Nutanix, Inc. has joined the Hortonworks Certified Technology Partner
program.

Joint Nutanix and Hortonworks customers are assured that Nutanix's converged
infrastructure solution has been tested, validated and certified for
interoperability with Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP).

Big data processing enables enterprises to mine and analyze large unstructured
data sets quickly for better business insight and improved decision-making. Apache Hadoop has matured to the point
where it is at the center of the next-generation of enterprise data
architectures. Many IT teams deploying Hadoop and leveraging non-virtualized
infrastructures, however, have found it difficult to efficiently scale and
typically experience low infrastructure utilization when servers are idle. Deployments
on traditional virtualized infrastructures, including those with SAN or
NAS-based centralized storage, suffer from severe inflexibility making it
difficult to scale cost effectively or provide the performance required for big
data workloads. This prohibits big data projects from running adjacent to other
business-critical workloads on the same infrastructure.

Nutanix's Virtual Computing Platform enables data scientists and programmers to
run virtualized big data jobs at performance and at massive scale.
In fact, Nutanix outperforms other leading infrastructure solutions by
2X on a rack space basis, when measured by the popular TeraSort benchmark (1).
Much of this performance advantage is derived from Nutanix's ILM capabilities, which
places data on the correct compute node for the fastest possible processing.
The Nutanix distributed file system supports the massive
parallel processing that is at the heart of big data.

Additionally, Nutanix enables virtualized Hadoop deployments to co-exist with
other applications so that organizations can leverage datacenter investments
across the organization. HDP runs on the Virtual Computing Platform
out-of-the-box and enables jobs to be flexibly scheduled during off-peak hours
to take advantage of idle datacenter resources.

The Virtual Computing Platform converges compute and storage in a
single appliance to eliminate the need for expensive storage networks and
arrays, such as SANs. The solution enables business owners and data scientists
to rely on simple, building block infrastructure for big data projects that can
scale - one node at a time. Nutanix provides distributed
infrastructure solutions for running distributed
HDP-powered applications.

For HDP-based Hadoop implementations,
Nutanix offers the following benefits:

• 
  Lower Datacenter Costs: Nutanix enables big data projects to run on the
  same infrastructure as line of business applications, thus eliminating the
  requirement for dedicated infrastructure.
• MapReduce
  Performance: Benchmarked at 2X the throughput performance of other
  solutions, Nutanix runs MapReduce jobs faster than traditional infrastructure.
• Greater Efficiency: Snapshot and
  fast clone capabilities enable parallel MapReduce branches so that multiple big
  data jobs can run side-by-side for maximum efficiency.
• Standardization and Simplicity at Scale:
  Nutanix integrates and scales with Hortonworks Data Platform without disruption
  to ongoing operations.
• Integration and Management:
  Nutanix delivers a simple-to-use reference architecture designed specifically
  for HDP-based big data implementations.

"Through the Hortonworks Certified
Technology Partner Program, we identify stand-out technology partners whose
solutions easily integrate with Hortonworks Data Platform to handle the
complexities and scale of big data. Nutanix offers Hortonworks customers one of
the most effective platforms for running big data projects at scale, while also
handling multiple workloads on the same infrastructure," said Mitch
Ferguson, VP business development, Hortonworks.

"With proven interoperability
between Nutanix and Hortonworks platforms customers gain the best possible
performance and scale for their Hadoop implementations. As a Hortonworks
Certified Technology Partner, we are making it easier for Hortonworks users to
affordably deploy and scale their big data projects out of the box,"
said Howard Ting, VP marketing, Nutanix.

(1) Nutanix testing has demonstrated 250MB/s sort throughput for a single 2U
Nutanix platform using the TeraSort performance benchmark. The previous
announced record, leveraging traditional storage and server technologies and
normalized for an equivalent 2U footprint, was 110MB/s.

To read the article Nutanix Complete Cluster Brings SAN-Free Virtualization to Hadoop
To get a copy of the Nutanix Reference Architecture for Hortonworks HDP (registration needed)