Hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer Nutanix is amongst quite a few suppliers that odor blood within the water relating to VMware and its prospects following the virtualisation large’s acquisition by Broadcom.
At Nutanix’s annual .Subsequent bash in Washington DC final week, migration away from VMware and to – it hopes – its personal Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) was a continuing theme.
As a part of this, it gathered three prospects to speak about their experiences of transferring from VMware to Nutanix.
Of those, just one was straight attributable to Broadcom’s licensing adjustments, however Broadcom-Amazon Net Companies (AWS) relations have been key to a different.
We requested them about their journey to Nutanix and away from VMware, in addition to the exact ache factors that prompted their selections.
Right here, we discuss to:
Dom Johnston, IT supervisor for Golding in Brisbane, Australia, which is a heavy civil and mining contracting firm that has operated on the east coast of Australia for about 75 years.
Kee Yew Wei, affiliate vice-president for infrastructure and operations at MSIG, which is a Japan-headquartered insurance coverage firm that operates internationally.
Mike Taylor, hospital ship joint job director for Navy Sealift Command and the US Navy, which operates two hospital ships, Mercy (pictured above) and Consolation.
What’s the story of your journey from VMware to Nutanix?
Dom Johnston: Golding had its infrastructure sitting in VMware on AWS. We had a three-year contract with VMware for that platform, which resulted in February this 12 months. About March of final 12 months, there was a reasonably public divorce between VMware and AWS. We weren’t certain the place that left us.
To chop an extended story quick, with what we noticed over the following two to 3 months from there, we thought-about the chance of leaving our infrastructure there past the top of that three-year contract was too nice for us.
Golding had its infrastructure sitting in VMware on AWS. [After the] pretty public divorce between VMware and AWS, we weren’t certain the place that left us. With what we noticed over the following two to 3 months, we thought-about the chance of leaving our infrastructure there past the top of that three-year contract was too nice. Nutanix has sort of swung in to exchange that Dom Johnston, Golding
So we went out to market to take a look at alternate options. And Nutanix has sort of swung in to primarily substitute that. We use NC2 [Nutanix Cloud Clusters] to run our manufacturing workloads in AWS, for our DR [disaster recovery] functionality, and that’s primarily to straight substitute the performance that existed inside AWS and VMware Cloud Catastrophe Restoration, which was the DR product that sat alongside that.
So primarily, our DR technique is that if an occasion happens, we instantly spin up the DR setting prepared to just accept a workload. Within the occasion that isn’t required, it’s spun again down once more, and we’ve misplaced, , a pair 100 bucks price of compute utilization.
Kee Yew Wei: Our journey with Nutanix is from 2017. We have been searching for a hyper-converged system to simplify our surroundings, to dispose of the normal three-tier legacy system, to simplify our surroundings, and to scale back our datacentre footprint.
Nutanix is the system, however we didn’t have full confidence in Acropolis at the moment, as a result of it was fairly new in comparison with VMware.
After a few years utilizing Nutanix, we constructed confidence, so we now have just lately migrated all our VMware to Nutanix AHV. We accomplished the total migration final month.
All this happened after the acquisition by Broadcom, and we obtained a citation with a 300% to 400% enhance on our renewal pricing. So, then we made the choice to go for Nutanix.
We began planning someplace round Q3 final 12 months and have been fairly conservative, with completion deliberate for possibly someplace in Q2 this 12 months. My group migrated 1,000 to 2,000 VMs [virtual machines] from This fall and accomplished that initially of April. So right this moment, we’re a full Nutanix home.
Mike Taylor: Our story with Nutanix began approach again in 2017. We’d been Nutanix lookers for a very long time.
On my ships, we had 1,000 blade servers and EMC tiered storage taking on a number of racks. However on the ships, there’s solely a finite quantity of energy they generate, so I wanted to discover a technique to convey every part down right into a smaller footprint – however a better, smaller footprint, one thing that may enable me to very elegantly handle and have ease of use that my groups aboard the ships may cope with.
After a few years utilizing Nutanix, we constructed confidence, so we now have just lately migrated all our VMware to Nutanix AHV Kee Yew Wei, MSIG
So, we did a bake-off with Dell, Cisco and Nutanix, and we applied Nutanix on Mercy in 2019 and Consolation in 2020.
Now, we’re taking a look at generational refreshes of all of our tools and possibly increasing from there and getting some new options, with redundancy and catastrophe restoration. We do have an onboard continuity-of-operations rack, so we now have mirrored failover clusters of Nutanix aboard the ships.
Now we’re all Nutanix. Every thing moved over. That’s like, out of 80-something servers, we solely had two or three servers that had hiccups.
Are you able to establish the exact ache level at which you determined to maneuver to Nutanix from VMware?
Taylor: I keep in mind standing in my major datacentre on the hospital ships. It’s very anticlimactic in case you ever get to go; I simply have 5 racks, however two of these 5 have been purely simply to run my server infrastructure. I keep in mind standing there with one among my friends, and we have been taking a look at it and we stated, “Oh, hey, we’re nonetheless utilizing SAN administrators.” And SAN was going away, they have been on their approach out.
Dell had come out with stuff like FX, and different folks have been dabbling with hyper-converged, whereas Nutanix had already executed it, and so they had their very own software program, which was straightforward to grasp for my engineers. So, I’m taking a look at these racks full of apparatus, particularly the VNX, which was energy hungry. So, we stated, “There needs to be a greater approach to do that.” Power was the issue. Power was the motive force to discovering an answer.
We weren’t impacted by the Broadcom occasion. We bought in earlier than it. I do nonetheless run some VMware, so I’m impacted by it there. The problem we now have incurred in persevering with to function that small half isn’t monetary. It’s purely that I can’t get to updates. I can’t get to obtain them. It’s assist features of the change that influence us essentially the most, not the monetary a part of it.
If we hadn’t moved to Nutanix, if we have been nonetheless purely ESXi, the monetary half will surely be a burden, like it’s for different army instructions.
Johnston: After AWS and VMware had their factor, we have been notified by VMware that we have been not capable of spin up our on-demand DR cluster. They informed us that, primarily, we may nonetheless use our DR plan if we powered down our manufacturing cluster earlier than spinning up a DR cluster. We have been testing quarterly, however we have been not ready to do this. In truth, we shifted to testing month-to-month as a result of there was a lot uncertainty in that area. We have been left in a state of affairs the place, as a result of we couldn’t take a look at, we had zero confidence.
Kee Yew Wei: It was all about value. We bought a invoice with a 300% to 400% enhance on our final renewal. So, this is without doubt one of the key elements that drove us emigrate all our workloads to Nutanix.
While you migrated to Nutanix, have been there some trade-offs, or do you might have the identical performance you had with VMware?
Taylor: The trade-offs are very, very gentle, if any. My folks have been very seasoned with ESXi VMware Instruments and the orchestration that VMware had.
However the studying curve for Nutanix could be very quick. It’s very straightforward to choose up, however you must study it. There’s a unique technique to import an OVA, versus the best way you do it inside the VMware ecosystem, for instance. So, the trade-off is de facto simply time to develop into a grasp at utilizing the system with regard to performance.
The training curve for Nutanix could be very quick. It’s very straightforward to choose up Mike Taylor, US Navy
In truth, I feel I’ve enhanced functionality utilizing AHV as my hypervisor. Relating to safety, utilizing VMware with the army, we now have to submit vulnerability scans consistently. That’s simply a part of our common drumbeat. I nonetheless run VMware on categorised elements of my community, and it is extremely difficult to maintain it safe and updated. I don’t have that situation with Nutanix.
Johnson: I second that. So far as trade-offs are involved, or the performance, it’s actually only a query of semantics in relation to the variations between the 2 platforms. The best way that Nutanix handles snapshots is completely different to the best way that VMware handles snapshots. That was a studying curve for us.
It’s like going from Home windows 10 to Home windows 11. Issues are in a unique spot, but it surely’s the identical performance.
You should put together your group, get them coaching, present them what to do. I don’t assume there’s any lack of performance. In truth, I feel there are quicker workflows, higher availability of instruments.
Kee Yew Wei: I don’t see trade-offs. Possibly 10 years in the past, compatibility with different suppliers’ software program may need been a difficulty, like backup options comparable to [Veritas] NetBackup. Possibly seven or eight years in the past, they didn’t assist Nutanix. However that’s not the case right this moment.
