Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Reviews

We use Nutanix Unified Storage for file storage and SMB sharing. My company has around 2,000 to 3,000 users on the platform.

We have massive storage needs and currently have 20 terabytes of storage Nutanix. We are storing around 10 or 11 terabytes of data on NUS. The cost would be huge if we wanted to add another NAS. 

A separate NAS would require us to buy more hardware and add switches. Nutanix allows us to add more storage inside the same cluster. It has significantly reduced our storage nodes by about 50 percent. It has been effective for us in terms of operations, management, and control. 

Nutanix Unified Storage is easy for end users to access. They can use it like any other drive on their systems.  We have mapped it in the user system so they can scan files and store them. They can use it just like an Android drive.

The dashboard could be more customizable

We have had Nutanix Unified Storage for four years.

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage nine out of 10 for stability. 

Nutanix Unified Storage is scalable. 

I rate Nutanix support nine out of 10. If you face any problems, support checks and resolves them immediately. 

Positive

We were using a VMware solution, but it required us to purchase separate storage and integrate it with the hardware. Nutanix is more convenient. 

We have Nutanix Unified Storage deployed on-prem in our data center. The deployment wasn't complex, and it only took two days. After deployment, NUS only requires periodic software updates but no patches. 

We see a 35 to 40 percent ROI on our investment. 

Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive. 

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage nine out of 10. I would recommend it to others.

Some of the features that we use include replication and snapshot capabilities, especially from remote locations to our data centers. The main benefit our company sees from using Nutanix Unified Storage is simplification. In the past, we used three-tier solutions with a lot of complexity and operational overhead. Now, we want to focus on the layers above. I want to have storage available, but I don't want to have to think about it. I want it to work without any issues.

The solution needs to be more open to integration with other vendors. Sometimes, we struggle with the support process. Our skilled engineers must explain our problems to everyone, even though we've already done preliminary investigations. The support team follows standard procedures, which can be painful. We're not a small customer, especially in the life sciences sector, so we'd appreciate more specialized support. I've heard Nutanix Unified Storage has teams dedicated to life sciences and healthcare; we should be part of that.

I have been using the product for five years. 

The solution's stability is good. We haven't heard about any issues with it, which is great. We have had issues related to hardware. 

We have used the tool's technical support and found it good. It's one of the best support services in the market. While some tech support experiences can be painful, Nutanix Unified Storage's support has been solid.

Positive

We see time and money savings from using the product. The simplification means we no longer need to worry about configuring small pieces. It's just a few clicks, and it's done. This saves us a lot of time and helps us avoid human errors. It's hard to put an exact number on the savings, but overall, it's a really simple process.

The solution's pricing is fair. 

The tool has been good so far. Our company has thousands of clusters installed, which we're using for virtualization and VMware. I want to explore whether there's a way to eliminate VMware. We want to try using AHV together with storage as a complete solution. 

Over the last five years, we don't have any other use cases with Nutanix Unified Storage. We're new to NetApp. We use NetApp extensively, and everything is connected to our NetApp ecosystem. We'll try the solution, but there are special use cases where we use some specific NetApp features that aren't available in Nutanix Unified Storage. 

One limitation we faced was the inability to use external storage, but I've heard that it's on the roadmap and should be delivered soon, which is awesome. Another important feature I learned about is the ability to scale up storage and compute independently. This is crucial for us because we've struggled with this in the past. It's good to see that you're listening to your customers.

We haven't been able to reduce the number of storage nodes so far because our systems are distributed worldwide. We need capacity everywhere, so it's hard to consolidate. However, we have been increasing the storage capacity in our storage nodes. I'm happy the tool allows us to think about storage and computing separately. We can grow each independently, which is good for our needs.

We initially used VMware virtualization, but we adopted a dual strategy by introducing Nutanix Unified Storage about five years ago. We saw great potential in it from the start. While there were some aspects we weren't fully satisfied with, we actively engaged with the tool, providing feedback. Our goal was to help make Nutanix our primary infrastructure solution.

The key factors driving us to adopt Nutanix Unified Storage fully are simplification and end-to-end coverage. We don't have to worry about building the solution or dealing with integrations.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

The Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is for multiple use cases such as S3 for application use and providing files for users, including file servers; additionally, we are using the NUS for the cluster and other purposes.

For data-intensive workloads such as AI and ML in hybrid cloud environments, we have a different cluster where we are using NVMe and storage nodes that provide storage capacity with high performance; we are using the storage node as capacity from the Nutanix side to support this.

Overall, we see many benefits from using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for multiple purposes; we use Nutanix for our database automation, where we use the storage to store data, and we also use it for AI/ML workloads.

One of the best features of the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that I find everything, all the solutions, in one single box; if you look into Nutanix, the HCI plus whatever storage is required as part of the requirements, such as if applications are hosted on Kubernetes or container platforms requiring S3, NFS, or any other protocol, we can access everything from a single system, eliminating the need to manage multiple systems and different storage in the data center, as one system from one OEM provides everything.

I have never seen any performance issues with the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for high-throughput and low-latency requirements in AI and ML workloads because we are using all NVMe as part of the storage.

The Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has helped us consolidate our systems, thereby reducing our overall TCO significantly; we only deal with one OEM for any issues, allowing us to consolidate our infrastructure and reduce our data center footprint, so the overall TCO is a benefit to us.

While there are good aspects, I would like to see improvements in networking configuration, particularly regarding overlay and underlay, plus enhancements in micro-segmentation, as that would provide added advantages in security and data availability.

I have been working with the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for around six, six-plus years.

I have not had any performance issues with the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

The Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is scalable.

My experience with customer service and technical support of Nutanix is positive; the technical support is good and I do not encounter any challenges with it.

Positive

I have not used any different solutions before Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS).

We evaluated other options before choosing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS); we previously worked with NetApp as our storage solution for a 3-tier architecture but not in the HCI context.

We did not purchase Nutanix through the AWS Marketplace; instead, we directly obtained it from a partner for our on-premise needs.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that it is competitive compared to other solutions available.

From a security point of view, my impression of the cybersecurity features in Nutanix when dealing with unstructured data like ransomware threats is positive; we are using the snapshots feature to ensure protection from ransomware and Flow for micro-segmentation as part of data security and segregation.

I have not had any issues with the security aspect or any challenges so far.

My advice to other organizations considering Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is that if they are looking for consolidation and better TCO, or they want to run applications in their systems, Nutanix will be the right choice for them.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight.

We use the solution more for Citrix profile VDI. We also have some Windows servers running, and we use Nutanix Unified Storage more for the server platform. If I remember correctly, we have more than 1,200 servers running on the Nutanix cluster.

Our company is a product-based company that performs order processing. Most of our applications are on the web. We also get invoices and a lot of files. It generates a lot of files and keeps them on the server, and the application is posted on some of Nutanix's servers as well.

In my experience, we haven't had any outages so far. The virtualization of the memory is based on the usage, and it consumes a lot. The previous tools were not as efficient as compared to Nutanix Unified Storage.

Nutanix Unified Storage is a cluster. Compared to any other virtualization environment, Nutanix Unified Storage doesn't require any downtime to upgrade and doesn't experience storage outages. So, things are going smoothly with Nutanix, and that's the best part of the Nutanix cluster for storage.

The solution's most valuable feature is the Prism Central centralized management console. We have close to eight to nine clusters and also remote sites. Compared to other tools, the solution is easy to manage. I would also like to mention the solution's ActiveDR concept and replication.

We have sites from different locations, and we are in the process of procuring ultimate licensing. Even if one cluster goes down, we can bring it up and have the application operating from the other site. That's the beauty of the tool, which makes it more efficient.

We use Cohesity from Nutanix to protect our organization's unstructured data. We also have a cloud-based Rubrik tool. Cohesity has the same infrastructure as Nutanix Unified Storage. I am an administrator for both Nutanix Unified Storage and Cohesity. We take snapshot-level backups. Since we are implementing ultimate licensing for remote sites, we will use an internal snapshot feature to replicate to the other sites.

The solution's storage and scalability features have improved our data operations. Our storage is increasing daily for business purposes. Nutanix Unified Storage has good scalability. We recently received some orders, and some nodes were added.

I like Nutanix's data locality feature because it improved our data accessibility and availability.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage has tremendously reduced the number of storage nodes by around 20% to 30%.

There is no tagging concept in Nutanix Unified Storage where you can tag the servers. It is more useful for backups because I manage backups as well. In other solutions, you can group servers in the backup. Although we can do a complete cluster of VMs in Nutanix, we cannot tag the server to a particular tag ID or number you can pull from the backup solutions.

If you call for that number, the server should ideally take the backups irrespective of the cluster in which it is present. We faced issues with those things. We have to protect the entire cluster manually. The server tagging feature could be added to the solution's future releases.

We didn't face any issues in Nutanix after the upgrade, but we had issues with the Cohesity backups. We consistently work with both the vendors, and that has been fixed. So that is the only thing that we had faced up to the upgrade.

We have been using the solution in my current organization for four years, and I used it for over a year in my previous organization. So, I have a total of five years of experience with Nutanix Unified Storage.

Nutanix Unified Storage is a stable solution. That's what we need. I see. As a customer, we look for such solutions to stabilize our environment and storage. Our day-to-day business requires that.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Around 784 users use the solution in our organization.

I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.

The solution's technical support is good and pretty responsive. We contact the support for small issues, and their problem-solving is the highest.

I rate the solution’s technical support a nine or ten out of ten.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. The upgrade from a previous version to the latest version is also easy. I wasn't involved in the solution's initial setup because it already existed when I joined the company. However, I was involved in increasing the nodes, which took around three to four hours. I don't remember exactly because it's been a while since we added storage.

From what I hear from the management, Nutanix Unified Storage has comparatively decent pricing. I think we are in pro licensing and have yet to get ultimate licensing.

We are not into AI yet. I'm an administrator and not an authorized personnel for those things. We are a product-based electronic components reseller. From what I have heard from management, we will be implementing AI soon.

We are mostly concerned about and focused on security hardening. Some internal solutions, like SentinelOne, have been recommended for security hardening. However, we are not dedicatedly using anything. We are also checking Cohesity DataHawk, and we are still in the process of finalizing it.

The solution is deployed in eight locations. We have multiple nodes in our main data center and DR data center. We mainly use the solution for VDI profiles and server virtualization.

I told my old colleagues that we are using Nutanix Unified Storage, and they were pretty impressed with its features. I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage to users as a unified storage solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our use cases can be divided in two. The first relates to end-user computing. We run Citrix on top of Nutanix clusters. It's highly stable, and we have a user base of around 8,000 people. It's a platform where people can claim government benefits, and many of our office staff at job fairs use it to access their applications. 

We also use it for backend functions in our data and analytics department. Our data lake solution uses cloud data housed on several Nutanix clusters in our data center. The application crunches that data and several analysts rely on it to predict things like fraud. 

The other side is a data warehouse we use for our SaaS application. It holds a massive data set that is pulled into the SaaS application, which crunches the numbers. With Nutanix, we can spread our SaaS worker VMs across several Nutanix nodes. They're all rolled together, but each worker is only dealing with the local data.

Once we patch a Nutanix cluster, we know it has also patched the storage element. We aren't dealing with the hypervisor separately, so we know it isn't completely separate from the SAN, which makes things a lot slicker. It's the same with the storage element.

From an analytics perspective, the best aspect of Unified Storage is its locality. When you read data, you want to know that you're only reading data from the particular local storage node. It's also critical to access the data as quickly as possible from that.  From a business perspective, the most important thing is ease of use. Having a combination of compute and storage makes it much easier to manage. 

We don't have any latency, which is one reason we continue to use Nutanix for these workloads. Our data warehouse has a traditional three-tiered structure and has been that way for many years. It doesn't mean it doesn't function, but we wanted to modernize it by improving performance. 

We achieved that using Nutanix. We could remove the latency you would get from reading your traditional SAN and combine all that into the Nutanix nodes on a cluster. 

It has reduced the number of nodes to a degree because we've been able to collapse several legacy SAN infrastructures into the Nutanix boosters. We still need that storage for three-tier, so we put it together outside. 

Historically, it has been a hyper-converged infrastructure, so when you are looking to grow the solution, you need to scale the compute and storage. Having the ability to scale the storage independently would be a good improvement. 

We have used Nutanix Unified Storage for nearly seven years. 

Nutanix technical support is generally very good. You can speak with someone, and they'll work behind the scenes to resolve the issue. If it's a more long-term issue, it may need to be passed from one team to another. It tends to work smoothly. 

Positive

We also use VMware, Oracle, and Linux hypervisors. When we adopt new tech, we add tenants to the picture because of what they can offer. We combine the skills of our system administrators and collapse them into one. Nutanix's advantage is ease of use. Compared to all the products we've tried, Nutanix performs just as well as anything else — better in some cases. 

Nutanix Unified Storage is competitively priced. There aren't any competitors that can do much better for the same price. 

I rate Nutanix Unified Storage eight out of 10. 

I use the solution in my company mainly for file shares and also in conjunction with objects to provide persistent volume claims with Kubernetes.

In terms of benefits, my company has reduced costs by using free trial storage. Cost reduction, along with simplicity, means only fewer hours are required from manpower in configuration and day-to-day administration.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its simplicity because managing installations sometimes involves defining, undoing, and configuring phases, which are not very easy, but Nutanix makes it straightforward. The tool is very stable. It doesn't come to my mind that I have seen the tool in our company's infrastructure for four years.

According to the keynotes announced by Nutanix the previous day or this morning, the data storage for Kubernetes requires improvement as it has a few shortcomings in the area of operations.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for four years. I am a customer of Nutanix.

It is a stable solution.

Scalability-wise, it is quite a simple and straightforward tool. If you need more storage, you just get a new node, and everything gets done in the background, so you don't have to configure anything much.

The technical support for the solution is the best I have seen in my life. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

In the past, my company tried to use an early version of vSAN, and we found that its performance was not good. After my company performed a PoC phase, we deployed Nutanix Unified Storage.

The product's initial setup phase was simple.

When it comes to the product's deployment phase, my company defines the strategy along with the PoC because we are a manufacturing company that has a large and sparse site with more than 100 factories, which we have to take into account. My company started off with the PoC, and then we expanded.

The solution is deployed on a hybrid model, but the majority of the storage is on an on-premises model. My company uses the cloud services offered by Azure.

Nutanix does provide my company with a technical consultant and a pre-sales engineer to help us deal with the implementation part, after which we perform a small test and then go ahead with everything. In Germany and the United States, my company has worked with a third party that Nutanix recommended we approach in order to deploy, install, and configure.

My company pays money for the tool's licensing fees, but we are saving quite a lot of money by getting to have our own resilient storage device.

In my opinion, the product is fairly priced. I would not be surprised if, in the near future, there is a rise in the prices associated with the tool's licensing models.

My company did not evaluate any other solutions against Nutanix Unified Storage. After Nutanix Unified Storage was presented to our company at a meeting, it would be a good idea to do a PoC before choosing the product.

The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads, such as AI or data analytics, is not an area my company considers a use case in our infrastructure. In our company, we are exploring and migrating some AI and LLM models while also testing them on an on-premises model in order to have a little more control of the data that we are training and so that we can reduce some costs associated with the public cloud, but in general, it is a medium-term project we have in our operations. The product is also capable of working with big projects.

My company has not faced any use cases where we had to use the product to detect and block ransomware threats.

Implementing the tool has certainly resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to an increase in storage capacity per node. I don't have the specific number because storage is not my main area, but I say from the top of my head that it could be at 3:1 or 4:1 consolidation. You should not take my word for granted because it is not my main area. The aforementioned area has affected my company's operations and business, especially in terms of simplification, by allowing us to save hours for our providers in the storage area for our administrators while also covering a reduction in incidents.

I don't have any idea about Nutanix Data Lens, but in the future, I am interested in working with the cybersecurity team to have a look at the tool's PoC phase, if possible. I think it could be a good use case for us.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company since I have two or three users, specifically cloud customers, who use Nutanix Files and subnets for backup storage and for a common shared folder.

The product's benefits stem from the ease of use and management it offers to its users.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that I like the object sizes. The tool's infrastructure is quite easy to implement. I know that I would like the product's licensing model to be much cheaper, especially if I tried to make another type of cluster. When you have huge data, the tool is cheaper.

Nutanix Unified Storage for detecting and blocking ransomware threats is a good option offered by the tool to users for objects and storage. Users can access the right technologies offered by the product so that it is more secure for our company.

Nutanix Unified Storage offers large space per node. The tool does not help reduce the number of nodes used in my company. Usually, my company needs to expand the number of nodes used.

In terms of the tools my company is currently utilizing to protect unstructured data, I would say that there is one option that you can use for your data protection. You can have two or three implementations to develop a disaster recovery for unstructured data, especially for the ones on file servers.

The product does not offer one console. From an improvement perspective, it should offer one console. With Prism Central, Nutanix tried to manage all the stuff, but I believe that it can be made easier.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for three or four years. My company is in partnership with Nutanix.

My company deals with the product's customers who work in the government sector who use it at a massive level. The product is also used in the banking sector. The product is very stable in general.

The solution's technical support is awesome, quick, and effective. I don't really use the product's support services. Whenever I use the product's support services, it has always been good. I rate the technical support a nine to ten out of ten.

Positive

Before bringing Nutanix Unified Storage into our company, files and objects were stored in separate products. My company used to use one solution named Nutanix Mine. All the licenses gained by our company work in a different manner.

Some of my company's clients used to use QNAP's NAS solutions. My company's client changed to Nutanix Unified Storage since it offers more reporting options, making it more cost-effective in terms of management.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The licensing model the tool has is cheaper than an HCI storage solution. You can get a straightforward compression feature in Nutanix Unified Storage, which is better than buying a SAN solution of eight terabytes for 1,000 USD. If you have some complexities and some requirements, or if the users operate in a government agency or in a VDI environment, depending on how you like to use it, it is better to use a solution from Nutanix instead of an all-modern block storage tool.

As my company is in partnership with Nutanix, we cannot consider another product against Nutanix Unified Storage.

I have never used anything in the tool associated with AI, so I don't know about Nutanix Unified Storage's throughput or latency for data-intensive workloads, such as AI or data analytics.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are using Nutanix Unified Storage for the clusters, the AHV, and the environment for our hybrid cloud setup. This was our part of the refresh activity. As a result, our database and SQL servers are running on this unified storage platform.

The challenge we faced was transitioning from our legacy platform, which was at the end of its life. We had the option to either buy some of the Dell platforms or go with a data center refresh activity. Most of our hardware was at the end of its support life, which was becoming costly. This led us to look for a better technology platform, and ultimately we chose the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform after conducting a POC. We found that some workloads were better suited for this environment, so we moved to Nutanix Unified Storage.

With Nutanix Unified Storage, managing our unstructured data is much easier. The platform's manageability is a significant improvement compared to what we were doing before. Previously, we had to invest a lot of manual effort in tasks like patching and upgrading, but now, most of these activities are self-service and transparent. One example of this is self-service, which allows us to quickly restore files or folders in just a few minutes. This has been very beneficial for our engineers, as it enables them to easily recover files and data on their own.

Nutanix Unified Storage is flexible. We can add storage as we need it because we can add it on the fly. Once we see that our capacity is reaching a threshold, we can easily add a new brick or additional storage to our platform. It's really easy, with no downtime or any other requirements. We can expand it very quickly.

Nutanix Unified Storage is resilient, making it easy to increase storage capacity compared to older three-tier systems. Previously, extending storage required extensive follow-ups and project activities, taking months to complete. Now, these tasks can be done within days or even minutes as soon as storage is available. If assistance is needed, a support ticket can be opened, but most of the time, it is quickly resolved through self-guided documentation. In just a few minutes, tasks that used to take months can now be completed in one day.

Nutanix Unified Storage has significantly improved our organization's disaster recovery capabilities. We have been using Rubrik to back up our other DR activities, making it easier to manage multiple sites. This has allowed us to meet our DR requirements and seamlessly expand our environment while still meeting DR goals.

Nutanix Unified Storage helps to unify our block, file, and object storage. We can easily scale the environment because it operates on a consumption-based model, allowing us to track usage daily and expand our storage accordingly. The platform also allows us to see the capacity of file objects in a single pane, making it easy to access all data platforms from one storage system. This provides flexibility as we can use it for checking block storage, object storage, or file-based storage as needed. Nutanix Unified Storage supports various workloads and storage types in a unified manner.

Nutanix Unified Storage allows our organization to manage and run its storage from one location using a single platform. The flexibility is also a significant advantage, especially with capacity-based licensing, as it enables us to scale our environment as needed. We have observed that sometimes we reach an 80 percent threshold, and based on that, we can plan our consumption model for the next three or six months. We can control both aspects effectively. Additionally, the platform offers a single pane of glass for management, making it very easy to handle. We don't need specialized storage admins; anyone with infrastructure knowledge can manage this platform effortlessly. It's a straightforward and efficient solution for managing and running our storage.

Nutanix Unified Storage has helped us eliminate silos in our organization. We can move critical workloads as needed for IOPS and performance, and these workloads have been running smoothly without any performance issues. We were able to utilize different storage features, such as compression and deduplication, to manage our resources effectively. The best part is the scalability it offers without causing any disruptions or performance problems. We can easily scale up or scale out our environment based on data growth or workload requirements.

The integration between Nutanix Unified Storage, Cluster, and Prism is excellent. They are integrated based on the licensing model we choose. Once we have selected the appropriate licensing, we will be able to use all the features we are licensed for. The software is responsible for integrating all these different products together. Once we have all of them set up, we will be able to see all three solutions in one dashboard. This dashboard allows us to monitor our business, view running VMs, and track resource utilization.

There is a software called Nutanix Data Lens that provides insight into our infrastructure data. With it, we can keep track of anything we detect, allowing us to monitor and prevent suspicious activity and attacks. Nutanix Data Lens offers a feature that can monitor suspicious activity.

What I found to be the most valuable features were better performance and uptime. Performance, in terms of block storage, provided a good amount of IOPs, which was essential for our tier application. The other important aspect was meeting our SLA's uptime requirement. This ensured that our platform, applications, and customers were effectively served.

Storage has been constantly changing due to a significant improvement in technology over the past few years. As a result, the cost of storage has generally decreased. However, in recent years, pricing has gone up in certain areas due to factors like the COVID pandemic and disruptions in the supply chain. We are currently waiting for the demand and supply to stabilize in order to improve the cost situation.

Another aspect that needs improvement is continuous protection against security threats such as ransomware and potential data leakage. These areas require enhanced security measures to safeguard the data effectively.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for a couple of years.

We have not seen anything at all as of now that concerns the stability of Nutanix Unified Storage. In terms of performance, it is providing better IOPS. Everyone is content unless there is a concern raised by the application folks about some issue with IOPS or a performance conflict related to the application ID. In that case, we need to investigate. Otherwise, Nutanix Unified Storage works perfectly all the time.

It is easy to scale the environment. We can scale based on the performance requirements of our workloads. So, if we have a new workload coming in and need more storage, we can easily scale it. There will be no disruption or performance loss when scaling out or scaling up.

We have around 200 people that use the solution.

We contact tech support whenever we have issues and need help. It's very easy to reach out to them because they are available online. If we're stuck or unable to find specific documentation, they are able to help us out.

Positive

We had various types of storage, mainly Dell EMC, with three file storage systems. We used multiple different storage options since it followed a three-tier architecture. As a result, we began transferring some of our data to the cloud and some to Nutanix.

The initial deployment was straightforward because we had already done everything earlier, such as test drives. After that, a lengthy discussion was conducted to determine the capacity sizing and other necessary details. We then communicated with the Nutanix account team to decide on the required storage and the environment we would be implementing.

There were plenty of other team members involved in the testing. These team members also work with us and have specific concerns related to their areas of expertise, such as the application folks with concerns about the application and the database folks with concerns about the database. During the testing, we collaborated with these different team members to ensure that any questions or performance issues they had were addressed. This included the database team, application owners, and various infrastructure members. There were around 50 people involved in the deployment.

In our two years of using Nutanix Unified Storage, we have already seen a 50 percent return on investment.

Nutanix offers different pricing options, including Ultimate and Ultimate Pro. Depending on our business requirements, we can discuss these options with the account manager. We can also request a quotation based on the capacity and model we need. The price will vary based on our specific requirements and the workload we plan to run.

If the workload is critical, we will need better critical support licensing to ensure our platform is robust and has the flexibility to handle any additional storage needs. It's important to have a single point of management to monitor all files, objects, and block storage services in the environment. Our goal is to support a maximum amount of different product services and storage types to accommodate our environment.

Anyone who is worried about the price can run the test drive. They should do the Proof of Concept because, in the long run, Nutanix Unified Storage offers a good return on investment within the first year. One of the best things about it is that it provides peace of mind by transitioning an organization from a three-tier architecture to a single unified platform, offering a single pane of glass to help plan maintenance activities accordingly. There is no need for months of planning as required in those three-tier architectures. With Nutanix Unified Storage, it will be simple.

We also explored a couple of other solutions, such as moving everything to the cloud platform or utilizing the CMB with EMC storage and implementing the three-tier models. However, after careful consideration, we decided to go with a hybrid cloud environment. This way, we can run certain workloads that are not suitable for the cloud on our current setup while upgrading other aspects to the cloud.

I give Nutanix Unified Storage a ten out of ten.

Nutanix Unified Storage does not require regular maintenance. Maintenance is only necessary when performing patching or other specific activities. Even then, maintenance is simplified due to the use of clusters, which allows for easy transfer of workloads between clusters during upgrades or updates. The process is non-disruptive and allows for seamless transitions. Maintenance is only needed on a few occasions, as most upgrades are non-disruptive.

Anyone considering evaluating Nutanix Unified Storage should consider the workload they plan to run and the specific use case they have. Another important factor is whether they will be using a mix of cloud or hybrid environments, or if everything will be in the hybrid cloud. To begin, they should do a test drive and conduct a proof of concept with a critical workload. The advantage is that there is no cost involved in testing it out and seeing if it suits their needs before deciding to proceed with the unified solution.