Nutanix Xpress is released for SMB

Nutanix has launched (24th May 2016) an entire new product line, called Nutanix Xpress, specifically for the Small Medium Business (SMB) market.

Utilising the Nutanix 1000 Series 1065 and based on the new Intel Broadwell chipset this product line available to order in June 2016, with delivery starting early July 2016.

The changes that the Nutanix Xpress comes with, compared to the Enterprise Editions is that a cluster for Xpress systems is limited to four nodes, you have to purchase a minimum of 3 nodes initially. However, for the SMB market, this should be sufficient to run most needs within Smaller businesses. Additional clusters or 3 or 4 nodes can be purchased.

One good solution for an SMB that requires Diaster Recovery (DR) is to purchase two clusters, one as the Primary Cluster and the second to act as the DR Cluster.

The Nutanix Xpress has been designed as a Turn-Key solution for those SMB with a small IT department and using the Prism interface provides easy management of the overall Cluster. When using the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) even further cost reduction is achieved when implementing a Nutnaix Xpress solution, as the purchased of a Hypervisor, like VMware ESX, is not required.

Using the Nutanix Xpress and the AHV provides a single pane of glass for monitoring the health of the hardware and the Virtual Machines (VMs) running on the system.

The Nutanix Xpress also provides cloud integration with AWS and Azure, allowing VMs to be backed up to the cloud for enhanced protection and in future edition provide the capability to migrate workloads (VMs) up to Public clouds, like AWS and Azure, or even back again.

Pricing for the UK has yet to be released, but the initially indicated pricing, based on the US Dollar appears to be around $25,000 for a 3 node Nutanix Xpress cluster, utilising a low-end specification and 3 years Xpress Support.

A low-end specification would be 3 nodes, with each node containing Dual 8 Core 1.7Ghz CPUs, 64GB RAM, 1x 480GB SSD and 2x 2TB HDD per node, providing ~4TB of storage. The $25,000 would also include the Xpress Software and 3 Years Xpress Support.

The Nutanix Xpress Software provides;

Cluster Size (3 or 4 nodes max)

Data Tiering

Online Cluster Grow or Shrink

Compression

Deduplication

VM-Centric Snapshots and Clones

VM Flash Mode

Replication within Single Site

VSS Integration

Remote Backup

Cloud Connect

Metro Availability

Centralised Management

One-click Upgrades (Nutanix OS and Hypervisor)

Pulse

Cluster health

AHV

vSphere

Hyper-V

VM Operations

Intelligent VM Placement

Virtual Network Configurations

Host Profiles

VM High Availability

The Nutanix Xpress Support uses the same Nutanix Support Engineers that support the Enterprise Customers and provides 24×7 coverage, by email or phone, 4 hours response time, Next Business Day for parts and up to 4 contacts eligible to contact support. There are some limitations on field support, but it is possible to choose the Production Support option, then enables 2 Hour response time and no limitation of field support.

This offering from Nutanix is a welcomed edition and any SMB should investigate the Nutanix Xpress solution. For any SMB that has a small IT team, Nutanix Xpress can reduce their workload, as Storage, Compute and Hypervisor can now be handled, directly by Nutanix, no longer does the IT team need to bounce between vendors to resolve a problem. Nutanix has the highest customer satisfaction from any storage provider on the market.

For those interesting in what the Nutanix Prism interface and AHV looks like, Nutanix has a Community Edition (CE) that can be downloaded and run on any PC, with enough memory, Intel CPU and an SSD and HDD. The Community Edition is a great place to start.

If you want to see the CE in action, get in touch and we can provide a demo of Nutanix CE, or download it for yourself at Nutanix CE or watch the Global Online Launch, Register here.