looks forward from a product point of view; in consideration of how our competition is speaking, they might need to club the licensing portion to meet customer requirements. I have rated Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a 10 out of 10.

We use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for big enterprises in Brazil, including Sebrae, the Minister of Brazil, and three local agencies in Brasília; we have 10 or 11 customers installed.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is easy to use. Last week, I studied the history of Nutanix, the principles, and KVM. It is simple, usable, and intuitive for me. NCM is easier to use, especially for layout. NCM does the best with the architecture of the CVM because one CVM for each node makes it more distributed and improves usability, offering more technical improvement compared to other vendors. NCM is very fast, as my implementation team appreciates it because it's fast to deploy.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is stable. I do not receive emails about releases or new versions, indicating that the solution is solid and safe with very good security.

I find the scalability quite easy; I only need to add a license for the core and install the new node for GPU, storage, processing, and memory.

I cannot rate Nutanix support since I never contacted them, but I have only heard good things from my team.

Positive

I have past experiences with vSphere and vCenter, which I had difficulty with. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is much easier to use, and I appreciate its graphical interface and colors.

The deployment process is easy.

It's important for us that deployment is fast and easy because my team has all the certifications for deploying Nutanix, and the steps are very easy to understand.

It saves time for implementation and deployment.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing is reasonable, especially compared to VMware and other solutions that are more expensive. It's less expensive than competitors such as Broadcom.

I use AWS and GCP, but I have also used VCF for VMware and vCenter, which is similar to NCM.

Regarding installation or configuring, I only work in design, specifically with Sizer and quotation nodes; that's my focus.

The documentation is easy to search for; it's the bible of Nutanix, and I find it pretty good. I haven't used the documentation in my local language, Portuguese, because my English needs improvement, so I use it only in English. My team uses it in Portuguese because some technical people lack expertise in English.

Everything is satisfactory. We are Platinum Partners with Nutanix.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten because it's very easy to use.

The use case for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that we can share data to the cloud and there is no need to sync manually. It automatically runs the job for the data sync from the on-premises to the cloud. Some users have data on their systems or servers, so there is no need to keep local data. It will go automatically over the cloud and we can easily access it without any issues. For applications, we can run them without any issues. If I compare with other virtualization such as VXI, there are some issues. However, when comparing with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), it performs better. There is no need to update any software manually as it will update automatically, eliminating the need for downtime.

What I appreciate most about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the compliance aspect. When following the standard procedure, we can easily monitor our infrastructure from a compliance perspective. When we match our compliance requirements, it becomes easier for our clients.

Recently, I have found some issues with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). When I raise a request for emergency support, I receive a response immediately. However, in some real cases, we have to wait for support. If there are production issues, we sometimes have to wait for 45 minutes to one hour. If they could minimize that response time, it would be more convenient for the client side.

We have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for the last one year.

We have used other solutions earlier, but currently we are fully implementing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) on our client side. We do not need to use any other solutions at present.

The initial deployment of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) was easy. Simple tasks such as VM creation and data transfer are much easier than other solutions. We can automatically schedule VM snapshots for syncing, and we can easily create VM templates for development purposes.

Regarding the pricing of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), when compared to others, it is obviously very costly. However, considering the solution quality, I would definitely choose Nutanix. Today's management is focused on costs, and they frequently ask us to negotiate with vendors or suppliers. Nutanix has a fixed price, and during our last renewal, it was around one crore. Management attempted some negotiation but ultimately approved it. They constantly inquire about pricing and alternative solutions, but from an IT perspective, I prefer Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

For stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), I would rate it a seven. For scalability, I would rate it a nine. 

On a scale from one to 10, I would rate the solution overall as a seven. 

I have a small request for Nutanix to arrange sessions for end users. When there are updates or solutions, if they could be explained to end users through sessions or webinars, it would be beneficial. This would help us understand what features are implemented in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and how we can use them effectively.