Exploring Nutanix from a VMware User's Perspective

Welcome to our fourth and likely final video in our series on diving deep into #VMware alternatives for your #homelab and your business. In this video, I tread into the realm of #Nutanix AOS/AHV to uncover how it compares to VMware ESXi and vCenter and evaluate it as a replacement from a VMware user's perspective. It's a long video, and a lot of planning, learning, and effort went into it, so let us know what you think!

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**TIMESTAMPS!**
0:00 Introduction
0:53 The history of Nutanix
4:03 Feature comparison of Nutanix
9:27 Comparing consoles
12:07 Comparing GUIs ESXi
14:00 Comparing GUIs Nutanix
20:36 Can Nutanix replace ESXi?
21:23 What I love about Nutanix
22:22 What I don’t like about Nutanix
24:57 The end of the series and closing!

[GuysTek]

There's been a lot of talk already about the actual cost of Nutanix, and I'm hoping that more viewers will share their Nutanix costs in the comments so we can kind of crowdsource some qualitative numbers as this video ages. For those of you wondering, Nutanix does not publish retail licensing costs anywhere that I could find in my research, so I'm hoping anyone who's purchased into Nutanix's tech is willing to share! Thanks all! -R

[sadfghjkllkjhgfdsfg]

We were (several years ago) Nutanix over VMWare on Dell. In order to save some money, we moved to "pure" Nutanix over AHV on Dell. All of that saving was then eaten up having to buy the AHV plugin for our backup solution. We're not doing anything crazy with it, it's just a HCI cluster running our business.

One thing I absolutely love about Nutanix: how hard it is to accidentally break.
I do cluster updates during the day while the whole business is running, and nobody even notices, it just migrates VMs around, does Nutanix *and* firmware updates, and moves on to the next node, rinse and repeat. But it's not cheap. Around 50% of our server purchase cost was Nutanix licensing last refresh, and pre-refresh this time we're looking at other options, but Nutanix very much has the incumbent advantage and aside from price, we're very happy with it.

[vitorgoncalves]

I think I watched all videos about VMWare alternatives. I think a sumary video with a recomendation for each type of workloads and/or scenarios would be interesting.

[michaelamireh]

Recent Nutanix Customer from VMware here. It has been a great transition and all of our users find it way more user friendly! Can't wait to see what they do for homelab users!

[fbifido]

Please DEEP DIVE into Nutanix CE latest using 4x Intel NUC (that way it would be easy to understand).
- install with 3 node first, then add the last one.
- show how to update/upgrade the cluster, software & hardware

[jeffnew]

Not a word on the fact that many (most?) Nutanix shops are actually running vSphere with the Nutanix CVM and Prism add-ons for HCI rather than Acropolis (AHV). This increases the cost of a deployment tremendously, but is necessary for those companies that need a vSphere back-end for apps, services, etc.

It also adds to the complexity of the deployment, with Prism being used in addition to vCenter Server. Deploy Nutanix on third-party hardware, such as Dell, and you add complexity to support, having to open cases and troubleshoot with Dell until they exhaust their options, where then they bring Nutanix in on the case.

We had a few Nutanix clusters, and when support ran out, they were shipped off to Dell for some small credit amount and replaced with stock Dell machines of the latest generation.

[views]

I have to comment about setting up a cluster (23:44). Assuming you have a jump box, If you download Nutanix Foundation, you can launch the wizard and you have the option to build a new cluster. It'll deploy the OS on the host, deploy the CVM, and create the cluster. It's very easy!

[markx]

Excellent videos. Thanks! Maybe one last summary video recapping the whole series? So many good points from each video. Also, after using all the different options .. do you have a favourite? 😃

[TVJAY]

Please do a deep dive on Nutanix and for fun build a three node cluster.

[bits]

LOVE those in depth reviews with very valid personal opinion on top ...

[Nehemoth_G]

Something that I don't like about Nutanix CE it's that they ask you for a corporate email account which makes no sense it's a community release.

[seanwoods]

This was the one video I wanted to see. Thank you for putting it together. I am about to replace my ESXI host with Nutanix due to my job looking to migrate.

[ninjmnky]

re 20:20 - LCM does firmware + bios updates for DELL and other major brands as well, if you get a supported server (like an XC series)

[ayyaswamythangavel]

Excellent videos comparing the various Hypervisors! Thank you

[phillippeerman]

I would love to see a comparison of Scale Computing’s HCI solution. SC doesn’t currently offer a community edition (free as in beer) so home lab enthusiasts are likely not gonna be interested but for business use I think they are a solution worth considering as a replacement ESXi & vCenter. Like Nutanix, Scale Computing is HCI only but very efficient code and ease of use are the major attractions to Scale Computing.

I've used VMware, Nutanix, Hyper-V, Proxmox, XCP-NG, and Scale Computing over the last 20 years (rated by experience with each). I've had a VMUG subscription for access to VMware historically but after the Broadcom acquisition, I prefer Promox in my home lab, Hyper-V for small business (cost savings can't be beat as much as I wish they could), and Scale Computing for SMB environments.

[edwardvanhazendonk]

Nutanix does support cli configuration via acli and ncli commands wich are feature rich! So you can tinker a lot more parameters then with ESXi.

[trevorlockhorn]

Nutanix is great I use it in production every day for multiple different Heathcare facilities.

[Techtips]

Thanks for covering Nutanix...much awaited...

[lukeleung]

Very good video!!! Want to know more about Nutanix and how it compare to VMware in more!!!

[jannikmeissner]

Would be cool to also see one video on Suse/Rancher Harvester. It keeps getting better and better with each update.