Kaminario PocketCompetitive Analyst Advantage Report

Six Key Differentiators between EMC VxRail and Nutanix NX Appliances

by DCIG Managing Analyst Ken Clipperton

Many organizations view hyper-converged infrastructure appliances (HCIAs) as the data center architecture of the future. Dell EMC VxRail and Nutanix NX Appliances are two leading options for creating the enterprise hybrid cloud. Visibility into their respective data protection ecosystems, enterprise application certifications, solution integration, support for multiple hypervisors, scalability and maturity should help organizations choose the most appropriate solution for them.

PRODUCT Hyper-converged infrastructure appliances Six Key Differentiators between Dell EMC VxRail (HCIAs) radically simplify the next generation Dell EMC VxRail and Nutanix NX of data center architectures. Combining and/ URL  https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/converged- Appliances infrastructure/vxrail/index.htm or virtualizing compute, memory, storage, networking, and data protection functions Dell EMC from a single vendor in a scale-out cluster, 1. SOLUTION INTEGRATION ADVANTAGE  Nutanix NX Series 3401 Hillview Ave, Palo Alto CA 94304 these pre-integrated appliances accelerate (877) 486-9273 and simplify infrastructure deployments and Organizations wishing to build private clouds management. As such, the stakes are high around VMware will find VxRail an excellent PRODUCT for vendors like Dell EMC and Nutanix who way to both simplify and extend a VMware Nutanix NX Series are competing to own this critical piece of infrastructure. Disparate software packages from Dell EMC, and VMware are pre-installed URL  https://www.nutanix.com/products/ data center infrastructure real estate. and pre-integrated. Most management is hardware-platforms/ The similarities between the Dell EMC VxRail through vCenter while software upgrades and Nutanix NX product families are signifi- Nutanix use a separate application. Nutanix integra- cant. The hyper-converged products from 1740 Technology Drive, Suite 150 tion occurs during development. Nutanix both Dell EMC and Nutanix facilitate: San Jose, CA 95110 offers simplicity through a single operating (855) NUTANIX • Rapid deployment by pre-integrating all system, one management application, and the core private cloud technologies in one API for integration with third-party auto- mation frameworks. SUMMARY COMPARISON their respective appliances.

Dell EMC VxRail Advantages • Cloud-like self-service. 2. BREADTH OF DATA PROTECTION • Breadth of ecosystem • The migration of cloud-native and ECOSYSTEM  Dell EMC VxRail • Enterprise applications certified traditional applications to onsite cloud ADVANTAGE • Vendor maturity infrastructure and multiple public cloud An extensive ecosystem of complementary providers. solutions, support, and education exists Nutanix NX Advantages around data protection for VMware vSphere. • Solution integration To deliver on these capabilities, both VMware and/or its partner entities often fill • Multi-hypervisor flexibility companies control the entire hardware any gaps in vSphere functionality which creates optionality and reduces risk. A data • Scalability and software stacks of their respective HCIA solutions pre-testing firmware and protection ecosystem is developing around software updates holistically and automat- the Nutanix AHV solution. For example, ing cluster-wide rollouts. Despite these Unitrends Backup recently added support similarities, many differences between for AHV workloads to its existing vSphere them remain. To help enterprises select support, including agentless host-level the product that best fits their needs, here protection that leverages AHV snapshots. are six ways these two products currently However, the Nutanix AHV ecosystem is differentiate themselves from one another. smaller than VMware’s.

Licensed to Unitrends with unrestricted and unlimited distribution rights through October 31, 2019 © 2018 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. DCIG: Empowering the IT industry with actionable analysis.™limited and unrestricted distribution rights. Updated October 2018 1 Pocket Analyst Report

3. ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS CERTIFIED 5. SCALABILITY ADVANTAGE  Dell EMC VxRail ADVANTAGE  Nutanix NX Series VMware vSphere dominates in enterprise IT, and has done so for VxRail requires a minimum of three (3) nodes, and can scale to many years. Consequently, it is certified for a broad array of appli- sixty-four (64) nodes per cluster. Nutanix can start as small as a cations and thoroughly tested through actual use in many enter- single node with no upper limit to nodes in a Nutanix cluster, with prises. Nutanix has achieved certification for many common clusters of more than 100 nodes in production. enterprise applications, and continues to grow that list. But if an enterprise depends on an application that is not yet certified on 6. VENDOR MATURITY the Nutanix stack, vSphere on VxRail has the advantage. ADVANTAGE  Dell EMC VxRail Nutanix is a startup leader in the hyperconverged marketplace. In 4. MULTI-HYPERVISOR FLEXIBILITY 2018, it achieved more than $1 billion in annual revenue, but it has ADVANTAGE  Nutanix NX Series yet to show a profit. Dell EMC is an established company with a VxRail is a VMware-centric solution. VxRail storage services are powerful global sales force and VAR community. Its VxRail busi- provided by VMware vSAN. vSAN integrates into the ESXi hyper- ness is similar in size to Nutanix, and Dell EMC has a history of visor at the kernel level, enabling tight integration and high perfor- profitable operations. mance with very low overhead. However, vSAN requires ESXi, which is not bundled with the appliance. Nutanix Acropolis pre- installs its own AHV hypervisor and supports other hypervisors, including ESXi and Hyper-V.

Comparison of Dell EMC VxRail and Nutanix NX Systems

Dell EMC Nutanix FEATURE VxRail with ESX NX Series with AHV

VMware Virtual SAN Enterprise VMware vCenter Server VMware vRealize Log Insight Nutanix Acropolis Solution VMware vSphere Data Protection Included Software Nutanix Prism Integration VMware vSphere Replication Nutanix Calm (25 VMs) Dell EMC Recoverpoint for VMs Dell EMC CloudArray VxRail Manager

Data Center Use Filers/SAN for Production Workloads Storage Integration NAS/SAN Storage to Non-cluster Servers

Arcserve UDP

Cohesity

Commvault

Backup HYCU Software Ecosystem Dell EMC Avamar Future

Dell EMC Data Domain Future

Dell EMC Networker Install agent in VMs

Druva Install agent in VMs

SUPPORTED UNDETERMINED / UNSUPPORTED Licensed to Unitrends with unrestricted and unlimited distribution rights through October 31, 2019 © 2018 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. DCIG: Empowering the IT industry with actionable analysis.™limited and unrestricted distribution Updated October 2018 2 rights. Pocket Analyst Report Comparison of Dell EMC VxRail and Nutanix NX Systems

Dell EMC Nutanix FEATURE VxRail with ESX NX Series with AHV

HPE Data Protector

Quest AppAssure

Quest NetVault Backup Install agent in VMs Backup Software Rubrik Ecosystem StorageCraft (continued) Unitrends Certified Certified

Veritas Backup Exec

Veritas NetBackup

CentOS

FreeBSD 9.x / 10.x / 11.x

Oracle 6.x / 7.x

Oracle Solaris 10.x / 11.x Guest Oses RHEL 5.x / 6.x / 7.x Certified SCO OpenServer 5 / UnixWare 7

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11.x / 12.x

Ubuntu 12.x / 14.x / 16.x

Windows Server 2008 R2 / 2012 / 2012 R2 / 2016

Metro Stretched Cluster

Multi-site Replication

Snapshots

Snapshots (Application-aware)

Exposes APIs for 3rd Party Automation

Hypervisor Licensed with Appliance

Management Hypervisor One-click Upgrades

Hypervisor Preinstalled on Appliance

Hypervisor Supports Microsoft ODX

Migrations - P2V

Migrations - V2V

Multi-tenancy

Self-service Portal for End Users

SUPPORTED UNDETERMINED / UNSUPPORTED Licensed to Unitrends with unrestricted and unlimited distribution rights through October 31, 2019 © 2018 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. DCIG: Empowering the IT industry with actionable analysis.™limited and unrestricted distribution Updated October 2018 3 rights. Pocket Analyst Report Comparison of Dell EMC VxRail and Nutanix NX Systems

Dell EMC Nutanix FEATURE VxRail with ESX NX Series with AHV

Citrix XenApp

VDI Certified Citrix XenDesktop

VMware Horizon View

Hadoop

IBM DB2

Microsoft Apps (Exchange/SharePoint/SQL)

MySQL Application Certified Oracle DB

PostgreSQL

SAP S4/HANA Non-production Production

Splunk

AHV

ESXi Hypervisor Certified Hyper-V

KVM

Cluster Scalability Min/Max # of nodes 3/64 1/Unlimited

SUPPORTED UNDETERMINED / UNSUPPORTED

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© 2018 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. Other trademarks appearing in this document are the property of their respective owners. This DCIG Pocket Analyst Report is a product of DCIG, LLC. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. Product information was compiled from both publicly-available and vendor-provided resources. While DCIG has attempted to verify that product information is correct and complete, feature support can change and is subject to interpretation. All features represent the opinion of DCIG. No negative inferences should be drawn against any product or vendor not included in this report. DCIG cannot be held responsible for any errors that may appear. Licensed to Unitrends with unrestricted and unlimited distribution rights through October 31, 2019 Updated October 2018 4