Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Reviews

We use Nutanix Cloud Manager for monitoring. It gives us visibility into our customers' workloads. It's easy to workload right on Nutanix, but you must be able to monitor how well it's running and the migrations occurring inside. 

Most of our customers have on-prem environments with NCI & MCM, so they can have a Nutanix cloud cluster inside one of the big hyperscalers. With NC2, you can use your existing Nutanix licensing or procure a cluster in the hyperscaler that looks and smells like what you've got on-prem. You have the CapEx model, where customers get their budget at the start of the year and buy what they need, and the OpEx model, where they pay monthly. This caters to both customers. 

Most of our cloud-based customers use Azure because they are Office 365 customers, and Azure is the path of least resistance. However, we do have GCP and AWS customers. In the case of AWS, it's more about the available tooling. 

Cloud Manager lets us have more informed discussions with our customers. We can tell them that their virtual machines are underprovisioned or overprovisioned. They can get more from their investment. The customers have already purchased the hardware and the licenses, so they are wasting resources and money if their machines are too big. If they are too small, the customer should make them bigger.

The capacity runway is useful for monthly and quarterly service reviews. We have a report that we can present to customers estimating their future needs. For example, we can say, "You will run out of memory in six months at your current trajectory." 

Cloud Manager enables those conversations. We provide each customer with a meaningful dashboard where they can easily see all their clusters and which ones are hot. 

Cloud Manager's data protection policies are nice. Sometimes our customers provision their own workloads. Regardless of whether they provision their workloads, we need to know that the data protection policies automatically protect their VMs locally and/or to another cluster. We don't need to have a conversation about data protection. It's already there.

GPU monitoring is crucial because we do a lot of desktop virtualization. It can tell us which desktop uses the most resources or has too many allocated resources so we can right-size them. The reporting is honest, which I find refreshing. Many vendors will tell you that you need to buy resources, whereas Cloud Manager helps us identify over-provisioning so we can get resources back.

The pre-defined reports are simple. We can very quickly get a report showing which VMs are running, the latency, resource usage, etc. It gives us that information fast. If we migrate data on Monday, we'll have a week's worth of reporting telling us how it went by Friday. We can also get end-of-the-month reporting. 

Cloud Manager's low-code automation features are excellent. We previously used vRealize Automation, which requires considerable effort to do simple things. With Cloud Manager, we can do things with one click. Currently, our workload is primarily VDI, so it doesn't fit so well, but I'd like to increase the usage. So many customers are using Cloud Manager just to manage their hypervisor environment, but the platform has much more to offer. This is a good example of where repetitive tasks can be automated. 

Humans make mistakes, and automation is a big help. It also helps when you don't need to be a rocket scientist to develop automation. You don't need to know much about coding, but it's helpful to know a little and understand what you're trying to achieve.

Our workloads are generally static, but automation is needed to make those changes safely when they change. Automation saves time if you are migrating and provisioning new workloads.

Long gone are the days when you had specialized admins who would be solely responsible for Nutanix environments. Most of us today are generalists. We have a breadth of knowledge, not depth, so filling the gaps with low-code automation is critical.  Reducing the number of clicks needed is great, but consistency is more important. We must ensure that all those workloads are built the same way, so all the expectations are the same.

I've had some challenges with the latest versions. I think the resource requirements are a little too high. The resources that Cloud Manager needs begin to account for a larger proportion of the resources the customers buy. In the announcement for the version they released today, they said there would be a lightweight version, so hopefully that has been addressed.

We have used Cloud Manager for about four years. We've been using it since before it was called cloud manager. 

I've never had any issues expanding clusters or upgrading. Nutanix is undergoing architectural changes and shifting toward microservices. That has been challenging because it's very different, but when it's up and running, it just works. 

As a VDI customer, we have 25,000 VMs, but that is not necessarily that many. We must be mindful of the limits, but we can design around those, so it isn't a problem. 

I rate Nutanix support 10 out of 10. Their support is nice because they'll often connect you with a technician you've spoken with before. I like that because if you call at the same time, you'll get someone in the same region, so you'll probably know who that person is. That's critical because relationships are important. 

Positive

We've worked with other solutions. I've always said that Nutanix is like IT for Dummies, and I'm happy to be considered a dummy. With other platforms, you need to deploy another management solution, but Nutanix provides basic management out of the box. It takes a couple of clicks to implement microsegmentation and data protection. 

The thing I like the most about Cloud Manager is that it's high availability by design. You get three nodes, so you don't have a single point of failure like you do with other vendors. When you log into it, the front page tells you whether you'll have a good day. If it's all green, you can have a cup of coffee because everything is fine, but don't pick up the phone if everything is red because it's all broken. 

I love that I don't need to work hard to find my information. NCM is a delight to set up. It takes a few clicks to deploy out of Prism Element. Anyone can use it because it's web-based and intuitive. You can monitor things at a high level with the click of a button. Generating basic scheduled reports is easy, so our C-level managers can see how their investment is performing. It's as intuitive as possible and all in one dashboard. 

Monitoring is a pillar. We need to monitor our customers' workloads for availability. If a customer doesn't use Nutanix, we'll go with something else, but NCM is the go-to solution for Nutanix. It's never a conversation about whether to use NCM or something else. 

The deployment is straightforward. You give it a few details about IP addresses, etc., press a button, and go make a cup of coffee. It's all done when you get back.

We've seen a return using Cloud Manager in the form of time saved. Time is expensive to our organization, and we've preferred to invest in tooling in recent years rather than people. We've saved a lot of time because we don't need to work as hard using Cloud Manager, which enables us to work smarter. 

It's always difficult to discuss Nutanix pricing because the cost varies wildly depending on the customer and the region. Desktop virtualization is simpler because there is a defined scope. You can tell the Nutanix salesperson how many users you have. In a more traditional environment, it's always best to have NCM for monitoring because you'd be crazy not to. 

We didn't evaluate anything else because Nutanix solutions always work better together. You may already be paying for Cloud Manager in your licensing, and the way Nutanix solutions complement each other is crucial. However, we say in the UK that you shouldn't be marking your own homework, so a third-party perspective could also be helpful. 

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager 10 out of 10. 

We work in the public sector, which includes local governments, fire departments, and transportation. The most interesting use case is that we have set up a private cloud with two sites where they are replicated, and from the same console, we have synchronous replication using 1M Ethernet. The RPO is zero.

Our clients like its simplicity. That is a great value. We moved from a three-layer infrastructure to a private cloud infrastructure. It has resulted in a lot of simplicity which is reflected in the availability of services.

Simplicity is the biggest value that we can see. This is super important for us because the technical team is dedicated to looking at the data and how to generate value for the business instead of worrying about the technology.

Using the built-in playbooks has freed up the time for our IT team. Instead of managing storage, CPU, and memory, they can dedicate their time to thinking about the needs of the business and attending to those needs. We have had clients who reduced their operations time by 60% to 70%.

Nutanix Cloud Manager helps your team a lot to address your current automation needs while planning for future expansion. You have a forecast of how your infrastructure is being used. This allows you to have visibility of what actions you should take to avoid reaching day zero. It helps you a lot.

Its installation is relatively simple. The administration is very intuitive. You have an HTML 5 interface that you can use on any device. I have clients who manage their infrastructure from their smartphones, no matter where they are. Its being very intuitive has helped us to deliver 4-hour workshops. We had an interesting case in the sector of transportation in Quito, Ecuador. A person who provided support and was with the help desk went on to manage the data center with just a 4-hour training. He went from being help desk support to being the data center manager, all with Nutanix. That easily gives an idea about its learning curve.

Nutanix Cloud Manager’s setup, learning curve, and ease of use were definitely important when deciding on a cloud management solution. In fact, we have been growing in infrastructure, and it has been maintained precisely due to the ease of use and small learning curve. It frees up time from the daily issues of looking at technology. The customers are happy and continue to grow.

Simplicity is most valuable because, with a single click, we have visibility of the entire infrastructure. We can focus more on the availability of services instead of being aware of the CPU, memory, or hard drives. With one click, we can see the availability of our services.

The interoperability with different clouds can be better so that one can even integrate the infrastructure of different clouds. They can interoperate better with other clouds because currently, you have to buy Nutanix resources in the cloud.

It has been four years as partners and service providers for our clients.

Its stability is very good. We did not have any issues for which we had to stop our services.

It is a very important aspect of Nutanix solutions.

It is efficient and fast. It is in Spanish, which is an advantage. There is always the option for technical support in Spanish.

Positive

In Ecuador, Nutanix began to introduce itself in 2016 in such a way that the customers moved from traditional infrastructures to Nutanix right away.

We have both kinds of deployments. We have clients who have private clouds, and then we have clients who have hybrid clouds. Our clients use Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

As a company, we do the implementations autonomously. It is simple. I do not personally do it. Our technical team does it. We can do the deployment or migration of about 15 to 20 virtual machines in four hours, so investing about four hours to move an entire legacy data center solution to a Nutanix Infrastructure is more than fine. 

We have an implementation strategy. We follow the best practices. We have a trained technical team, and they follow the objectives.

If you compare it with a traditional model or with a native cloud, then definitely the best alternative is to make an investment in Nutanix solutions. The return on investment varies depending on what you compare it with. In Ecuador, in the public sector, they force them to buy a three-year licensed solution. So, if you compare it to three years with traditional or cloud-native infrastructure, the Nutanix solution is definitely a winner.

For Ecuador, this is a sensitive issue. It is a small economy, so the issue of budget is very sensitive. You find many small businesses and government clients who do not renew, for example, support or guarantees, which raises the risk level for them. We are always advising them that it is necessary to renew the services or infrastructure.

We evaluated many solutions before switching to Nutanix Cloud Manager. However, once the customers get to know Nutanix, they always prefer to stay with the solution.

Our customers choose Nutanix for the experience. Our customers have stayed with Nutanix because they did feel a change before and after. Before Nutanix, managing storage required time and working on weekends outside of business hours. Having to shut down the services to make firmware updates of different components of the data center was an issue. Now they can do this during business hours without the risk of services being unavailable.

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

We started migrating from VMware to Nutanix four years ago, and we're seeing much better performance.

We had a difficult disaster recovery situation that we handled with Nutanix Cloud Manager. We also migrated licenses from on-premises in a local environment to the cloud, which is much cheaper.

Nutanix Cloud Manager is easier for technicians than VMware, so fewer people are needed to do the same tasks. It's critical because if we do things faster, we do them at a lower price, especially if we use fewer human resources. 

NCM’s built-in playbooks have freed our IT team to focus on other tasks in some areas, but we also have our own local playbooks. This has freed up time for our IT team. Since 2023, we have spent an average of six hours completing an implementation, which allows us to use our IT staff more effectively for other tasks.

The learning curve has been smooth, and the technicians are performing a little better regarding response times. The only thing that makes a little difference is the virtualization part, which I believe is compensated by the performance part. A short learning curve is important because the infrastructure team is a bit large, so doing things with less time is better. If we take longer, then it will be more expensive.

We are still learning about cloud usage and the integrations we are targeting right now at the event. I believe there is room for improvement, especially with the prices, which are not very friendly.

I have used Nutanix Cloud Manager for four years.

We haven't experienced any downtime. 

It's easy to scale Nutanix Cloud Manager for the cloud and local services.

I rate Nutanix support nine out of 10. We are happy with the customer service.

Positive

We used VMware previously. It's okay. We made the switch four years ago when we purchased another company that was already using Nutanix. From that moment, we started working with Nutanix, which we didn't know about before.

Deploying Nutanix was a smooth experience. The technicians were fluid, and the deployment had no major problems. 

We used the help of EDVAL, an integrator company. I liked working with them

Due to the migration, we are at around 9 percent. We are now talking with them because we have VMware things we are going to migrate to Nutanix. There is a migration and expulsion plan, there is an optimal communication process with them. We are talking to salespeople about reaching around 15 percent or 20 percent reduction thanks to Nutanix's approach and scaling nature.

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager eight out of 10. I wouldn’t give it a 10 because of the price.

We completely migrated all of our data centers from VMware to Nutanix. We were running a hyper-converged infrastructure based on HPE systems. We chose the full Nutanix stack because of the level of performance and the availability. There was the robustness of the systems, and it also looked simpler to manage than VMware.

The system is more robust now. In terms of performance, some users mentioned performance improvement for some legal applications without having to touch anything.

When it comes to faster outcomes, we are not dealing with projects that need to be delivered to the market very fast, so that is not the most important point for us. Nutanix does help us with our DevOps operations. We can support our development teams in a better way by providing them with resources faster than before. We have completely automated the provisioning of Linux systems that are used to host web applications. We are better than before.

Its ease of use is very important because the team is limited in capacity. We wanted a good partner to support us. One concern before migrating to Nutanix was that the community is less developed than VMware. Now that we have migrated, it is not a concern anymore. Nutanix was able to live up to our expectations.

There is less management for the team than before, so there is a complete gain of time. It freed up our staff's time for other work. This is something that is important for our company. We have 130 people in our company, and my IT infrastructure and operations team has six people, including two people for the service desk. We do not have many system engineers or network engineers, so the more we can gain on basic tasks, the more time we have for the projects or to improve our different solutions. We are able to save 10% to 15% of the time or at least one infrastructure engineer's time.

The web interface could be improved at some points.

We are currently facing one issue regarding management. We have two clusters supported on different sites with synchronous replication. The central point of management must be completely deployed on a Nutanix system with a witness. That is something that should be improved in the future.

The other issue that we are facing is related to integration. There is a lack of integration with our Veeam backup solution. It is not very well integrated with that, but this issue is not completely on the Nutanix side.

We migrated to Nutanix last summer. It has been almost one year.

It meets our current needs. I would rate it an eight out of ten for that. In terms of future expansion, when we migrated last year, we already planned for the resources. We are okay for the next three to four years. We may install a new cluster next year on a third site.

Their technical support is excellent. They are easy to approach, and their action time is very fast. For all the priority cases that can impact production, I can directly contact my local Nutanix team. Within 20 minutes of opening a case, we get a message.

We did not use a similar solution before, so I cannot compare it with others, but it is easier than what we were doing before.

We are using only the Azure cloud. We deployed the new infrastructure in parallel to the old one. We interconnected everything. The migration lasted two weeks. In two weeks, we migrated all of our virtual machine servers from the development environment to the production environment.

It was a very simple process from Nutanix's point of view. We also moved to new firewall technology in parallel. It took two weeks because we were retaining all the firewall policies at the same time. If we had to move only from VMware to Nutanix, we could have done the job in one night for 1,200 virtual machines.

Its price is correct.

There was a competition with VMware for the virtualization part and with different types of vendors, such as Cisco, HPE, etc.

I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager an eight out of ten. Some interfaces can be improved, but its performance is perfect.

I use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for sales and enterprise needs. I implement NCM for clients, and I use it for university education. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) helps with the automation of the clusters and provides a unification platform, with the principal automatic communication in redirect. 

NCM helps with automation for the preparation of new VMs for other teams. This is important for me because I don't need to spend more time stopping my other operations to create new VMs. Using NCM's built-in playbooks has helped free up time for my IT team to focus on other projects, saving approximately 20% of time.

The best features of NCM include synchronization in the platform and the Prism Central. It provides centralized management and performance. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is far simpler to use compared to other cloud management solutions, and the technology is more practical to connect in other clouds. Nutanix is more expensive, but the presentation features more technology and integration. It provides more security and the experience is generally better.

I have two years of experience with Nutanix.

It's more stable, and the support is practical for any problem.

The scalability in Nutanix is more flexible, which makes it practical to add new nodes.

The support is the best support I have experienced in Nutanix. They have demonstrated excellent service when clients have problems with Nutanix and HDD issues, providing hardware replacement within 24 hours. The resolution, hardware technology, and hardware replacement are consistently prompt.

I don't use different virtualization as I started with the cloud computation of Nutanix. Other clients use VMware and Hyper-V, and my company consults for the transition to Nutanix.

I have experience with Nutanix products from working for Nutanix. I work with Nutanix solutions, and in my college, we discuss the technology with students. The outcomes are very fast, and the system is more flexible. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is simpler and more stable compared to other cloud management solutions, and the technology is more practical to connect in other clouds. It is more difficult to set up in other clouds. We use both public cloud and private cloud for NCM. I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a 10 out of 10.

The primary use case for Nutanix Cloud Manager is to distribute the workload for the infrastructure. It is used for virtualization and integrates with the front end to provide cloud features as a private cloud to the development and operations team, leading to less management overhead for the administrator team.

Nutanix Cloud Manager is a stable product compared to other vendors. It is beneficial for integrating with the front end to provide cloud features as a private cloud to development and operations teams. This reduces management overhead for the administrator team, allowing the end users to directly access features and reducing integration time.

The file server is the best feature because it supports different vendors such as Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware without locking with a specific vendor. Nutanix is a stable product with fewer limitations compared to competitors like VxRail. It is beneficial for integrating with the front end to provide cloud features as a private cloud to development and operations teams. This reduces management overhead for the administrator team.

The product could be more flexible with plugins. Quick resolution of disconnection issues and errors in plugins is crucial. Sometimes plugins are not working well, and the resolution time is too long.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager for around two years.

It is a stable product. Bugs, glitches, and downtime are minimal. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

Scalability is good, and I would rate it a ten.

Technical support is good. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

I used VMware VCF before, but it was not as flexible compared to Nutanix.

The initial setup was moderate. It required some understanding of clustering, so while it was doable, it was not very easy for every user to undertake.

The deployment involved around ten people.

Setting up Nutanix Cloud Manager has saved a significant amount of time. Compared to VMware, the setup time was reduced by about twenty percent.

The pricing is moderate. It is not cheap or expensive.

I used VMware VCF before, but it was not as flexible as Nutanix. I also considered VxRail.

I would give Nutanix Cloud Manager a seven out of ten. The complete solution is overall good, but some improvement is required, especially with the flexibility of plugins and disconnection issues.

We use Nutanix Cloud Manager for the daily administration of our Nutanix cluster. NCM provides one spot to go to for everything Nutanix related. It gives us a window into the overall health of our platform, allowing us to see everything at a glance. NCM tells us about the number of VMs running and all the other critical metrics you would want to see, such as host and virtual machine performance. It can provide a single-pane-of-glass view into multiple clusters, but we're only managing one. 

NCM gives us greater insight into our infrastructure because we have more reporting and alert capabilities. We can get a breakdown of VM efficiency and determine which ones are over-provisioned, constrained, or using up too many resources in an instance. 

Before NCM, we couldn't predict our future resource requirements accurately based on our current workload. I need to know if I will have enough memory storage and CPU for the next year so I don't have to ask for more money and get more hardware. It provides me with more analytics that I can use to improve the environment and make more educated decisions.

Features like capacity planning and runway analytics aren't too crucial for our day-to-day operations, but they're helpful when it comes time for long-term planning. We've only had this for a year, so we haven't needed to add any hardware in that time. However, in another six months or a year, we might need to add hardware to this environment if we see things are trending in that direction. NCM will help me demonstrate what we need to the accounting folks and business leaders. I can tell them that, based on these reports, it looks like we're consuming this amount of resources, so I need some funds budgeted to acquire more hardware. It's a cost-justification tool.

I'm looking forward to using NCM's playbooks as I become more comfortable with the platform. For instance, you can run a playbook to automatically shut down virtual machines during a maintenance window or allot more resources to a VM that needs them. I've only used it for reporting and alerts. It lets me know when something happens, and I or one of the other admins will resolve the issue. In the future, I would like to do that automatically. I know it can do that. I just haven't
done that yet. We'll start small and do some testing, but we haven't gotten there yet.  

From an automation standpoint, I don't think it's doing as much as it could because we aren't fully utilizing the platform. With respect to the analytics, however, We have a lot more information delivered automatically and consistently. It has significantly increased the amount of information we have at our disposal. NCM could also manipulate our environment more than what we're currently doing, but we haven't implemented it yet. 

I like NCM's X-Play feature. For example, we have a couple set up to notify us when our virtual machines require more memory, or they're over-provisioned. We automate alerts and send out reports so that we can address those. It does what I require it to do. We also have X-Play set up on the reporting side to notify us when new virtual machines are created. I need to be aware of the new machines in case we need to do anything further. 

When we're doing something new, it sometimes takes a couple of days to get our feet wet. We have to play around with it and test it on a small subset of whatever we're trying to do. It depends on whether we're automating something on the virtual machines or reporting on them. It will generally take a few days to get from a concept to automation in production. The solution's low-code automation works as expected. 

I think NCM's guest tools have some room for improvement. It's a minor pain point getting those installed and getting the virtual machines to recognize them. I know there are changes coming in the near future, but as it stands today, they could be improved. 

It's an HTML5 web interface. Sometimes you click on an action that you want to do, but the interface doesn't necessarily refresh as fast as you would expect. You need to force a browser refresh, but it would be nice if the interface would refresh automatically faster. It seems much slower than a full-blown application that you'd install on your end-user computer. 

I have used Nutanix Cloud Manager for about a year.

NCM is generally stable, aside from a few minor problems with the web interface. Our production workloads aren't going down daily, weekly, or monthly because of hard crashes or anything like that. We haven't had any outages at all. It is reliable from a performance standpoint. If we could work on some of those things related to the UI, that would be great. 

Nutanix Cloud Manager is highly scalable. I've been a part of various Wisconsin Nutanix user groups where people have upwards of a hundred nodes or more. While we may never get that large for our environment, it certainly does scale to a size that we could only ever imagine. I'm thinking we might add a node or two and an additional piece of hardware, but people are out there buying a lot more.

I rate Nutanix support 10 out of 10. It's one area where Nutanix shines. Each time I've called or opened a ticket, they've resolved the issue quickly. The support team is always willing to go the extra mile and help you out. It's a stark difference compared to what we were getting before. 

I feel confident that when we call or create a ticket, we will be connected to the right person the first time. I know that this person will be knowledgeable enough to assist. I don't recall any support cases where we've had to escalate it to someone more knowledgeable. Their front-line support helps us every time, and that's been a great experience. It doesn't take a long time to get a callback and you're not sitting on hold for a long time. I feel assured that I will get help immediately when I need it. 

Positive

We had Microsoft Hyper-V before Nutanix. Nutanix Cloud Manager has more capabilities, but there are also more things to learn, so it's a slightly more complicated solution. Hyper-V is a more straightforward solution with fewer features. There are more things to do and places to go, so you need to document more. It isn't a knock on the platform. It's relatively easy to use, but you must document more. 

Support was probably the biggest reason why we switched to Nutanix. When we had a problem with the Hyper-V infrastructure, we always tried to fix it ourselves before calling Microsoft support because we didn't want to engage with them. We couldn't get a timely response. It was a lot of run-around to get to a potential solution. Microsoft would try to blame the hardware vendors, who would blame Microsoft. It is a lot of back and forth. 

Also, Hyper-V lacked out-of-the-box analytics and reporting. It's essential to have that for justifying costs to the leadership. I must tell them, "We need more hardware, and here's why." I can tell the virtual machines are not using the correct number of virtual CPUs because Nutanix tells me they're over-provisioned. I have factual data we didn't have with Hyper-V to back up some of these things. At the end of the day, Hyper-V is a great small business solution, but we scaled it past what it's intended to do. It was time for us to make a jump to a more enterprise-class offering.

Deploying Nutanix Cloud Manager was straightforward. The initial installation took about two or three hours, but it took around a month to migrate the virtual machines from the Hyper-V platform to the Nutanix environment. We did it in phases over the weekend. 

We had a three-person team from my company. I was the primary admin, and I have a backup. We also involved our networking and security guys for various changes in the environment. 

Our Nutanix environment is deployed at one location - our main data center - and Cloud Manager covers only one cluster that contains every virtual machine for all the departments in the company. We have virtual machines for accounting and several other areas that benefit from this. 

Six people are responsible for managing the environment, but two admins perform most of the work. However, four other people also have permission to create virtual machines, run reports, etc. It requires a little maintenance. We have to apply software and firmware updates as they come out. 

Since deploying Nutanix, I'm spending less time babysitting the environment. Doing all the troubleshooting and research by myself could take six hours. We prefer to set a maintenance window in case we need to try something, and we don't necessarily know if it will fix the problem. 

With Nutanix, we call support and have them connect remotely. They can typically fix whatever problem we have immediately without any kind of downtime. That has saved a lot of time. It's a lot less stressful whenever there is a problem because I know I have somebody that I can call. It's hard to quantify that in dollar terms, but I know it has saved us a lot of time.

Nutanix costs more than Hyper-V, but the price is reasonable for the features we're getting. We have better support, analytics, reporting, and other capabilities that we didn't have before. That is more than enough to justify the cost. The hardware we purchased from Nutanix was priced fairly. The primary costs are software and support. It's a subscription-based service, which can be bad or good, depending on how you look at that. For me, it makes perfect sense. We get regular updates and can get support when we need it. 

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager nine out of 10. NCM has been an amazing addition to our company. I have a few nitpicky complaints, but when it comes to the things that matter, the solution has always delivered. 

It's good that the solution is sold as a complete package. If we had to pick and choose the individual pieces, we might miss out on some useful features. Maybe we won't use some of them, but it's an opportunity to ensure you are diving into everything that it offers, which is quite a bit. There's a lot of great stuff in here.

Before you deploy Nutanix, I recommend participating in one of the Nutanix Boot Camps. You can sit down and work with people to see how the solution works firsthand. You can test-drive the solution on their site to experience the solution without deploying anything, so you can play with the environment to see what that looks like. Once you have played around with it a little bit, you can do a proof of concept or a demo lab to get a bit more experience. 

I would also suggest using Nutanix Hypervisor AHV instead of running Hyper-V or VMware on top of the Nutanix platform. The level of integration there has been excellent. I recommend using the Nutanix hardware. If you have a support problem, there's no back-and-forth between the hardware and software vendor. It's easy to say, "Look, it's your hardware and software. There's obviously a problem here. Let's get to the bottom of it, and then you never have to worry about the finger-pointing game." 

We use the solution mostly for management. We also use it for disaster recovery on Nutanix clusters to keep a small group of servers running. We wanted one area so we didn't have to manage everything separately.

We use Prism Ultimate. The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to run and open the management console from one place. We do not have to log in multiple times. We have all alerts for our clusters in one location.

The biggest benefits of the solution are cost savings and time savings for the management. The solution has a tool that helps you figure out your growth and how many nodes you would need to move to a different number of users. We've used that a few times, and it's been helpful.

It is a good product, and it allows us a lot of flexibility and the ability to do things quickly without needing much expertise. The product is pretty intuitive and easy to learn. When we first started, my team and I were able to use the solution after taking some basic classes.

The licensing procedures are not smooth and easy. I have to call the licensing support every year to renew our contracts because they keep changing the licensing models.

I've also noticed that some features in the on-prem products either do not work in the cloud product or work better on-prem. When upgrades do not run from the cloud portal, I must go back to the on-prem product.

We have been using the solution for five years.

We have not had any issues with stability. We've not had any downtime.

Support is very responsive. I've had very few issues with them. They usually give me the answers right away. The support site is very helpful. The site has a knowledge-based search. When we enter tickets, it gives us some good advice right then and there. I've been able to use it many times to avoid having to wait for somebody to call.

The support’s knowledge and expertise are top-notch. If the person I'm talking to doesn't know the answer, they quickly find someone who can help resolve it.

I wish other cloud solutions’ support were as good as Nutanix Support. Nutanix Support has been able to solve our issues quickly, and they're very patient and friendly. I've had to call them various times on weekends. They're always willing to help.

Positive

We worked with Nutanix to deploy the product. They were amazingly helpful in setting up and running the product. It appeared like it would be complex, but they simplified it. With a few clicks of a button, the product starts building and running scripts on the back end. It was really easy for us.

We also did a proof of concept, ran it for a couple of weeks, tore it down, and built a new one. Both times, the solution was up and running within a couple of hours. Four employees in our organization were involved in the deployment. Most of the maintenance is done on the back end. My team did not do any upgrades. We maintain the clusters.

One of our biggest returns on investment was disaster recovery. We had disaster recovery in a separate data center where we had to have an equal amount of hardware for both sides. Now we just have a couple of small nodes running in the cloud. So we're saving quite a bit of money doing that. We've also been able to maintain the same number of people supporting the solution, so we haven't needed to find experts in Nutanix to get it running.

The pricing has become an issue in our company. The tool is expensive.

We've been happy with the speed of outcomes. We haven't had any issues. Faster outcomes are very important to our organization. We're very sensitive to how long things take and how much energy and effort our staff and end users need. Our VMware is totally separate from Nutanix.

The solution has definitely helped validate the capacity requirements that we have and make sure that we have the equipment we need. We've been able to monitor and see how our use goes up over time, plan for future purchases, and ensure we don't have any outages.

Our company has been growing. NCM’s capacity planning and Runway analytics is very important to us. It helps us proactively forecast our needs in the next six months. The management appreciates the ability to forecast instead of having a knee-jerk reaction at the last minute.

We can't standardize certain things in the organization to use playbooks. I'm hoping to get to a point where we can use them more. The tools available in the solution are very helpful. The tools help us look at past trends and determine what we will need in the future.

The setup was easy. The learning curve has been a little bit steep because there are so many individual products. We haven't taken the time yet to sit down with our sales team and the support to review our options. I feel we're not using the solution to its full potential. Compared to other products, the learning curve is very similar. It has a licensed web management tool that can be accessed almost anywhere.

It's fairly important to us that NCM is sold as one product with multiple tiers. We're more likely to use features that are included. We push the team to try new things and find better ways to do things. So if we had to evaluate every single one right at the beginning and then try to figure out which ones we'll buy, it would slow down the process.

The acquisition and support costs of NCM versus other cloud management solutions are comparable. The solution works well. I haven't had any issues where I've had to wait and be frustrated. It's definitely been very usable and quick. NCM Ultimate's deployment time is comparable to or faster than other cloud management solutions.

Anyone evaluating Nutanix should get some training and figure out what all the parts do and how they work. They should make sure to size the clusters correctly. We ran into some issues early on with nodes and clusters since we didn't buy enough from the beginning. We run the solution on our central environment.

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