Dell Networker vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dell Networker
Score 5.7 out of 10
N/A
Dell NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.N/A
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Nutanix in San Jose, California offers their software-defined Enterprise Cloud as a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. The Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure solution combines the Nutanix Acropolis virtualization solution, Nutanix AHV hypervisor (though Acropolis works with other hypervisors), Prism cluster manager, Nutanix Calm and Nutanix Flow server management, and is available on the Nutanix NX series of server hardware appliances, as well as third-party OEM appliances.N/A
Pricing
Dell NetworkerNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell NetworkerNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Dell NetworkerNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Features
Dell NetworkerNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Data Center Backup
Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Product A and Product B
Dell Networker
5.0
Ratings
52% below category average
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
-
Ratings
Universal recovery5.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Instant recovery6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Recovery verification6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Business application protection4.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple backup destinations3.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Incremental backup identification4.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Backup to the cloud5.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Deduplication and file compression6.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Snapshots6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Flexible deployment2.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Management dashboard4.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform support3.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Retention options4.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Encryption7.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Dell NetworkerNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Small Businesses
Cove Data Protection
Cove Data Protection
Score 9.9 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.2 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.2 out of 10
VMware vSAN
VMware vSAN
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Dell NetworkerNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
1.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
3.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.3
(0 ratings)
9.7
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
1.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Dell NetworkerNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Likelihood to Recommend
For users with a basic backup system that does not provide advanced data protection this is a life saver in the age we live in where hackers are looking to encrypt and ruin your important backups. I would recommend [Dell EMC Networker] based on its features, price, and ease of use. If you have a similar product already it does not offer many unique features however.
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For an organization that requires top-notch performance HCI, Nutanix is the best. You may start with 3 nodes and expand the cluster as required. The management through Nutanix Prism Central and Element was so easy that even a Junior Engineer was able to handle it. The Nutanix platform is not suitable for organizations with a small budget and fewer requirements for high-performance infrastructure, as the Nutanix solution itself is suited for enterprises.
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Pros
  • Networker has a UI and set that is relatively easy to use. It has a policy-based backup system that is straightforward as far as configuration.
  • Networker has fairly robust reporting on current save sets and easily exportable pdfs and spreadsheets of statistics and metrics
  • Networker has a monitoring dialogue which allows you to find out quickly what has succeeded or failed.
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  • "Nutanix is an operating system playing inside an existing, rich IT ecosystem." Listen to Wendy M. Pfeiffer, CIO of Nutanix, as she shares game-changing results with the implementation of infrastructure-as-code.
  • With one-click simplicity, Nutanix AOS streamlines IT operations and relieves budget pressures by integrating storage, networking, and compute services into a single solution managed by IT generalists. Start small and scale without limit to meet business demands.
  • Deliver applications with the highest possible performance throughout the full lifecycle, not just day one. Provide reliable performance SLAs without worrying about workload changes or growth in application demands.
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Cons
  • Networker terminology is awful. My favorite example is that many required-to-function configuration changes need to occur with the advanced configuration enabled. To make this worse, the 'advanced configuration' I am speaking of is actually called 'Debug Mode'. That's right, you must use debug mode in order to have a functional administrator interface.
  • Errors are common and to resolve you often must go to support. You really need to be an expert to fix many errors, the steps usually involve being really knowledgeable in the CLI tools, which I am getting good at, but the public documentation is seriously lacking for troubleshooting these issues. That said, support (through emc) is really good at handling the common issues, friendly, generally knowledgeable, and quick to respond.
  • It runs on Java, and sometimes I need to clear java cache to fix interface bugs. Generally this isn't an issue, but it is additional software you must worry about.
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  • Can be priced high at times.
  • The one downside I have working with Nutanix is the sales team. They seem to try to add in extra goodies to sales quotes or push for extras that you don't really need and you have to tell them to take them out. Don't be afraid to push back on them.
  • Need to analyze sizing with sales team to ensure right sizing.
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Likelihood to Renew
There are three reasons for not renewing our use of NetWorker: 1) the rising and extremely high cost of support and proprietary hardware needed for deduplication, 2) the complete unreliability of the product (we couldn't recover from a true disaster if we wanted to), and 3) the horrible support from EMC for the product
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AOS definitely make our dev/test virtual environment management much easier than before. And the consolidation the test/dev environment from Azure and Cisco UCS, we have less need to transfer large amount of data between different hardware platforms which was very big challenge. To expand the capacity is very easy to archive as well.
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Usability
NetWorker has the clunkiest interface and unfriendliest CLI with which I have ever had to work. I spent three years hating this application because it took ALL of my time just to keep it running. Even then, I had no confidence in our ability to recover from a disaster because of its unreliability.
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It's not out of the box easy, but once you get the fundamentals the steep learning curve flattens out and the processes to get things done and how it works becomes very apparent. It's wrapping the slight change in workflow from prior VM management methods took time to unbox and apply the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure way
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
We have not had any Nutanix availability issues over the years.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Nutanix AOS performance is light years ahead of HPE. We were nervous about using Nutanix AHV but it has been a vast improvement and saves on cost. Applications has been much improved and end users have commented. It has also freed up time for our Network Administrators and made their lives easier.
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Support Rating
The support team has always been good, and there is never an issue that can't be resolved. The techs are competent and know the product. The slightly less than perfect rating I'm giving is because Support shouldn't carry the burden themselves. We hear from Dell sales people all the time, but they never call and ask about this product, nor do they offer to upsell it or make it better. That lack of sales support and coherence hurts the overall rating a bit. When I spend my company's money on your product, I expect you to at least ACT like you care, if not actually care for real. It influences my opinion and future purchasing habits.
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Nutanix provide top tier support - their only rival in this field in my experience is Rubrik. Their sales and the aftersales team really put the effort in to make the initial install an easy process to complete and support we've required post that has been expertly handled. Their support's first point of contact is the equivalent of 3rd line at other vendors and they're always more than willing to explain concepts to help us better understand the issue/solution provided.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
We requested more training than typical which was very in depth
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
A lot of online training courses, most of them are free.
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Implementation Rating
How can anyone build a house without a blueprint? NetWorker was ramrodded into place here without a design or implementation plan. The result was a setup that was doomed from the start and never worked reliable over the full three years of our contract obligation.
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IPv6 is needed for link local discovery. We do not have IPv6 configured on our network so the easiest way to get our nodes configured and discovered by foundation was to configure the IPv4 addressing within the node prior to trying to discover with foundation.
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Alternatives Considered
Our trust in DataDomain as a premier deduplication technology naturally leads to [Dell EMC] Networker being the appropriate backup application to integrate with. Networker provides the most favorable dedup with DataDomain when compared to other backup technologies, and provides the highest combination of protection flexibility and performance that most other applications cannot provide. For example, Veeam provides excellent VM backup capability, but is unable to protect Meditech. If you go down the list of backup applications, you'll find that Networker is unique in what it is able to protect and in its backup performance.
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vSAN on VXrail and a Cisco Flashstack was our two existing systems before bringing in a Nutanix cluster. The performance of Nutanix HCI was far better than vSAN's performance (hybrid vs. hybrid and AF vs. AF.) However, Pure does deliver on its claim of being the fastest storage possible, which is true. However, the flashstacks management and complex setup do not compare to the ease of using Nutanix HCI.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Can add on new cluster and join it to existing cluster
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Return on Investment
  • Now that it's been implemented and the many kinks worked out, we have far less exposure to downtime, but that's only because we didn't have an adequate backup solution in the target environment initially. We used native tools to protect SQL data and a few other tricks, but really didn't have anything proper. In other words, the bar was low.
  • We have reduced the load on some of our application servers through the use of Networker's agent for Microsoft. However, compare that with Veeam, which just has a checkbox and no agent required to properly back up a SQL box.
  • Agent-based backups require monitoring and periodic updates. This adds complexity and additional staff time to manage.
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  • Found an immediate reclamation of time. SAN's are a pain to manage and update - Nutanix made turned a couple hours of work into one click.
  • They are a software company. Every Time they come out with an update I find my performance improving, or a new feature added. Soon I'll be able to give my developers controlled self-service capabilities. I originally bought hardware and it's evolving on me into a private cloud in a box.
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ScreenShots