We are an education institute, and we use Nutanix Cloud Manager to manage student applications, employee applications, and for other educational purposes.
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A sustainable solution with a straightforward initial setup
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager is the flexibility we're finding in expanding our technology and our support. We can't mess with the student's data, and we need to protect the data of many students within our data centers to ensure continuous business. One of the benefits of using NCM is the ecosystems we have within the organization and other organizations.
What needs improvement?
Nutanix Cloud Manager could partner with more partners to bring technologies that align with the area's policies and business needs.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Nutanix Cloud Manager for six to seven years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Nutanix Cloud Manager is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Nutanix Cloud Manager is a scalable solution. We are using six nodes and planning to add more features like the video in the future.
How are customer service and support?
Nutanix Cloud Manager's technical support is reachable and solves the problem in a matter of seconds.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
From the documents I'm reviewing, Nutanix Cloud Manager's initial setup was a straightforward process. There were no issues in the solution's implementation.
What was our ROI?
We're seeing a return on investment from Nutanix Cloud Manager, but since ours is an educational business, there's not much to assess.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Nutanix Cloud Manager's pricing is fair at the moment. However, its pricing should be reassessed, and different pricing categories should be set for different business needs.
What other advice do I have?
When we approached Nutanix Cloud Manager, they presented the technology well. We chose Nutanix Cloud Manager because we found it could be sustainable for the future. Users should consider Nutanix Cloud Manager's use cases and opt for the solution depending on their type of business.
Overall, I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager a ten out of ten.
Helps me with essential knowledge and planning for projects
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for virtualization purposes.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution saves around 15% of standard time for our organization.
What is most valuable?
The solution is easy to use and has a very supportive team. It helps me with essential knowledge and planning for projects.
What needs improvement?
The solution's virtualization could be even better. They should improve the upgrade and patch engine features.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution. Although, one of its nodes might break if you don't follow the proper upgrading and patching steps.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution. Our enterprise has three clusters dedicated to it.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support is good. However, it is complicated to communicate with the customer service team for the contract renewal process.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We switched to Nutanix because of its flexible pricing model compared to other vendors.
What was our ROI?
The solution generates a high return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution's price is reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Is easy to set up, but the interface could be improved to allow the use of other tools
What is our primary use case?
We use Nutanix Cloud Manager to manage all of our Nutanix infrastructure. We have six data centers throughout the world, and we use it to manage all that infrastructure for VMware. We're currently moving to AHV and are managing those as well.
How has it helped my organization?
From a resiliency of the infrastructure standpoint, we don't chase outages and major problems like we used to on other arrays such as CMC storage or Dell storage. Our folks have a lot more free time handle to the normal workload instead of troubleshooting.
What is most valuable?
The ease of use is a valuable feature. For us, it's a consistent interface. It's very easy to train our employees on it, and it's a newer generation interface. It's homogeneous, and every product and subset tie together, giving a very similar look to everything.
We do implement Nutanix Cloud Manager's built-in playbooks. Currently, the biggest one we use that's been very helpful is cleaning up snapshots. As users do snapshots of their virtual machines, it then goes back and cleans those out. We don't have a mess lingering out there.
Because Nutanix Cloud Manager's eScripts are based on Python, it allows me to bring developers in who are Python-centric. They are able to get up to speed quickly and develop the automation pieces we need for our own private cloud and build servers and applications on-premises.
What needs improvement?
In some ways, Nutanix Cloud Manager abstracts out certain items in a simplified manner, which makes it good for training. At other times, to get to the next technical level, we want to actually dive in, and Nutanix Cloud Manager sometimes restricts us from actually diving into the deeper technical pieces. There's no advance button that lets us do more advanced things without having to drop out to the CLI to do the command line piece.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've worked with Nutanix Cloud Manager for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far, we've been very impressed with the stability. In the Nutanix ecosystem, everything is clustered, highly available, and fails over. It takes care of itself.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have very few users who are using Nutanix Cloud Manager at present, but we do have all of our infrastructure running Nutanix on the storage side. From that scale, we're handling thousands of servers with no issues there. In about three months, we will be switching over all of our VMware folks to Nutanix Cloud Manager via ServiceNow. Then, we'll be able to see the full impact of our users using Nutanix Cloud Manager.
How are customer service and support?
I would give a ten out of ten to Nutanix's technical support. We've had excellent support. They always know two or three other people they can call on to help with certain portions of an issue. There's very good networking within the company.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We're a VMware shop and have vRA, which we used for all the automation on the VMware side. We also used vRealize Orchestrator. Initially, we chose Nutanix over standard disc arrays because we came out of the storage market. As Nutanix has added products, we've seen value in them and went in that direction.
When we bought the storage system and disc encryption, they came with other licenses. Nutanix Cloud Manager was an add-on. When we looked at the cost of other solutions and the opportunities that Nutanix Cloud Manager gives us to tie directly into Nutanix, it just seemed to be the right fit.
What was our ROI?
It might be too early to tell as we just started using Nutanix Cloud Manager for our private cloud about four months ago. Once we get fully off of VMware, we should definitely see an ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price is probably right where it should be. It's not vastly expensive, and it's not too cheap. We get very good value for the price with what we're being offered with it.
What other advice do I have?
Nutanix Cloud Manager is a walled garden, and you have to do all of your editing within the interface. Our developers become frustrated with not being able to use other tools such as Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and CSE pipelines. These are outside of the Nutanix Cloud Manager interface, and the developers would prefer to use them instead of using the NCM interface. In this sense, Nutanix Cloud Manager has been a struggle to use. The NCM interface could be improved.
The setup is fantastic because you can click a button and deploy it. It's already part of the existing piece, and it's like adding a module. Compared to the setup of other cloud management solutions, Nutanix Cloud Manager's setup is much easier. We just spent about four months upgrading a VMware product, and there were bugs. It was a nightmare. With Nutanix Cloud Manager, it's click-and-play, and we haven't had any issues at all.
The learning curve is a lot easier because it is based on Python, and we have developers who already know it. We don't have to retool. Many of my developers have been up to speed in under a week.
If you're considering Nutanix Cloud Manager, my advice would be to go through the entire POC in-depth to see the value in it. Initially, it may look very simplistic, but when you dive into the code, you will see the depth of the product.
Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager a six because the automation tools are still in the early stages. There are things that need to be fleshed out in the private cloud as well as the public cloud. I don't see anything badly wrong with it, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement as an industry in general.
An easy-to-use and efficient solution that enables us to clone servers
What is our primary use case?
We are still working on moving workloads from the old environment to Nutanix. We are planning to use Nutanix for our mid-tier. The mid-tier consists of noncore applications like medical services.
How has it helped my organization?
Nutanix is customer friendly. The efficiency of Nutanix Clusters is amazing. The product communicates with the hardware far better than any other product.
What is most valuable?
I love that we can clone the server once it is deployed. The solution’s ease of use is mind-blowing.
What needs improvement?
Compared to Dell HCI, Prism’s home screen is quite mundane. When we tried to migrate an application from the old cluster, we couldn't run it on Nutanix’s native hypervisor. So we had to install a different hypervisor to run that particular application.
For how long have I used the solution?
My organization has been using the solution for two months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution has been very stable so far. We have had no issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
So far, the product is quite scalable. It's easy to add clusters and nodes. We have about three nodes in disaster recovery and six nodes in production.
How are customer service and support?
The solution’s support is one of the fastest supports we've experienced. We always get a response within an hour.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously we used Dell HCI, which was running on VMware ESXi. We had resource constraints in our previous environment. It wasn't as efficient as Nutanix.
How was the initial setup?
There is a level of complexity to the initial setup because it is new. However, it was not as complex as other products.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution’s price is competitive. Compared to Dell HCI, Nutanix is a lot cheaper.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We reached out to OEM vendors in the market. We compared the offers based on price, features offered, and the cost of support for several years, and Nutanix came up at the top.
What other advice do I have?
We just completed the installation and deployment for the disaster recovery branch. I work for the Central Bank of Nigeria. We have three different environments in the bank. We use IBM for our core systems. We also have test and development environments where we run stress tests before deployments.
When I had to deploy about ten or twelve different servers that use the same operating systems, I deployed one and cloned it. The product’s ability to clone is by far the best thing I have seen. It took me only two to three minutes instead of 30 minutes or an hour.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Our IT team has been able to focus on best practices by using this solution
What is our primary use case?
I use Nutanix with Citrix. Sometimes, I need to expand the workload.
What is most valuable?
I like being able to expand my workload with Nutanix Cloud Manager at the best cost.
Our IT team has been able to focus on best practices by using Nutanix Cloud Manager's built-in playbooks.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Nutanix Cloud Manager for approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not had any issues with the stability of the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have 30 clusters and have not had any problems with scalability.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had any problems with technical support. They always responded in a timely manner. Thus, I would rate technical support a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used VMware but switched to Nutanix.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In Brazil, Nutanix Cloud Manager is not cheap. However, Nutanix offers different options such as long-term contracts.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager a nine.
Provides great automation features that help automate critical processes
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution to automate the business processes for our customers.
How has it helped my organization?
For our customers, the solution is an added value to their environment. It helps them automate critical processes instead of doing them manually.
What is most valuable?
The solution provides the best automation features.
What needs improvement?
They should include more use cases for automation in administering the environment.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
The support team’s response time is good. Although, it depends on the criticality of the issue.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have used PowerShell and Orchestrator before. In comparison, NCM provides better integration.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup is straightforward. There is a lot of documentation and webinars on Nutanix's portal to learn the implementation process.
What was our ROI?
The solution generates a return on investment. There is no need to appoint a resource as it automates the processes.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is expensive.
What other advice do I have?
NCM provides faster automation than manual operations. Its maintenance is less time-consuming due to the high availability of its infrastructure. In addition, it saves a lot of time as there is no need to generate reports and alerts. We can just read the insights data on the dashboard. It helps our executives to concentrate more on projects instead of operations.
I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Reasonably priced and saves us time and effort
How has it helped my organization?
I do a lot of tasks via automation which I previously would have to hire people to do. The solution has helped me to eliminate a lot of low-skilled labor. I can put the money required for this job into other things.
What is most valuable?
Getting an update about my clusters is the most valuable feature of the product.
What needs improvement?
The support provided after office hours could use some improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is really stable compared to everything else in my environment. I had one major problem over a five-year period.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I've had no problems with scale, and I keep growing my environment every day.
How are customer service and support?
The support is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was easy.
What about the implementation team?
We used a combination of our employees and consultants to deploy the solution.
What was our ROI?
Since we are able to automate more, we are able to deploy faster. So customers are happier, and it leads to customer retention.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution’s pricing is not outrageous like other products. However, reducing the price would always be useful.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I've evaluated options across the board, and Nutanix’s structuring platform has saved me a lot of time and effort. It takes three times more people to do tasks on VMware than Nutanix.
What other advice do I have?
I have different products. It seems like Nutanix is headed toward making things more seamless, which really excites me. I need solutions with improved speed of creating and automating the processes and making them seamless. I need solutions to grab everything from everywhere. NCM is self-sufficient. You don't need to know everything about it. It installs itself, and it takes care of itself. We have used the older versions of the solution too.
The speed of the outcomes is great. I couldn’t be happier. I can deliver to my developers and my end customers faster. Faster outcomes are very important to my organization.
NCM’s built-in playbooks have freed up time for my IT team by 25%. I love that the product allows me to fix things that are broken now and think about the future at the same time. Compared to other products, NCM is much easier to use. I don't need highly trained people to use the solution.
Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.
Good documentation, easy to extend, and offers high availability
What is our primary use case?
We wanted to optimize our process. We were going into a cloud architecture, so we wanted to see how we could leverage the existing Nutanix framework instead of manually managing the servers.
We currently have a physical VM set up. We had slowly wanted to migrate to the cloud. Since we are already using Nutanix, my senior architect gave me some access to play around with the solution and explore how we can deploy code as a platform as a service instead of writing our own scratch code. If we want to use it as an independent platform in the future, and as a core developer, I wanted to write code to make sure it is interoperable in any of the cloud services we might use.
What is most valuable?
The scaling is good. We now have dynamic scaling and other scaling policies set up.
In a physical server, we have to define our items upfront, and then we are stuck. With this solution, we can increase it dynamically and define the threshold, and auto-enhance the features.
We cannot say the traffic is always the same. Over the weekends, it's slow. Over the weekdays, it's higher. They gave us some configurations so that if it is idle, we run on one part, and if there is more traffic, we can run on multiple parts.
The local automation is good. We've seen a huge improvement in our code. I personally worked with the performance teams to compare the product with old physical VM architecture versus the cloud architecture, and I see the difference. I was not able to break it. It was very scalable. While my physical VM crashed at some point in time, the cloud ran fine.
It offers high availability and consistency. We have a lot of batch jobs running and handling that data, so we need a pretty good service. Instead of horizontally scaling, they are scaling vertically.
What needs improvement?
I like Cloud Manager from AWS more based on the handling of the UI. This solution could be more user-friendly. The UI could be better. It would be nice if it offered a simple GUI where we would have one view.
We'd like the solution to be a one-stop shop. We have a requirement of having a single GUI setup. Nutanix is like an ocean. We'd like everything tied all together.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've used the solution for a couple of months for running some POCs.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is very scalable, and we like the configuration options. You can pick and choose. You don't just have a standard way of doing things. It's pretty dynamic.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had a chance to speak with support. Our infrastructure team manages to troubleshoot items.
Recently, we have had one physical server managed by Nutanix that had a snapshot issue (in that the server was not taking snapshots for two months). It's a production server. They sent us a proactive email. There was pretty smooth communication in that regard. They did have pretty quick support for that issue. They are rebuilding the image and archiving the data based on the fact that there are backup issues. That said, when it comes to production servers, they should have a 24-hour turnaround and not 72 hours. Support in these cases has to happen fast.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used AWS Cloud Manager in my previous organization. Currently, based on the sensitivity of the data, we are moving to a hybrid approach. Many are still using physical VMs. In my new organization, a lot of my team is already on Nutanix. We were the first team to head into the cloud, and I was handling the project.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is pretty quick, like all the clouds. The ease of use could be improved a bit more. There is pretty good documentation that helps make the learning curve smaller. My approach is to go to the documentation first before jumping in. The person I was working with provided good information, and we built our own documentation on top of that as well.
As an application team, it was easy to implement. Maybe it was easy since we didn't get into too much complexity. The APIs are playing a good role. The configuration is pretty straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I did not handle the pricing or licensing aspect of the project.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options. We are only licensed for OpenShift and Nutanix at this point.
What other advice do I have?
We use OpenShift on top of Nutanix, and all the physical servers are cloud servers, and they are all managed by our team.
As for the built-in playbooks, I haven't done much exploration. One of my team members did more work in this area. He helped me and did all the configuration. He explained what he was doing. However, I was not involved in the playbook at all.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It needs to be easier to use. However, it is improving. The market has shifted. A lot of companies are trying to get in. Yet Nutanix is doing a great job in collaborating with so many organizations. It's going to provide us with a one-stop solution that helps us avoid running around between vendors.
I would advise people to read the documentation. That will definitely help. It's pretty sophisticated. Reading the documentation and following up with Nutanix support will keep you from stumbling into the process blindly. Get in touch with an account manager. They can help you understand the requirements first and then look into your options. If you have an expert that can guide you, you won't be wasting too much time.
A private cloud management tool with an easy setup phase and good customer support
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution as a private cloud management tool in our company.
What is most valuable?
We create some VMs using Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service. The solution's simplicity to use and its configurable features are some of the solution's valuable parts.
What needs improvement?
I am very satisfied with the solution. The pricing of the solution is an area of concern that needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have experience and work with products from Nutanix. I have worked on the solution for three years. I am a customer of Nutanix.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. I mean, we don't have problems using the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I'm very satisfied with the product's scalability since it's very good.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is very good. For everything we need, we call the support, and they work together with us to solve the issue and find a solution quickly. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
It's simple and not complex to do the first setup. For deployment, around four people who were from a technical background, who knew how to operate the system, were required. For the maintenance of the product, four people are required.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
On a scale from one to ten, if one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the solution's pricing a six.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
An intuitive and easy-to-learn product that saves cost and time
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution mostly for management. We also use it for disaster recovery on Nutanix clusters to keep a small group of servers running. We wanted one area so we didn't have to manage everything separately.
What is most valuable?
We use Prism Ultimate. The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to run and open the management console from one place. We do not have to log in multiple times. We have all alerts for our clusters in one location.
The biggest benefits of the solution are cost savings and time savings for the management. The solution has a tool that helps you figure out your growth and how many nodes you would need to move to a different number of users. We've used that a few times, and it's been helpful.
It is a good product, and it allows us a lot of flexibility and the ability to do things quickly without needing much expertise. The product is pretty intuitive and easy to learn. When we first started, my team and I were able to use the solution after taking some basic classes.
What needs improvement?
The licensing procedures are not smooth and easy. I have to call the licensing support every year to renew our contracts because they keep changing the licensing models.
I've also noticed that some features in the on-prem products either do not work in the cloud product or work better on-prem. When upgrades do not run from the cloud portal, I must go back to the on-prem product.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not had any issues with stability. We've not had any downtime.
How are customer service and support?
Support is very responsive. I've had very few issues with them. They usually give me the answers right away. The support site is very helpful. The site has a knowledge-based search. When we enter tickets, it gives us some good advice right then and there. I've been able to use it many times to avoid having to wait for somebody to call.
The support’s knowledge and expertise are top-notch. If the person I'm talking to doesn't know the answer, they quickly find someone who can help resolve it.
I wish other cloud solutions’ support were as good as Nutanix Support. Nutanix Support has been able to solve our issues quickly, and they're very patient and friendly. I've had to call them various times on weekends. They're always willing to help.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What about the implementation team?
We worked with Nutanix to deploy the product. They were amazingly helpful in setting up and running the product. It appeared like it would be complex, but they simplified it. With a few clicks of a button, the product starts building and running scripts on the back end. It was really easy for us.
We also did a proof of concept, ran it for a couple of weeks, tore it down, and built a new one. Both times, the solution was up and running within a couple of hours. Four employees in our organization were involved in the deployment. Most of the maintenance is done on the back end. My team did not do any upgrades. We maintain the clusters.
What was our ROI?
One of our biggest returns on investment was disaster recovery. We had disaster recovery in a separate data center where we had to have an equal amount of hardware for both sides. Now we just have a couple of small nodes running in the cloud. So we're saving quite a bit of money doing that. We've also been able to maintain the same number of people supporting the solution, so we haven't needed to find experts in Nutanix to get it running.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing has become an issue in our company. The tool is expensive.
What other advice do I have?
We've been happy with the speed of outcomes. We haven't had any issues. Faster outcomes are very important to our organization. We're very sensitive to how long things take and how much energy and effort our staff and end users need. Our VMware is totally separate from Nutanix.
The solution has definitely helped validate the capacity requirements that we have and make sure that we have the equipment we need. We've been able to monitor and see how our use goes up over time, plan for future purchases, and ensure we don't have any outages.
Our company has been growing. NCM’s capacity planning and Runway analytics is very important to us. It helps us proactively forecast our needs in the next six months. The management appreciates the ability to forecast instead of having a knee-jerk reaction at the last minute.
We can't standardize certain things in the organization to use playbooks. I'm hoping to get to a point where we can use them more. The tools available in the solution are very helpful. The tools help us look at past trends and determine what we will need in the future.
The setup was easy. The learning curve has been a little bit steep because there are so many individual products. We haven't taken the time yet to sit down with our sales team and the support to review our options. I feel we're not using the solution to its full potential. Compared to other products, the learning curve is very similar. It has a licensed web management tool that can be accessed almost anywhere.
It's fairly important to us that NCM is sold as one product with multiple tiers. We're more likely to use features that are included. We push the team to try new things and find better ways to do things. So if we had to evaluate every single one right at the beginning and then try to figure out which ones we'll buy, it would slow down the process.
The acquisition and support costs of NCM versus other cloud management solutions are comparable. The solution works well. I haven't had any issues where I've had to wait and be frustrated. It's definitely been very usable and quick. NCM Ultimate's deployment time is comparable to or faster than other cloud management solutions.
Anyone evaluating Nutanix should get some training and figure out what all the parts do and how they work. They should make sure to size the clusters correctly. We ran into some issues early on with nodes and clusters since we didn't buy enough from the beginning. We run the solution on our central environment.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.