We use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) because we manage a multi-hybrid, multi-cloud environment, with some workloads on-premises, some workloads on Azure Cloud, some on AWS Cloud, and some on GCP Cloud, so that is where our use case is for managing a complete hybrid multi-cloud platform, and we use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) as the management platform for that.

What I appreciate most about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it provides centralized management and automation, offering a unified platform to manage services across multiple clouds, reducing tool sprawl and simplifying complex infrastructure tasks. The single-click operations are best, offering simple one-click upgrade and scalability for the infrastructure, which significantly increases operational efficiency. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) gives us basically a single pane of glass for management.

Next would be cost optimization and visibility with robust tools for cost metering, budgeting, and identifying underutilized resources, helping to optimize costs as well as the usage of the product and resources. It also includes intelligent operations offering machine learning-driven self-tuning, application discovery, and advanced reporting to enhance performance. Finally, there is security and compliance, providing robust security, including network planning and regulatory compliance monitoring.

We see the benefits of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) immediately, particularly with unified multi-cloud management as a true single pane of glass across on-premises and public clouds, which includes AWS and Azure. As we experienced their customer support over time, we found it to be very superior with a consistent high level of customer satisfaction. The simplicity and speed of deployment are much faster and easier compared to other solutions we have used. On the cost management side, we realized it has a stronger ROI, being very cost-effective, with pricing models beneficial for multi-cloud environments, quantifying to a 425% three-year return on investment, a 21% higher developer productivity, and 88% less planned downtime.

Some downsides of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are that it has very high cost and licensing complexity, particularly for smaller environments, making it more suited for larger environments. On the learning curve and support, while Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is user-friendly in some areas, the initial setup is complex and sometimes requires very specialized expertise, creating a steep learning curve. There is also limited third-party integration, as it has very limited non-native integrations compared to competitors. The documentation has gaps, particularly for advanced features, requiring some improvement, and certain advanced configurations and troubleshooting still require heavy reliance on the command-line interface rather than having a GUI.

I have been working with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for around one year.

I have not seen any lagging, crashing, or downtime.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is hugely scalable, and that is one of the biggest advantages of the product.

I have contacted Nutanix customer support. Both the speed and quality of the support I have experienced are fantastic.

It took us more than a month to fully set up Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for the first time, but after we became familiar with the product, we started using it and seeing how it helps us.

One person cannot do the deployment; we definitely need a team.

We see the benefits of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) immediately, particularly with unified multi-cloud management as a true single pane of glass across on-premises and public clouds, which includes AWS and Azure. As we experienced their customer support over time, we found it to be very superior with a consistent high level of customer satisfaction. The simplicity and speed of deployment are much faster and easier compared to other solutions we have used. On the cost management side, we realized it has a stronger ROI, being very cost-effective, with pricing models beneficial for multi-cloud environments, quantifying to a 425% three-year return on investment, a 21% higher developer productivity, and 88% less planned downtime.

In my current field, I have been working for more than 30 years. In my experience comparing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with other cloud management solutions, I find it far ahead in terms of the functionality it offers as compared to its competitors, both in ease of management and the way it makes things extremely easy with a single pane of glass to manage. Its main advantages are ease of use, automation, and cost-effectiveness, also offering unified control across private and public clouds. It has superior support with a Net Promoter Score of over 90. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is very simple to deploy and has comprehensive native integrations, often outperforming niche or complex solutions on cost efficiency when compared to competitors like VMware Cloud Foundation, ServiceNow ITOM, Azure Arc, AWS Outposts, or Google Distributed Cloud.

The playbooks, often referred to as X-Play, have been very useful, really freeing up a lot of our time, making it the right strategy to enhance their product and make it more user-friendly. These playbooks provide a low-code and no-code automation engine within Prism Central, streamlining routine IT tasks and auto-remediating issues. They use triggers such as alerts, manual, and time-based to initiate actions such as VM management, third-party notifications, or scripts. Various features within their playbooks that we have used include trigger types that are alert-based, where, for example, if your VM memory usage crosses 70%, you can set a threshold value, again manual or time-based. Over 30 native actions are available, including VM power operations, snapshot management, and script execution. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) playbooks support integration with REST APIs, allowing connection with external tools such as ServiceNow, Jira, or Ansible. Use cases we have applied include auto-remediation, such as automatically adding memory to a VM if it hits a utilization alert, automated maintenance to start or stop AWS EC2 instances based on a schedule, alerting to send notifications to Slack when a new VM is created, and playbooks can be imported, exported, and monitored via the Plays tab to track execution history.

I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.

I have been working with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for approximately three years. I work as a multi-cloud architect and solution architect on several different OEM products within the cloud and virtualization space. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) initially launched in 2022, and I have been working with the product since 2023.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides automation capability in multi-cloud management, automation, and security with different use cases depending on the organization. The product has different capabilities including self-service capabilities, blueprinting, and compliance, which we utilize.

Feature-wise, the self-service capabilities are quite improved from the initial version and provide governance and visibility of Google Cloud and Azure. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Playbook helps us orchestrate operations and reach the desired state, which is very helpful. The low-code automation allows us to manage VMs, remediate alerts, and handle day-to-day tasks with playbooks, enabling intelligent operations.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has the capability for cost optimization and analysis, which helps us scale workload and perform cost assessment and optimization. This is a great feature available in the product.

When comparing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with other competitive portfolio products, there is some lack of capabilities. When compared with VMware Aria from an automation perspective, it lacks some CI/CD integration capabilities and integration of CI/CD pipelines.

The user interface could be improved. The UI should be more cosmetic and visually distinct, as sometimes it is very similar to other Nutanix platforms.

Stability-wise, there are no issues. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a very good, well-known, and safely launched tool. I have not found any crash, legacy, or latency issues. The product is completely reliable.

Regarding speed and quality, I would rate the quality at five out of five on the largest scale. Support-wise, I would rate it around 4.5 for speed because sometimes it depends on the issue. If there is a P1 or P2 issue, the timeline will change. Support-wise, I would rate it 4.5 for speed, and the quality of support is five out of five.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is very easy from a deployment perspective because it comes with the SaaS service. It is completely SaaS-based, which makes it very easy for deployment and allows for a quick start. A fast start is achievable with this product.

For deployment and day-zero, day-one, and day-two operations, around two to three people are required. This may include a system admin, and it depends on how much Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is utilized. Two people is sufficient for operating and managing the product from an operations perspective.

There are a couple of cloud management solutions apart from Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). The most competitive would be Aria automation and the Aria Suite from VMware. Nutanix is launching Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for managing hybrid cloud management environments and performing cloud management.

The low-code automation speed-wise is satisfactory. When doing an apple-to-apple comparison with other automation tools, it is quite good on the Nutanix side.

It depends on deployment. If using SaaS-based deployment, it does not require any management from the organization. If using VM-based deployment, it will require management as per VM-level operations, such as upgrades.

I am not a direct customer of Nutanix. I manage customers who have a Nutanix environment as a managed service provider. Some of our clients have Nutanix clusters, and some have VMware clusters, which we manage as a managed service provider.

We are not a partner with Nutanix, so we do not sell the product, but we suggest it based on the use case of the customer. If a client comes to us with a requirement for automation or management, we will facilitate a tailored solution and recommend it. However, the purchasing and cost are handled by the authorized Nutanix partners who are aligned with that particular customer.

I would rate this product nine out of ten overall.

The main use case for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is to create a hybrid cloud experience. It serves as a turnkey solution where we can add management features to get the same experience we have with an NCM Nutanix product on-premises, even if we run Nutanix in the public cloud.

I work for an IT distributor where we sell products for virtualization and data centers, with Nutanix being our main solution for this kind of business. We resell Nutanix for other companies from various industries or markets in Brazil.

The setup of Nutanix is very easy. The overall complexity of the solution is much less, and it's a solution that provides freedom of choice. We can run Nutanix on any cloud, on any hardware with any hypervisor.

The cost governance features of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are some of the most important features in this solution. We have features that help customers spend less on public cloud infrastructure. We have the observability of these costs, attribute quotas or chargeback policies, and with this kind of cost management, the expenditure of IT infrastructure in the public cloud could be significantly less so that the return on investment can be very relevant to companies that spend substantial money with the public cloud.

The console of the Nutanix solution has various reports that we can fulfill and use a SaaS-like solution for Nutanix that allows us to input our expenditure profiles of the public clouds and then compare that with the cost that we might have with the on-premise solutions.

The main area that could be improved with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the cost. This is a license that we can use as a complement for the NCI product, which is the main product of Nutanix. Here in Brazil, we have a total cost of ownership based on the NCI, and sometimes the NCM additions make the product a little higher when we compare it with the public clouds. We are much cheaper when we compare with the Broadcom vCloud solution, but not as competitive when we compare with AWS or Google when these kinds of solutions are built into the platform.

I have worked for about 10 years with the Nutanix portfolio: NCM, NCI, and NUS.

These solutions are already deployed in a high availability way with load balancing. Any problem with these machines does not compromise the structure of what we have built within. The solution has very high availability with no problems.

In terms of scalability, it is really high. The threshold is not about NCM; it's the size of your on-premises or cloud infrastructure. As long as your AWS or public cloud workloads can grow, the solution is already set up to manage it.

I would rate their customer service with Nutanix a nine out of ten. The support of the Nutanix team is great. The complexity of the matters might make it slightly lower, but even then, this is higher than the average of the market.

I have never used a similar solution in my company. I have only studied the solution from Broadcom.

The deployment of the Nutanix solution is instantaneous. These solutions are packaged in the Nutanix Prism Central that is a piece of software already deployed in the cluster. It requires only the setup of the policies that we want to have, the creation of the playbooks that we're interested in, and the setup of the cost profiles and the quotas or the project. The setup is already done when we deploy the Prism Central solution, which is a main managed solution for this kind of cluster.

Using NCM's built-in playbooks has freed up time for my IT team. We have saved more than 50% of the time. We can create the experience of scale-out and elasticity that we have in the public cloud, provide this to on-premises solutions, and it saves lots of time in micromanagement of the VM profiles.

Regarding the speed of outcomes from their low-code automation, some companies have longer cycles of deployment of applications of infrastructure, and time is money. Once we can deploy large solutions with CI/CD solutions and integrate a DevOps-like flow of production, we can reduce this time and accelerate the value of the solution for the infrastructure. Nutanix gives that with the turnkey solution. We do not have the complexity to assemble a CI/CD solution with open-source solutions or multiple products. This is a complete flow of work for DevOps, integrated even with the Kubernetes or containers infrastructures that can accelerate this kind of deployment significantly, varying with the profile of the company that utilizes it. My company is not a development company, so this does not have this kind of value since we do not develop, but I can see the value that this feature has for companies that build software in-house.

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

The use cases are related to infrastructure migration from VMware to Nutanix. I have exposure to the Dell XC series, which has a Nutanix hypervisor installed. It consists of containers along with the Nutanix infrastructure using Dell hardware.

The licensing is much cheaper than other competitors such as VMware, Cisco UCS, or Microsoft Hyper-V for on-premises data centers. It is very user-friendly and can be managed through Prism Central, a centralized console that allows management of multiple clusters.

Due to the recent conversion from VMware to Broadcom, Broadcom has increased their prices five times the existing rates. Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused. The main differentiator from competitors is its cost-effectiveness, and customers have been running and upgrading their technologies for 10 to 15 years. In terms of client satisfaction, performance, upgrades, or protection against ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities, they are regularly releasing patches and upgrading the system. These activities contribute to customer satisfaction and differentiate them from competitors.

Nutanix needs more cloud collaborations.There are many cloud providers currently available. Integration with the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Unified Storage or Nutanix cloud platform should be improved for better containerization. This is a major drawback in configuration. Other competitors are developing solutions such as VMware on AWS, VMware on Google Cloud, and Azure VMware solutions.

I have more than seven years of experience in Nutanix. My core expertise is in VMware and Nutanix.

It is highly scalable. Most customers utilize the scalability capabilities for running and expanding their IT infrastructure as needed. The key aspects include mix-match hardware and hyper-converged infrastructure, combining compute, storage, and network in a single platform. No other competitor provides such scalable infrastructure. It is software-defined, cloud-integrated, and simple to manage with automated one-touch upgrade capabilities.

They have their vendor site at support.nutanix.com. Users require an order ID or unique ID to log in, which can be individual or team-based. Support is available for software, hardware, upgrades, firmware, BIOS, Dell PT agent, and software entities through support.nutanix.com.

I would rate their support a nine out of ten because sometimes you struggle to get the engineers assigned to a particular issue, especially in situations like production downtime. Although there are Technical Account Managers (TAMs) and resident engineers available, they may not always be fully equipped to handle on-site troubleshooting effectively. Reducing resolution time would be beneficial for both the client and Nutanix.

We use external storage including Dell XtremIO, Data Domains, and I have exposure to VMware vSAN for storage solutions.

When comparing it to the other options, the licensing cost is significantly lower. It's a software-defined platform that offers block storage through a single management interface. Overall, this solution is more cost-effective than its competitors, which highlights the advantages of a unified storage platform.

With all details and resources available, including DNS entries, IPs, subnets, and subnet masks, the initial setup takes two hours from start to finish. Expansion of new containers takes approximately 40 to 45 minutes.

Implementation requires team effort. The process involves racking and stacking in the data center, network engineering according to cut sheet plans, cabling configuration, and hardware setup for HPE or Dell servers. After hardware setup, either AHV hypervisor or ESXi needs to be installed, followed by primary virtual machine configuration for Prism Central or Prism Element. The implementation scope depends on infrastructure size, whether it's a three-node, four-node, or six-node cluster, which is specified in the cut sheet. Separate teams handle costing, implementation, deployment, and operations.

Pricing is based on the Acropolis Operating System (AOS), not on the hypervisor level. While VMware costs depend on ESXi hypervisor pricing, the AHV hypervisor for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is free. Customers only pay for the AOS platform. This differs from other competitors such as Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix, which have their own licensing costs for servers and cloud platforms.

There are currently many platforms available, particularly with Nutanix. We can utilize Nutanix with Kubernetes as well as on AWS. For automation purposes, we require DevOps and machine learning to automate tasks. For example, if you want to delete snapshots on servers, automation is necessary, and this can be achieved through machine learning or DevOps practices. In the current environment, there are various scripting options available, including PowerShell and other non-specified scripts. If we focus specifically on the DevOps perspective, it's essential for me to learn these new technologies.

Regarding machine learning, I don’t have much exposure specifically to unified storage. However, with Nutanix Cloud platform, I have experience with data services and secure data services. From an infrastructure standpoint, I have over seven years of experience in hybrid and multi-cloud environments on the Nutanix platform.

In terms of cybersecurity, there are multiple external appliances available for unified storage. To focus on the Nutanix platform specifically, Nutanix Unified Storage has several features. For instance, Nutanix Lens is one tool available. Moreover, when consolidating your Nutanix infrastructure, you have access to various data protection, data analytics, and secure backup options. It's a combined effort involving Data Lens and other tools available in the market.

Data Lens essentially helps manage big data access across various geopolitical areas through data centers. We need to ensure compliance with our policies regarding security, especially concerning ransomware. In essence, it's a security solution offering that addresses vulnerabilities, data resiliency, and analytical tools that we utilize for security purposes. I had the opportunity to work on Data Lens about two or three months ago for a project.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a unified cloud management platform that provides automation, cost optimization, self-service provisioning, and security across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Prism Center manages Nutanix infrastructure, monitoring, alerts, and lifecycle, while Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) adds advanced capabilities such as cost governance, automation, self-service, and security, as it is built on top of the Prism Center. It simplifies multi-cloud management and reduces cloud costs with optimization tools while enabling self-service and faster provisioning, improving security and compliance, and automating manual IT operations.

Regarding speed, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) automates deployment and includes logging task execution, such as blueprint deployment steps and runbook, which is helpful for debugging performance analysis for application performance and logging during automation. Because we have multiple nodes, we can use automations within two to three minutes. When running the automation script, we can deploy and collect the logs within two to three minutes. Without using automation scripts, it would take more time and effort for collecting requirement data and requirement deployments. Manual management is very difficult, so we develop scripting automation for deployment, collecting logs, and health checks, making it very speedy at two to three minutes.

We use automation for logging, collecting logs, and checking monitoring. The automation engine is powerful, similar to Calm, which is for automated application deployment, and I am using it in two and three projects. For expansion, we can use automation such as infrastructure and Terraform. Unified cloud storage is a unified software platform, such as NCM and VMware.

We can explain the platform types: unified SaaS, on-prem, and hybrid cloud management. VMware uses enterprise-grade hybrid management, and for infrastructure automation, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) uses Calm, blueprint, and runbook, while VMware uses infrastructure automation, blueprint, and workflow. For self-service protocol, NCM uses integrated multi-tenancy, but VMware is customizable. For cost governance, NCM uses Beam for multi-cloud cost tracking, but VMware requires vRealize Operations.

To compare Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and other components simply, NCM is a unified platform offering automation, cost governance, and operations through the UI. Compared to vRealize or Terraform, NCM stands out for simplicity and integrated cost analysis with Beam, and more benefits on one-click application with blueprint called Calm. However, tools such as Terraform offer more flexibility for DevOps-heavy use cases, and VMware may fit better in an all-VMware environment.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a very scalable deployment performance tool. The best features and key areas for improvement in Nutanix management are the user interface, enhancing onboarding with tool tips and guided steps, blueprint, and version control through Git integration. These are key areas to improve, along with third-party integration and license simplicity. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is very powerful, but it can be improved in areas such as UI usability, blueprint version, deeper cloud integration, and enhanced reporting by adding more AI-driven automation.

Five plus years

I rate stability as 8 out of 10 because I have deployed multiple projects, and neither my customers nor my team have complained.

I rate the technical support as 9 out of 10 because I know it very well.

I am working with VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing depends on customer requirements and is based on licensing. It is relatively inexpensive, falling in the medium price range.

I recommend Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to others because it is a very good platform for organizations that want to simplify hybrid or multi-cloud operations. It helps improve cost efficiency, which is crucial as customers check for that first. It improves efficiency and automates IT tasks, which benefits customers significantly. It enhances governance and security compliance, all from a single management platform. The customer base ranges from 3,000 to 5,000 users. My overall rating for this solution is 8 out of 10.

My use case with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) includes cluster management, cluster initiation, VM management, VM capacity, VM deployment, and day-to-day operations, as well as patch lifecycle management of clusters and the AHV.

Compared to other cloud management solutions such as VMware, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) offers a single pane of glass where a single service can manage everything, thanks to Prism Central and Prism Element metrics. The security level is a significant advantage because Nutanix supports multi-cloud from Prism Central and provides one-click upgrades through LCM.

Additionally, we utilize a replication factor to rebuild data during disk or host failures to maintain high availability of production servers and workloads. Using the playbooks in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) significantly helps free up time for other tasks, as we encounter anomalies in our enterprise environment. The playbooks allow us to troubleshoot issues automatically without manual intervention, which in turn saves time.

As a professional certified in Nutanix for multi-cloud infrastructure, I believe there is room for improvement in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) regarding the data rebuilding process with the replication factor. It currently does not support parallelism, which results in longer rebuild times compared to external storage such as Dell PowerFlex, which has faster data rebuild speeds. My concern is that rebuilding data in Nutanix can take from one to 20 hours based on size, whereas Dell PowerFlex minimizes downtime. Despite achieving usable storage in Nutanix, I would advocate for enhancements in the parallelism of data rebuilding. The data rebuilding process could potentially be simplified, although improvements have been made by removing the RAID concept for a distributed architecture. In enterprise environments, reliance on storage remains high, and increasing the speed of the rebuild process would be beneficial. Those storage aspects can definitely be improved.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for three to four years.

I would rate the stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten out of ten, as it provides multiple features, including disaster recovery with a one-minute SLA, which is superior compared to other vendors that typically offer 15-minute SLAs.

I would rate the scalability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a nine out of ten, primarily because of concerns regarding the data rebuilding process.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for technical support.

It's easy. With a proper plan, we can achieve it.

Pricing for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is based on the applications and workloads we use; it is somewhat high, but it provides a good subscription model compared to VMware's core per product pricing. I prefer Nutanix because it reduces the burdens by not having to manage separate VMs or services for storage and automation, which makes it a favorable option.

Currently, I am working on Nutanix Cloud, and in the future, we will be merging with Azure using LCM. In my organization, approximately 30 to 35 people work with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) as part of a team of around 60 that operates 24/7, including SMEs.

We are a customer and also a partner. Our clients include very large businesses, particularly big online retailers in the US. I currently work in L2 and L3 level support, focusing on SME-level tasks and collaborating with senior members to leverage my knowledge and learning.

I find the future of hybrid management crucial, and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) plays an integral role in maintaining hybrid solutions with its software-defined hyper-converged infrastructure, making it my choice over other clouds.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Our main use case for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) was initially to run away from the high cost of VMware, and after that, we realized that if we compare apples and apples, there is a technical advantage in Nutanix. The technology is newer regarding storage management, and we appreciate the path that Nutanix was taking with NKE. Now with Nutanix, we know the path we are taking for NKP, whereas VMware's Tanzu was proprietary, requiring us to fully commit to VMware or nothing.

The best features of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) start with the combination of cost and what is really under the hood, and it basically does the same thing that VMware does. The cost is better, and we appreciate the options available for storage—it allows for object storage, and the management of the storage underneath Nutanix is much more flexible than VMware. Additionally, we can have another platform as a service that is not available in VMware.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) assists my team in addressing our current automation needs while planning for future expansion by allowing us to use Ansible for automation and configuration management. We are planning to gradually replace VMware with Nutanix and are using the same tools, such as Ansible, to deploy. Although we are not using the native blueprint automation from Nutanix, we plan to integrate open-source tools such as Terraform for Kubernetes automation while using Nutanix native tools for implementations.

In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) can be improved as the NKP product needs to mature a little more. This is a natural process, and while the hypervisor is mature, I would like to see more maturity in the products on top of the hypervisor, such as databases and object storage. The main reason I give it an 8 or 9 rating is that a few things need to mature, such as NKP and the object storage. While our primary reason for choosing Nutanix was for mission-critical applications and Kubernetes, I believe there are issues that need addressing. However, I see they have a roadmap for improvements, especially with the hypervisor itself, which I would rate a perfect 10, while the new products and plugins need enhancement.

I have two years of experience with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) in real production.

Regarding stability, I find Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to be very stable and suitable for running mission-critical applications.

I evaluate the scalability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and find it very scalable, with no limitations encountered at the moment.

In terms of the speed of outcomes from Nutanix's low-code automation, it is almost the same as what we experienced with VMware. In case of issues, I find that Nutanix offers more personalized support since it is smaller now. We have easier access to high-level engineers compared to VMware, where you have to navigate multiple channels for support. Both support systems are good, and while I do not complain about VMware support, the feeling might change as Nutanix grows. I would rate the support for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) around a nine on a scale of one to ten, as it is really good.

With Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), we could run multiple solutions, such as SUSE, NKP, and OpenShift. The learning curve of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is more simple compared to VMware, as we were coming from a VMware environment, and it was something new for us. There is a lot of free material available to help us start learning Nutanix.

The built-in playbooks of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have indeed freed up time for our IT team, which is noteworthy considering we previously had a problematic setup with a combination of SimpliVity and VMware. We faced complications due to two vendors blaming each other for firmware issues, which was a nightmare. Now, we have one place to ask questions, and Nutanix works closely with a short list of certified hardware vendors. If I have an issue, I call Nutanix, and they handle communication with the vendors, whereas with VMware, the problems are isolated to my world. Last year, our group spent about 40% of its time fixing issues related to VMware, but now things are much smoother with Nutanix.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) an 8 or 9, as it has its strengths and some areas for improvement.

I use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to create virtual machines, connect them for storage. I use it for many other tasks, but mainly for servers or virtual machines, where I build different virtual machines, such as Windows and Linux, of all kinds.

The major attraction point of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that everything is auto-scaling. For example, if we are trying to patch in Nutanix, when we go to the lifecycle manager and click on the patch, the VMs automatically migrate from one cluster to another cluster or one host to another host, and it starts getting patched. In other cloud setups, such as VMware, we need to do it manually, so Nutanix is more user-friendly than other cloud setups.

The best feature in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), from my perspective as a cloud engineer, is having hardware to private setup support by a single vendor, whereas with other cloud setups, we have different support. For a setup, we have a separate support for the cloud setup and a separate support for the hardware. The second feature is creating auto-scheduled snapshots; until today, we haven't found any other cloud setup for scheduling a snapshot onto a VM. These are the main points: getting full support from the Nutanix vendor, scheduling the snapshots, and auto patching are the three best features I can mention, though there may be many others.

It is easy to use. Even a school student can run Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) automation because it is extremely user-friendly. Not only developers or experts but even a college graduate can use Nutanix, as everything is understandable and the graphical user interface of Nutanix Prism is very attractive.

The areas that could be improved include the Nutanix Move tool, which is presently used for migrating VMs from one setup to a private cloud. It can be improved by adding some other setups, such as Citrix Xen, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat OpenShift. There are many other cloud products that need to be added to the Nutanix Move tool, which would be really helpful for us in India, where we use different setups such as Red Hat Virtualization, OpenShift, Citrix XenCenter, Hyper-V, and VMware.

The second suggestion is regarding the different clusters in Nutanix. Although Nutanix is very user-friendly and codeless, the individual clusters cannot be logged in at the same time via Prism, which takes time and can be wasteful. We have multiple clusters within Nutanix. Prism serves as the central management interface, allowing us to access these different clusters. When we log in through Prism, it takes a certain amount of time—sometimes several minutes—to log into each individual cluster. This can be quite time-consuming.

Another important issue, especially for our customers in India and other data centers, is the need for proper VM tool reports. We require detailed information such as VM names, IP addresses, CPU assignments, and CPU utilization. This data should be exported in an Excel format. For example, if a virtual machine has four CPUs, the Excel report should include entries like: VM name, IP address, 4 CPUs, and current utilization (e.g., if 2 out of 4 CPUs are being used). We also need to capture other parameters, such as memory and disk configurations (e.g., hard disk 1 and hard disk 2), whether any ISOs are mounted (like CD/DVDs), USB drives attached to the VM, storage types (like NVM), and any RDMs associated with the VM. By extracting all this information into an Excel file, we would create a handy inventory for all the engineers. This detailed VM list would be extremely beneficial for cloud engineers and managers working with Nutanix.

I have been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for the last two to two and a half years with substantial experience. I'm not an expert in automation, but the existing features are sufficient to manage effectively.

The stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is rated as eight out of ten.

For scalability, I would rate it as eight out of ten.

We are managing private clouds for different clients. We currently hold 1,800 customers on Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), mostly medium customers, with approximately 100 enterprise customers and the remaining 1,700 being medium clients.

I would rate Nutanix support as eight out of ten.

Having worked with approximately four to five different cloud setups including Nutanix, VMware, Hyper-V, and Red Hat OpenShift, I would rate both Nutanix and VMware similarly at four out of five as they provide similar features, but Nutanix is more attractive compared to VMware.

We are exclusively managing a private cloud. I work specifically with the private cloud, while a separate team handles the public cloud. However, I can confidently say that no one is currently using Nutanix as a public cloud solution; it is being utilized solely as a private setup.

Deploying Nutanix is straightforward, but as with any new system, it can be complex at the beginning.

In the past, we had vendor support during the initial stages, about two to two and a half years ago. The vendor would regularly visit our data center and provide guidance, which made it easier for us. However, understanding a new subject can still be challenging at first.

Considering my team, I have approximately ten experts working with Nutanix, while the rest are normal engineers handling basic tasks or support for Nutanix, VMware, or other clouds.

India is a hub for various customers seeking technology solutions. Many of these customers are looking for competitive pricing, but Nutanix's costs tend to be quite high. We primarily work with mid-level customers in India rather than enterprise clients. These mid-level customers are interested in services that are priced more moderately. In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups. As a result, we have approximately 3,000 customers using VMware, while Nutanix has around 1,800 customers. The disparity in these numbers is quite striking: 3,000 customers for VMware versus 1,800 for Nutanix. Indian customers don't like high-priced hyper clouds, so they invest in VMware, which offers the same features at a lower base price.

I have seen a lot of improvements in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), but the package we are using has been the same for the last two to two and a half years.

I would definitely recommend Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to other users or cloud engineers, but they may hesitate due to the pricing. In India, the market looks for minimal prices and best features.

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