Nutanix, known for its hyper-converged infrastructure, is diving into VMware’s market following its acquisition by Broadcom. At Nutanix’s recent .Next event in Washington DC, the focus was clear: more customers are moving away from VMware to Nutanix, particularly its Acropolis hypervisor (AHV).
Three customers shared their experiences of switching. While only one directly cited Broadcom’s pricing changes, connections with AWS played a significant role in another’s decision.
Dom Johnston is the IT manager for Golding, a civil and mining contracting company in Brisbane, Australia. “We had our infrastructure on VMware with AWS. Our three-year contract ended in February, and thanks to the noticeable split between VMware and AWS, we felt uncertain about our future there. We analyzed the risks and decided we couldn’t continue with that setup,” he explains. They searched for alternatives and chose Nutanix. Now, they run their production workloads on Nutanix Cloud Clusters, focusing on disaster recovery. “If an issue arises, we can quickly spin up our DR environment; if not, we just scale back, losing minimal costs.”
Kee Yew Wei, from MSIG, an international insurance company based in Japan, began this journey in 2017. “We wanted a hyper-converged system to replace our traditional setup and reduce our datacentre footprint,” he says. Initially wary of Nutanix’s newness compared to VMware, they eventually transitioned all workloads to Nutanix AHV last month, prompted largely by a 300% to 400% price hike in their VMware renewal. “We started planning the migration last year and wrapped it up in a few months.”
Mike Taylor, a director for the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command, traced his path back to 2017 too. He faced challenges aboard his hospital ships, where limited power made energy efficiency crucial. “We had racks filled with 1,000 blade servers and EMC storage. It was clear we needed a more compact, efficient solution.” After testing options from Dell, Cisco, and Nutanix, they implemented Nutanix on ships Mercy and Comfort in 2019 and 2020. “Now, about 80% of our infrastructure is Nutanix, and we had minimal hiccups during the transition.”
When asked about the pivotal pain points for their migrations, Taylor vividly recalls a moment in his datacentre. “I remember standing there and realizing we were still using outdated SAN technology. With the energy demands of our existing setup, it became clear we needed to adapt.”
Johnston went through a similar realization. “After that split between AWS and VMware, we struggled with clarity around our disaster recovery plans. VMware’s sudden changes threatened our confidence in their solutions.”
Kee Yew Wei focused on financial concerns: “The jump in renewal costs was a significant factor driving us toward Nutanix.”
Did they face any trade-offs? Taylor mentions that while his team was well-versed in VMware, the transition to Nutanix had a short learning curve. “The functionalities are mostly there, and I think I actually have enhanced capabilities with AHV. Security is also more manageable without constant updates like we faced with VMware.”
Johnston agrees, noting that differences are often just about familiarization. “Moving to Nutanix felt like updating from Windows 10 to 11. The tools might be in different spots, but overall, the functionalities are there, often with improved workflows.”
Kee Yew Wei also sees no trade-offs. “Ten years ago, compatibility issues existed, but that’s not the case anymore. Today, Nutanix integrates well with various systems.”