Nutanix vs VMware: Choose the best one for your business

Growing organizations are often compelled to mix and match hardware and software components from different vendors. After all, it’s the most convenient way to keep costs down and address unique challenges as your IT infrastructure becomes more intricate.

However, interoperability issues often occur when systems and components don’t speak the same language. As a result, maintenance burdens, security vulnerabilities, and high operational costs may creep in.

But there’s a solution. With hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), you can consolidate all disparate elements of your IT environment into one system.

But which HCI solution should you choose for your business? 

VMware is a popular choice. In fact, according to a 2023 Forrester Wave study, VMware leads the competitive HCI market, with Nutanix trailing behind.

Keep reading to learn more about HCI, the differences between VMware and Nutanix, and what to consider before choosing an HCI solution.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)?
• VMware and Nutanix: An overview
• What are the differences between Nutanix and VMware?
• VMware vs Nutanix: Side-by-side comparison
• Factors to consider when choosing between VMware and Nutanix
• Final thoughts: VMware vs Nutanix – choosing the best HCI solution

What is hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)?

Using x86 servers as the underlying hardware, HCI abstracts your data center resources and converts them into a “pool” you can manage and provision using a single dashboard. 

This not only simplifies IT management but also enables the provisioning and deployment of workloads and apps without the need for purpose-built hardware.

HCI benefits and challenges

Hyperconverged architecture can benefit your organization in diverse ways. But to maximize these benefits, you must be aware of the challenges it poses.

Let’s start with the benefits.

• Eliminates complexity — HCI enables you to manage and deploy IT resources using a central hub. This eliminates complexity, which in turn enables IT staff to make better decisions.
• Saves costs — By consolidating resources and components into a unified system, hyperconverged infrastructure reduces the costs associated with hardware procurement and licensing.
• Increases scalability — HCI offers the benefits of scale-out architecture. When it’s time to scale up your resources, simply adding nodes to your HCI cluster enables you to respond to increasing workload demands without disrupting operations.
• Enhances security — HCI also allows you to consolidate backup and data recovery solutions into one platform, allowing you to bolster data protection and disaster recovery. 

But as we already mentioned, hyperconverged infrastructure is not without challenges. Investing in HCI means paying for licensing, hardware, and software. So, you’ll need to prepare for upfront costs. 

Vendor lock-in can also be a concern. Since there’s no interoperability between nodes of different HCI systems, you’re likely to become dependent on your chosen vendor’s ecosystem. If you’re not careful, that dependence can get costly over time.

VMware and Nutanix: An overview

Before we dig deep into each HCI offering, let’s discuss the background of both companies. 

What is VMware?

VMware is a cloud computing company that is most popular for pioneering virtualization technology through its bare metal hypervisor. It offers a wide range of virtualization solutions, enabling IT staff around the world to create and run virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical server. 

VMware offers a suite of products that forms the backbone of its HCI stack, including:

• vSphere — VMware’s flagship virtualization platform, which allows for the efficient management of VMs. 
• vSAN — VMware’s software-defined storage solution that integrates directly with vSphere.
• vCenter — VMware’s centralized management platform that provides users with a unified solution for managing vSphere environments.

vCloud Director — VMware’s vCloud Director is the platform’s control panel for simplifying, managing, and grouping VM hosts into software-defined data centers.

What is Nutanix?

Founded in 2009, Nutanix is a cloud computing company that offers data center infrastructure solutions. Since Nutanix launched Complete Cluster (now Virtual Computing Platform) in 2011, the company has built and maintained a solid reputation in the HCI market.

Nutanix has expanded its HCI offering in recent years, boasting a robust tech stack that includes:

• Prism — A management interface that gives IT administrators a single pane of glass to manage and control the entire Nutanix environment.
• Acropolis — This is Nutanix’s turnkey solution that offers virtualization capabilities and supports various workloads and applications.
• Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) — A software stack that helps IT staff manage hybrid cloud environments by unifying compute, storage, and networking resources.

Let’s break those differences down based on key features and benefits.

Performance and scalability

The ability to integrate all hardware-centric systems into a virtualized pool is a significant benefit, especially if an HCI platform has the capacity to run and scale these data center resources on demand.

Nutanix

Nutanix’s main strength is that its HCI software seamlessly integrates with the best hypervisors, including VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. You can use its native hypervisor, Nutanix AHV, at no additional cost.

As an HCI solution, Nutanix uses distributed architecture, meaning resources are spread across multiple nodes. This removes silos between public, private, and hybrid cloud environments, allowing you to handle more demanding workloads.

VMware

VMware enhances performance and scalability by leveraging the best of virtualization technology.

Using VMware’s vSphere with Tanzu, you can create a Kubernetes control plane on the hypervisor layer. This not only enables your IT infrastructure to run more intensive workloads but also facilitates collaboration between vSphere administrators and DevOps staff.

vSphere 8.0 Distributed Services Engine also enables you to offload network and security functions to DPUs. This frees up around 20 percent of CPU workloads, improving performance and minimizing latency.

Lastly, VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi supports external SAN systems, allowing you to efficiently handle large volumes of data.

Verdict: VMware gets the slight edge here. While Nutanix’s distributed approach allows you to handle diverse workloads, VMware’s advanced virtualization technology offers more advantages, especially when running intensive workloads across multi-cloud environments.

Management features

Being able to integrate the critical elements of your IT infrastructure into one platform is already a plus. Imagine the added advantage if you could use an HCI solution with robust and user-friendly management tools.

Nutanix

Nutanix’s management tool, Prism, provides centralized access and a multi-cloud interface for configuring, managing, and monitoring cloud environments. Prism is well known for its “single pane of glass” approach, which enables you to see key metrics, networks, and configurations at a glance. 

Prism uses AI-driven operations to help you detect and fix issues early. It also offers a root cause analysis feature that identifies the most probable cause of an issue and suggests resolutions.

VMware

VMware vCenter is a centralized platform for managing, monitoring, and controlling vSphere environments. Managing infrastructure components can get complex. But thanks to vCenter’s “command center” approach and clean design, you get increased visibility and easy access to VMware’s broad ecosystem and critical components, including vSphere, vSAN, and vRealize Suite.

vCenter takes some getting used to, which is understandable considering its many features. That said, vCenter is the most familiar control panel for HCI. And given its supportive community of VMware customers, you can rest easy knowing you’ll always get help if you encounter any navigation issues.

Verdict: Nutanix Prism gets a slight edge over VMware’s vCenter on account of its ease of use, unified management, and automation features. 

Licensing and pricing

HCI solutions are a huge investment. As such, you have to analyze their prices before committing.

Nutanix

Nutanix’s pricing model is straightforward. The licensing plans are subscription-based and categorized by the type of node. You’ll find tiers such as Starter, Pro, and Ultimate. This makes it easy for you to accurately estimate costs as you scale. 

Nutanix uses a per-core licensing approach for certain products, such as Nutanix Cloud Manager. It also offers specialized licensing for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) based on user counts.

VMware

In the wake of the $69 billion Broadcom acquisition, VMware shelved the perpetual license model in favor of the subscription model to “better serve customers with continuous innovation, faster time to value, and predictable investments.”

The organization’s licensing plans include per CPU, per core, and per VM models, giving you the flexibility you need to deploy and manage your server environments.

Verdict: This is an apples vs oranges scenario where there’s no clear winner. Nutanix uses a straightforward licensing approach to make it easier for you to estimate costs as you scale your business. VMware’s licensing structure is more nuanced but offers greater flexibility in addressing diverse deployment needs.

Integration capabilities

An HCI solution needs robust integration capabilities. After all, unifying components into one central hub is its main job.

Nutanix

Nutanix’s ecosystem is strong but could benefit from key partnerships with hardware vendors and hyperscalers. Also, Nutanix HCI doesn’t support external storage solutions such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI disk arrays. This is a major disadvantage if your organization requires a more flexible storage solution to run mission-critical workloads.

VMware

VMware’s broad network of partners includes Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Wipro Limited, and Atos. The result is a robust HCI ecosystem that helps you meet and address the diverse needs of an enterprise environment.

Verdict: Thanks to VMware’s mature ecosystem of trust, you get an HCI solution that can keep up with the most demanding workloads across multi-cloud environments.

Security

High-priority applications and workloads often involve the management, transfer, and use of critical data. To protect and secure such data across hybrid multi-cloud environments, you need to strengthen your HCI security posture.

Nutanix

Nutanix boasts a strong security framework to help organizations handle threats to their cloud and virtualization environments. The HCI platform uses AES 256 encryption to protect your data from brute-force attacks. Nutanix Security Central also provides a unified management platform to help you better manage and respond to security threats across the entire infrastructure. 

VMware

VMware uses a comprehensive lateral security solution to address the most common threats of the modern era. These include Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks, zero-day exploits, and remote code execution (RCE). VMware’s most powerful security feature is VMware Contexa, a cloud-based threat intelligence framework that safeguards networks, endpoints, and workloads. 

Additionally, VMware’s products have been certified to meet both FIPS 140-2 and 140-3 standards, which are essential security requirements for cryptographic modules.

Verdict: Let’s call this a draw. When it comes to security, both solutions excel in handling enterprise-level threats. But at the end of the day, the best choice depends on your specific security needs.

VMware vs Nutanix: Side-by-side comparison

Here’s a table showing the differences between VMware and Nutanix at a glance.

Factors to consider when choosing between VMware and Nutanix

To find the best HCI solution for your organization, provide answers to these questions.

What features are most important for your business needs?

When choosing between Nutanix and VMware, consider the feature sets that fully address the needs of your mission-critical workloads. 

To determine the most essential HCI features, look into factors such as integration capabilities, scalability, system performance, licensing costs, and security features.

How does each HCI solution integrate with your existing tech stack?

While VMware and Nutanix have similar goals, their approach is different. If you want to consolidate your data center resources in the most efficient and cost-effective manner, evaluate your current infrastructure and its compatibility with available HCI components. 

It’s also important to reexamine your organization’s mission and goals. That way, you can address any compatibility issues that are preventing you from adopting the HCI solutions you need to achieve those goals.

Which HCI solution is more cost-effective for your business?

At the end of the day, you’re adopting HCI to ensure your organization achieves sustainable profitability. When aiming for a cost-effective HCI solution, the goal is not to choose the least expensive option; it’s to pick the one that offers the best value and generates the best ROI. 

So, carefully assess the overall benefits and long-term value of each solution to make an informed decision.

Final thoughts: VMware vs Nutanix — choosing the best HCI solution

As technology and markets continue to evolve, customers will keep demanding new and better digital experiences. The right HCI solution gives your data center environments the agility and scalability they need to meet increasing demands.

To maximize an HCI solution’s benefits, choose a vendor with a tech stack that aligns with your existing IT infrastructure, workload requirements, and cloud strategy roadmap. 

Your cloud hosting platform plays a critical role in maximizing the benefits of your chosen HCI solution. Choosing VMware? Opt for Liquid Web’s private cloud, as it leverages VMware’s cloud solutions for optimal performance, scalability, and security.

Check out our VMware private cloud plans today.

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