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Posted May 22, 2019 in Infrastructure

Nutanix Ups the Ante in Its Portfolio at .NEXT 2019

There were a number of announcements made at .NEXT 2019 that really expanded upon and rounded out the portfolio of offerings that Nutanix has. The fact is that the world of IT is constantly changing. There are different consumption models, workloads, users, and ways of accessing resources. The cloud is no longer a forward-looking discussion topic, but rather, table stakes in every conversation. It is not a destination, it is a method. You can have software as a service (SaaS) for users that just want the direct outcomes of services. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) for users that want to build and manage custom environments. Functions as a service (FaaS) for users that want to create services by using chunks of code in a serverless computing architecture. The list of “as-a-service” options out there keeps growing and keeping up with all of them can be difficult. A way to simplify the conversation around them is to ask these questions:

1. What outcome do you want?

First, decide what the outcome is. Do you want to reduce costs? Increase reliability to reduce the risk of business impact from failures? Deploy a new workload? Increase flexibility and mobility of users? Improve your security posture to adhere to governance or compliance requirements?

2. When do you want it?

Is this something that needs to be implemented as a reactive measure? Is it part of a long-term strategy? Is it a gating requirement for a business objective with a defined timeline?

3. How much control do you want?

Can it be provided by an existing service? Is there a mandate to manage it internally because of policies or regulations? Are there custom aspects to it that require glue to other services that are not available out of the box?

4. How resilient do you want it to be?

What is your confidence in the infrastructure that it will run on? What is the business impact of services being unavailable? Does the increased availability and reduction in risk to the business justify the financial costs?

5. How much are you willing to pay?

Is there a budget associated with the desired outcome? Have you reviewed the ROI to determine the value provided by the desired outcome?

These questions can help you determine the various paths that can be taken to achieve a desired outcome. What Nutanix has done is increase the options for solutions to these questions based on what the market has dictated as desirable or sought after.

So, now for the announcements:


Mine is a Nutanix cluster with deep integration into backup providers. You can manage your backup and recovery operations from Prism and backup is provided as a hyperconverged appliance. Think of a dedicated cluster used only for backup purposes with the 3rd party backup software running directly on it and management from Prism. The first vendor to do this is Veeam. Others that are coming soon with a similar solution are Commvault, HYCU, Veritas, and Unitrends.

Xi Frame

Xi Frame is desktop as a service with the control plane delivered as a SaaS offering. You can have desktops created in AWS, Azure, or on Nutanix infrastructure on-prem or in the datacentre. It is integrated into Prism for a familiar management experience and can be up and running within minutes.

Xi Leap

Xi Leap provided the simplest DR solution possible. No complex setup, add-on licensing, staging, or lead time to deploy. Currently, it is available in US West (Bay Area, California), US East (Ashburn, Virginia), and the U.K (London). It is rolling out internationally to Italy, Japan, and Germany in the next couple of months.

Xi Leap includes replication, network connectivity, runbook automation, site recovery capabilities, and consistent security policies across sites. This is a comprehensive DR solution that can be implemented in minutes.

Xi Beam

Xi Beam is a tool for multi-cloud and on-prem environments to perform cost optimization and continuous auditing for security compliance. It can be used to determine where to place or move workloads based on real-time costs. It has over 250 automated checks, and out-of-the-box it has preconfigured regulatory policies that can be reporting on, such as CIS, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and more. It is delivered as a SaaS and is extremely easy to set up within minutes. Custom policies can be created, and automated remediation actions performed with a single click, so that corrective actions are quickly taken against security threats.

Xi IoT

Xi IoT (Internet of Things) creates the simplest path to get actionable information from real-time data analytics of sensor data. Sensors can be devices like video cameras, temperature or pressure sensors, streaming devices, or even a smartphone with the Xi IoT app. You can create intelligent applications utilizing data connectors and machine learning modules (for example, implementing object recognition) to transform the data. This data can be processed at the edge for real-time responses or pushed into the cloud for larger scale machine learning. The Xi Edge platform is delivered as a VM appliance hosted in a Nutanix cluster.

Xi Clusters

Xi Clusters are baremetal Nutanix clusters in the cloud. They operate and are managed in the same way that traditional private cloud environments are, but the resources are in the cloud. This allows for dynamic workload expansions, additional resources for consolidations, increased network bandwidth and availability for global operations, and low latency access to cloud resources. You can even run workloads on Xi Clusters then hibernate them in S3, shut down the compute to save costs, and then import the VMs back into the Xi Clusters at a later date. Xi Clusters will also integrate with your existing cloud VPCs. Xi Clusters will be available on AWS and Azure as bare-metal and on GCP as a nested virtualization offering.

We are living in a multi-cloud, global infrastructure reality that is extremely diverse and has the ability to impact the world in a way greater than many could have imagined. Managing complexity is difficult, as is understanding the continual changes in the industry. Scalar can help navigate the landscape of solutions and the merits of each as they pertain to your business requirements. Let us help you simplify your environment, abstract complexity, and implement solutions that further your business.

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