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Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    KVM

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AKernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization solution developed by small Israeli software company Qumranet and supported by Red Hat since that company's acquisition in 2008.N/A

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ANutanix 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
    KVMNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    KVMNutanix 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
    KVMNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Considered Both Products
    Red Hat
    No answer on this topic
    Nutanix
    Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    We looked at ten solutions, a mixture of VMware and Hyper-V as well as Nutanix KVM, many we rejected on the basis of fault tolerance - most of the other solutions only had two nodes and a SAN. We also found the associated costs of VMware too much for a small business. We also …
    Incentivized
    Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Nutanix is more expensive than VSAN. There's no getting around this. But the value of a Nutanix system far outweighs the value of VSAN. Nutanix will give you data locality, VSAN will flood the network with disk reads & writes. Nutanix wrote their own replication factor …
    Incentivized
    Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    We have used, and still currently use VMWare for our hyper-visor in many respects, it is what was used entirely. While Nutanix's Acropolis is missing a few features because of it being a newer hyper-visor, none of them are deal breakers and the cost savings is absolutely …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Would buy again
    17 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    15 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    18 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    15 Answers
    Features
    KVMNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Feature
    Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    -
    Ratings
    Virtual machine automated provisioning7.05 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management console10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration10.05 Ratings00 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security9.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    KVMNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Small Businesses
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    VMware vSAN
    Score8.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    KVMNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    9.0
    (77 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.3
    (9 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (51 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 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
    KVMNutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Red Hat
    KVM is the best solution in the case you need to test and turn up any virtual environment with limited vCPU/RAM resources. The obvious area of its use is a network environment when we want to avoid being tied to one type of hardware/vendor and being able to swap from one instance to another with no downtimes. The use of a vSwitch (that supports VLAN tagging) is a significant bonus for network engineers that some other hypervisors do not provide.
    Incentivized
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    Nutanix
    For an organization that requires top-notch performance HCI, Nutanix is the best. You may start with 3 nodes and expand the cluster as required. The management through Nutanix Prism Central and Element was so easy that even a Junior Engineer was able to handle it. The Nutanix platform is not suitable for organizations with a small budget and fewer requirements for high-performance infrastructure, as the Nutanix solution itself is suited for enterprises.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Red Hat
    • KVM is really good at providing fast and reliable virtualization for Linux guests
    • Since KVM is a kernel module, every VM is a Linux process which can be managed by Linux system tools
    • KVM integrates very well with the management framework libvirt, which is why KVM can be integrated in automation tools as well
    Incentivized
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    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!
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Red Hat
    • KVM itself doesn't ship with a management interface
    • KVM itself is a bit complicated to handle
    • KVM needs Qemu to virtualize Windows guests
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Red Hat
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Red Hat
    It does the job and stays out of the way. The specifics of usability relies on the implementation, but with things like Icarus and libvirt, things are standardizing nicely.
    Incentivized
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    Nutanix
    It's not out of the box easy, but once you get the fundamentals the steep learning curve flattens out and the processes to get things done and how it works becomes very apparent. It's wrapping the slight change in workflow from prior VM management methods took time to unbox and apply the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure way
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    So far no issue on availability during no issue on network or power outage
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    The performance is nothing short of amazing. This is an HCI solution, and as any all-flash HCI solution is amazingly fast, Nutanix AOS fills local IO requests until its local IO is saturated before reaching out over the network. This lowers latency substantially compared to vSAN.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    Our implementation team were great and worked with us and got the program up and running very easily. Every time we called post implementation we immediately talked to an Engineer, which is so unusual in dealing with companies. Everything they have promised they have full filled. I think their support is top notch.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    We requested more training than typical which was very in depth
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    A lot of online training courses, most of them are free.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Red Hat
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Red Hat
    It is a very reliable solution that can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with low overhead. It is a free and open source software. Easy to use withOpenStack.
    Incentivized
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    Nutanix
    Nutanix integrates very well with Rubrik for backup and protection of the environment. Nutanix gave us simplicity and scalability compared to VMware and allowed us to extend our infrastructure into the cloud using EC2. One unified management pane for all our workloads, unlike VMWare.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    We have scaled our products over the years and continue to do so very easily.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Red Hat
    • Fast provisioning of new servers.
    • Huge drop of the cost of servers compared to bare metal.
    • Easy upgrades of resources, sometimes now even requiring a server restart.
    Incentivized
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    Nutanix
    • We find that return on investment is probably a better metric in most cases.
    • ROI analysis is more than an exercise. Companies must outline what their future looks like, even if it’s vastly different from what they’re used to and comfortable with.
    • As good as your financial analysis might be, displacing status quo infrastructure has a lot of emotions tied to it.
    Incentivized
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