Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Reviews

We use Nutanix Unified Storage for our day-to-day operations in relation to production clusters.

We had a brand new build for our data center and implemented the solution there. We were not trying to solve a specific problem but liked the product and its features.

We have one block with four nodes in it, but our use case for our cluster is different because we run our own private cloud. We don't have traditional offices and have more web servers. We don't have file server services. Thus, we are not fully utilizing Nutanix Unified Storage for unifying our organization’s block, file, and object storage.

We use a solution with snapshots as part of our ransomware protection strategy. For backups, we use HYCU with different backup schedules and snapshots. We're migrating over to Veeam right now as well. If we had a ransomware-type scenario or a situation where the servers were encrypted and there was a DR situation, we'd rely on our solution to go back in time on snapshots until we found a recovery point. We'd then restore from there.

Nutanix Unified Storage is easy to use. New employees are able to come up to speed fairly quickly with regard to the day-to-day administration processes.

Because Nutanix is web-based, I can be in Illinois and check on the data center in Michigan. If we have a problem that one of my engineers can't solve, then they can call me, and I can take a look at it. The remote availability features are great.

I used Nutanix Data Lens a little bit, but my security engineer has been playing more with it. He has not said anything bad about it.

Nutanix Unified Storage helped remove siloes in our organization. IT doesn't have to operate as it did 10 years ago, where you had a team dedicated just to storage, one team that was just hardware, or one dedicated to certain applications. With Nutanix, everybody learned all the different ins and outs. We're bringing on a whole new data center and will be doing replication between the clusters and between the data centers. Everyone has come up to speed pretty quickly, and I don't have to pigeonhole a person. Everyone can jump from console to console and learn it fairly quickly.

We've been using this solution for two years now.

I'd the give solution's stability a ten out of ten. It's never been down.

I would give Nutanix Unified Storage a ten out of ten for scalability.

Technical support has been excellent, and I'd give them a ten out of ten. Anytime we've got questions, someone will get us an answer fairly quickly.

Positive

The initial deployment was straightforward and only took a couple of hours.

We hired Nutanix professional services to handle the deployment, and they trained us on it after the fact. They have always provided excellent service.

We have definitely seen an ROI in terms of uptime and the quality of the software. If we have issues, we reach out to support, and they respond quickly. We'll have a response within 30 minutes, and that is worth more than anything else. Our account reps and resell vendors have been great too.

With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price.

Nutanix Unified Storage fills a need, and it definitely works well within the Nutanix stack. It's not a waste of money. I would rate it ten out of ten and recommend it.

We use Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for file storage options like storage pools and file servers. Additionally, we utilize Veritas for a third-party backup solution. We have been using all Nutanix-related products.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is appreciated for its fault tolerance and redundancy at the cluster level, which ensures reliable storage of files, folders, and other information accessible on the client side. We utilize features like storage pool containers and file analytics tools for analyzing folder sizes. The functionality aligns with our management requirements.

Nutanix could improve the ability to track user actions, such as identifying who deleted a folder. Additionally, there is confusion regarding container size management; there should be an easier way to identify container sizes and associated storage usage. Nutanix should also consider archive-like functionalities similar to AWS and Azure for unused data, and allow quota assignment on subfolders.

I have been using Nutanix for around 10 to 15 years.

Performance-wise, Nutanix Unified Storage is good, but there are some issues with the security dashboard. It automatically triggers tasks, causing performance issues.

Nutanix needs to improve storage management similar to public cloud solutions like AWS and Azure for better scalability.

Nutanix technical support is excellent, with swift responses based on priority. I would rate it 10 out of 10.

Positive

We also use VMware, but for security and performance, I recommend Nutanix. It offers VM migration, automatic healing, resiliency, and security, making it a preferable option for critical VMs.

Installation of Nutanix Unified Storage was easy. We referred to the Nutanix Bible and utilized KB articles for guidance.

Pricing is good as per the market value.

We have been using VMware in addition to Nutanix.

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a seven out of ten. It has good features but needs improvements in storage management and user permissions tracking. Consider consulting me for enhancements as I have experience and analysis reports that could help Nutanix succeed in the market.

On-premises

We mainly got onto Nutanix Files to replace our existing corporate file system. We had plans to migrate almost 100 terabytes of storage, but due to some optimization, we migrated 60 terabytes and ditched the rest because it was useless data. Luckily, we figured out that we do not need that data anymore. That is our main case, and we have set up five separate instances of Nutanix Files so far.

Management-wise, it has made work a lot easier. It is all in one place physically. It is much better now.

There is ease of management. We only have one place to go, and we can find all the information and all the data that we need. It also improved the visibility of the actual usage of our resources. We can see how many people are accessing files at all times. That was one of the main drivers through which we were able to see that our users were not using some of the data at all. We were able to archive that data. If we had Nutanix Analytics and Files Analytics in place, we would have gone a step further and automated the archival of cold data. At this time, we do not have that much to manage, but in the future, we will implement that.

It is hard to assess Nutanix Unified Storage for detecting and blocking ransomware threats because I never had a chance to see it in action. It is enabled everywhere. Maybe we were just lucky. We have not had any ransomware incidents since implementing Nutanix Files, but seeing how the policy is set up, I expect it to react very fast. Hopefully, I will never have to verify the accuracy of this claim.

To protect unstructured data in our organization, we use HYCU backups. They are great partners of Nutanix. HYCU has been awesome and flawless so far. These tools are not critically vital, but they do add to the mix. There is plenty of useful information I can get from those tools. I am glad they are there.

It is very easy to manage. I am focusing mostly on Nutanix Files because of our use case. I did not have a chance to look at Objects, for instance. We will start looking at Volumes at some point this year. With regards to Files, it is very intuitive. It is easy to manage, and it makes it much easier for us to manage the corporate system. Everything is consolidated in one place rather than having to jump all over Europe, which is how spread it was before. That is a big win for us.

It is hard to say what can be better because we have been using Nutanix products for 11 years. We have been with Nutanix for a long time, and it is difficult to find flaws. The moment we find something that is not up to our expectations, we raise a request for a new feature or engage with support. We usually get an answer fairly quickly. There is not much we are missing. When it comes to Nutanix Files, one thing that would be great is a slightly easier way of managing snapshots and restore points, especially when a third party is involved. We have a third party for backups. They look after the data that we are managing. At times, it is difficult to discern which recovery point has been generated. In a new iteration, they can perhaps amend that piece of management. It is a tiny detail. It already works, but if they can implement a more straightforward way of managing those recovery points, it will be a good thing.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for about two years now.

It is very stable. I have not had any issues. Even when we roll updates, nobody notices what is happening in the background, so it is very reliable.

We have not had the need or the requirements to scale. It seems that it would be fairly straightforward. It will be as easy. It will be a one-click to deploy a new node or add a new node to an instance or anything like that.

We have a good relationship with our Nutanix account manager. Whenever we have a technical question, we drop it to them. If we are unsure of what to do, we reach out to tech support. They usually get back to us super fast.

Their customer support is very good. They are very knowledgeable. I do not think there has ever been an issue that they could not resolve. If that happens, it is because it may be a new bug. If we find something that nobody else found before, they reach out and tell us that it is something that is going to be fixed in the next three days. They give us a workaround. If they are not able to fix it immediately, they let us know that it is in their roadmap. They would do it in one of the next releases or add it to the list of features that they plan to add because nobody has asked before. In that sense, it is awesome.

I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We did not have anything similar. It was a custom-built or internally-built solution based on the existing features of Nutanix. We just managed it manually.

In terms of implementation, it was as easy as you could imagine. Even migrating the data was very straightforward. It took us plenty of time because of the amount of data that we had to move. Other than that, it was fine.

It was supposed to replace a different solution. It was just a matter of deploying the instance that I was looking for and then slowly migrating the data over. I did not encounter any major issues there.

I am saving a lot of man-hours in managing or figuring out issues or finding solutions for the problems that arise. In the past, I would have had to check everything in the chain to figure out what was wrong. It is a lot easier, especially with regard to permissions on a file system. The solution we had in place before was a pain in the neck.

It is above my role. I am not the one who makes the calls, but it seems to me that it was very competitive. Other solutions would have required dedicated hardware, so an additional CapEx has to be put in place. In that sense, it was definitely a more competitive option to go with Nutanix Files. We did not get storage for every node just for the sake of adding files, but it was a wider solution for that.

We had other options. We do have different storage devices in place. We decided to centralize on Nutanix because we have been working with them for quite a long time, and we have been very happy with their products. It seemed like a fairly straightforward decision, but then, of course, we tested it. It proved to be a much more efficient way of dealing with what we had in place.

We do not have any data-intensive workloads. Our use case is mainly for the corporate file system. When I start using volumes, I expect the same performance as standard VMs. I will be happy to see a very high performance like everything else so far.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage has not resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. We implemented Nutanix after purchasing storage-heavy nodes.

We are not using Nutanix Data Lens. We have Files Analytics. I was looking into Data Lens. Unfortunately, it did not fall within the budget for this year. Perhaps next year, we will be able to give it a go.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a nine out of ten. It is not yet perfect. They are going to implement a more consolidated interface. There are basically three products that fall under the storage piece. They are not in the same pane of glass, but it is a very solid product, so I can give it a nine. It meets my needs and resolves all my problems so far. I am sure that when we start implementing volumes, it will prove to be a good solution for that. It is in our roadmap to start using volumes to solve a couple of issues that we have at the moment. I am already confident that it will do so.

On-premises

I use the solution in my company mainly for tax data, which we use for some user orders.

The tool is easy to use. My company preferred Nutanix Unified Storage to replace old storage systems, which is good for our company's purpose.

The solution's most valuable feature is the range of files we use it for in our company. My company also uses Nutanix Volumes.

The aspect of the product that I like the most is its simplicity.

The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads can be handled by the tool, but our workloads are not so intensive since they consist of data, some user files, and so on, but it works fine. The tool does a good job with what you need to do with it.

In our company, our second session with Nutanix Unified storage involves using it to detect and block ransomware threats and then using Nutanix Data Lens. I can monitor with the tool's help, which is an interesting part.

I do not use Nutanix Data Lens, but I plan to use it in the future.

The tools that we currently use to protect unstructured data in your organization revolve around the area of disaster recovery for some of the other sites in our company, along with its use for backup. My company is in the healthcare industry, a reason why I believe that the aforementioned tools are important for my organization.

From an improvement perspective, maybe some features can be rolled out in the GUI, especially the ones we can do only in CLI as of now. There are some processes, like if I like to change the data storage to another place, I have to use CLI, and I don't like it since I believe that it could have been simpler in GUI.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for about five and a half years.

It is a stable solution. I don't remember any crashes when it comes to Nutanix Unified Storage.

It is a scalable solution. My company has multiple file instances, and the tool has the minimum amount of file servers, which is available for free. In our company, whenever we need, we can scale up, but our use is not so intensive, so it works fine for us from the beginning.

The solution's technical support is good, especially compared to other vendors. When you raise the ticket with Nutanix's support team, they reply quickly with a solution. I rate the technical support an eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with Dell PowerScale (Isilon). My company switched to Nutanix Unified Storage from Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as the latter had reached the end of the support phase at a time when we had to renew the license.

The product's initial setup phase was simple.

My company did not have any strategy while deploying Nutanix Unified Storage since it was the first time that my company had deployed it.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. My organization is in the healthcare business, so we are allergic to the cloud.

My company deployed the product with the help of the product's partner, Proact. Nowadays, the tool is installed by our company's sales team.

The ROI I have experienced from using the solution revolves around disaster recovery,, which is good since if one of the sites goes down, it serves as an easy and quick tool to recover it.

The product is neither cheap nor expensive, making it a solution offering a price range that is in the middle. The use of licenses offered by the product is an area that is complicated, especially since my company has so many clusters, for which a couple of different licenses are required for different companies with different licenses. With so many clusters in place, the licensing part gets complicated. Previously, with EBX, my company had to deal with license-related expenses from the US end. My company is learning how to deal with the tool's licensing model so that it can be made easier for us to deal with in the future.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We use Nutanix Unified Storage for file storage and analytics. We use Nutanix as an additional server. Before implementing it, we didn't have insight into our files. We have two Nutanix clusters. One is at our primary location, and we also have an off-site disaster recovery cluster.  My company has about a thousand users on the main site. 

Nutanix's analytics provide better insights into all of our files. 

The most valuable feature is Nutanix's file analytics. I like the ability to manage all my file servers from a single platform. I can see which owners have access to files and track changes. 

The interface could be improved.

We have used Nutanix Unified Storage for about seven months. 

Nutanix is stable.

The scalability is excellent. We can scale up and out. Nutanix can expand to meet any demand. We can increase the VMs, CPU, and memory as needed. 

I rate Nutanix support 10 out of 10. It's excellent. We contact them when we have problems, and they always resolve the issue quickly. 

Positive

Before implementing Nutanix, we used a traditional file server storage solution. We adopted Nutanix because we have more than a million files and we didn't have any insights or analytics. We didn't know who deleted or moved files. We couldn't see who had permission to access a file. Nutanix is integrated with our Active Directory.

The setup is straightforward, and it only took about 15 minutes to deploy Nutanix to our file server. We had help from a reseller and rely on the vendor for maintenance.

We haven't seen an ROI so far, but I believe we'll start to see a return after three years.

Nutanix is cost-effective because we don't need to upgrade our infrastructure. It's cheaper than the alternatives. 

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage 10 out of 10. The file server analytics are great. 

Nutanix Unified Storage will mostly be used for home folders and departmental shares. We do a lot of research, and we use this solution for research storage. There are several instruments that generate a lot of data, and we needed a place to store this data during analysis. We needed long-term storage as well.

Our previous system was a large lake of storage, and it worked well for shares and home folders. One of the things the researchers wanted to do once the file sets were placed was to analyze the data. We mounted those volumes on a server to be analyzed, and it wasn't performing enough. It couldn't keep up with it. With Nutanix Unified Storage, however, we can tailor different file servers for different workloads.

Nutanix Unified Storage will allow us to be more agile when deploying storage for the different use cases that we need. Also, with DR, the failover and failback between the two clusters are very simple in Nutanix Unified Storage compared to most solutions. You click, answer a question, and let it go. In other systems, you have to do a lot of reconfiguring and synchronization, which can take hours or days depending on the length of time that you need to fail back from. However, with Nutanix Unified Storage it's very simple. It makes life a lot easier for us.

One of the things that really sold us on Nutanix Unified Storage was File Analytics and Data Lens. We could always tell how much storage we were using, how many files we had, and even the age of the files, but we could never get a good handle on who was doing what with them. This has been a huge issue for us. For example, if someone moved a folder, we would not be able to tell who did it. We did not have a good way of auditing what was going on with the systems. This could become an issue in a ransomware attack. It would make it more difficult to figure out when we got infected and where we need to roll back to in order to recover. Nutanix File Analytics and Data Lens give us that information. In addition, Data Lens has a mechanism built in to prevent a ransomware attack from getting a foothold on the system. It can shut it down before it does a lot of damage.

Nutanix Unified Storage does a very good job of unifying our organization's block, file, and object storage. It puts it all in one place. From one platform, we can deploy S3-type buckets. We can provide iSCSI-level block storage if we need to. It does a great job with home folders and departmental shares, which is what we mostly use Nutanix Unified Storage for.

We can manage and run its storage from any location. Nutanix Unified Storage does a really good job of that, especially with the newest version of Files, 4.3. You can run it on NC2. That opens up a whole new possibility for us down the road when it comes time to do a refresh on the hardware. As our data centers age, it also gives us another option. We would have to decide whether we want to spend millions of dollars updating our data centers or looking at a cloud-based solution. NC2 provides a lot of advantages over just a standard native AWS or Azure deployment.

As part of our organization's ransomware protection strategy, our security department has a number of ransomware appliances that do scanning. We have antivirus running on the various shares and workstations. What's really exciting for us with Nutanix Unified Storage is that we get another tool to help prevent a ransomware attack. In case something gets through the security's appliances or something slides in through the back door, we have an additional tool to look for that ransomware attack and recover from it quickly.

Other than testing Nutanix Data Lens, we haven't gotten into it yet. However, it looks very promising. We're very excited about it, and so is our security team.

In terms of removing silos in our organization, Nutanix Unified Storage does a good job. My team manages the virtual infrastructure, and that was one of the reasons why we went with Nutanix Unified Storage over some of the other competitors. We're familiar with Nutanix and the platform. It's easy to deal with, and it makes managing a large system with a small number of employees a lot easier.

The current hardware is not as dense as it could be. In our deployment, we have 2 PB per site, and we have to have 24 nodes. That's a lot of cabling and network ports that we use up. More dense nodes would be better.

We tested Nutanix Unified Storage for a couple of months before we purchased it. Last week, we spun up the clusters, and we're starting to deploy the file servers in the shares right now. We're in the very early stages of deployment.

The solution scales pretty well. Once it gets denser nodes, it'll scale better. There are options when you hit limits, especially using objects. You can scale that out, and they have excellent tiering options as well. I'm pleased with it.

Nutanix's technical support is excellent. That was one of the drivers in picking Nutanix. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We used a large lake of storage, and it did well for us. However, as technology moved on, we found that it wasn't meeting all of our needs. Nutanix Unified Storage gives us more flexibility to provide better solutions for our users. We evaluated other solutions and went with Nutanix Unified Storage because of the analytics that it provides and Data Lens. The simplified DR failover was a big factor as well.

With Nutanix Unified Storage, you can deploy file servers either vertically or horizontally. For a large departmental share, we can size it, scale it out, and have a large number of servers so that you can have thousands of users on it. If we're doing an export or a share that's going to run on an analysis server and more speed is needed, we can scale vertically and add more CPUs to add more memory to the file server. This is something we couldn't do with our previous system.

Once we had Nutanix Unified Storage racked, stacked, and everything cabled up, the actual deployment went very smoothly. We deployed 24-node clusters in about three days. We were ready to start building file servers and sharing on them. I was really pleased with how well it went.

Our partner, Choice Solutions, helped us with the deployment.

At this point, it's too early to tell, but I think we will see an ROI. We will probably see a reduction in support costs. We will be able to provide better resources for our researchers, which is the main driver. They're the primary users of the storage.

It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for.

My advice, if you're looking into Nutanix Unified Storage, is to definitely do the test drives. Do the research, and compare Nutanix Unified Storage with some others. Look at File Analytics and Data Lens, and compare how well DR works. Take a look at the various options that Nutanix Unified Storage provides and compare them to those offered by other solutions.

I haven't had enough time to really get a good feel for it, but from what I've seen so far, I'm pleased with Nutanix Unified Storage. Thus, I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

We are currently using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for Citrix Virtual Desktop. These virtual desktops are used as a jump host.

There are a lot of features in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). The file server is very good for the environment because previously we needed to create separate file servers. Now we can make them on Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) only. There are many features like Flow, which is for segmentation. I also have experience in administration.

There are some techniques in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) that need to be improved. Sometimes, processes get stuck on the console, which requires intervention from the command lines. There are gaps between the GUI and command lines.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for the last ten years.

For the first time, it was difficult because it was our initial deployment. After that, it has been very easy.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very stable. During updates or upgrades, it is stable and user-friendly. The upgrade process is simple: just click, click, click, next, next, next, finish.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very easy to scale. You can simply rack and mount the server or node you want and add it to the cluster anytime.

The customer service is better than VMware and other solutions. They come on the call and start troubleshooting immediately. The quality of support is good.

Neutral

I previously worked with VMware before moving on to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). I also have experience with Citrix and Hyper-V.

The initial setup was difficult the first time, but after that, it became very easy.

Just one person is required for the deployment. However, we need information from the network teams about requirements. During our recent deployment, I was in Mumbai, India, while my hardware was in Denver, US. We didn't use a deployment service. Our data center team connected the cables, and I managed the rest remotely.

I heard that VMware is costlier than Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Previously, I worked with a Nutanix partner, so I am aware of the pricing.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a perfect ten out of ten. You don’t have to do much; you just have to purchase the required hardware, rack it, power it on, connect the network cables, and add it to the cluster. That's it. Nutanix technical support is impressive, as they resolve issues immediately without unnecessary delays. My overall product rating is ten.

On-premises

We have a local data center here that isn't connected to the Internet because of the nature of our organization. It does not have any external communications. Last year, we had a disaster when we ran out of storage space in the clusters assigned to the storage containers. We had around 10 TB allocated for files across five clusters. One of our clusters was hosting critical files, so we had to rate the machine consumption from that cluster, and it can expire because the application that the customer was working on was transferring pictures with enormous sizes. 

We realized that we also had the file license, so why don't we go ahead and use it? We contacted Nutanix, and the managers and system engineers suggested we have meetings. We discussed it and then started providing these storage services. Soon, we will expand with node storage, and that will be another option. We're currently looking at best practices because I think there is a limit on the file sizes. We cannot go beyond 10 TB.

The Nutanix solution has improved the overall performance of our infrastructure operations. Nutanix unifies our block file and object storage. It's like a separate service we can provide for the critical applications we are running, but I can ensure each application is secure against ransomware or other vulnerabilities. I will recommend my team to go further with the block and object storage.

I like Nutanix Prism Central. The primary benefit is that we can manage everything from the same page. It also gives you the data in graph form on the main page, so you can keep a close eye on what is happening. You can watch for high utilization and see the disks and reports in the central console. It's a resilient and highly stable application 

The modernized infrastructure and data services feature is the most beneficial to me as an administrator. We derive business value in terms of storage because we have the option of using Windows Firewall.

Nutanix Unified Storage allows us to consolidate our data platform within the Nutanix cluster itself without using external storage. You can work with all types of unstructured data seamlessly with Unified Storage. There should be no problem with that. There are no issues with audio, video, uploads, downloads, etc. 

It's a flexible solution. This is what I understood as I was reviewing the documentation today. Nutanix is trying to simplify storage and has many options for scalability. 

The GUI is easy to use, but it's complex to do tasks from the command line. That is one way they could simplify things for the engineers. People tend to use a graphical interface more than the command line interface. If anything goes wrong, we need to do troubleshooting from the CLI. It would be nice if there were more ways to fix issues within the GUI. 

Nutanix is highly stable. 

Scaling can be a challenge. Once you order a block with a specific size, it will need to be changed to a different node to scale up. We have to expand the cluster and have the nodes ready to increase the storage size. We cannot go ahead and add an extra hard disk if the slots are full.

I rate Nutanix support nine out of 10. 

Positive

We previously used VMware. Nutanix is faster, but the two solutions offer the same level of security.

A typical deployment could probably be completed in a day or two, but our data site required a lot of approvals and an on-site review by our engineer, so our deployment time was around a week. One person is enough to deploy the solution. It doesn't require much maintenance if the clusters are upgraded correctly. 

Switching to Nutanix Unified Storage reduced the total cost of ownership by nearly 50 percent. You can go on the Nutanix website and see a cost comparison of how much you can save over three to five years. 

Nutanix is priced a bit higher than some of its competitors. A lot of Chinese companies like Huawei are entering the Saudi Arabian market trying to provide similar solutions for a lower price. It offers good value, especially the support. Nutanix has a highly competent team. The after-sales support is excellent. 

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage nine out of 10. 

On-premises