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Nutanix AHV

Nutanix AHV

Overview

What is Nutanix AHV?

Nutanix AHV is presented as a modern and secure virtualization platform that powers VMs and containers for applications and cloud-native workloads on-premises and in public clouds. Its tools and automated workflows simplify the day-to-day administration of VMs and containers.

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Recent Reviews

Nutanix AHV OK

9 out of 10
November 05, 2021
I can not say enough how great Nutanix AOS is, friendly to use, easy to upgrade (1 click). We switched over from PC to convert into VDI …
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Nutanix AHV is a great product

9 out of 10
November 05, 2021
We use Nutanix AOS as our virtual environment located at our headquarters and at three of our remote offices. We have a six-node cluster …
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Nutanix review

9 out of 10
June 30, 2021
Incentivized
Our company is engaged in software development. Nutanix AOS is used in our company as a virtualization platform, where many different …
Continue reading

Nutanix

9 out of 10
April 09, 2021
Incentivized
Nutanix [AOS] is being used by how for the hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) environment which consolidates the server and storage …
Continue reading

Nutanix Review

10 out of 10
April 13, 2020
Incentivized
We use Nutanix Platform in our IAAS services and VDI services across all our clients. The client experience has been improved from our …
Continue reading

Nutanix Review

10 out of 10
March 13, 2020
Incentivized
We use AOS to host more than 100 virtual machines on different OS. Since our migration to AOS, we haven't had any issues related to our …
Continue reading
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Pricing

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What is Nutanix AHV?

Nutanix AHV is presented as a modern and secure virtualization platform that powers VMs and containers for applications and cloud-native workloads on-premises and in public clouds. Its tools and automated workflows simplify the day-to-day administration of VMs and containers.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

AHV VM Networking | Tech Bytes | Nutanix University

YouTube

Live migrate AHV VMs with vGPU | Tech Bytes | Nutanix University

YouTube

AHV VMs with multiple vGPU profiles | Tech Bytes | Nutanix University

YouTube

Tech Bytes: Exporting a QCOW2 Image from AHV

YouTube

How to use RBAC | AHV Mission Control | Nutanix University

YouTube

On-Demand Cross Cluster Live Migration | AHV Mission Control | Nutanix University

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Nutanix AHV?

Nutanix AHV is presented as a modern and secure virtualization platform that powers VMs and containers for applications and cloud-native workloads on-premises and in public clouds. Its tools and automated workflows simplify the day-to-day administration of VMs and containers. Open source at its core, Nutanix AHV extends advanced virtualization capabilities to modern hybrid cloud environments. It features a distributed systems core designed for the cloud to solve today’s complex enterprise IT challenges.


Overview


According to Nutanix, the hypervisor is the foundation of modern IT. Virtual Machines (VMs) and containers abstract applications from the underlying hardware so that they can be dynamically provisioned, upgraded, and managed at scale. This paradigm is central across both traditional enterprise IT as well as modern cloud-native applications, but until recently these two delivery models were siloed.

AHV brings these two worlds together, with an open-source foundation extended with advanced enterprise features, and integrated into an HCI framework with built-in storage and networking capabilities for a complete, seamless solution. With simple provisioning and management of VMs, containers, business-critical applications and cloud-native operations and workloads, AHV enables a consistent hybrid cloud operating model across datacenters, the edge, and public clouds.


Enterprise-grade Virtualization Capabilities


  • Ensuring high availability for all workloads - Advanced virtualization features include VM live migration, dynamic scheduling, VM HA, and metro clustering.
  • Highly optimized utilization and performance - Memory overcommit, VM affinity, vNUMA, automated CPU compatibility, AHV turbo and an optimized storage stack.
  • Lifecycle management across the entire stack - Cloud infrastructure upgrades with one click. Start with firmware, and then automate rolling full-stack upgrades.


Nutanix AHV Video

Nutanix AHV: Built-in Enterprise-Class Virtualization

Nutanix AHV Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutanix AHV is presented as a modern and secure virtualization platform that powers VMs and containers for applications and cloud-native workloads on-premises and in public clouds. Its tools and automated workflows simplify the day-to-day administration of VMs and containers.

Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, and Oracle VM VirtualBox are common alternatives for Nutanix AHV.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.1.

The most common users of Nutanix AHV are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(25)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-21 of 21)
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November 05, 2021

Nutanix AHV short review

Wouter Zijlstra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Nutanix AOS as our core business. We are running all virtual machines based on Nutanix AOS after our migration from HyperV. So far, we have not found any downsides where it doesn't run as expected.
  • Great managability
  • Easy to see issues
  • Easy accessible roadmap
Nutanix AOS is well suited for both small and big organizations that run virtual machines or file shares. The integration with other Nutanix products is really good.
November 05, 2021

Nutanix AHV OK

Indra Zulardi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I can not say enough how great Nutanix AOS is, friendly to use, easy to upgrade (1 click). We switched over from PC to convert into VDI with Nutanix AOS over a year ago, and it has been one of the best decisions we have made. Simply put, we have gone from working with a vendor to a strategic partner with Nutanix. Their customer service and responses have been fantastic!
  • Friendly to use
  • Easy to upgrade
  • AOS
  • PRism
Our implementation team was 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 fulfilled. I think their support is top-notch.
Christopher Cundall | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We started using it for a small-scale VDI and have now used it in anger for a lot more systems.
  • Integration of HCI with an easy intuitive CLI
  • Updates are straight forward
  • Nutanix AOS training is free, labs are helpful and makes using Nutanix AOS easy
  • Integration with other CLIs makes it complex to work out which CLI for which purpose is needed.
  • Cost... its not cheap (but you pay for what you get some times.)
  • We did get a dodgy set of DIMMs which require reboots, resetting, or replacing. Still getting above normal failure rates.
Nutanix AOS now has a solution for most areas, especially the high end. The weak point is the entry-level, low-cost market.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Nutanix AOS as our virtual environment located at our headquarters and at three of our remote offices. We have a six-node cluster running AHV at our HQ, and at the three remote offices, we have a one-node cluster running AHV as well.
  • Performance
  • Updating BIOS, BMC, etc. of nodes is extremely easy
  • Set up was straight forward
  • Technical support is very good
  • The ability to add GPU cards could be more straightforward instead of having to add via SSH
  • Improve the speed of updating AOS and AHV?
  • Allow memory and CPU to be added to a VM while it it is running
I think Nutanix AOS is a great product and, I would recommend it to anyone. The only reason I did not give it a 10 out of 10 is because I don't do that for any product. Every product has room for improvement.
July 28, 2021

It Director

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used across the organization, it provides benefits of public cloud-like agility and productivity with the low cost and control of an on-premises environment.
  • Easy scaling
  • Self-healing
  • Centralized management
  • OneClick Upgrade
  • Updates with zero production impact
  • Adding hardware resources without stopping the clusters
  • Mobile version support
Modular virtualization
The only scenario where I would not implement it is at a site that does not have at least 3 ESX hosts and 100VMs. [In my opinion,] the cost would not be justifiable.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, we are using a seven-node cluster, which supports our VDI environment of up to 500 desktops. Included in that count is the ability to have 150 grid card enabled desktops for our architectural/engineering, and communications/new media education departments.
  • Incredibly easy user interface through Prism Element
  • Adding new nodes is as simple as configuring IP and clicking add node
  • Interface is set up the way your brain works--health is one location, nodes in another location, etc.
  • Need to learn Linux--CLI is Linux based
  • Better explanation of their internal management network
Small IT staff can maintain these clusters since they perform many of the functions automatically. Joining other nodes to the cluster is easy.
June 30, 2021

Nutanix review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company is engaged in software development. Nutanix AOS is used in our company as a virtualization platform, where many different types of workloads work. Here we have a DEV and PROD environments, various services in the form of virtual machines and k8s nodes. Nutanix AOS solves the tasks of central management and monitoring of these workloads.
  • Easy scaling
  • Self-healing
  • Easy managing
  • Good support
  • Expensive software
[Nutanix AOS] is good when you need easy scaling and high reliability. The good architecture of the solution allows to solve the tasks set for the platform. This solution allows to reduce the number of personnel serving the infrastructure due to the ease of management and a good knowledge base. As a disadvantage, I would attribute the complexity of customizing some types of loads to optimal work on DFS, for example, high-load databases.
April 09, 2021

Nutanix

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nutanix [AOS] is being used by how for the hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) environment which consolidates the server and storage resources into a single virtualized server environment. It is being used to replace the legacy physical server environment with a high performance virtualized server environment. The advantage of using the software is that it simplifies the environment since when we need to grow our storage capacity we automatically add additional server resources which improves performance as we scale the environment. Nutanix [AOS] is being used for Mission Critical Business Applications such as SAP ERP, CRM, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint etc.
  • Nutanix [AOS] scales very well
  • Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor is included as part of the software package which saves costs
  • Nutanix has very good management tools
  • Nutanix has built-in intelligence which provides insight into the environment
  • Costs seems to be a bit high compared to other HCI solutions such as Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.
Nutanix [AOS] is well-suited for virtualized environments requiring high performance computing with the flexibility to scale and grow the environment well into the future. The applications that can run on Nutanix is typically your business critical applications such ERP, CRM, BI, Microsoft Exchange On-premise, etc. If your application can run in a virtualized environment, it can then most likely run on Nutanix [AOS]. If you business requires an intelligent virtualized platform with insight into how the underlying infrastructure is performing, then Nutanix [AOS] has very good management tools which can provide these type of reports.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nutanix hosts all our VMs infrastructure, so nearly all our servers.
  • 1-click upgrade
  • Works behind the scenes.
  • Simplicity
  • More functionality available in Prism (implemented with Ncli).
  • PC functionality overlaps PE functionality.
With Nutanix you don't have to manage all the SAN parts (network and storage), that is the advantage of HCI.
You can still share volume with physical servers or other VMs.
April 13, 2020

Nutanix Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Nutanix Platform in our IAAS services and VDI services across all our clients. The client experience has been improved from our last infrastructure based on a traditional server-SAN approach. Delivery times and upgrade times have been reduced by half.
  • fast deploy
  • vdi
  • IAAS
  • Quality review of software
Nutanix AOS is appropriate for VDI and IAAS; it is less appropriate for high performance databases.
Tyler Twitchell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Nutanix for both the software and hardware aspect of all our virtual environments in production and in our corporate offices. It is the base platform for all servers that we use to run our business both for our clients as well as for all internal users. It is used for both virtualization as well as for some storage needs and is the core of our infrastructure.
  • One component to support both compute and storage needs for virtualization.
  • Easy expandable as business needs arise both at the node level and larger with blocks.
  • Well outlined interface with good historical data.
  • API tools are available to obtain logging information from Nutanix that can be used with other monitoring tools such as Splunk.
  • Correlating data across multiple VMs is difficult.
  • More detailed information about BIOS and firmware versions hard to locate.
We have based our entire company on the Nutanix hardware and AOS to support all of our servers and clients that we use for our business. It has been a solid product with HA features that allow us to run our business without interruption. For virtualization it is the best solution I have used in the last 7 years. We have both high performance systems and those that require vast amounts of resources and we have found that Nutanix works well in both instances.
March 14, 2020

Prons & Cons

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Virtualization infra and VDI infra.
  • Prism Central reporting is very useful.
  • New cluster build and putting it into production is streamless.
  • Gradation of the current environment is effortless.
  • Knowledge sharing.
  • Document and literature is few for the technology.
  • Support service needs to improve.
Where there is less human intervention required in day to day work in the infra, Nutanix is best suited.
March 13, 2020

Nutanix Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use AOS to host more than 100 virtual machines on different OS. Since our migration to AOS, we haven't had any issues related to our environment. AOS has been great for us from support to documentation it had allowed us to focus on growing instead of troubleshooting. It is used across our technical department but everyone in the company touches it indirectly.
  • One-click upgrades.
  • Very fast hypervisor.
  • Easy management.
  • Pricing.
Nutanix is very well suited for anybody looking for a stable hypervisor. You have stunning support access ready 27/7 to assist and always taking care of any issues that could prevent you from uptime. I can't find any reason why it wouldn't suit any MSP needs.
March 11, 2020

Nutanix Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Nutanix in our datacenters.
  • The de-duping feature works well.
  • Gives our VM's stability.
  • Speed with the core makes it very fast.
  • Downtime when doing a cut over is long.
So far it's been great and we haven't had too many challenges. I'm wondering how it would work in counties with slower internet access like us in Africa and regular power outages, however.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nutanix AOS is used across the whole organization. It resolved the business problem with licensing & manpower cost for separate storage, network, and monitoring.
  • Nutanix CALM: Easy automation
  • Nutanix Move: Flexible migration
  • I have not found any such "CONS" in Nutanix until now.
Automation and backups.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Nutanix AOS as our hypervisor in our virtual environment.
  • Updating and upgrading is a snap
  • AHV for virtualization
  • Files
  • Better support through 3rd party vendors such as Dell
Nutanix AOS is well suited for cloud connectors and self-service.
Nathan Roberts | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We installed a Nutanix cluster (4 nodes) to run all the virtual machines (VM) used by my organization. Nutanix is a hyperconverged computing solution, so the processing, storage and networking for the cluster is all crammed into a 2U space, all managed from a web browser. The promise of the cluster is that you will never lose services, as an entire node can go offline and your system will not miss a beat. If you are familiar with RAID for storage, clustering is like RAID for servers, where there is redundancy not just of storage, but of an entire server. So if uptime is critical for your organization, Nutanix can be a good solution, albeit expensive. Our implementation supports our entire organization, offering peace of mind from hardware failures. It's also all automatic, significantly lowering management cost and reducing administrative burden.
  • Nutanix AHV removes the headache from clustering. Once it's set up--which a Nutanix rep completed--the system is largely self-managed.
  • It was a turnkey installation, and I was building virtual machines from day one.
  • The system automatically manages moving VMs from cluster to cluster when software updates are performed on the Nutanix system that require the nodes to be rebooted, so there is no down time.
  • System management from a web browser is easy management, as it can be managed from anywhere there is Internet connectivity.
  • It supports Windows and Linux VMs equally well, allowing access to the VMs from within the browser. This can be much easier than using remote desktop or VNC.
  • Nutanix has a huge learning curve. We purchased the on-line training course when we moved to the platform and it was literally weeks of instruction. It was so extensive, in fact, that we ran out of time to complete it before the test.
  • Operations that cannot be done from the browser require running commands from a terminal emulator; perhaps owing to the newness of the platform, documentation is not robust. I highly recommend you buy the tech support.
  • Software updates are sometimes rushed to release. I've gotten to where I wait at least a few weeks after release before installing them, as I've run into significant issues with buggy software. Such installations have required time-consuming tech support calls to resolve.
  • While the promise of perpetual VM uptime is being fulfilled, the dashboard frequently reports issues that need to be resolved.
  • Because of significant hardware redundancy, the cost per byte of storage capacity is high.
Nutanix is a good solution if:
  1. You cannot afford to have your services go offline.
  2. You want peace of mind that comes from total hardware redundancy.
  3. You are comfortable running commands through a terminal emulator.
  4. You want a system that largely manages itself in terms of keeping your VMs online.
  5. You're concerned more about bullets 1-4 than you are cost.
Nutanix is probably not a good solution for you if:
  1. Cost is your primary concern. In this case, you would probably be better served using something like Microsoft's Hyper-V replication, which is included with the cost of a Windows Server license.
  2. 24x7 uptime is not critical, there are cheaper and easier solutions to achieve near-constant uptime (see bullet one, above).
  3. You are not comfortable working at a command line or don't want to pay for tech support.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nutanix AOS provides us the availability to migrate all of our actual tools, servers, services on a hyper-converged solution. It covers the whole business, and every kind of server is running on it. + we are using AHV, which matches totally with our hypervisor needs.
  • Performance
  • Scalable
  • Safe
  • More possibilities through the GUI (prism)
March 06, 2020

Nutanix AOS Review

Hernán Paggi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Nutanix AOS in our IT department and in our main data center. Since then, we offer support and services to all company facilities.

We have a complete block of 4 nodes running Nutanix AHV and Acropolis. In this platform, we have all the computer services of the company, from the database servers to the ERP application modules.

The problem we manage to solve is mainly the consolidation of our workloads, as well as generating significant savings in the rack space as well as in the consumption of electrical energy. In addition, we manage to centralize and administer manually and automatically all the processes involved in the administration of virtual machines.
  • Easy of use
  • Efficiency
  • Consolidation
  • Reliability
  • Technical support
  • Speed
  • Limited presence in my country
  • Service support not in Spanish
One of the main scenarios and where we noticed a big difference was the time that the IT staff spent managing our platform and our surroundings.

Before, we discussed concerns about monitoring storage systems, disk configuration, FC connections, manual firmware updates for each component, manual resource management of workloads, etc. that consumed the time of several staff members. All of this was reduced to a single person who can also spend more time doing other tasks, and Nutanix AOS is responsible for all this through automatically handling responses.
September 14, 2018

Nutanix Experience

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's used by the entire organization, managed by IT hosting critical servers. It has simply replaced our VMWare cluster.
It's simply meets our requirements without breaking the bank and can expand based on our business need. It's Cisco UCS friendly and for the past year we never had any downtime due to software or hardware incompatibility . Also we have dumped ESX and went with AHV which so far has been great . The interface is also very easy where you have a single pane of glass for managing your hardware and getting a granular view of the virtual machines and the overall health status.
  • High Availability across the physical nodes
  • Effective local storage distribution and de-duplication
  • Intuitive user interface prism
  • Integration with Cisco hardware
  • Migration from VMWare could be simpler than what it is
  • Can work on more straightforward driver support for different operating systems such as Server 2016
It's appropriate for mid-sized businesses with 50 to 70 average server horsepower. Also for environments with high availability acquirement and shorter RTO thanks to snapshot technology. Also, clustering comes in handy for the DR needs ;it also simply integrates with Azure .

I don't personally believe that HCI is going to fall short for more demanding environments, as it can grow and become more powerful using better hardware.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We acquired a competitor of ours in mid 2015, and needed a solution to host their existing servers on. Their existing servers were old Server 2003, Server 2000 and their main databases ran on SQL 2000. Other than keeping the system up and running, the solution hadn't been touched in years. We were interested in Nutanix, and turned to them to get this going. Initial setup went quickly - hours! After a few months of implementation we started running into performance problems. We worked with Nutanix and after a few tweaks to VMware, to Nutanix and to SQL, we were finally ready to go live. After go live, we got so many compliments on how fast the system was! We are saving so many man hours due to the speed of this system, I think it'll probably pay for itself in no time!
  • Performance is great!
  • Management via Prism is awesome!
  • One-click hypervisor upgrades are fantastic!
  • Management of VMs on AHV take some getting used to. It's just a list of VMs that are displayed, and you search through it. Not the normal folder structure that I'm used to in VMware.
  • Also can't disable a NIC card in a VM in AHV. Very handy feature present in VMware.
  • Larger workloads may have to be tweaked to get the performance you need/want.
I believe that Nutanix is going to be able to handle all workloads we throw at it, but (like with most things) you have to know how it works in order to design the workloads that will be running on top of it correctly.
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