Converged infrastructure, Nutanix
Discussion
Has anyone used Nutanix to replace traditional SAN storage and separate servers. Its an interesting idea and something I think I'm going to recommend to our architect that we investigate more and look to demo. Just wondered if anyone has any real world experience of the product they would like to share. I'm considering it for Hyper-V.
Cheers
ACP
Cheers
ACP
We've used competitors to Nutanix. You can download a free intro book from here; http://www.hyperconverged.org/dummies-book-downloa...
Works well for certain applications - e.g. VDI and where you are looking for providing cloud platforms for agile application deployment. It's probably pretty essential if your running your IT following some form of bimodal model.
You can experiment with the concept using something like this; https://b3n.org/freenas-9-3-on-vmware-esxi-6-0-gui...
GG
Works well for certain applications - e.g. VDI and where you are looking for providing cloud platforms for agile application deployment. It's probably pretty essential if your running your IT following some form of bimodal model.
You can experiment with the concept using something like this; https://b3n.org/freenas-9-3-on-vmware-esxi-6-0-gui...
GG
Expensive. Very very expensive.
I'd look at it along with Simplivity, but it's a lot of money, assumes you grow compute and storage linearly, and when you need an additional TB of storage their expansion model is "buy another node" which is expensive and of course has licensing implications.
I'd gladly have a rack full of either if I didn't have to pay for it.
I'd look at it along with Simplivity, but it's a lot of money, assumes you grow compute and storage linearly, and when you need an additional TB of storage their expansion model is "buy another node" which is expensive and of course has licensing implications.
I'd gladly have a rack full of either if I didn't have to pay for it.
Griff, thanks for the links. The hypercoverged will be night time reading 
Juice, I don't know costs yet, still investigating, but I'll look at Scale as well as our preferred supplier seems to have relationships with everyone so I'm sure I can arrange a call with them also.
Essentially, we have a large ESXi cluster in the US connected to an HP EVA SAN. They are both coming to their end of life and we are looking at ways to reduce the footprint and cost. Its a mix of DC's, app servers, SQL AlwaysOn clusters. The plan is to use the converged infrastructure for Hyper V to utilise the benefits of our SA agreement. We use Veeam as our backup solution so it has to work with that.
I'm also keen to have our developers starting working with containers (they have mentioned this in the past) yet we've never been able to give them the resource for it.
Cheers
ACP
Juice, I don't know costs yet, still investigating, but I'll look at Scale as well as our preferred supplier seems to have relationships with everyone so I'm sure I can arrange a call with them also.
Essentially, we have a large ESXi cluster in the US connected to an HP EVA SAN. They are both coming to their end of life and we are looking at ways to reduce the footprint and cost. Its a mix of DC's, app servers, SQL AlwaysOn clusters. The plan is to use the converged infrastructure for Hyper V to utilise the benefits of our SA agreement. We use Veeam as our backup solution so it has to work with that.
I'm also keen to have our developers starting working with containers (they have mentioned this in the past) yet we've never been able to give them the resource for it.
Cheers
ACP
Edited by AClownsPocket on Thursday 21st April 19:51
swerni said:
The challenge with hyper converged is, how to scale it?
You're tied into modular building blocks, if you need more compute, you buy more compute and storage.
If you need more storage you buy more compute and storage.
Buying in is fairly cheap, scaling it ain't.
They are great for organisations who won't grow and have no IT skills.
Also the storage functionality is pretty crap as well
I should add, I am very biased.
Interesting points, why are you biased?You're tied into modular building blocks, if you need more compute, you buy more compute and storage.
If you need more storage you buy more compute and storage.
Buying in is fairly cheap, scaling it ain't.
They are great for organisations who won't grow and have no IT skills.
Also the storage functionality is pretty crap as well
I should add, I am very biased.
I'm in this boat, our VNXs are coming up to 5 years old and with corporate policy I have to look at replacing, I've been very interested with VXrail, tintri and nutanix, I've alos looked at the cisco hyperconverged stuff.
I was leaning towards the vxrail or cisco kit but quickly decided I'm slightly too big to get it all on one offering so will need another I'd use 2% of, I also wanted demonstrations as we run a SAP farm as VMs.
Tintri will lend kit and are offering the T820 for 30k at the moment.
EMC are about to announce the VNX3 next month and that looks really exciting.
It's a minefield at the moment and I suspect EMC are gonna try to muscle out the smaller boys, it's like the VHS betamax wars out there and I really don't want to bet on the wrong one, the tintri box can be plugged in additionally to our VNX so I could get one just to play with but I'm leaning towards the VNX3 now.
I had nutanix in but it seemed insanely expensive for what it was, I think they quoted me 200k for a couple of nodes and if I wanted VMware on top it got silly as I need to have a production and standby datacentre. I don't mind dropping a wedge on a couple VNXs as it's proven technology but I need more than assurances from vendors it will be quick.
I'm not helping am I?
I was leaning towards the vxrail or cisco kit but quickly decided I'm slightly too big to get it all on one offering so will need another I'd use 2% of, I also wanted demonstrations as we run a SAP farm as VMs.
Tintri will lend kit and are offering the T820 for 30k at the moment.
EMC are about to announce the VNX3 next month and that looks really exciting.
It's a minefield at the moment and I suspect EMC are gonna try to muscle out the smaller boys, it's like the VHS betamax wars out there and I really don't want to bet on the wrong one, the tintri box can be plugged in additionally to our VNX so I could get one just to play with but I'm leaning towards the VNX3 now.
I had nutanix in but it seemed insanely expensive for what it was, I think they quoted me 200k for a couple of nodes and if I wanted VMware on top it got silly as I need to have a production and standby datacentre. I don't mind dropping a wedge on a couple VNXs as it's proven technology but I need more than assurances from vendors it will be quick.
I'm not helping am I?
juice said:
We looked into Nutanix, but for the cost of them it was quite a big pill to swallow for a 3 node cluster.
So we went Scale Computing HC3x instead which has been great (and a 3rd of the price). Depends on how IO intensive you are....
Does the Scale support virtual networking and VLAN tagging? I keep finding conflicting information on the web. So we went Scale Computing HC3x instead which has been great (and a 3rd of the price). Depends on how IO intensive you are....
Sheets Tabuer said:
I'm in this boat, our VNXs are coming up to 5 years old and with corporate policy I have to look at replacing, I've been very interested with VXrail, tintri and nutanix, I've alos looked at the cisco hyperconverged stuff.
I was leaning towards the vxrail or cisco kit but quickly decided I'm slightly too big to get it all on one offering so will need another I'd use 2% of, I also wanted demonstrations as we run a SAP farm as VMs.
Tintri will lend kit and are offering the T820 for 30k at the moment.
EMC are about to announce the VNX3 next month and that looks really exciting.
It's a minefield at the moment and I suspect EMC are gonna try to muscle out the smaller boys, it's like the VHS betamax wars out there and I really don't want to bet on the wrong one, the tintri box can be plugged in additionally to our VNX so I could get one just to play with but I'm leaning towards the VNX3 now.
I had nutanix in but it seemed insanely expensive for what it was, I think they quoted me 200k for a couple of nodes and if I wanted VMware on top it got silly as I need to have a production and standby datacentre. I don't mind dropping a wedge on a couple VNXs as it's proven technology but I need more than assurances from vendors it will be quick.
I'm not helping am I?
For a 100% VMware environment Tintri look nice tbh, NFS only though unless it's changed (which isn't a bad thing just a statement of fact).I was leaning towards the vxrail or cisco kit but quickly decided I'm slightly too big to get it all on one offering so will need another I'd use 2% of, I also wanted demonstrations as we run a SAP farm as VMs.
Tintri will lend kit and are offering the T820 for 30k at the moment.
EMC are about to announce the VNX3 next month and that looks really exciting.
It's a minefield at the moment and I suspect EMC are gonna try to muscle out the smaller boys, it's like the VHS betamax wars out there and I really don't want to bet on the wrong one, the tintri box can be plugged in additionally to our VNX so I could get one just to play with but I'm leaning towards the VNX3 now.
I had nutanix in but it seemed insanely expensive for what it was, I think they quoted me 200k for a couple of nodes and if I wanted VMware on top it got silly as I need to have a production and standby datacentre. I don't mind dropping a wedge on a couple VNXs as it's proven technology but I need more than assurances from vendors it will be quick.
I'm not helping am I?
Never really looked into this before, but the place I work is spending big on updating its infrastructure, but myself and my boss are keen to not spend money for the sake of it and get something that works for us.
I like Nutanix because I can use our existing VMware licenses with them, but it also supports Hyper-V which is where we see ourselves moving to in the next 2 years. Veeam is our standard backup mechanism and works outstandingly well, Nutanix supports it. Acroplis is the only bit that doesn't sell for me as I don't think we'd use it (KVM again).
I've been looking into Nimble's SureStack too. Need to arrange a call with them and see what they can offer.
The one thing that is important as someone else mentioned is that I'd like to be able to scale out the storage or the compute independently as we need it. This may limit our options somewhat.
I like Nutanix because I can use our existing VMware licenses with them, but it also supports Hyper-V which is where we see ourselves moving to in the next 2 years. Veeam is our standard backup mechanism and works outstandingly well, Nutanix supports it. Acroplis is the only bit that doesn't sell for me as I don't think we'd use it (KVM again).
I've been looking into Nimble's SureStack too. Need to arrange a call with them and see what they can offer.
The one thing that is important as someone else mentioned is that I'd like to be able to scale out the storage or the compute independently as we need it. This may limit our options somewhat.
I think you have to ask what Nutanix gives you?
It's not "drop in and forget" and if you want something that's truly as easy to use as possible you'd just go buy some hosts and hook them into a DAS array as it's about as zero-maintenance as you can get.
Where stuff like Nutanix does come into play very heavily is if you make use of cloning and replication and stuff where the dedupe can help out.
I still think you'd be paying £100k (made up number) for £30-40k worth of storage and computer - you're paying a hell of a lot for their management layer.
What capacity and IOPS do you need and what's your host/guest count? Also why are you switching from ESXi to Hyper-V as it's not that often you see that.
It's not "drop in and forget" and if you want something that's truly as easy to use as possible you'd just go buy some hosts and hook them into a DAS array as it's about as zero-maintenance as you can get.
Where stuff like Nutanix does come into play very heavily is if you make use of cloning and replication and stuff where the dedupe can help out.
I still think you'd be paying £100k (made up number) for £30-40k worth of storage and computer - you're paying a hell of a lot for their management layer.
What capacity and IOPS do you need and what's your host/guest count? Also why are you switching from ESXi to Hyper-V as it's not that often you see that.
AClownsPocket - I may be able to help. The company I work for have been a Nimble reseller pretty much since they launched in the UK and we do this sort of thing day in, day out. I'd be happy to answer any questions and ping my details across if you'd like?
Swerni - when are you popping in btw? Our car park is perfect for V8 noise...
Swerni - when are you popping in btw? Our car park is perfect for V8 noise...
swerni said:
There are lots of technologies that can offer cloning, replication etc.
Dedupe is an interesting one. There is a massive overhead for running it. If you're using expensive disk or SSD as your storage media then it's worth it, if you aren then it does't usually pay for itself.
Their management layer is okay, but again there are much better ways of managing and supporting an infrastructure.
I agree entirely, and for most folks it's probably cheaper to just buy more disk space.Dedupe is an interesting one. There is a massive overhead for running it. If you're using expensive disk or SSD as your storage media then it's worth it, if you aren then it does't usually pay for itself.
Their management layer is okay, but again there are much better ways of managing and supporting an infrastructure.
I struggle with this myth that hyperconverged means you don't need IT people and you don't have to do any management.
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