Nutanix Expanding Virtual Computing Platform

Nutanix, Inc. announced two new platforms that meet the cost, performance and scale requirements to run nearly any enterprise application.

Nutanix’s expanded portfolio o its Virtual Computing Platforms enables IT teams to tailor and grow their compute and storage environment to fit their individual requirements, whether for an enterprise branch office with limited on-site IT resources or core data centers tasked with supporting an increasingly diverse and demanding set of workloads.

The NX-1000 series puts converged infrastructure within reach of small to mid-sized corporations, enterprise branch offices or retail stores at an attractive price point while also streamlining IT management. The NX-6000 series allows enterprises to scale their Nutanix cluster by adding storage capacity as needed for applications with large data sets such as big data projects, high-end databases or demanding VDI.

Converged Infrastructure for Mid-Market
NX-1000 Series
Small to mid-sized corporations, enterprise branch offices and retail stores typically lack the specialized IT resources needed to manage traditional infrastructure built with separate servers, storage arrays and networking. Unlike other converged infrastructure solutions, which offer little more than legacy products packaged into a single chassis or cabinet, the NX-1000 Series, like other Nutanix platforms, features a flatter data center architecture that eliminates the need for centralized SAN/NAS storage, thereby reducing IT complexity and simplifying management.

This new platform includes all of the functionality offered in every Virtual Computing Platform, including software-based storage controller technology and ILM capabilities, such as flash-enabled data tiering and performance-optimized data compression. The NX-1000 also requires up to 80% less space and power than alternative approaches, providing a single platform to power branch office services, including local applications, virtual desktop deployments, file and print services, DHCP and DNS services, WAN optimization controllers and security-focused virtual appliances.

Features and benefits include:

• Easy-to-deploy converged infrastructure in a single 2U appliance to run virtual workloads common in mid-sized corporations, enterprise branch offices and retail stores
• Flexibility to use existing network infrastructure (1GbE or 10GbE) to reduce deployment costs and accelerate deloyment
• Pre-installed replication and backup software automatically protects VM-specific data
• Affordable pricing beginning at just $22,500 per node (server and storage included)

For a limited time, Nutanix is offering a pricing promotion on the NX-1000 series platform.

Elastic Storage Offering in Converged Infrastructure
NX-6000 Series
Although many converged infrastructure solutions enable a simpler, building block-based approach to the enterprise datacenter, they often lack the ability to ideally match infrastructure capabilities with the demands of specific enterprise applications or services.

The NX-6000 Virtual Computing Platform is a converged data center platform to independently scale storage resources in a single converged infrastructure. Existing buyers of converged infrastructure have typically been forced to deploy products that only offer fixed, vendor-selected ratios of storage capacity and compute performance. Because most enterprises need to run multiple applications within the same environment, each with their own unique resource demands, IT is now in need of infrastructure that can be uniquely tailored to each environment. The NX-6000 platform makes it simple and affordable for enterprises to design and scale their data centers one appliance at a time with the ability to add just the right amount of storage and compute resources for any workload.

Features and benefits include:

• Allows IT to choose, provision and expand storage capacity based on need, avoiding costly purchases of underutilized or unneeded resources
• Allows new platforms to be added to existing Nutanix clusters, enabling customers to mix and match platforms within a single environment for running multiple business applications simultaneously
• Delivers 3X more raw storage capacity than earlier Nutanix platforms to support data intensive applications, such as SQL data bases, Hadoop-driven data analytics or large-scale VDI rollouts. Doubles the amount of server-attached flash capacity for accommodating large working sets, accelerating I/O intensive applications
• Includes in-line and post-process data compression to deliver 35TB to 70TB of usable storage in 2U platform
• Pricing beginning at $60,000 per node

"Natively converged infrastructure solutions (also known as CompuStorage solutions in IDC’s taxonomy on file and object storage) are quickly becoming a reality for many enterprises as the need to handle big data projects, high-end databases or demanding VDI dramatically increases. The key to a successful natively converged infrastructure is flexibility-a single platform that can scale compute and storage independent of each other, and can easily adapt to specific environments and application requirements," said Ashish Nadkarni, research director, storage systems, IDC.

"Expanding our industry-leading Virtual Computing Platform portfolio with the NX-1000 and NX-6000 series gives Nutanix customers the flexibility to deploy infrastructure that perfectly matches the needs of their business. By providing an affordable solution that drastically simplifies infrastructure management for mid-market companies and enterprise branch offices, as well as empowering customers to choose the appropriate ratio of storage and compute resources, Nutanix continues to lead the charge in re-inventing the enterprise datacenter," said  Howard Ting, VP marketing, Nutanix.

"Nutanix’s converged infrastructure offers just the kind of flexibility we need. Their Virtual Computing Platforms provide the flexibility to scale both compute and storage resources, which allows us to meet our specific application requirements. Their new NX-1000 solution is attractive for locations outside our main datacenter, where the simplicity of converged infrastructure really makes a difference," said Shawn Stamper, lead systems administrator, Ohio Army National Guard.