I use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for sales and enterprise needs. I implement NCM for clients, and I use it for university education. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) helps with the automation of the clusters and provides a unification platform, with the principal automatic communication in redirect. 

NCM helps with automation for the preparation of new VMs for other teams. This is important for me because I don't need to spend more time stopping my other operations to create new VMs. Using NCM's built-in playbooks has helped free up time for my IT team to focus on other projects, saving approximately 20% of time.

The best features of NCM include synchronization in the platform and the Prism Central. It provides centralized management and performance. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is far simpler to use compared to other cloud management solutions, and the technology is more practical to connect in other clouds. Nutanix is more expensive, but the presentation features more technology and integration. It provides more security and the experience is generally better.

I have two years of experience with Nutanix.

It's more stable, and the support is practical for any problem.

The scalability in Nutanix is more flexible, which makes it practical to add new nodes.

The support is the best support I have experienced in Nutanix. They have demonstrated excellent service when clients have problems with Nutanix and HDD issues, providing hardware replacement within 24 hours. The resolution, hardware technology, and hardware replacement are consistently prompt.

I don't use different virtualization as I started with the cloud computation of Nutanix. Other clients use VMware and Hyper-V, and my company consults for the transition to Nutanix.

I have experience with Nutanix products from working for Nutanix. I work with Nutanix solutions, and in my college, we discuss the technology with students. The outcomes are very fast, and the system is more flexible. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is simpler and more stable compared to other cloud management solutions, and the technology is more practical to connect in other clouds. It is more difficult to set up in other clouds. We use both public cloud and private cloud for NCM. I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a 10 out of 10.

My main use cases right now involve migrating two of the most critical server VM servers that we have; one is our secure server, which has a lot of data in it, and the other one is an application server that hosts the critical application for my business.

I am currently using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to manage our infrastructure.

I'm using the local storage in Nutanix, and I'm using the move and the prism sensor to administer the closet.

Regarding specific functionalities, we already have micro-segmentation in Security Central to analyze the traffic that's crossing between those servers to be able to firewall application policy between those applications that are working on those servers.

I really appreciate the console, the centralized administration, and the ability to quickly attach storage between operations.

Management of our infrastructure has improved because it's simpler to administrate, and it's easier to understand what is happening with each server in our environment, allowing us to analyze the data and consumption of each component operating within it.

The cost governance feature allows our CTOs and CEOs to have an overall structure of knowledge about what is functioning and what we are doing in our infrastructure.

We are not using a lot of self-service because we are new in that area, but we understand that we could integrate that feature into our local development to allow us to test and operate our local infrastructure.

Until now, I have not encountered many challenges; during implementation, we had to focus on the data we have, ensuring we validated it to be clear on what we could migrate before and after the migration.

I don't see a need for improvements in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) at the moment; however, I would appreciate better performance.

I would like to see integrated analytics in the dashboard that accurately displays graphics, such as CPU usage, the overall health of the infrastructure, and specific virtual machines that we refer to frequently.

I don't think the solution's cost visibility feature will affect us immediately, but over time I believe it will provide better benefits, help us reduce losses, and allow us to move forward with old projects and servers we are currently using.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for only a month, as I am a new customer in Nutanix, and I already implemented it at the beginning of last month.

I think Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the most reliable solution in our environment right now, and we are confident that despite any potential losses, we will not experience any downtime in other parts of our environment or services.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is very good for scalability; we are currently considering introducing Nutanix to other sites, perhaps in our co-location and possibly towards the end of the year for new acquisitions to enhance scalability.

I have received very straightforward and pleasant technical support from our partner so far; I haven't had to escalate any cases, and I am confident that with their and the provider's support, we will get a good response if we encounter any incidents.

I would rate customer service and technical support a 10 right now.

Positive

My deployment experience was very positive, as it was fast and straightforward, allowing simple integration into our existing infrastructure without affecting our operations or causing breakdowns while migrating servers.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing was good because our partner supported us by explaining the benefits and features of each option and what we could expect from the implementation. I understand that the Nutanix solution is cost-effective.

The biggest return on investment for me when using this product is the fast deployment and the rapid integration and migration without impacting our operations during the migration.

I believe we will see measurable outcomes from using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), including reduced costs and more efficient IT management in the future.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing was good because our partner supported us by explaining the benefits and features of each option and what we could expect from the implementation. I understand that the Nutanix solution is cost-effective.

We considered two other products before adopting Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

One was from HP, a simpler option, and we also looked at some from Dell.

The main differences between the two options were cost, the full package offered, and the level of support we would receive from the implementation partner.

It has made things much more efficient. I would say efficiency has increased approximately by 80%.

To maintain that rating of 10, it's important for us to receive good responses during any situations and ensure collaboration with the partner and provider while keeping the pricing consistent.

We are analyzing the impact of the Runbooks feature on automating our IT processes, considering that we think we will be working on making some dashboards or using some of them to advance the rest of our Nutanix project.

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) 10 out of 10.

We use it primarily for general workload for the virtual machines, reporting, and getting the capacity reports.

In terms of features, we have general availability with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), allowing me to manage my Nutanix cluster the same as I could on-premises, and the fact that I can quickly and easily stand up servers is very beneficial.

In Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), the planning feature in reporting is very useful, as you can create a particular scenario that provides potential resource consumption of your current cluster and can help interpret workloads, which is great for forecasting how long depend on the current capacity and whether you need to purchase new hardware.

We can give developers access to a self-service portal. It's very helpful. You can grant access and give people the power to manage issues themselves. 

We've found we've generally saved time by using Nutanix.

Nutanix gives us access to a single pane of glass by which we're able to see everything. 

It is important to mention that while Nutanix claims improvements in licensing over the past couple of years, I find it a bit annoying, as it still does not work as intended. If there are licensing errors, for example, being told I have 96 cores licensed but Nutanix Flow not licensed despite having assigned units, it complicates things unnecessarily.

We have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for about three years.

I assess the stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with a few issues where downtime occurred; once it was related to power when the whole console went down. 

We had two instances where a network outage caused cluster reboots, which I would prefer to see handled differently as the VMs rebooted to ensure data consistency. 

This behavior differs from VMware where VMs would not necessarily restart, and I am unsure if there is an option to configure the network to prevent this.

Scaling with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is not as straightforward as they claim, largely due to the assumption that you have IPv6 enabled on your switches, which we did not. We encountered challenges while adding extra servers to existing clusters; however, we sorted it out with the expertise of the support staff, even though it was beyond my knowledge and experience.

I would say my experience with customer service is a nine out of ten, as I never give a ten. I do not know what a ten is. There is always room for improvement, and they are definitely high quality. There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call. Since 2019, I've only had to escalate twice. 

Positive

We had used VMware. If I had to deploy the same and used VMware or Nutanix, I would choose Nutanix at the same cost due to the number of features.

For the first deployment of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), we had a third-party help us with setup, while for the next clusters, I handled it myself. The latest deployment involved a partner due to time constraints. It requires some knowledge and experience, however, once I watched the first setup, I was able to do it myself after that.

Migration is also possible to do by yourself. Between Nutanix generation six to generation nine, we were able to move VMs. 

For the first deployment of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), we had a third-party help us with setup, while for the next clusters I handled it myself.

The cost reduction has provided some ROI. 

For those evaluating Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) as a solution, I advise not to be afraid to move from VMware and to run some proof of concept, as that was my case. People tend to stick with known technologies, and I understand their reluctance, but change can be beneficial. Comparatively, having similar hardware and paying less with Nutanix while getting many features that work well is appealing. 

In our case, we pay for 60 features with VMware but use only ten, while with Nutanix, we get 25 features at a better price. 

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten out of ten.

I use the company solution to manage all Nutanix clusters. We have three clusters, including one for VDI, one for the production server, and another for disaster recovery. The tool helps us manage everything in one view.

The product has helped my company to have a single point of view for managing the infrastructure, our environment, and virtualization. We use the tool for something important, which is the structuring of the code.

The solution's most valuable features stem from its ease of management of our infrastructure and virtualization hypervisor. I think the tool is better than the others on the market.

The speed of outcomes I have received using the tool's low-code automation is fast and has helped us a lot. We are a company that has the intention to want IaC to come first. We are changing how we manage things to facilitate the day's activities.

With faster outcomes, we can reduce the daily management needed to maintain the systems.

Considering how the tool has helped our company's team address the current automation needs while planning for future expansion, I would say that we have seen how it works after Nutanix launched Nutanix v4 API. It is important because we think it will be the most compatible with the other solutions in the market.

Compared to other cloud management solutions, Nutanix is the best solution, especially Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) since it has helped our company a lot. The tool's support is amazing, and I think it is the best. It is easy to work with the solution.

In our company, even though not directly in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), we saw that the tool has many layers in it. An integration between Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and Nutanix Kubernetes Platform would be a great deal.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for a year, but my company has been using it even before I joined. The tool has been in the company for four years.

It is an okay and stable solution. Our company has not had problems with it.

For scalability, it is an amazing tool. Last year, we needed to scale our cluster, and it was easy. We had to just plug in and install the tool and nodes while including the cluster, and it is ready to go.

At the moment, there are no plans to increase the tool's usage, but we may plan to do so next year.

The tool's support is amazing. During the day, our team will need to solve the problems associated with the tool. I think it's the best company we have had business with, and its partners are okay with it. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

Previously, I used to use VMware and Dell VxRail. I switched to Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) from other products, considering its price, which is an important aspect. Another advantage is that when you use Nutanix, the cloud infrastructure is better, in my opinion.

The product's initial setup phase was simple.

The solution was deployed before I joined my company.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. A little bit of our environment is in the cloud, but we have not yet integrated it with Nutanix. I use the cloud services from Azure.

During the product's installation phase, the consultant and a partner from Brazil greatly helped our company.

My company has not sought help from any implementors with implementing the cloud product yet, but we plan to do so in the future.

Recently, my company studied the movement to go to the cloud, and we concluded that it is better to stay in our solution quickly and use Nutanix's integration with the cloud, while not forgetting our infrastructure and going to the cloud.

The pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market.

My company evaluated Dell VxRail and VMware against Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). We evaluated Dell VxRail because it was an integrated and unified solution.

I can't remember whether the tool's built-in playbooks freed up time for our IT team.

I rate the overall tool a ten out of ten.

We work in the public sector, which includes local governments, fire departments, and transportation. The most interesting use case is that we have set up a private cloud with two sites where they are replicated, and from the same console, we have synchronous replication using 1M Ethernet. The RPO is zero.

Our clients like its simplicity. That is a great value. We moved from a three-layer infrastructure to a private cloud infrastructure. It has resulted in a lot of simplicity which is reflected in the availability of services.

Simplicity is the biggest value that we can see. This is super important for us because the technical team is dedicated to looking at the data and how to generate value for the business instead of worrying about the technology.

Using the built-in playbooks has freed up the time for our IT team. Instead of managing storage, CPU, and memory, they can dedicate their time to thinking about the needs of the business and attending to those needs. We have had clients who reduced their operations time by 60% to 70%.

Nutanix Cloud Manager helps your team a lot to address your current automation needs while planning for future expansion. You have a forecast of how your infrastructure is being used. This allows you to have visibility of what actions you should take to avoid reaching day zero. It helps you a lot.

Its installation is relatively simple. The administration is very intuitive. You have an HTML 5 interface that you can use on any device. I have clients who manage their infrastructure from their smartphones, no matter where they are. Its being very intuitive has helped us to deliver 4-hour workshops. We had an interesting case in the sector of transportation in Quito, Ecuador. A person who provided support and was with the help desk went on to manage the data center with just a 4-hour training. He went from being help desk support to being the data center manager, all with Nutanix. That easily gives an idea about its learning curve.

Nutanix Cloud Manager’s setup, learning curve, and ease of use were definitely important when deciding on a cloud management solution. In fact, we have been growing in infrastructure, and it has been maintained precisely due to the ease of use and small learning curve. It frees up time from the daily issues of looking at technology. The customers are happy and continue to grow.

Simplicity is most valuable because, with a single click, we have visibility of the entire infrastructure. We can focus more on the availability of services instead of being aware of the CPU, memory, or hard drives. With one click, we can see the availability of our services.

The interoperability with different clouds can be better so that one can even integrate the infrastructure of different clouds. They can interoperate better with other clouds because currently, you have to buy Nutanix resources in the cloud.

It has been four years as partners and service providers for our clients.

Its stability is very good. We did not have any issues for which we had to stop our services.

It is a very important aspect of Nutanix solutions.

It is efficient and fast. It is in Spanish, which is an advantage. There is always the option for technical support in Spanish.

Positive

In Ecuador, Nutanix began to introduce itself in 2016 in such a way that the customers moved from traditional infrastructures to Nutanix right away.

We have both kinds of deployments. We have clients who have private clouds, and then we have clients who have hybrid clouds. Our clients use Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

As a company, we do the implementations autonomously. It is simple. I do not personally do it. Our technical team does it. We can do the deployment or migration of about 15 to 20 virtual machines in four hours, so investing about four hours to move an entire legacy data center solution to a Nutanix Infrastructure is more than fine. 

We have an implementation strategy. We follow the best practices. We have a trained technical team, and they follow the objectives.

If you compare it with a traditional model or with a native cloud, then definitely the best alternative is to make an investment in Nutanix solutions. The return on investment varies depending on what you compare it with. In Ecuador, in the public sector, they force them to buy a three-year licensed solution. So, if you compare it to three years with traditional or cloud-native infrastructure, the Nutanix solution is definitely a winner.

For Ecuador, this is a sensitive issue. It is a small economy, so the issue of budget is very sensitive. You find many small businesses and government clients who do not renew, for example, support or guarantees, which raises the risk level for them. We are always advising them that it is necessary to renew the services or infrastructure.

We evaluated many solutions before switching to Nutanix Cloud Manager. However, once the customers get to know Nutanix, they always prefer to stay with the solution.

Our customers choose Nutanix for the experience. Our customers have stayed with Nutanix because they did feel a change before and after. Before Nutanix, managing storage required time and working on weekends outside of business hours. Having to shut down the services to make firmware updates of different components of the data center was an issue. Now they can do this during business hours without the risk of services being unavailable.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager a ten out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for all of the created VMs. We have all of our systems in Nutanix. My company migrated from Veeam to VMware and then to Nutanix. In my company, we have Nutanix for all of our servers.

My company chose the tool since it is a very simple and good product. When I checked the comparison between VMware and Nutanix, I found the latter to be better, especially since it is very easy to monitor.

The tool is easy to use. My company learned how to use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) in about six months.

For me, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a very good tool. The solution's dashboard is fine. The possibility of changing some of the icons in the dashboard configuration would be good since it is an area where the tool has shortcomings. If I want to change the LAN connection or a configuration, it is difficult since I have to keep clicking and clicking the options in the solution. I want to have a one-click button for the network. With one click, I should be able to download three or more VMs with the help of the tool.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) since 2019, so it has been almost six years. I am an end-user of the tool.

The technical support for the solution has been very, very good. With the support team, once you create a use case, you can automatically call and get access to the technical team in fifteen minutes. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The solution can be deployed in a period of two months. As per the contract, I know that my company had to migrate from VMware to Nutanix in two months.

With VMware, which we had for one year in our company, we paid 20,00,000 United Arab Emirates Dirhams. With Nutanix, in five years, our company has paid 83,000 United Arab Emirates Dirhams, which is very good and not as expensive as VMware. Time for creating VMs is very easy in Nutanix, compared to VMware, as it can be done in two to three minutes since all the templates are great. With VMware, the time required to create VMs is about ten minutes. In terms of time, Nutanix helps save 20 percent when compared to VMware.

I don't use the automation options offered by Nutanix.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We mainly use it for infrastructure as a service. We use it for managing the clusters and hardware and running the VLCM updates. We do not use it to manage files and all the embedded because we have other solutions corporate-wide for it. It is pretty much being used to manage the infrastructure of the clusters and make sure that we have all the licenses applied to all the different clusters around the world.

We are multinational. I have clusters right now but not on all 53 plants. We have some Acronis data centers. They are called Co Lo data centers. We have a couple of those data centers with Nutanix in them. We have one in Tokyo, one in Ashburn, and then we have a couple of data centers in Mexico with Nutanix. We also have some in the US, some in Portugal where I am from, Italy, Germany, Asia, China, and Japan. We are around the world, and we use Prism to manage all those data centers.

Centralization is the main benefit. We are a company that is growing a lot due to acquisitions. Each of the companies we acquire does not use all of the same hardware or solutions. The mission of my team is to design and deploy solutions for all the new companies around the world and make sure they adopt our solutions. This is good to showcase to them what we have and make them see that they can manage their own side of the world. They can get granularity there and be able to support all their business locally. We still can have a backup team, which is my team, supporting them in case there are issues. There is always someone looking at it if something goes wrong. 

We do not have to be alerted by an outage. We can work on an issue before it happens or as it happens. Sometimes, when people get up, the issue is already fixed because we can do all that remotely. NCM allows that.

Nutanix Cloud Manager has saved our IT time. We got our weekends back. Previously, having a different type of infrastructure with Cisco UCS and VMware, updating the Cisco component, the EMC storage, and downloading everything sometimes was a week's worth of work. We had to do upgrades on weekends because we could not do it online. Since we started using NCM and LCM out of NCM, we went from one-day upgrades to one hour. Earlier, we were running it for a one-year period, and now we are running it every month and that is a complete cluster upgrade. There is no downtime and no business complaints. We just warn them that we are doing this. We have total confidence and total trust that it is not going to be an issue.

In terms of ease of use, I use a lot of hypervisors, and there is nothing that can be compared to it, whether it is VMware, Hyper-V, or even Azure. The Azure portal does not have a one-click to update everything. If you look at the on-prem things, I have Cisco UCS, Lenovo, and IBM servers that I use in VMware. There was no single panel where I could manage all that together. There were always different things to manage. You needed knowledge and training. Nowadays, a new hire can come in, and I can tell them to run this every week. They will be able to do it without training.

It frees up the staff that I have from having to deal with heavy troubleshooting. It is one less worry for me. We have 53 plants operating 24/7. We have problems on a daily basis. We have attacks. It is a huge asset not having the burden of dealing with upgrades because if we do not do those, we are open to vulnerabilities. With NCM, we can focus on everything else. Worrying about updates is a thing of the past. Anybody on the team can go ahead and take a look.

The single pane of glass is valuable. Seeing all my clusters there and getting all the alerts in one place helps to manage our global infrastructure. To me, the ability to view or see everything in one single place is very valuable.

We are also able to do lifecycle management and run updates. We have got our weekend back. That is very important. IT guys never have weekends. With Nutanix Cloud Manager, we are able to run updates during normal business hours. We are able to do it with the click of a button. Not having to worry and not having to see how it is running on the other side of the world makes a huge difference.

We have clusters not only with HPE. We have some with VMware to use Cisco Call Manager for VoIP. That only runs on VMware. They upgrade the ESXi host but not vCenter, which manages the ESXi host. It would be great if there is a way to include vCenter on the VM because you run the updates, but you do not update vCenter. It complains that you still have not updated it.

We started using the first version when it was called Prism in 2018. 

The technical support from Nutanix is excellent. It is not always the same experience. It differs. Sometimes you get someone who is very experienced on a given module or hardware. It depends on who you get, but even if you do not get the fastest guy at the first call, you will get it once the escalation happens. We have not had a case where the issue was not completely solved with a definite solution. I am very happy with Nutanix's support. 

We work with a lot of brands, and it is not always like that. Even with Microsoft, when we open a ticket, the first person is going to tell me to try things that my team has already tried before. We have to tell them that this is not the first rodeo that we are at. We have done this. We need to go beyond that, but they still have to do their due diligence. They do not care about that. They still want to run their script till they get to it. Nutanix is different. We tell them what we have done. They know we are certified. They take that into consideration and go to the next step, which is troubleshooting.

I would rate them a ten out of ten. They are by far the ones we like to work with.

Positive

The price depends. I struggle a lot with that because I manage a budget. Not all businesses have the ability to spend that amount of money. When I have a plant that needs 10 VMs running, the smallest cluster I can offer them for high availability is a three-node cluster. It is going to cost me a hundred thousand dollars, whereas I could get a Dell box with 6K Windows Standard installed on it and get Hyper-V running and a couple of VMs, but there is no high availability. We had plants that were running like that because they did not want to spend the money. We had a ransomware attack. In the case of sites with Nutanix, we were up in a week, whereas in the case of the sites with that kind of hardware, we were up three weeks later. They then understood the importance of having proper hardware that can support resiliency and high availability.

It is expensive when you are looking at small locations that need low-latency workloads, but for larger locations, as compared to other guys, even using VMware, it is not that expensive because if you add it all up, it is going to be pretty much the same value. You just need to look at a similar size solution to be able to make a comparison.

We do not use low-code automation. We support manufacturing plants. We do not have to deploy and stop VMs. We use Red Hat OpenShift for some containerized stuff but not a lot. We have some websites for looking for products. We do not have any need to build VMs and destroy them and build them again. It is pretty much what we do on our Azure footprint. We have 400 VMs there. We do not have automation there. We never build templates. We build one or two VMs per month when we get requests. My team builds those VMs even for our developers so that we have cost and check. We do not need to use automation at this point. We appreciate the automation of life cycle management and all those rapid tests that we have to make, but that is the standard automation we use.

I do use playbooks out of Azure but not out of Nutanix.

I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager a ten out of ten. I have no issues with bad-mouthing it or praising it. In this case, praise is due for sure.

I am an MSP currently, but ten years ago, I was a customer of the solution. What I love about Nutanix is its one-click upgrade. I know that with the tool, all of our company's infrastructure will have a standard upgrade through the switch. With Nutanix, I have to click and go for the launch option.

In my company, people in the operations team gain benefits associated with time and productivity. With the tool, our company can give time to customers so that we can answer or respond to their problems, not just technical problems.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is an invisible tool for managing an infrastructure, just like any tool we use to manage any environment. It has been helpful in the long run, considering that I always get to direct my company to help other organizations and stay customer-friendly.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is not comparable with other cloud management solutions. In the past, when you used to drive your car, you had to know how to repair or fix your motor. Nowadays, you just hop into your car and drive, and I would say that Nutanix is similar. Compared to Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), other companies are still behind the line. Public clouds are similar to Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), but things may seem very locked, making them a trap for customers. As soon as one plans to work, Nutanix needs to be attached to all the public clouds and private cloud instances.

Learning how to use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is quick. The new version allows us to have a product demo. You can use AI for help and ask it to help you connect with the web server.

I don't want the product to be made better because I won't have any work in my company. I don't want to get replaced by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). I am sure Nutanix can develop and provide more functionalities to customers to help bypass issues.

Considering the shortcomings where improvements are needed, I would say that the tool should have a cheap hardware model that can be used to manage the proof of concept phase. When I set the solution, I prefer to put it on the table, turn it on, and test it on the external desk. With Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), it is not the same thing. We want to feel physical things. We want to feel the real sense, but with the cloud, there is no scope to have it in the physical sense.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) since 2014 as a customer and as an MSP.

It is a very stable solution. Like in the case of VMware, you can definitely test some versions, but such versions have short-term support. You can go with the tool's version later on to get long-term support (LTS).

The solution's technical support is wonderful. With the new products, you can say that our company's team has to stay focused. In the past, we had only one product, and all the teams in our company used to use the same solution, but now things have become more specific. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The product has helped my company save time by at least 50 percent. The tool doesn't help save money because it requires human operations. Human beings can be more productive in business cases, not just in the area of information technology.

The product is expensive. For a tech person like me, I want the product to be free. When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless.

In terms of the speed of the outcomes from the tool's end, my company does not use the product's automation functionality.

In my company, we don't use the tool's built-in playbooks.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We use Nutanix Cloud Manager for monitoring. It gives us visibility into our customers' workloads. It's easy to workload right on Nutanix, but you must be able to monitor how well it's running and the migrations occurring inside. 

Most of our customers have on-prem environments with NCI & MCM, so they can have a Nutanix cloud cluster inside one of the big hyperscalers. With NC2, you can use your existing Nutanix licensing or procure a cluster in the hyperscaler that looks and smells like what you've got on-prem. You have the CapEx model, where customers get their budget at the start of the year and buy what they need, and the OpEx model, where they pay monthly. This caters to both customers. 

Most of our cloud-based customers use Azure because they are Office 365 customers, and Azure is the path of least resistance. However, we do have GCP and AWS customers. In the case of AWS, it's more about the available tooling. 

Cloud Manager lets us have more informed discussions with our customers. We can tell them that their virtual machines are underprovisioned or overprovisioned. They can get more from their investment. The customers have already purchased the hardware and the licenses, so they are wasting resources and money if their machines are too big. If they are too small, the customer should make them bigger.

The capacity runway is useful for monthly and quarterly service reviews. We have a report that we can present to customers estimating their future needs. For example, we can say, "You will run out of memory in six months at your current trajectory." 

Cloud Manager enables those conversations. We provide each customer with a meaningful dashboard where they can easily see all their clusters and which ones are hot. 

Cloud Manager's data protection policies are nice. Sometimes our customers provision their own workloads. Regardless of whether they provision their workloads, we need to know that the data protection policies automatically protect their VMs locally and/or to another cluster. We don't need to have a conversation about data protection. It's already there.

GPU monitoring is crucial because we do a lot of desktop virtualization. It can tell us which desktop uses the most resources or has too many allocated resources so we can right-size them. The reporting is honest, which I find refreshing. Many vendors will tell you that you need to buy resources, whereas Cloud Manager helps us identify over-provisioning so we can get resources back.

The pre-defined reports are simple. We can very quickly get a report showing which VMs are running, the latency, resource usage, etc. It gives us that information fast. If we migrate data on Monday, we'll have a week's worth of reporting telling us how it went by Friday. We can also get end-of-the-month reporting. 

Cloud Manager's low-code automation features are excellent. We previously used vRealize Automation, which requires considerable effort to do simple things. With Cloud Manager, we can do things with one click. Currently, our workload is primarily VDI, so it doesn't fit so well, but I'd like to increase the usage. So many customers are using Cloud Manager just to manage their hypervisor environment, but the platform has much more to offer. This is a good example of where repetitive tasks can be automated. 

Humans make mistakes, and automation is a big help. It also helps when you don't need to be a rocket scientist to develop automation. You don't need to know much about coding, but it's helpful to know a little and understand what you're trying to achieve.

Our workloads are generally static, but automation is needed to make those changes safely when they change. Automation saves time if you are migrating and provisioning new workloads.

Long gone are the days when you had specialized admins who would be solely responsible for Nutanix environments. Most of us today are generalists. We have a breadth of knowledge, not depth, so filling the gaps with low-code automation is critical.  Reducing the number of clicks needed is great, but consistency is more important. We must ensure that all those workloads are built the same way, so all the expectations are the same.

I've had some challenges with the latest versions. I think the resource requirements are a little too high. The resources that Cloud Manager needs begin to account for a larger proportion of the resources the customers buy. In the announcement for the version they released today, they said there would be a lightweight version, so hopefully that has been addressed.

We have used Cloud Manager for about four years. We've been using it since before it was called cloud manager. 

I've never had any issues expanding clusters or upgrading. Nutanix is undergoing architectural changes and shifting toward microservices. That has been challenging because it's very different, but when it's up and running, it just works. 

As a VDI customer, we have 25,000 VMs, but that is not necessarily that many. We must be mindful of the limits, but we can design around those, so it isn't a problem. 

I rate Nutanix support 10 out of 10. Their support is nice because they'll often connect you with a technician you've spoken with before. I like that because if you call at the same time, you'll get someone in the same region, so you'll probably know who that person is. That's critical because relationships are important. 

Positive

We've worked with other solutions. I've always said that Nutanix is like IT for Dummies, and I'm happy to be considered a dummy. With other platforms, you need to deploy another management solution, but Nutanix provides basic management out of the box. It takes a couple of clicks to implement microsegmentation and data protection. 

The thing I like the most about Cloud Manager is that it's high availability by design. You get three nodes, so you don't have a single point of failure like you do with other vendors. When you log into it, the front page tells you whether you'll have a good day. If it's all green, you can have a cup of coffee because everything is fine, but don't pick up the phone if everything is red because it's all broken. 

I love that I don't need to work hard to find my information. NCM is a delight to set up. It takes a few clicks to deploy out of Prism Element. Anyone can use it because it's web-based and intuitive. You can monitor things at a high level with the click of a button. Generating basic scheduled reports is easy, so our C-level managers can see how their investment is performing. It's as intuitive as possible and all in one dashboard. 

Monitoring is a pillar. We need to monitor our customers' workloads for availability. If a customer doesn't use Nutanix, we'll go with something else, but NCM is the go-to solution for Nutanix. It's never a conversation about whether to use NCM or something else. 

The deployment is straightforward. You give it a few details about IP addresses, etc., press a button, and go make a cup of coffee. It's all done when you get back.

We've seen a return using Cloud Manager in the form of time saved. Time is expensive to our organization, and we've preferred to invest in tooling in recent years rather than people. We've saved a lot of time because we don't need to work as hard using Cloud Manager, which enables us to work smarter. 

It's always difficult to discuss Nutanix pricing because the cost varies wildly depending on the customer and the region. Desktop virtualization is simpler because there is a defined scope. You can tell the Nutanix salesperson how many users you have. In a more traditional environment, it's always best to have NCM for monitoring because you'd be crazy not to. 

We didn't evaluate anything else because Nutanix solutions always work better together. You may already be paying for Cloud Manager in your licensing, and the way Nutanix solutions complement each other is crucial. However, we say in the UK that you shouldn't be marking your own homework, so a third-party perspective could also be helpful. 

I rate Nutanix Cloud Manager 10 out of 10. 

I am not using the cloud manager myself. Instead, I am responsible for deploying and implementing it on behalf of my clients. My role solely involves deploying the manager.

From my company's perspective, our main use case for Nutanix revolves around Citrix. We use it for Citrix Cloud, Citrix on-premises, and sometimes for data center modernization. However, the main reason our customers continue to use Nutanix is its multi-cloud visibility and its ease of VM management.

One or two of our customers utilize the built-in playbooks depending on their level of maturity and available resources. The automation goals of these playbooks are important, but the extent to which they are adopted depends on the customer's IT team and their level of readiness.

We have just begun implementing this, so we don't have any feedback yet on how much time it will save on their projects using playbooks.

We only sell and deployed Nutanix. We don't sell anything else. Because we trust the value of the product and we don't have to manage other products and Nutanix is the best way to satisfy the customers.

Because of its easy deployment, sellability, and fast implementation, Nutanix is a preferred choice. It has excellent performance for workloads and is easy to migrate and move workloads. Additionally, it's simple to convert existing VMware Nutanix clusters to a Nutanix infrastructure, making DR and security easier. Overall, it provides a well-organized and seamless experience.

The most valuable features of this solution are visibility, the single console, capacity planning, the VM efficiencies. We have a recovery plan, security, policies policy security. That's why we implement it with your customers.

I believe that Nutanix Central has the potential to enhance the features and management capabilities of the platform. In my opinion, Nutanix Central will be instrumental in further improving this aspect.

I don't anticipate needing any additional features in this area. While I may require new features such as load balancing with Nutanix Flow networking, I don't believe I'll need them from NCM.

Over the past year, we have seen several improvements in Nutanix Cloud Manager, including new dashboards for security and disaster recovery. Additionally, a new dashboard has been introduced.

There are some load-balancing features that are currently missing in the flow network security and could potentially be added in the future.

I have been working with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for nine years.

The stability is good.

We have not had any problems with NCM.

The goal is to optimize what they currently have and detect any anomalies, particularly in terms of security, for future expansion. This is why they are using it.

Perhaps it would be better if NCM could be optimized to consume fewer resources.

The support team for Nutanix is exceptional. 

The support provided by Nutanix is the best I have ever experienced. 

Whenever we open a case, the solution is provided quickly with excellent quality. The support team is composed of knowledgeable individuals who can address issues effectively.

I would rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Previously, I worked with vRealize Operation Automation.

In my opinion, VMware is not as user-friendly as NCM, which is why I did not choose it for our project.

I think NCM is a valuable tool and can provide evidence of its usefulness, but sometimes the decision not to use it comes down to budget constraints.

We don't handle the deployment process ourselves, but it really depends on the specific use case. For many of our customers, their use case revolves around Citrix. As a result, some customers don't require Nutanix Central, since they only run Virtual Delivery Agents (VDA) on the cluster. Therefore, the decision to use Nutanix Central or other tools really depends on the specific requirements of the customer's use case.

The default deployment is okay.

We have experienced a positive return on investment due to the VM efficiency that Nutanix provides. It has allowed us to optimize our infrastructure and reduce the number of on-desk nodes. This has enabled us to redirect the budget towards other solutions or add more nodes and features.

In my opinion, the pricing is reasonable.

The pricing for NCM is appealing when selling to cloud vendors. I believe that the starter level should be included by default in the package. 

This would enable us to offer more features to customers who may not have the budget to purchase NCM separately. By having basic features included in the package, it would be easier to sell additional features and the full stack to customers.

When we discovered Nutanix and NCM, we were amazed by the simplicity and user-friendliness, and it felt like a revelation. The WOW effect was so strong that we didn't even consider looking for another product.

My main advice to future customers is to be cautious about the resource consumption of NCM and carefully consider where to host the NCM installations.

I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten out of ten.