Nutanix is making on its hybrid cloud capabilities, including aid for unstructured knowledge in Nutanix Clusters for AWS and Microsoft Azure.

The hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) seller today made Nutanix Documents accessible to operate in Nutanix Clusters and additional the capability to tier Nutanix Objects throughout any cloud supporting AWS S3-suitable item shops. It also explained it enhanced its catastrophe get well capabilities for documents and objects, lowering the recovery position objective (RPO) to a single moment.

These capabilities lengthen performance of Nutanix Clusters that released in August. Clusters enables buyers to go block storage knowledge and applications among on-premises Nutanix HCI nodes and AWS Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) occasions. Nutanix struck a deal with Microsoft in September to add Clusters on Azure in 2021.

“We want to provide the identical hybrid capabilities with our storage fabric for unstructured knowledge,” explained Greg Smith, Nutanix VP of specialized marketing. “That usually means documents and item storage.”

Nutanix Clusters is aggressive to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), which integrates HCI nodes managing VMware’s vSAN with general public clouds. VMware and Nutanix are the primary HCI computer software vendors.

Smith explained possessing Nutanix Documents accessible to operate in AWS allows buyers handle file storage throughout personal and general public clouds by a single console. Cloud tiering for objects allows corporations shop knowledge on general public clouds whilst preserving metadata and stubs on premises on Nutanix storage. Owning the metadata on premises will make it accessible to operate analytics, and facilitates look for and retrieval.

Nutanix Files dashboard
Nutanix Clusters people can set retention procedures for documents throughout clouds

Key takeaway: Uniform management

“The vital takeaway is offering uniform management throughout on-premises and general public clouds,” explained Bob Laliberte, Business Strategy Group (ESG) senior analyst.

Laliberte explained Nutanix’s additions can enable corporations deal with the very long-phrase costs of alterations they made in the wake of COVID-19.

“With COVID, corporations promptly shifted applications and workloads to the general public cloud to guarantee business resiliency — but they also have to take into account the very long-phrase costs,” he explained. “Nutanix is enabling corporations to regulate costs for knowledge-intense workloads in the general public cloud and provide the requisite security for that knowledge with tight RPOs.”

Nutanix’s Smith explained the enhanced RPO for DR arrived from wonderful-tuning the vendor’s replication for block storage.

“We have been at this indigenous replication business for some time with our HCI,” he explained. “That technological innovation gives us the engine to provide identical RPOs for distinctive storage protocols — exclusively NFS, SMB and S3 objects.”

Laliberte explained the DR capabilities are important for corporations dealing with mission-important applications, as very well as microservices on containers.

“Figuring out that the knowledge is guarded, even on additional modern day applications, is truly significant,” he explained. “The a single-moment RPO is required to guarantee resiliency in those ephemeral environments.”

Nutanix Clusters is distinctive than the HCI vendor’s Xi cloud company, which also provides DR. The Xi cloud is managed by Nutanix in its knowledge centre, Clusters is a company managing on general public clouds. Nutanix fees a subscription price for knowledge less than management in Clusters.

Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: The ‘New HCI’

Like other storage vendors, Nutanix has emphasised aid to handle applications and knowledge throughout personal and general public clouds — in particular as operate forces change distant through the pandemic.

In the course of its quarterly earnings contact past 7 days, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey referred to its technological innovation as “the foundation for hybrid cloud infrastructure, the new HCI of this 10 years.” 

Pandey held up the Clusters initiative as vital to its hybrid cloud approach, noting its partnerships with AWS and Azure. 

“We are morphing from currently being a pioneer in on-prem hyper-converged infrastructure to currently being an genuine hybrid cloud infrastructure, the new HCI business,” he explained.