Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Reviews

I am not using it currently. I tested a few things a while ago. This is something that we will probably adopt mid-term.

I am not a storage guy. I am a Nutanix guy. I got a question from my boss about what Nutanix can offer, especially for the Nutanix environment. There is a limitation that Nutanix is not able to use any other storage solution or external storage solution. It is NFS inside the VM. We wanted some block storage, so I started to experiment with the Nutanix solution.

There is ease of use. We use other third-party solutions in our environment for storage. The challenge that we have is that we do not have enough people. If someone is going on a vacation, I have to take care of a few things in this area, such as configuring new NFS storage, and trust me, some of the other vendors are very complicated. It is hard to deal with simple things, whereas the solution from Nutanix is simple and intuitive. If I show it to a colleague just once, he will be able to do things easily. It is very good.

I could not test it much for resilience, but overall, we never had any issues with the Nutanix products that we use. We never had data loss or any data-related issues. The performance is also very good. Even though my testing was not deep enough, I am confident it is a great solution. It is a very easy one.

Nutanix Unified Storage is great for helping manage and run storage from any location.

I like that we can have Nutanix clusters for VMs and files. That means we have data locality when we use the NFS storage somewhere else. When you use an external vendor, you do not have the data locality.

The interface is quite simple. It is very good. It is easy to configure. It also has a powerful CLI. In the few hours that I was playing with it, I did not explore the power of it, but I noticed that CLI has potential. Because of its simplicity, the interface can lack some options, but I am pretty sure that any lack of features in the UI can be compensated by the CLI.

Its interface is very simplistic. It is a good thing for people because of the ease of use, but at times, I find it too simplistic. It is hard to find advanced options. They should eventually expand it and provide additional drop-down lists or menus with advanced feature sets. They should expand it with some additional menus and options so that we can do more. Currently, Nutanix is too simple, whereas, with other vendors, you get lost among all the buttons and menus. Nutanix is doing all that simply, but if you keep it too simple, you miss the options to do things through the UI.

The routing of their support cases could be better.

I had a test cluster for two weeks, and I was logging in from time to time. It was more of experimenting than testing. I had my test cluster, and I played around for a few hours.

It was a great experience to use it for files for two weeks.

I can rate it a ten out of ten for stability, but I need to fully test it to provide real feedback.

I did not test it in a big environment, but looking at how Nutanix works, I would say it is scalable. You just add more nodes and storage to expand, and this is familiar with the concept. I am confident in its scalability.

We are a company with about 700 people. We had two people testing it. It was me and my colleague, but he barely tested it.

I have mixed sentiments. If my case reaches the right person, it goes well. It is not about the people. It is about the way the case is routed. We are based in Europe. Usually during the day, our case lands in Asia or EMEA. The India team works till One o'clock our time. If I raise a case an hour before their shift ends, it still goes to them. That is not okay. They are going home. Why assign the case to them? These kinds of things bother us.

I would rate their support a seven out of ten because I know that the others are very bad. As compared to other companies, Nutanix is still doing better. Otherwise, I would have rated it a five out of ten.

Neutral

Its deployment is simple. It took a few days because I was installing it for the first time, so I had to read more, but the second time, I will be able to deploy it maximum in a day.

Nutanix Unified Storage consolidates block, file, and object storage. It is a great idea. I like it, but I am a bit reluctant to put everything into the same cluster. If you have virtualization and storage with all its features, such as block, file, and object, in one cluster, I am not sure what the impact will be in case of any kind of failure. For me, it would be too much. It is nice to have it all, but I am wary of putting too many things in one box.

I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage. I am also in discussion with my manager to start using it.

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

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.

My customers use the solution for storage purposes.

The solution is a repository with redundancy and faster access than the Windows server.

The most valuable feature of Nutanix Unified Storage is redundancy.

The solution should include more protocols to access data.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage since 2020.

Nutanix Unified Storage is a stable solution.

The solution’s technical support is very good. The technical support team is fast, competent, and correctly provides technical details.

Positive

I previously used Windows File Server.

The solution’s initial setup and the transfer of the files are very easy.

We have seen a return on investment with Nutanix Unified Storage.

Before choosing Nutanix Unified Storage, we evaluated SUSE.

We don't face latency issues because the solution provides fast access.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage has reduced the number of storage nodes due to increased storage capacity per node. We have a six-node cluster, which was double that size earlier.

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

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. 

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.

We normally use it to create servers and manage them. We use four nodes. We have one cluster with four nodes for our production servers, Active Directory, etc.

Nutanix Unified Storage has helped us digitalize. Our mission is to digitalize the administration in Morocco. It has helped us to apply our strategy very fast, and it has been very helpful.

We have not had any issues with the throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage. I am satisfied with its throughput and latency.

We have not had any ransomware attacks. It seems to be doing great at detecting and blocking ransomware threats.

Implementing Nutanix Unified Storage has not resulted in a reduction in the number of storage nodes. It is the same.

I like its interface. It is very interactive and simple to use.

Its licensing can be better. They can make it easier for us to scale our infrastructure.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage since 2021.

It is very stable. We rarely faced any bugs or errors. It happened only a couple of times in three years, so it is good.

We are trying to do that. We have not done it before. We want to add two or three nodes. We will see.

I used their support twice. It was very fast. I am satisfied with the troubleshooting method that they use. I would rate them a solid nine out of ten.

Positive

We did not use any other solution previously. This is the first one.

We are using it on-premises. We are a governmental organization, so we want our data to be very safe.

Its initial setup was a little bit complex, but with the help of our partner, it went smoothly.

We did not have any implementation strategy as such.

We used a partner. They are a reseller and integrator. Their company is called MTS. Our experience with them was very good.

We have not yet seen an ROI.

The licensing should be more flexible.

Its cost is a little bit more than what we want, but if we consider the quality and the price, it is okay. It is fair.

We evaluated other solutions. While deciding, we first considered the cost and whether it could meet our needs. We then tried to choose the best one for us. 

To protect unstructured data, we are using a backup solution. We try to make redundancy for every server. We also take snapshots regularly to make our data safe in any disaster.

I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a nine out of ten because I feel comfortable using it. I feel comfortable with the support and scalability, but its price stops it from making it a ten. If they decrease the price, it would be a ten.

We use the solution to replace the Microsoft file server. The solution ensures that the Microsoft file server is reachable and you always have your infrastructure in place. With Nutanix Unified Storage, you can synchronize the other locations.

Nutanix Unified Storage is quite easy to manage and back up everything.

The most valuable features of the solution are high availability and synchronization to another location. Just in case it goes down, then you always have your data. Nutanix Unified Storage is easy to implement, and the way the architecture is built is very good.

The solution has already improved a lot. The first time we used it, we ran into boundaries. Since then, the solution has become more mature.

The throughput or latency of Nutanix Unified Storage for data-intensive workloads is one of the better things we see. It's like expanding storage and two times doing nothing. If you have to do that in other systems, it takes more work and care. The storage in Nutanix is better organized and more flexible.

We have used the demo version of Nutanix Data Lens, which is okay from what we saw. Our organization is considering using Data Lens because it gives insights into what's happening with our data, which is interesting.

We have several security measures in place that are very important for our organization.

There are still some gaps in the solution's synchronization that could be improved.

I have been using Nutanix Unified Storage for two years and three months.

Nutanix Unified Storage has been a stable solution in the past.

Nutanix Unified Storage is a scalable solution.

The solution's technical support was horrible in the past. We addressed it to Nutanix, and they took it seriously, created an action plan, and adapted it. Afterward, the support improved, and now we have a direct channel to them. The engineers are also good.

Positive

We previously used the Microsoft file server. We switched to Nutanix Unified Storage because the business had a requirement for heavy availability. That was one of the biggest reasons we wanted a different solution, as it was not easy with Microsoft.

The solution’s initial setup was not easy.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team. We found errors in the guide provided by Nutanix, so the information that went out to us was wrong. We found the issue, experimented, and found a solution. Nutanix wasn't aware of the issue and rewrote its manual. Each time we went back to Nutanix, we found out what was wrong and correctly deployed the solution the second time.

The biggest return on investment with the solution is high availability because it costs a lot of money if the tool goes down.

The solution’s pricing could be cheaper.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven 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.