Nutanix AHV vs. Scale Computing Platform

[Nutanix AOS] is good when you need easy scaling and high reliability. The good architecture of the solution allows to solve the tasks set for the platform. This solution allows to reduce the number of personnel serving the infrastructure due to the ease of management and a good knowledge base. As a disadvantage, I would attribute the complexity of customizing some types of loads to optimal work on DFS, for example, high-load databases.

Incentivized

Scale is best suited to environments that do not have excessive external or proprietary peripherals. Integrating with tape drive backups or robot tape libraries can be problematic. The most effective use of Scale systems is for companies running multiple instances of the same operating system. The hypervisor's code/file-sharing nature does an excellent job managing new instances while keeping the increase in storage to a minimum.

• One component to support both compute and storage needs for virtualization.
• Easy expandable as business needs arise both at the node level and larger with blocks.
• Well outlined interface with good historical data.
• API tools are available to obtain logging information from Nutanix that can be used with other monitoring tools such as Splunk.

Incentivized

• Simplicity - I do not have to create storage buckets or micromanage anything.
• Efficiency - Lower power use since moving to a hyperconverged environment.
• Scalability - Adding additional hardware is easy, and increasing things like the amount of RAM or number of cores is easy.

Incentivized

• Management of VMs on AHV take some getting used to. It's just a list of VMs that are displayed, and you search through it. Not the normal folder structure that I'm used to in VMware.
• Also can't disable a NIC card in a VM in AHV. Very handy feature present in VMware.
• Larger workloads may have to be tweaked to get the performance you need/want.

Incentivized

• Display the IP address of the node on which the VM is running on the Devices (gear icon) tab. This would allow me to manage my Microsoft license easier.
• During the on-boarding I missed the step to install the Scale Computing Platform tools, and we didn't notice this until I had issues with backups. It would be helpful if some kind of alert notification would display on a VM card if the tools were not installed.
• Add a new health or diagnostics tab that would display alerts, diagnostic tools, performance concerns or pattern anomalies.
• Some kind of email/alert when a disk reaches near capacity

Incentivized

We made a huge financial investment with this platform (four clusters, all-flash storage array), so we're in it for the long haul. Luckily it's a beast. I've had to use support more than any other platform I've administered, but the help has been very good. Nutanix continues to add features and innovations which increase the ROI

Incentivized

I'm on the fence about renewing the support contract. The reliability of the HC3 makes it difficult to spend the cost of the renewal which is higher than the costs prior to Scale. I'm convinced if we were a larger district that the savings would be tremendous and I wouldn't hesitate to renew. In our specific situation, it may be more feasible to pay per incident.

Incentivized

Nutanix Prism Element and Prism Central are easy-to-use HTML5-based web consoles. The layout makes sense; you're only a few clicks away from getting to where you need to be. The AHV hypervisor is integrated into the platform for a fast and seamless experience. Rich data on VM metrics is also available.

Incentivized

Everything you need to do is point-and-click easy. If you are the kind of admin who wants to edit every config file and endlessly customize your environment, then Scale may not be for you. On the other hand, if you just want it to work really well, and do what they told you it will do, then Scale is the ideal system.

Incentivized

Never had an outage or an error. Once a hard drive failed, but Scale kept on working flawlessly without interruption.

Incentivized

The performance is very impressive. I am used to VMware and the snapshots were taking 10 minutes. The first time I had to restore from a snapshot on Nutanix it took 5 seconds and I couldn't believe it. Everything done on the server is fast. Powering on VM is done in seconds compared.to what we were using before.

Incentivized

Performance has been just as outstanding as reliability. I have never experienced delays in any aspect of usage.

Incentivized

Our first support ticket to Nutanix was responded to within 10 minutes of submission. That was kind of impressive. They have worldwide support so that when a support request is created, support is acknowledged in a relative short amount of time.

Incentivized

We had one need for support post-setup, and the person who answered the phone was the support person I needed. No transfer, no level one, and our accents were similar enough that we understood each other easily. The problem was actually in my switch, not with Scale, but the support person still assisted me and got the entire cluster up and running again in under 30 minutes. They are truly a partner not just a vendor.

Incentivized

I did not do in-person training.

Incentivized

Because Scale is so simple, the training is just as quick and easy.

Incentivized

The implementation was very easy. We had Scale support on standby and they were ready and eager to help if needed. The process went so fast the employees in the organization did not even know it was done.

Incentivized

By far, in my opinion, Nutanix AOS is heads above VMware. From the creation of a VM to updating the nodes themselves, Nutanix AOS is so much easier, faster, and just an overall better product. I would choose Nutanix AOS over VMware any day.

As mentioned previously, not having to worry about the compatibility between your hardware, hypervisor, and VM OS is a great help. On the downside, there is less ability to get deep in the weeds with your own system. Much of the Scale HyperCore OS is locked down intentionally, which prevents technical users from having much insight on broad error messages without support intervention.

HC3 is one of the best products I have purchased for our district. It is unbelievably reliable to the point that they shoot themselves in the foot on support contracts.

Incentivized

• It is a highly redundant solution
• Nutanix [AOS] provides a simple easy to manage HCI platform with a reduced TCO and an increased ROI
• Centralized management solution of consolidated sever and storage solution in a virtualized environment which minimizes wastage of valuable resourses
• Offers businesses the agility and flexibility to run other virtualized platforms on the Nutanix environment

Incentivized

• With the high cost of the leading competitor the savings starts day one and saves every year after.
• Scale can be administered by a tier one technician so cost of labor is reduced.
• If there is a problem like a cyber attack, the savings kick in with the least amount of downtime.

Incentivized