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@ROIdude

While the major storage array manufacturers typically have the ability to replicate array to array, they do not support replication at the VM level. This precludes replication from many datacenters or offices to one central location. It also leads to challenges in terms of supporting VMware Storage DRS as well as in backing up VMware vCloud Director.

VMware and Veeam share a similar focus on the virtualized data center and on the private cloud which utilizes virtualization as its underpinning technology. The combination of Nutanix and Veeam provide a great combination for protecting data in both environments.

Protecting the Modern Data Center

With today’s robust hardware (i.e. Nutanix) and virtualization technology, there is no reason why a virtualized workload shouldn’t run at least as fast as its physical counterpart. And virtualization brings capabilities such as High Availability and Fault Tolerance that completely mitigate server failure.  Read more...

Virtualization is setting the foundation for transforming enterprise datacenters into private clouds. In this flexible, resource pooled, dynamic environment, how do you maintain performance and availability SLAs, while providing all of the other benefits like self-service provisioning and resource elasticity? Delivering 100 percent service availability means having a proactive disaster recovery (DR) solution that is designed from the ground up for virtual workloads. Not surprisingly, this is easier said than done.

Traditional DR/Business Continuity solutions are based on simplistic array-level block replication and therefore deliver on only storage level DR.  To support overall application level DR one is then forced to cobble together a solution on top of the existing array-level block replication technology. While minimally functional for small environments, this approach doesn’t scale. Before you know it, this approach becomes an end unto itself.  Read more...

This article was originally posted on the VMware End-user Computing blog on April 11, 2013.

I recently had the opportunity to head over to the VMware HQ and conduct a white boarding session on the VMware Horizon Suite on Nutanix solution.

When looking at the diagram in the solution video I noticed one thing, white space. Rather than having complex lines going to LUNs/IQNs or chassis to arrays or uplinks, all we had to show was the Horizon architecture, which is what we really care about.

One “ring” to rule them all

Obviously convergence is a key trait we live by at Nutanix so when thinking about Horizon Suite on the Nutanix platform, the following idea came to mind: why can’t we just put Horizon Workspace and Horizon View on the same platform?

Simple answer: we can, and did with amazing results.  Read more...

@ROIdude

Mark Andreesen’s famous August 2011 WSJ article, Why Software Is Eating the World, discusses how software companies, especially Silicon Valley firms, are disrupting industries across the planet. Most big data center players still cling to the hardware-based models of yore. But the growing ubiquity of the hypervisor as the new data center O/S means that software-defined technologies will increasingly challenge the status quo.

Software-Defined Data Center Attributes

Proliferating data center virtualization has revealed the necessity for simplified infrastructure design, implementation and support. Major data center players including EMC, Cisco, NetApp, HP, IBM, Oracle and Dell have responded with converged infrastructure (CI) solutions that combine compute, storage and network resources either as products or as reference architectures.  Read more...

@ROIdude

This post was published on Steve Kaplan’s blog, By The Bell, today 3/20/13.

Steve Kaplan joins Nutanix to build worldwide partner network.

After twenty-five years in the IT channel, including positions at six different solutions providers, writing columns for three different channel magazines, and seats on partner advisory councils for several manufacturers- I’ve switched sides.  I recently joined Nutanix to help build a world-class worldwide partner network.

Disruptive Technologies

This was not an easy decision. I was at Presidio almost five years and had the opportunity to work with many outstanding people. I’m proud of all the great work the organization has done for clients across the country, and am particularly pleased that Presidio was recently named the VMware 2012 Global Partner of the Year. But every so often a disruptive technology emerges that compels me to bet my career on it. Nutanix has developed such a technology.  Read more...

@howardting

It’s been about a week since we launched the updated Nutanix website and so far the feedback we’ve received has been generally very positive.  I wanted to share a bit of the thinking behind the design of the new site.  As I mentioned in my previous blog post, innovation is engrained in our culture at Nutanix.  We are constantly challenging the status quo to determine if there is a better way to do things.  This “tendency to innovate” extends well beyond product development and is pervasive throughout the organization.  Read more...

@dgfallon

This post came about through a few discussions on Twitter and encounters in the field, and before I knew it I had volunteered to write a post for the Nutanix Blog. Now my experiences tend to be slanted towards VDI since I’m often brought in to tell war stories of building large VDI environments with traditional infrastructure in my days before Nutanix, and these conversations often evolve into discussions regarding other workloads that can be placed on Nutanix. After a couple of these encounters, I felt compelled to share the story of how Nutanix goes well beyond VDI, some might say to Infinity and Beyond.

First, lets look at why Nutanix rocks at VDI. We’ve seen a rapid uptake as the go to appliance for VDI; VMware and Citrix teams come to us because they see a solution to their virtual desktop infrastructure challenges. VDI is plagued by the I/O blender problem and tends to be a very unpredictable workload that requires a considerable amount of infrastructure when implemented with traditional hardware.  Read more...

@trailsfootmarks

These predictions were first published as a contributed article in VMblog’s 5th Annual Virtualization and Cloud Prediction Series.

For the last few weeks, the Nutanix marketing team kept nudging me to write a blog on 2013 predictions. I kept pushing it off, perhaps subconsciously, because it would have been a royal waste if the world really came to an end. 12/21/12 is safely behind us, and I’ve found my mojo to write. Something tells me I did better with my 2012 predictions than the Mayans. You be the judge. Tweet me a score between 1 and 10, 1 being an absolute dud and 10 a near perfect. @trailsfootmarks (hashtag: #Nutanix).

I look at 2013 as the beginning of the end of big iron. Public cloud, virtual datacenter appliances, Taiwanese ODMs, commodity flash SSDs, and 10 GbE will trump their expensive legacy counterparts.

The Year of the Public Cloud  Read more...

I’d like to start my first blog post with a small introduction. I come from a family of pilots and teachers.  We enjoy technology and travel, and are naturally comfortable speaking to an audience.  As the lead trainer at Nutanix, I have the privilege of sharing our technology with a variety of audiences: customers, partners, and new employees. We’re expanding in each of these categories at a rapid pace, so my team is constantly juggling its resources to respond to incoming requests. As I write this article, I am returning from a nearly 3-week global training tour. Just as with IT infrastructure, time spent on the road can be converged for optimal performance.

Just how converged was my trip? Well, in 20 days, I conducted five classes in three time zones, taught 40 students from seven organizations, and earned over 40,000 frequent flier miles (okay, some of these were bonus miles).  I said “Hello,” “Howdy” and “Kon’nichiwa.” I also discovered that lessons you learn at home are especially important abroad.  Read more...

@howardting

This is my first blog post and I would like to take this opportunity to extend my warm greetings to all Nutanix customers, resellers, distributors, technology alliance partners, supporters, followers, and even competitors (who I know are reading this).  After a terrific 3.5 year run at the highly disruptive and successful network security company Palo Alto Networks, I joined Nutanix as VP of Marketing exactly one month ago with great excitement and optimism about the opportunity we have to help enterprises reinvent their datacenters.  The first 30 days on the job have been remarkable in many ways and today I’m going to write about the manifestation of one of those remarkable attributes that make Nutanix such a special company – rapid innovation.  Read more...