Microsoft Azure vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
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
Microsoft AzureNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Editions & Modules
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft AzureNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft AzureNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Features
Microsoft AzureNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
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Microsoft AzureNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
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Score 8.7 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
VMware vSAN
VMware vSAN
Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
Microsoft AzureNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(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
8.0
(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
Microsoft AzureNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Likelihood to Recommend
Actually, migrating to Microsoft Azure is a good solution for almost any situation, especially when all components of your network are ready to become cloud-based. The only drawback I personally encounter frequently is that older software packages cannot always be easily picked up and moved to Microsoft Azure in an optimal manner.
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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
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
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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
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
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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
We have been very satisfied with Windows Azure and now a lot of our business depends on it as more teams are now deploying their applications into Azure. Our next step is to have our Infrastructure team move their resources to Azure. It will take awhile for that to happen but we are positive that it will.
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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
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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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
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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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
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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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
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
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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
I feel that Microsoft Azure typically outperforms Google Cloud Platform in hybrid cloud capabilities, integration aspects, and, primarily, security compliance features. Azure offered superior integration with Microsoft's enterprise software ecosystem, and it's second to none in my opinion. This made it the natural choice for most, especially if heavily invested in Windows, Office 365, or Active Directory deployments. We chose Azure over GCP because we simply needed Windows workload support as a strong driver, more access to global regions, and let's not forget that most tech teams in an organization are Microsoft Certified, which makes skillset transfer from on-prem to cloud a minimal learning curve over shifting to a different provider.
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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
  • Times and growth went into it. By balancing on-premises maintenance with continuous cloud improvements, we’ve budgeted and planned endlessly increased capacity.
  • In today’s world of cyber-crime, clients can put even more faith in what they’ve heard. We built an innovative single-sign-on hub for all users. Also, other business platforms use Azure application gateways, reducing worker switching time and increasing productivity.
  • Its step can automate to improve the investment. In addition, we can integrate our organization’s credentials into an authorization for other systems.
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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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