Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Reviews

Nutanix Unified Storage is our primary storage solution, and I primarily use its volumes to provide additional disk space for machines. These volumes are shared between vision machines and technical servers. However, for some projects, this solution was discontinued. I currently have all of my additional systems running on bare-metal machines, which fully utilize the available hardware and provide ample storage capacity. To accommodate this, I've repurposed the volumes to share them over the network and connect them to the bare-metal hosts and storage systems. This approach has proven to be highly effective for multiple companies I've worked with.

Another use case for Nutanix Unified Storage is sharing storage through the SMB and NFS protocols. This has been particularly beneficial in my work, as it allows both Windows and Linux machines to access shared files seamlessly. This is a valuable feature for large-scale projects.

Nutanix Unified Storage also offers object storage, which I have used in large-scale environments. However, I have not been entirely satisfied with the available options. Therefore, I have opted to use AWS object storage instead. Currently, I do not utilize Nutanix object storage internally due to ongoing limitations. A year ago, I attempted to integrate object storage into my workflows, but it fell short of my requirements. Consequently, I reverted to the AWS system. Overall, I am pleased with the file storage and volume options provided by Nutanix Unified Storage, as they have significantly enhanced my productivity in various tasks and projects.

I previously worked at a hospital where I utilized Nutanix Unified Storage to facilitate data sharing and capture from the laboratory. I developed a shared design using Nutanix Unified Storage over the network infrastructure. This design enabled seamless data transfer whenever a machine-generated a test result. Upon receiving a blood sample, the machine, connected to a printer, would automatically print the blood test results and the blood type. Additionally, a copy of these results was generated and shared via the Nutanix Unified Storage platform. Using the 'fixable to call' function, I mounted the shared file to the machine, enabling the automatic printing of one hard copy and the simultaneous sharing of a soft copy. This allowed lab technicians or lab doctors to conveniently send the test results to the attending physician at the clinic or directly to the patient.

Nutanix Unified Storage has proven to be flexible to meet our needs.

Unified Storage is good at unifying our organization's block files.

Implementing Unified Storage has streamlined the way I manage and execute tasks across our multiple branches. Unified Storage has enabled me to consolidate data, effortlessly mount it to machines, and share files and folders with colleagues in different locations.

Unified Storage's ability to remove silos is good.

The integrations between Unified Storage, Kubernetes Engine, and the database service are complete. We have not encountered any incompatibility issues.

The Nutanix block files are the most valuable feature.

Unified Storage failed to fulfill our object storage requirements.

The virtual volume has limitations. If I create more than one disk, it encounters limitations. When I mount the volume group to the physical machine, it updates the same disk or partition on the machine, which is not desirable. I was working on a media project that required ten gigabytes of data. I created a volume group of that size, but due to the limitations of the virtual disk, which can be up to 64 terabytes, I had to create a mini disk. Once I mount the disk to the physical machine, it creates a mini virtual disk or mini partition, not just a single partition.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for five years.

Nutanix Unified Storage is stable.

The technical support is one of the best support services we have used.

Positive

I previously used VMware in another organization.

The initial deployment is straightforward and I can do it myself.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage ten out of ten.

The security of Unified Storage is comparable to that of other SDS solutions, and we have not encountered any security concerns.

Our positive experience with Unified Storage has prompted us to further invest in Nutanix products to establish our private cloud with on-premises data centers.

I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage for anyone researching enterprise data storage solutions.

Everybody calls it three-tier, but we came from traditional Big Iron, so app hosting was on clustered Unix or Linux systems. It was nothing to have SAN, NAS, iSCSI, and all kinds of disparate storage in the environment. When we did a run-off of HCI products, we did VxRail, HyperFlex, and Nutanix. It was only a benefit to realize that there was a storage element that we did not account for. 

I was trying to beat out having to have all these products to do VMware. In the long run, there was this benefit where we started to think about what other things we could do now that we had this storage. There were files, objects, or whatever you wanted to turn on, so to me, it was a huge win for no money. It was just available. You just took advantage of it when you needed to.

We scaled out the second or third cluster in anticipation of removing EMC CLARiiON products at the time, which then became Dell EMC CLARiiON products. We scaled out a ten-node cluster. It had 300 or 400 terabytes in it, so we were able to migrate from traditional SAN-based infrastructure. I got rid of the SAN-based infrastructure. I got rid of the refrigerator full of disks and power cooling. We did not have only storage; we could also run compute on it, and everything runs local. We did some storage-centric nodes for a while. They were fun, but they were just large disk arrays that presented themselves inside the cluster. I figured that it was easier to have FAT nodes with enough storage in them to take advantage of both compute and memory versus having any sort of storage-centric nodes, but you could not run any workloads on them. It was a nice Flex environment where you could move stuff into a cluster because it has a ton of storage, but when you tried to uplift it or were close to it, you discovered that some of these nodes do have limitations. In the long run, it was better to have all the compute nodes with memory storage and an all-in-one compute platform for our use cases. Now that disks are fast and everything like that, it does not hurt in the long run. There is no downside.

In the long run, there was money savings. In simple terms, you had to continue either to pay maintenance for the SAN infrastructure and storage environment and then present that to physical nodes that just get shared out when all of that is rolled into one bottle of wine. Imagine taking two-thirds of your infrastructure away with no impact. It is a no-brainer that you are going to save a ton of money. In the long run, you did not have to convince your customer. It would probably be termed as reinvesting into this product. Do not just buy one and consider it done. Start to do the evolution—no more stack delivery, which is also a benefit. You do not have to forklift anything in. Just buy a few nodes every year. It is easy. It is a no-brainer. It saves tons of money.

When it comes to latency or throughput improvements, most of our infrastructure runs on what you would consider just traditional factors. If we had a database or if people had hosted apps, it all ran in the local environment. We rarely separated the infrastructure where we had a database server living somewhere in the environment, and then we had the front-end web servers living somewhere else. A lot of times, they were just combined, but with the all-flash capabilities that Nutanix has in Unified Storage, if you want to move workloads in or tier it, there are no issues. Nutanix has solved all of the problems. I never experienced any issues. I never heard any complaints. No one ever came to me. We have moved things to it. It is hard to get compliments when you are the cloud for your customer, but very frequently, you get asked if something changed. If you ask them why they're asking, they say. "It is a little faster." When it works a little faster, I pat myself on the back. We have been using it significantly, and we never ran into any problems.

In terms of a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node, by being able to be clustered in the same process, we get some benefits from it as compared to traditional tiering. However, at least in my world, as soon as you make some savings, someone will take advantage of it. There might have been some savings, but I would not know. As soon as there is some space to be had, somebody needs space. The customers like it because any benefits that I somehow garner out of the infrastructure, or as I add, they win. If they give me money and I buy something, they instantly see a benefit. They never argue when I say that it is the time to buy. Nutranix MAKES it easier. It is not me. I just do the implementation.

For somebody like me who grew up building what others call three-tier and I call traditional architecture, the valuable thing is that you can now buy it. You can have new deployments and infrastructure up and running with very little infrastructure behind it. If you have networking and you buy the cluster, you are done. The flexibility it provides with growth is a no-brainer. It could be node-based or cluster-based. We have multiple clusters. We DR to different sites. We have now bought specific clusters for high-end compute for data analytics and data lakes. There is nothing that it cannot do, and it does everything better than ITS COMPETITORS. 

A pet peeve of mine is the integration with the hardware platforms. Each one of them presents its own use case. They have let Cisco on stage and they are bragging about it. Generally, when you buy UCS products, they want you to have FIs. FIs are nothing more than just fancy and smarter switches with a GUI. Now that they are partners with each other, you get LCM. LCM did not exist for UCS before. HPE is similar, but the integration points could be made better. 

At the surface level, they have done the handshake, and all those are wins. We are able to pick the platform of our choice and deploy it with the confidence that Nutanix is going to back it, but after having used almost all of the products that they have, except for Lenovo and Dell, I would still go with Supermicro. I would still go with the x nodes all day long. The flexibility is there. We only go to one vendor when something breaks. It just makes life easier. There is no short side to it. It is not deficient in some way based on the other ones. They are all equal, and there is more flexibility at a different price point. I don't integrate with extra partners and have to deal with whatever they have. In the long run, it would be just the devil in the details when it comes to hardware.

It was the second cluster we wanted. We started using it in 2017 or 2018.

The customer service from my partner and from Nutanix directly is unrivaled. At Nutanix NEXT 2024, somebody was on stage saying that he treats Nutanix as a part of his business, and that is probably the most apt way of phrasing it. I implement it. I see it as an extension of my knowledge or support, so I get to call people and people show up. I do not call hotlines and put in tickets. It is like having two extra guys on your staff that you do not pay for. 

I would rate them a ten out of ten. If possible, I would even rate them an eleven. There is not one bad instance that I can think of. 

Positive

We used other products, but it would have been ad hoc.

It is all on-prem. Its initial deployment was pretty straightforward. We had deployed a few clusters before, so it was not a big deal to get the cluster up, but it was interesting to learn the lessons. You think you have all the storage and you can outsmart the unified storage environment by creating a FAT VM, and then I will give it a bunch of storage space. What you realize is that you do not get the benefits of unified storage without using unified storage. Just because you have storage does not mean that it works the way it is supposed to. You learn those lessons. You think that you can outsmart these guys and realize that you cannot. In the long run, it was easy. Once the cluster was up and running, it was just making sure our licenses and other factors were in place.

It is very intuitive. There is a wizard guide for creating shares, objects, etc. It is pretty easy.

The biggest return on investment is that it frees up revenue and the data center space cost of dealing with power, cooling, etc because now I can just put more Nutanix in there when needed. It never outgrows itself. As these nodes get denser and smarter, racks stay the same. When I scale out, I never need ten more racks of equipment. I can just fill out some older nodes, and they are now denser, so I stay in the same footprint. That to me is the biggest benefit.

We are not using Nutanix Data Lens. It is probably something I should do.

We are not using much to protect unstructured data in our organization. Most of the infrastructure data that we get is in huge datasets. We store that on larger storage platforms that are designed specifically to hold petabytes of data and then it is read into Nutanix clusters for analytic purposes. I do not have to deal with it. I am pulling from somebody else who hosts huge data frames.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a ten out of ten.

We use it for our application servers. We have company applications for the casino, hotel, and food and beverage. 

The cost has been the main benefit. It is a cheaper cost than what we used to use, which was VMware and Dell. Now it is cheaper in terms of hardware and licensing, and that has helped financially. It being up and available helps too.

The throughput is really good, and it has low latency. I would describe it as good on speed and good on not being latent. We have not had any problems with data-intensive workloads.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage will eventually result in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. We are still migrating, so I cannot say that it has done that yet, but it appears that it will. We are still in the process of putting it in. Overall, it would be nice to reduce by 50%.

Redundancy and availability are valuable. We have several nodes, so it stays up, and there is redundancy. Then there is availability. We have all those nodes, so it is always on 24/7.

There should be more information. If it gets used more by more people, they will have a bigger community to share ideas. It is still kind of newer. It is not as big as Dell and other companies. It is still newer. The older it gets, the better it will get.

We have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for about one year.

It is pretty stable. We have not had any outages, so it has been stable so far.

Its scalability is probably pretty good. I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability. It seems that we can scale up pretty large if we want to.

We only have one main data center, but we are going to have a newer data center in the next year, and we are going to use it there too.

It can be slightly improved, but mostly, it is good.

Positive

We were using VMware and Dell. We switched mostly because of the cost. VMware increased the cost by 110%, so it was not economical to have anymore, whereas with Nutanix, once you buy the hardware, the hypervisor is included for free, so it is a better deal.

It is on-prem. Everything is on-prem.

Its deployment was easy. The tenants' move was pretty seamless. It was not necessarily a hard thing to do to migrate over. Now we were worried about the more intensive servers and databases and whatnot that may potentially have an effect on our company, but for all the smaller applications that are not as revenue-generating, they have been good so far.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we analyzed and defined levels of how critical and revenue-generating the applications were. We first did everything that was not supercritical, such as a very small database and whatnot, and then started to increase from there.

We use Nutanix Consulting, not a third party.

The ROI is in terms of the yearly cost or maintenance cost.

Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower.

We evaluated other solutions a little bit. We were not going to go to Citrix or anything else, so it was only Nutanix. That was our only option. 

We use NetApp MetroCluster to protect unstructured data in our organization. It has its own set of ransomware security. I do not have the exact details about it, but NetApp products have some ransomware capability to detect environments. These tools are very important for our organization. In our industry, there are lots of ransomware attacks, and they happen to all our competitors. That is why they are super important.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. It seems very good, but it needs to get slightly better.

We run our VMs on Nutanix Unified Storage. We were trying to reduce the data center footprint and shrink the bandwidths on the number of storage units that we were using. We also wanted to avoid having to deal with different vendors when there is an issue. We have a 700 TB environment.

We use Varonis for ransomware protection. It's very expensive, but it does a very good job. Varonis monitors file pattern changes and maintains well-known dictionary sets.

The life cycle managers of the PCMs are very impressive, and I like them. They make our lives easy when managing patches and security updates when they come in. A life cycle manager helps to consolidate different vendors.

Also, because the management is simplified, I can depend on one or two people. We are able to reduce contractors and FTEs. We used to be a team of more than ten people, and now we are a team of six. As such, we are able to save about $400,000 a year.

We have to run mandatory disaster recovery processes every year. It's very important that Nutanix Unified Storage is able to manage and run our storage from any location.

Nutanix Unified Storage removed siloes from our organization’s storage.

Security is an area for improvement. When there are vulnerabilities, there needs to be a faster approval process. The solution needs to automatically target the vulnerabilities and not waste too much time.

We have been Nutanix customers for two years.

NUS's stability is very good.

Nutanix's technical support is good. They go the extra mile to help us out with health checks as well. Therefore, I would give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

NUS's initial setup was straightforward.

Our partner, CAS Severn, helped us with the initial deployment process.

I believe that we have seen an ROI.

I would recommend trying Nutanix Unified Storage. I rate it a nine out of ten.

We use Nutanix Unified Storage for virtualization with Acropolis and have approximately 120 servers on Nutanix.

We replaced our entire infrastructure with Nutanix, greatly reducing data center space and consumption, which has helped the company. Everything we have today runs on top of Nutanix.

Unified Storage has reduced the number of storage nodes needed by about 60 percent. We had nearly two racks in the data center, and now we have less than half a rack. It has helped us put fewer resources into data center expansion, and by reducing them, we can put more computing power in the same space.

We have virtually zero downtime with Nutanix. It updates itself, and we can easily move machines from one cluster to another. Through its hyperconvergence, Nutanix performs comparably to traditional hardware or better.

I think that recently, about two years ago I imagine, Nutanix added a better feature on the platform and now it competes with the best on the market. I think the add-on feature they used is very good.

While Unified Storage has evolved a lot over time, its database handling needs to improve a little. There could be an improvement in terms of costs. It's a little expensive for Brazil but still delivers a lot of performance.

I have used Nutanix Unified Storage for eight years.

Nutanix Unified Storage is highly stable. We haven’t had any issues.

Over time, Unified Storage's versions changed, and its capacity also increased a lot. Eventually, you also need to upgrade the hardware version, but it is highly scalable and easy.

I rate Nutanix nine out of 10 for support. Nutanix support is one of the best on the market. They respond quickly, and the technicians are knowledgeable and professional. 

Positive

It's easy and transparent to deploy servers on Nutanix. We started with some servers to test. Once we saw there were no major problems and the installation was quick, we implemented the entire load..

We use a consultancy from Brazil called Tech Channel, which supports us to this day. We are here at the event with them.

The biggest benefits are performance, security of use, and a single management platform.

Nutanix's licensing model isn't too difficult, but the price is high for Brazil, and the software renewal is considerable. 

I rate Nutanix nine out of 10. It is extraordinary, and the price is okay.

My company started off without Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor initially. After three years we migrated to Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor and started to increase it in our company's environment with other clusters during the designing phase.

The product has been helpful for my company because we deal with big projects in the data center infrastructure, and we see that with Nutanix Unified Storage, we can improve and get better results for the company.

The most valuable features of the solution are replication and backup and our company needs a tool to help us with disaster recovery and the security of our data.

Some of the new features in the tool cannot be used with just one click, as was possible in the past. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads, such as AI or data analytics, is better in the present compared to the past. In the past, my company faced some small problems with the latency part, but nowadays, it works very well.

In terms of the use of detecting and blocking ransomware threats, I would say that my company applies some configurations to all the data so that the other people in the environment involved in the administration part can't delete them. If someone tries to attack and delete some data, then my company has a feature in the tool to enable the protection of data so that no one can delete any data.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. In the past, my company had more servers and appliances, but nowadays, we have reduced the number of appliances in the data center by around six percent. The reduction in storage nodes has affected our company's operation and business in terms of the cost of energy, environment, administration, and contracts for continuing the business in the data center.

In terms of the tools used to protect unstructured data, my company replicates the environment in one data center to another and one Nutanix cluster to another Nutanix cluster.

It is very important to use the data protection features offered by Nutanix in our company because we can have another point of data in a separate cluster of Nutanix.

My company analyzed a traditional architecture, but we saw a better solution in Nutanix because it is small, and we can run the same appliance everywhere.

The new solutions that users have been seeing for the past one or two years don't have features available in one click like they were in the past, but they do work, though it is not as easy as it was in the past.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for eight years.

It is a stable solution. My company did not have to stop anything in our environment due to any problem associated with Nutanix Unified Storage.

During the eight years that we have had the product in our company, we haven't seen any problems during the three times we used the tool's scalability feature in the environment. During some moments, we were able to improve the same clusters. At times, our company had to buy or order new clusters, but every cluster is actually used for replication, and it has never been a problem.

During the eight years my company has used the product, I would say that we have had some experience with the tool's support team. Whenever my company requires help with the product, we have received good support. I rate the support team a nine out of ten.

Positive

In the past, my company used to use some other solutions for replication purposes, but it was not a native solution of the appliances used. My company used to use another solution like a backup solution, which was a tool to restore a queue manager from IBM.

The product's initial setup phase was easy, especially because my company was planning to move some small workloads on it to see how it works and then continue with the other biggest work.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

My company sought help from a partner company in Brazil named TechChannel to help our organization with the deployment.

The security of the data and replication are areas where I see an ROI from the use of the solution. I think the best ROI is in terms of security since we can save the data in other appliances.

My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We use it for daily operations, primarily to store our enterprise data.

In the beginning, when we first started using Nutanix, we wanted a single solution that could handle both file and block-level data. So it's a single platform, and we also needed inbuilt ransomware protection.

So, we found that Nutanix was the best solution for that. We also researched the deployment process and found it to be quite easy. 

Additionally, we had a POC with them and saw that the interface is user-friendly, making it possible to use it without extensive training.

Nutanix successfully adapts to difficult or challenging life experiences

When it comes to resiliency, Nutanix has built-in redundancy. We can create snapshots with detection, de-duplication, and completion of all the data. So, it's very easy to have replications of free data. If any attacks happen, we still have the data with us.

We are able to store a large amount of data without needing multiple solutions. Nutanix can be scaled for storage and computing independently, which makes us more cost-efficient.

It also simplifies data management operations, giving the speed and flexibility to build more modern applications in on-prem, cloud, and edge environments.

It also protects unstructured data from ransomware and other cyberattacks.

Unified Storage has a remote feature that allows you to manage data from various geographical locations.

Our sales representative can direct us to the appropriate resource, whether it's a PSC, an SE with the system, or someone else who can help. Additionally, if we create a ticket directly with their support team, they have very good product knowledge and are really helpful.

If we are stuck a problem – not necessarily a bug, but just need help navigating something – do we contact our sales representative first, and they can route us to the right resource.

If bugs occur, they work on them and release fixes as early as possible.

First of all, we like the user interface, which is quite easy. And it helps our day-to-day operations very easily; we can do it very easily. 

And afterward, the pre-sales guys are very supportive whenever you get stuck in anything. They will help you on that day. I really have good hands-on experience with the product, and also the support team is very strong.

The flexibility is great. We can easily integrate it with other products as well. Like, it is designed to scale up and scale out easily, allowing the organization to store as much capacity as they need.

We can easily store and manage unstructured data, such as audio and video, in Unified Storage without any extra work.

From a management side, the one thing I would prefer is if it were a bit less expensive for smaller enterprises. It's a bit costly. 

If they provided flexible modules where you could pick and choose features, and only pay for what you use, that would be an improvement.

I've been using it for about two and a half years.

We've observed some occasional lagging when transferring large amounts of data – many GBs at once. This could be due to network factors or something else, but it's not severe. 

For smaller datasets, the transfer happens in real time with no lag.

Nutanix has a good team of people on the technical support side. Usually, when we log a ticket, a support engineer promptly assists us through a remote session or email. 

One thing I want to highlight is that they have excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.

Positive

We used a storage solution from Dell. My company has a policy that requires us to change our security products every five years. 

So, we were looking for a stable and superior product, and after thorough research on the community, we found that Nutanix offered the best solution with its single-platform approach.

We also use the Nutanix Hypervisor (AHV). However, we haven't done the integration because we keep our storage separate.

We had a POC first. During the POC, we worked closely with the sales team alongside the engineers, and it was pretty easy to deploy. 

Once we decided to purchase, the full deployment only took about one or two months. If all prerequisites are ready, it can even be done in under 20 days.

We use the cloud deployment model.

On the Nutanix team, we probably needed around two people. We also had support from our network and security teams, in addition to someone managing the Nutanix deployment itself.

Every product needs maintenance, but with Nutanix, it's mostly about software upgrades. They provide an excellent user interface, and with every release, they resolve issues from previous versions.

It is worth the price. Your investment will be in safe hands. 

The pricing is a bit too high. I would like more flexibility. 

We considered Commvault, but our management and overall team felt that Nutanix was a better solution.

On a scale of ten, I'd give Dell an eight out of ten for security features. And Nutanix a nine out of ten rating.

I'd definitely say go for it. It's a great product. My main advice is to negotiate the pricing with the vendor. Beyond that, it integrates well with your current network environment and should work without needing major changes or disrupting your existing setup.

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

It is a great solution for small enterprises looking for storage options. While it is a bit expensive, the value provided by Nutanix justifies the investment. Your investment will be in safe hands.

We are a managed services provider, and we customize solutions for every use case. For example, we have a client who built up file servers on Azure and found it very cost prohibitive. Thus, they wanted to move back into Nutanix Unified Storage to reduce costs. Our clients have seen a 7% to 10% reduction in storage costs. We have been able to achieve a 4:1 compression using Nutanix Unified Storage.

We have one client who is currently doing a POC with Nutanix Data Lens.

We have been able to improve efficiency metrics such as performance, dedup, and energy savings by using Nutanix Unified Storage.

One of our clients has 14 different locations, and having a single pane of glass with Nutanix Unified Storage would be a great help for them. We would not have to create 14 different consoles.

Nutanix needs to improve their cybersecurity options at the storage level.

We've been working with this solution for a year.

We have not seen any issues with the stability of the solution.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. With a few clicks, you can stand your storage up. It reduces the overall life cycle of deployment within the ecosystem.

We have seen an ROI. When we build a solution for a five or six-year contract, we factor in the total cost of ownership. The total cost of ownership for Nutanix is very competitive.

Compared to other solutions, Nutanix Unified Storage is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance.

I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage and rate it a ten out of ten. You will be able to bring in scalability and flexibility.