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
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.
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....
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.
This is all interesting stuff.
Although the company I work is far from an SME, this SME size solution may just work for us in this case. Our mission critical ERP infrastructure is in a Co-Lo, so the HCI stuff is to replace file servers, some small scale SQL deployments (2012 with AlwaysOn) and regional app servers. We are in the process of removing a load of servers from the infrastructure as they are no longer needed as we've gone Co-Lo, so its really to manage the localised requirements and provide infrastructure for file services, domain controllers, etc, nothing exciting
Funk, thank you for the email. Between you and swerni I have a lot to think about. I have reached out via Insight (who we use) to setup some meetings with Nutanix, Nimble and EMC. I may come to you guys directly if I'm not happy with the info I get.
Cheers
ACP
Although the company I work is far from an SME, this SME size solution may just work for us in this case. Our mission critical ERP infrastructure is in a Co-Lo, so the HCI stuff is to replace file servers, some small scale SQL deployments (2012 with AlwaysOn) and regional app servers. We are in the process of removing a load of servers from the infrastructure as they are no longer needed as we've gone Co-Lo, so its really to manage the localised requirements and provide infrastructure for file services, domain controllers, etc, nothing exciting
Funk, thank you for the email. Between you and swerni I have a lot to think about. I have reached out via Insight (who we use) to setup some meetings with Nutanix, Nimble and EMC. I may come to you guys directly if I'm not happy with the info I get.
Cheers
ACP
Ved said:
Not true on how it scales. If you want to add more overall storage capacity to a Nutanix cluster you just add in storage nodes. These particular nodes have minimal CPU (1x 6 core) to run the storage controller VM but have 30TB of RAW storage on them (14TB ish usable before dedupe/compression etc). They don't incur a hypervisor cost on top as they don't run guest VMs so it's not the same cost as buying 'regular' nodes that can have any CPU or storage config on them. The nice thing is you add what you need when you need it so it's a glove-fit rather than a bin liner.
I'm also biased
This is appealing and makes me more keen to demo the Nutanix kit. Next week will be interesting with the various manufacturers. As much as we've used EMC before, I'm sceptical their product is going to fit what we want. I'm also biased
Fastdruid said:
Don't. Just don't.
Hyper-V is just abysmal. It's like Microsoft took a good look at VMware and thought "nah, we're not going to make it that easy".
Everything that is easy in VMware isn't and even the stuff that is tricky in VMware has been made far worse. Cluster Management is terrible. Networking is horrible. Filesystem management is slapdash and random. Storage is a joke (new "datastore"? 18 step process!). DR can be painful. SCVMM is an abortion of terrible badly thought out ideas on top of badly thought out ideas.
The only reason for going with Hyper-V is cost (or if you really hate the vCenter web console ) and even then IMO it's just not worth it.
We use ESXi 5.5 at the moment and it works brilliantly. However, its bloody expensive and having an MS EA, we want to leverage the benefits. Is Hyper-V that bad in Server 2016, or are you referring to an earlier version? We've always stuck by the mantra, use an MS product only on version 3 Hyper-V is just abysmal. It's like Microsoft took a good look at VMware and thought "nah, we're not going to make it that easy".
Everything that is easy in VMware isn't and even the stuff that is tricky in VMware has been made far worse. Cluster Management is terrible. Networking is horrible. Filesystem management is slapdash and random. Storage is a joke (new "datastore"? 18 step process!). DR can be painful. SCVMM is an abortion of terrible badly thought out ideas on top of badly thought out ideas.
The only reason for going with Hyper-V is cost (or if you really hate the vCenter web console
) and even then IMO it's just not worth it. Edited by AClownsPocket on Friday 13th May 11:06
Food for thought. The EMC offering for VxRail was actually a very good fit, price competitive and we can leverage of VMware ELA for better deals. The downside is no support for Hyper-V
Nutanix was also very good, again, seems to be price competitive, we can buy on Lenovo hardware who we have a global proceurement deal with so again can leverage better pricing and its hypervisor agnostic and supports Veeam.
Eval hardware next, lets see how it goes
Nutanix was also very good, again, seems to be price competitive, we can buy on Lenovo hardware who we have a global proceurement deal with so again can leverage better pricing and its hypervisor agnostic and supports Veeam.
Eval hardware next, lets see how it goes
I've read so much from both sides, I'm kind of sick of it now. I'll get the evaluation units and make my own mind up. I don't really give a toss about inKernel and the in deep tech specs. I need it to work, offer good performance, value and be as automated as possible with minimal administration.
Well, we have our first PoC with HyperGrid (Gridstore). Its arrived today and we've started testing for the next two weeks. Early signs are impressive, unbox to setup ready to deploy guest's in under an hour.
We have HPE's converged 250 to demo also and still waiting on Nutanix (their communications and responsiveness have been dreadful so far). If after the HPE demo, we hear nothing more, then it'll be between the two products mentioned.
We have HPE's converged 250 to demo also and still waiting on Nutanix (their communications and responsiveness have been dreadful so far). If after the HPE demo, we hear nothing more, then it'll be between the two products mentioned.
Well
Some progress.
POC completed with Hypergrid and really impressed.
Hyper-V demo planned with Simplivity for about 6 weeks time.
Reached out to Pivot3 and Atlantis Computing.
Cloud POC completed with Nutanix, meetings with HP.
Have to say, I've not been impressed with the big hitters offerings. They seem overly complex and a mish mash of existing tech bundled together with a new overlaid software management function. Its not good at all and for me, doesn't represent value. The smaller players seem to have a better handle on it and are doing it the right way.
Some progress.
POC completed with Hypergrid and really impressed.
Hyper-V demo planned with Simplivity for about 6 weeks time.
Reached out to Pivot3 and Atlantis Computing.
Cloud POC completed with Nutanix, meetings with HP.
Have to say, I've not been impressed with the big hitters offerings. They seem overly complex and a mish mash of existing tech bundled together with a new overlaid software management function. Its not good at all and for me, doesn't represent value. The smaller players seem to have a better handle on it and are doing it the right way.
George111 said:
It is soul destroying being in a senior technical role when critical technology decisions are taken by accountants. Some are inconsequential but irritating but others like the above, are going to be work-life changing decisions. I'd be getting out !
This isn't a soul destroying decision. Its a new challenge and an opportunity to learn a new product. I certainly won't be jumping ship.Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff