Azure Virtual Machines vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Virtual Machines
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Virtual Machines (VMs) are available on Microsoft Azure, providing what is built as a low-cost, per-second compute service, available via Windows or Linux.
$0
Per Hour
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Nutanix in San Jose, California offers their software-defined Enterprise Cloud as a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. The Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure solution combines the Nutanix Acropolis virtualization solution, Nutanix AHV hypervisor (though Acropolis works with other hypervisors), Prism cluster manager, Nutanix Calm and Nutanix Flow server management, and is available on the Nutanix NX series of server hardware appliances, as well as third-party OEM appliances.N/A
Pricing
Azure Virtual MachinesNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Editions & Modules
3 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0038
Per Hour
Spot - General Purpose - Av2
$0.005
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0059
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0075
Per Hour
Spot - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0104
Per Hour
Spot - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0125
Per Hour
Spot - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.016
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0307
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0369
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.0481
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.05
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0548
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.0753
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0846
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.096
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.126
Per Hour
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Virtual MachinesNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Virtual MachinesNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Considered Both Products
Azure Virtual Machines

No answer on this topic

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix AOS is by far the superior leader when compared against this competition. They are quicker and more reliable. Also, the functionality is much more advanced and simplicity leading.
Automation is wonderful, and the performance of its tools works without fail. I have not …
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
Azure Virtual MachinesNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Azure Virtual Machines
8.6
23 Ratings
3% above category average
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
-
Ratings
Virtual machine automated provisioning8.923 Ratings00 Ratings
Management console8.021 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup8.919 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration8.516 Ratings00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security8.516 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Virtual MachinesNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Small Businesses
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE
Score 9.3 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
VMware vSAN
VMware vSAN
Score 8.8 out of 10
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User Ratings
Azure Virtual MachinesNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(23 ratings)
9.0
(72 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(6 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(4 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(51 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.7
(54 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Virtual MachinesNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
If you want to host a dedicated Windows server on the cloud, and especially if you want to integrate it with your on premises Active Directory, Azure Virtual Machines should be your first choice. Obviously running Linux on Azure works very well too, but given Azure's pricing is not the cheapest, there are other providers out there that have a better cost-benefit ratio for Linux. That said, hosting Windows on Azure can be affordable (especially when compared to other providers) if you plan your licensing, topology, and application architecture correctly.
Read full review
Nutanix
I would highly recommend using Nutanix HCI for any of your infrastructure needs. I would highly suggest saving money and using the free included AHV hypervisor. The performance is incredible, and the data reduction capabilities are on par with vSAN. I would only recommend using ESXi with Nutanix AOS if AHV does not yet support some one-off configurations or if you still want to use horizon while the frame is still growing.
Read full review
Pros
Microsoft
  • When demand is high, we scale the service out, eg During a Football Match.
  • When a football match is over and the throughput of data from OPTA drops we save by the service scaling back in.
  • Our App Service Plans along with the Clean C# code are lightening fast giving a good customer experience.
  • When producing the TV Guide information and a program overruns its scheduled time, a client can instantly be updated to the new programming schedule as our change is instant and its in the right place for all the clients to download and adjust their television guides appropriately to send out to the public giving a 24x7 uptime service that is precise and accurate and resilient to outages due to failover zones around the world.
Read full review
Nutanix
  • One-click upgrades; whether it's hypervisor, firmware, disk or other updates. This feature has drastically decreased complexity and administration time.
  • Data Locality. Not all hyperconverged technology is created equal. When I first purchased Nutanix they were the only vendor (and as far as I know, still are) that made sure the storage a VM used was on the same host that VM was running on. Given a normal operating state, the [storage] network is literally only used for replication data.
  • They got rid of traditional RAID. Nutanix uses software to determine where a VM's storage should be written and replicated to. This dramatically decreases I/O when changing the number of nodes in a cluster, be it on purpose or during a failure scenario. Ex. adding a new node: If one uses RAID arrays then enough space has to be set aside to create a new array that includes the new node, then all the information has to be copied over, and the old array destroyed. RAID arrays do not grow and shrink gracefully so Nutanix has designed a better solution.
  • The Nutanix management interface was built on HTML5. No more flash headaches!
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • Pricing can be a concern if you are truly agnostic to which cloud you are building your particular solution in.
  • The UI, as is the case with any cloud provider, is crowded.
  • As with any cloud provider, it can be difficult to tune in exactly the right amount of servers for your needs...you might find yourself under/overprovisioning.
Read full review
Nutanix
  • Can be priced high at times.
  • The one downside I have working with Nutanix is the sales team. They seem to try to add in extra goodies to sales quotes or push for extras that you don't really need and you have to tell them to take them out. Don't be afraid to push back on them.
  • Need to analyze sizing with sales team to ensure right sizing.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
AOS definitely make our dev/test virtual environment management much easier than before. And the consolidation the test/dev environment from Azure and Cisco UCS, we have less need to transfer large amount of data between different hardware platforms which was very big challenge. To expand the capacity is very easy to archive as well.
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Usability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
The learning curve on it is very low and easy to use. It is very user friendly and easy to understand.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
So far no issue on availability during no issue on network or power outage
Read full review
Performance
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
Nutanix AOS performance is light years ahead of HPE. We were nervous about using Nutanix AHV but it has been a vast improvement and saves on cost. Applications has been much improved and end users have commented. It has also freed up time for our Network Administrators and made their lives easier.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
I give the overall support for Azure Virtual Machines a 7 because I think while the overall support do a great job there are still areas that it could improve on such as efficiency and speed. So while I only give it a 7 and it has some issues it is still better than the overall support at Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.
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Nutanix
Modernizing with HCI, which creates private cloud-like data centers, is, for many organizations, the first step in their digital transformation. Companies that have kept their eye on the long game and made decisions based on a fully-developed ROI analysis have found themselves uniquely positioned to make the critical operational changes the COVID-19 situation has demanded.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
We requested more training than typical which was very in depth
Read full review
Online Training
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
A lot of online training courses, most of them are free.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
IPv6 is needed for link local discovery. We do not have IPv6 configured on our network so the easiest way to get our nodes configured and discovered by foundation was to configure the IPv4 addressing within the node prior to trying to discover with foundation.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Azure Virtual Machines offer unparalleled flexibility in provisioning, managing and upgrading the VM instances, both manually and programmatically. AVM offer very granular billing options and enables high costs optimisations (while still being costly). The other competitors I mentioned are very good at offering dead-cheap VMs. But if you need anything beyond that, especially for big computing, you need Azure Virtual Machines.
Read full review
Nutanix
We've decided to go for both VxRail and Nutanix AOS to make sure we can get the best deals from both sides. I appreciate this may not be a path most companies can go down, but always good to have a bit of healthy competition between vendors to ensure you're getting the best pricing from both sides!
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Nutanix
We have scaled our products over the years and continue to do so very easily.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • It's so easy to spin up new instances, that it becomes also to easy to have to many of them to manage. Many teams end up with a couple of hundreds of VMs after a short while, making the whole thing very hard to maneuver
  • Azure VMs are the next step for us to rely on Onprem servers, and leaving the management of the infrastructure to the professionals
  • The ease of use, is also important when our main focus is to deliver new applications and integrations fast, and not having to worry about infrastructure. We sell bottles, not CPUs
Read full review
Nutanix
  • We save money with an all-inclusive pricing model and cut out of extra pieces we no longer need
  • The management of this product is minimal and save time and resources.
  • We found that the N+1 portion is working well but not identified well.
Read full review
ScreenShots