We performed a comparison between Nutanix Acropolis AOS series and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the solution our users prefer when looking for an HCI solution. It is user-friendly and offers simple operating system features, easy installation, and excellent centralized administration. VxRail users are happier with that solution’s pricing, however.
"They offer top-tier support."
"The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices."
"When we need additional storage but want to keep the size of the SANs manageable, the StarWind Virtual SAN has allowed me to do everything needed."
"It has a nice, simple control panel. You can clearly see the state and health of storage along with the synchronization."
"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."
"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"The product gave us a cost-effective way to deploy a highly available server environment."
"It supports multi-cloud integration that includes AWS, Google, and Azure."
"There are a lot of things I really like. Perhaps the best part is taking a snapshot of a virtual machine. It's very quick. Another useful part is replication and creating a protection domain: using the protection feature to replicate a machine to a remote site for DR purposes."
"One of the most valuable features is the One-Click Upgrade. When I need to update the system, I do it with one click. This product is amazing because everything is easy to manage, from network management to snapshots."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's most valuable features are all the cloud facilities or benefits it provides for my data center."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its software Move, which we use to migrate virtual info from another platform to the Nutanix platform."
"The architecture of Nutanix is the best, and the virtualization we get, out of the box, is an advantage. Also, dedupe and compression are done natively, inside the platform, so there are no additional licenses. That adds value to it."
"The most valuable features are the RBAC, role-based access control, and the reporting. NCI also provides a single platform, a single pane with a dashboard, to manage the entire infrastructure. We have complete information about overall utilization, performance, and a forecast for our platform in that single pane."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is easy to use, integrates with other hardware configurations, and is simple to manage."
"The pricing is very, very good."
"I would recommend VxRail, it works for most of the use cases."
"It makes for easier deployments through automation and improved accessibility."
"I like the managed updates. They are really nice in VxRail. Everything comes packaged and the updates are much easier than with other solutions that I've had to work with."
"t's a very good solution with multiple options with VxRail series like based on customer requirements whether they're focused on compute, storage, scalability and high performance, etc. Whether a customer you are going to start your IT Infrastructure footprint with a limited budget, you have freedom of choice and non-disruptive expansion in the future, whether in the main data center or branches. Any idea coming in system admins mind to run this setup continuously and keep service 100% 24/7 is possible in this product line. Hyper-converged appliances allow a datacenter in a box approach, with G, E P, Vand P series."
"VxRail can be used for application modernization."
"Homogeneity is most valuable. The truth is that having everything in a single cluster helps a lot."
"The updating of the features was one aspect of the solution that made us decide to use it."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided."
"Diagnostics information or alerts on the state of systems could also be implemented to give more visibility."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"Benchmark testing indicated that workloads did slightly better on our Vblock by a few percentage"
"It would be fantastic if there was a built-in layer, in Nutanix, that acted like a cloud interface. So far, we need to integrate a cloud interface on top of Nutanix for billing the usage for specific customers' domains. It would be great if a cloud gateway was built-in, inside Nutanix."
"The licensing cost could be lower."
"In terms of what I would like to see improved, I would say the life cycle management. I don't know if it is because they changed to an LCM from the previous way of upgrading the hardware or software but sometimes it feels that it needs a wizard that says, "Check this, check this," telling you your options. The only thing that's a bit frustrating for me is the life cycle management interface. That's the only thing on the entire system that frustrates me."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's LTS version needs to be more reliable."
"We did have some integration issues."
"When we have issues with the solution, they tend to be around networking."
"This solution would be improved with built-in integration with Rubrik."
"We have issues at times with the one-click upgrade, which is bugging us. At times, the one-click upgrade does not work or does not work well."
"I would like to have a unified platform where I, for example, can manage my 50 stores from a single portal in VxRail and be able to apply all the updates at once. I want to unify them into a centralized console."
"In the next release, maybe they could add in integration with the hyper-cloud so it will be easier to do the movement up and back to the cloud in order to scale in and scale out."
"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."
"Technically speaking, the vCenter and the administration of the integration of the vCenter could be improved."
"Next release, we would like to see online applications."
"I would like them to include an easier solution to host its own DNS. When they changed to version 6.5, they took out the easy features of letting the rail be its own DNS. You can still trick the system and make the VxRail Manager another one of the rail-required VMs become the DNS, but it's a lot of extra work. I'd like to see it put back into the UI."
"Its price needs to be improved. It is very expensive. NSX should be licensed together. It will make the network virtualization layer more usable. It would be better if they come together in a bundle, not separately."
More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 3rd in HCI with 194 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 119 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere, Dell PowerFlex and Hyper-V, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, HPE Hyper Converged and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. VxRail report.
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"Nutanix node you will be running vSphere on top on the underlining Nutanix software" This description is incorrect.
There is no "layer" between the hardware and the OS which is ESXI hypervisor on both cases.
While both systems do a very good job within the nodal limits for scaling a compute environment - it is the networking layer that has the most impact on GPU sharing across a cluster. From a practical perspective, VxRail nodes will typically offer a discount over native Nutanix nodes. With Nutanix you also need servers, disk, networking and GPU's. VxRail will be more integrated with sized nodes, Dell, Cisco or other networking and often the VSphere 7 licenses can be integrated - achieving a lower net cost.
Testing for optimizations on either VSAN or Nutanix to see which favors a vGPU system would be something I would like to see quantified. My guess is they are network constrained and differences between VxRail and a build your own Nutanix environment will be negligible for the same network. Would be good to confirm if there is an optimal point - say 40Gbps vs 10Gbps or 100Gbps for the inter-GPU message passing.
Best option for vSphere 7 is the VxRail as it designed on VMware technology and built in integrates with vSphere, on a Nutanix node you will be running vSphere on top on the underlining Nutanix software.
Ok, I have no hands-on with vxRail.
But we have vGPU running on Nutanix with ESXi (vsphere). I am not aware of something like vGPU sharing across nodes/hosts. You did not mention which solution you have in mind as you would be about to choose in the process.
We have Citrix XenDesktop running. It works really smoothly most of the time. We only encountered a lagging problem once every few weeks which we are yet to solve. Perhaps something running in the back of our net.
With Nutanix you would have a solid base to work with.
You did not mention what automation is to be used. You could use something like Nutanix Calm as an automation solution.
further reading: Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop on Nutanix
Dev-Test: Cloud Development Environment & Testing Solutions | Nutanix
Let me know which platform you have in mind to narrow down suggestions.