Nutanix Prism Reviews

Prism Central is my daily management interface. There's a good overview of the individual clusters that we run.

We use it to take a look at IOPS for disk performance, disk latency, and storage statistics. We also look at the cluster memory resources to make sure that there's enough memory available. We also look at the CPU usage to make sure that there are not any unusual spikes or anything that could be played into creating a boot storm. If you're running virtual desktop stuff and they decide to recompose, suddenly there's a boot storm. We can get a feel for performance at any point in time.

We have four Nutanix Clusters in our environment, and the workloads go from database to general server and compute, applications, web services, and virtual desktop infrastructure. Our Citrix environment is run on a Nutanix Cluster as well.

It's all run in our data center.

We have greater visibility.

It also gives our infrastructure and our server teams better insight into, and controls over, how they stand up servers. Recently, Nutanix allowed templates to be built, similar to the way that VMware does things. Building servers, and eventually, being able to automate those tasks, is something that's going to make things a lot easier for those who build the servers.

And for the end-users who need access and take a look at the console, they can log in and they only have access to exactly their servers. It gives them a single pane of glass. They can see everything to do with their servers. They can customize their own dashboards for visibility into the particular virtual machines that they're responsible for. There's no worry about them clicking on the wrong server, consoling into the wrong box, or powering off or even deleting the wrong server. Those are all very positive things that the Prism interface has introduced to us.

Along with users having console access to those machines, it's great for us to be able to restrict certain users from hitting the console. There are some users that simply don't need to fiddle with it. They just need to see the current run or what kind of statistics their server is showing, or the uptime. They don't necessarily need to log in to it from the console. That's what SSH is for.

As far as security posture goes, we have put better controls around which servers our users can access and what they can do. We did that a little bit within our VMware environment, but not to the level of granularity that we have in Nutanix, with the roles and role mapping.

For me, the most valuable feature is that, when you log in, you have customized dashboards. You can add widgets to those dashboards and you can change the density of certain data points in the dashboards. When I log in, I quickly see where the cluster lies, as far as memory and CPU resources go. I can see how much storage we have left or if we need to consider purchasing an additional node to expand the cluster. That's what I first look at.

They populate the dashboards by default. Adding a widget is extremely easy. It's just a couple of clicks. And customizing the data density is a matter of choosing small, medium, or large. It's like: "What t-shirt size do you want to see?" It's a simplistic interface. Nutanix certainly takes its users, and the user experience, very much to heart.

There are also some great built-in dashboards that allow us to get some customer reporting performance statistics and to get a feel for what the future is. There's some reporting that does a "flash forward" to six months down the road with predictive usage for the cluster.

In addition, I have Life Cycle Management for updates. I'm primarily responsible for keeping the Nutanix infrastructure up to date with the latest code and the Life Cycle management takes care of that in a very small number of clicks. In other environments, I've run VMware with the Cisco offering for UCS, making sure that firmware and software all match up and that they don't fight. That was a pain. Nutanix's Life Cycle Management puts it all in one place and does all that legwork for me. When it comes time to run an upgrade, I click the button. It runs through the pre-install checklist, does a sanity check on itself to make sure that everything is inventoried properly, and then it applies the updates. I can walk away and have supper, or go to bed and wake up the next morning, and it's done.

We also have some disaster recovery and business continuity plans, using Nutanix and its data protection offerings. We have some protection domains that are set up to replicate virtual machines between sites. And that's something that was, once again, very intuitive and easy to set up. Scheduling those jobs and getting the status of those data protection jobs was very simplistic. If something fails, you get an alert email and it tells you exactly where the failure occurred.

We made our initial Nutanix purchase in April 2020 and we've been using it since shortly after that.

I've had no issues with the stability of the system. All of the workloads are replicated between different nodes. If we have a hardware failure, the other node is there to take care of it, and then we can remediate by a reboot or hardware replacement. That's very simple. It is a very resilient solution.

Scaling it is extremely simple. With the planning resource, you can complete a capacity runway report and it will give you a scenario for how many nodes you need to add and, potentially, what models to use. And to expand the cluster, you go into Prism, you click "Expand Cluster," and you find the new node and it brings it in. It's very simple.

If there's ever a question, Nutanix support is always available. They are very prompt in their responses and very knowledgeable. We haven't had to worry about any information that has not been very clear to understand. They do a very good job explaining and keeping things on the level.

I've been involved in several sessions with Nutanix where we look at certain pieces of the interface, whether it be a task list, Life Cycle Management, or the list of your virtual machines. They have asked what data points we want to see for these machines. Do we want to see their IP addresses? Do we want to see the percentage utilized for memory or for disks? They put out calls and they take user feedback very seriously.

However, within the realm of hardware support, these are comments that I've already submitted all the way up to the top. With our previous storage solutions or hardware platforms, when there was a failing component, the replacement component was shipped out the next day. There was no user interaction needed for that process. With Nutanix, sometimes I have to open the ticket to begin the hardware issue, and there are some shipping acknowledgments required. The process itself is not extremely clear and I've been assured that that process will be improved in the very near future.

With any vendor, whenever there is a support issue, sometimes coming together and finding the root cause of that issue can take some time. And that's something that we've experienced with the interface. We were trying to enable multi-factor authentication and we encountered a bug in the Prism interface. It took a couple of months for us to locate the root cause and for them to be able to build a patch for it. We found a workaround, but it did take some time. 

Beyond those things, we have really had a very positive experience getting Nutanix up off the ground and getting everything migrated over to it.

Before we started using Nutanix, we used VMware which was our virtualization vendor of choice at the time. But seeing some of the offerings that Nutanix had, and our company's partnership with them, certainly made it a very easy choice.

The installation process of Nutanix was very easy. Nutanix provided very knowledgeable installation engineers. The process was very simple. They asked for a lot of information in advance to make sure that we had all of the proper IP addressing and network configuration, and that our switches and everything else were prepared. So when it came to installation day, it was a couple of simple scripts and we sat back and waited for the cluster to update.

It was just me who was involved from our side in the setup.

When it came to migrating workloads, the virtual machines, and everything else, Nutanix does have a very nice tool, Nutanix Move, that helps facilitate all of those moves. We can schedule it and it synchronizes. But that can be time-consuming and it might not always be so intuitive for someone who is a little more basic. But it's a tool that gets the job done. You don't have to worry about restoring from backup.

I trained most of our staff on how to use Nutanix. We had about a one-hour session for most users. And for anything that they wanted beyond that, I referred them to Nutanix University, which provides free training. It's really a great site that I would suggest to anyone who is using Nutanix.

The solution requires software and firmware updates, but that's all handled through the Life Cycle Management that's built into Prism.

From what I understand, our maintenance cost for NetApp and the SMARTnet renewal cost for our Cisco UCS pretty much paid for our Nutanix environment within the first year and a half. We have certainly seen a return on our investment in maintenance and SMARTnet costs.

The licensing structure is something that they're currently improving on. When we first purchased, we were informed that their licenses are transferable. If we were thinking of doing NC2, meaning Nutanix clusters on Azure or AWS, the licensing would be very quick and easy to swap over. 

When we actually went to question them about that, we found that there were a couple of different licensing models, some consumption-based models and some licensing models that were tied to physical hardware. That was, perhaps, not the best experience. But the licensing structure is something that Nutanix, as an organization, is working on, and something that they're hoping to have improved in the very near future.

We didn't evaluate any other options for this particular move. The alternative for us was to buy an additional storage array and a different server infrastructure. We probably would have ended up going with VMware vSAN on Cisco UCS.

We have evaluated running Nutanix in the cloud, that's something that's potentially on our roadmap, but we're also looking at just running servers in Azure, in addition.

I would certainly suggest that you request a test drive of Nutanix. They offer very simple test drives in their environment. Or get involved in the user group. Nutanix has a forum and research is key. Are there any lessons learned that I have personally learned in this process? Definitely consult with the network team before implementing, to make sure that there is proper capacity, but that's not a comment about Nutanix. That's a comment about infrastructure in general.

I'm the assistant vice president and we are Nutanix partners.

Prism has a user-friendly UI with a centralized console. It offers a lot of features and software. 

Performance metrics and analytics could be improved. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

We have not faced any stability issues from the Nutanix side. 

The solution is easily scalable, we have around 200 IT users. 

We have engagement with the India support team, which is a dedicated team and we have a weekly scheduled call with the ITM. We go over any tech issues or additional services they suggest and can apply. This helps us with our regulatory reporting. 

The initial setup was simple because we had an ESX deployment at the hypervisor level. It was simple because of DVR and we use a private cloud environment that is a VRA. We now have around 60 nodes in our production setup.

We compared Nutanix with VMware. VMware has the VRA as an automation tool and Nutanix has an ERA cloud automation tool. Nutanix offers a lot of software including the automation cloud tool and networking tools as well. It's good for Microsoft segmentation and very competitive with VMware.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

We have 20 customers using this solution. 

Nutanix is a HCA product and includes VMware called Nutanix Express that has been fantastic for us. We have about 100 plus VMs without any trouble and we have VCDR. 

The replication we have does not have any backup systems built-in. We have to separate license records for backup, like onboard. We would like to have this in a future release. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

Globally, they have many sites to evaluate from a support perspective. We have found that Nutanix have 90% plus customer support rating. In the past six years, they have been in the top of the Gartner report.

The initial setup was straightforward but we did get help from Nutanix in this regard and raised tickets whenever we faced any issues.

Nutanix have bundles for pricing. On a single bundle, we get everything including vSAN or VMware and there are no additional costs. It is just a single license that is needed. 

I would recommend Nutanix based on its stability and support. The Nutanix site have extensive documentation so this makes it easy to self learn about this solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We are using Nutanix Prism for the replication between two sites and to manage our cluster. With the latest version, we have been able to use the synchronous replication. 

The most valuable feature of Nutanix Prism is the capacity strength.

There is a bug with the HTML5 interface. I don't know if it is recorded to my laptop or the application, but sometimes we have to restart the CVM. 

I have been using Nutanix Prism for six years.

In the six years we have been using Nutanix Prism, we have never had a problem with stability.

Technical support is quite good. I can recall four times when we needed to call support. One time it was for a performance issue on one of our IT applications. Another time was regarding an exchange problem, we had lost OneNote. This was a hardware issue that they were also able to help us resolve.

I would rate it a five out of five overall.

Positive

Nutanix Prism is easy to install. 

Our company used our local partners to implement the solution. 

We have a license with the core product. If the cluster is on SSD, the number of SSD disks will impact the license fee. 

I would recommend implementing Nutanix Prism to anyone considering using it as a solution for their organization.

Overall, I would rate this product an eight out of 10.

We have been using Nutanix Prism to manage a whole cluster to manage old VMs and the object inside the Nutanix and it has been very easy since we have a very beautiful dashboard that gives quite a lot of information about the CPU replacement or storage use. 

The main dashboard itself has been very helpful. If we ever have any issues, we are able to get back on the dashboard to take a look. The management is very easy with Nutanix. With such a dashboard where you have all the visibility you need - including access to alerts or issues, you have great control. 

The setup is simple. 

The solution is scalable. 

It is stable and reliable. 

The pricing could be improved. We'd like it if they offered some sort of discount for returning users. 

I've been using the solution for six or seven years at this point. It's been a while since we began using it. 

The solution is very stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product is scalable. It's no problem if you want to expand it. 

We have about six users on the solution. They are from the IT department. 

Technical support is good. Once you initiate contact, they will work with you and sort out the issue. They are responsive and knowledgeable. 

Positive

Beforehand, we used VMware. We had been using VMware for nine years or somewhere around that length of time. Then, we shifted from VMware to Nutanix.

It is a straightforward setup. It's not overly complex or very difficult to manage. 

We had some engineers manage the process. Having it done by a professional engineer ensures everything runs quite smoothly. 

For the deployment, there was only one or two staff involved. We now have five staff members who are well trained on Nutanix we are able to do some daily management duties every day. They are engineers. 

We did have outside help from an integrator during the setup process. 

We did buy the software with that integrator. We had the installation and configuration, et cetera, handled with their help.

I don't have any details in regard to any ROI. 

We pay for the solution on a yearly basis. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We are using the core application of Nutanix, Nutanix AOS, with Prism for the application side of things. It is used specifically for its hyper-converged functionality, but not for anything database-related.

One valuable aspect of Nutanix Prism is how easy it is to set up. The setup process is useful to us because all we need to do is to set some variables and go with the recommended settings.

We definitely have some issues with Nutanix Prism. Our main issue is that we cannot operate the database. It would seem that less configuration would be desirable, because between Nutanix and the Oracle database on Windows, there tends to be problems. When we took our initial problems with the database to Nutanix support, they gave us some configurations to try out, but these did not solve anything.

So the problems remain, and that is why we are only using Nutanix Prism for our application. We didn't have the time to find a working configuration for the database, and thus we migrated the database to another solution.

Their support seems to have some problems, too, because when we opened a ticket the one time, the lower level of support connected to take the ticket and the technician said that it was a false positive, meaning that they could not reference the error. However, Prism clearly stated to us that there was an error, despite the technician checking the system and telling us, "No, there are no more errors." I wanted the technician to clarify what had happened, but he merely told me the fault is inaccessible.

I have been using Nutanix Prism for three years.

It is stable, but we tend not to overload the system in any way.

We can't really depend on Nutanix Prism, so we are currently just using it for non-essential work in our site.

The support is bad because they take too long to solve issues, and in one instance they dismissed an error we got from Prism as a false positive for no obvious reason.

The setup is useful because there are a few variables that we have to input, and then we simply proceed with the recommended settings. The overall time to deploy depends somewhat on Nutanix, but with a Nutanix cluster of 11 nodes on the site, plus the hypervisor, it will take around seven to ten hours.

In general, we have just two technicians using Nutanix.

We have spent a lot of money on the Nutanix solution with Prism. Yet, for this amount of money we could be buying high-end storage with a lot of IOPS and bandwidth, even more than with Nutanix.

I cannot truly recommend Nutanix Prism for others. It was just the one time for us, and in the future we will use another solution because it seems that whatever hyper-converged system we might use, like VMware's vSAN or Nutanix, will still have a lot of issues with either the application or database.

Thus, for us, we may return to a more standard solution such as hardware-based storage with our own servers, rather than software-defined solutions. We have spent a lot of money on the Nutanix solution that could have been better spent elsewhere, such as on high-end storage with plenty of IOPS and bandwidth.

I would rate Nutanix Prism a five out of ten.

Our company provides infrastructure as a service to our customers and the solution is used on top of our platform to streamline workflows. 

The solution is a high-performance platform that effectively handles three-layered issues like SA and network fiber cables. 

The snapshot capability is a big advantage because it processes within minutes and is not limited by a virtual server's storage capacity. We are able to provide immediate backups to customers. 

PaaS services are a bit complex to implement so should be strengthened and developed. We struggled to integrate so did not have the courage to implement PaaS services. The process should be easier to understand. 

The solution does not support creating hybrid disc clusters that include SSD disc configuration servers with hybrid disc configuration servers in the same cluster. 

I have been using the solution for four years. 

We are very happy with the stability provided for our cluster of 60 servers. 

We struggle every day with hardware or server issues in our clusters. If a server hub breaks, the solution handles the problematic case very successfully. 

The solution is scalable and I rate it a ten out of ten. 

Three senior engineers handle all level two and level three issues that require technical support. The support team has access to our cluster for any troubleshooting needed. 

Technical support has one of the smallest yet knowledgeable teams in the market. They are very fast and provide excellent support. 

I rate technical support a ten out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy and takes about four hours. 

Our business has grown so we add fifteen servers per year to our cluster with no issues. It takes about five days to add these new servers. 

Our internal team of four engineers handled the initial implementation. 

We now have ten engineers on staff who handle daily operations which includes setup and implementation for our customers. 

The pricing is based on a licensing model and is around $10,000 for a two-year license. As we buy more servers, we receive license discounts.

Two years ago, the solution was costly because Turkey was in a financial crisis and Lira exchange rates were high so the two-year license was $15,000.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Our use case for this solution is hybrid. We use it for hyper-converged infrastructure and hybrid cloud management. The solution is deployed in the data centre.

The solution gives you better agility, especially concerning your physical data center footprint. It can combine the computing, storage and networks in a single location with a limited footprint physically. We can scale up and down, giving us a cloud-like behaviour when managing workload.

We have found the seamless integration feature most valuable. It offers computing, storage and network to support workloads. It is also seamless to monitor and have visibility over applications across on-premises locations and your multi-cloud environments.

The dashboard can be enhanced to provide greater visibility.

We have been using this solution for three years and are currently using the latest version.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable and can be scaled up or down as demanded.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate them an eight out of ten.

We previously used VMware, but this solution has very modern and contemporary HCI solutions, which customers find very useful. We still support VMware because their system is a good one.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Deployment was done in-house and took three to five days.

The licensing costs are provided to our customers because we are partners with Nutranix.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the dashboard visibility could be improved.

Nutanix Prism is used in a virtualized environment with high-performance requirements where people can have the VMs and run the databases with infrastructure as a given service, that has five nines or four nines uptime environments.

Nutanix Prism is popular in the Indian market, particularly in enterprises where they need a DR type of environment, and where they look for less than finite RPO and RTO. If you have this environment on-premises, and if you can just rent out some portion to any of the service providers, then you can easily set up a DR environment to give you a finite list versus RPO and RTO.

Nutanix Prism needs more flexibility commercially and more flexibility with its licensing. Currently, they're very fixed on their licensing model, for example, it's based on terabyte calculation.

I've been using Nutanix Prism for two years now.

Nutanix Prism is a very stable solution.

Nutanix Prism is a scalable solution. It also has hyperscale availability.

We contacted the support team for Nutanix Prism during the initial setup. There were some configurations we were not able to understand, but their support team was very helpful.

We used VMware predominantly. We also used Cisco HCI before using Nutanix Prism. We didn't need to switch, but we wanted to have different flavors in our environment to cater to more customers.

Nutanix Prism has a very straightforward initial setup. They provided very helpful guidance during the setup process. If one knows the basic setup criteria of the network, the solution can be easily deployed in any environment.

Implementation of Nutanix Prism took a few weeks. We set up the environment in-house without using a consultant or integrator, but we had help from the Nutanix support team.

The license we bought for Nutanix Prism is perpetual, so once you have it, you can keep on using it. It's a three-year license that you pay once for. The license we have covers the three-node cluster, but then you need to have the basic networking gear for the infrastructure to work in the type of environment we're in. For example, the only additional thing we need to do apart from getting the license is to plan the network connectivity.

I use Nutanix Prism. It's a three-node solution for virtualization. It's an on-premise solution. I don't remember which version I'm using.

The solution is being used within our organization, but we also have customers hosted on top of that, so I don't remember exactly how many people are using Nutanix Prism. For deployment and maintenance of the solution, you'll need two people: one system administrator and one network L2 or L3.

I can recommend Nutanix Prism to others who want to start using it, but my advice is for them to get the POC done first. They have to understand the environment, use cases, and what they're looking for, then they can make their call.

I'm rating Nutanix Prism nine out of ten.

I am using Nutanix Prism for many types of equipment, such as servers, SAN switches, and storage areas. You are able to manage your infrastructure from one central location, such as VMs and servers.

The most valuable feature of Nutanix Prism is the single location management. You can manage everything from one location HTML5 web interface which is highly intuitive. The solution is easy to use, you do not need to be an expert in storage. 

Nutanix Prism could improve by having more features or configurations in the web interface. We should not have to use the command-line interface(CLI). For some clients using the CLI can be difficult.

I have been using Nutanix Prism for approximately six years.

Nutanix Prism is highly stable. I experienced all three types of installation, Hyper-V, ESXi, and AHV. For Hyper-V, there are a lot of instabilities.

The initial setup of Nutanix Prism is very simple. You do not have to perform any difficult operations. When you deploy your cluster and perform the workloads, it's called Foundation. When you have completed this, Prism's is accessible. For Prism Element, no configuration is required. The configuration is available once you have deployed your cluster.

The Prism Central, you only have to download a virtual appliance that is available from the Nutanix website. You deploy it where the VM is. You only have to administer your cluster and then you can manage everything in the new platform, it's very easy.

I rate Nutanix Prism a nine out of ten.