Nutanix announced major new
capabilities in its popular hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)
software, delivering significant innovations to the datacenter and cloud
markets. Specifically, these innovations will bring up to 50% faster
performance, native virtual networking to simplify multicloud
deployments, end-to-end security monitoring to support a Zero-Trust
strategy, and expanded automation and budgeting capabilities for cloud
resources. In addition to extending its HCI software stack to the public cloud,
the company continues to set the bar for innovation in the fast-growing
HCI market, putting true IT modernization within reach of all
organizations.
HCI
has become the standard for powering modern private clouds, and Nutanix
software is recognized by more than 17,000 customers and leading
industry analysts for its unmatched simplicity, scalability, resilience,
and security, all of which conclude that Nutanix is an undisputed
leader in the fast-growing HCI market. Most recently, the company was
recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave: Hyperconverged
Infrastructure, Q3 2020, in which it received the highest score across
all three categories: current offering, strategy (tied), and market
presence. The Forrester report shared: "Nutanix has maintained its
position atop the HCI market with its innovation, R&D investment,
sales momentum, partnerships, and acquisition of new customers from all
segments and geographies ... It has a clear, impressive roadmap for its
product lines."
Today's
announcement highlights Nutanix's commitment to innovation to meet
emerging customer requirements and further disrupt the industry status
quo. With these new HCI improvements, Nutanix customers will benefit
from:
50% Faster Performance
Nutanix
has once again advanced its HCI architecture to exploit the latest in
storage technologies, including NVMe based SSDs and Intel Optane SSDs.
The resulting lower latency will deliver up to 50% faster performance
for I/O intensive workloads, such as large databases and large-scale
healthcare applications. The advancements also improve VM density to
lower the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) for all applications.
The
company's new Blockstore technology self-manages storage with
significantly greater efficiency than traditional file systems. In
addition, Nutanix HCI software adds support for Storage Performance
Development Kit (SPDK), currently available to customers as a technology
preview, an open source library developed by Intel that enables
applications to access NVMe capacity directly, avoiding any operating
system or kernel-level overhead to drive even faster workload
performance. Together, Blockstore and SPDK reinforce
the benefits of Nutanix's software-defined architecture, enabling
continuous advancements in both performance and resiliency.
"Through
our recently announced Joint Innovation Lab, we are collaborating with
Nutanix to integrate Intel's latest and greatest technology on the
Nutanix software stack," said Chris Tobias, General Manager, Optane
Solutions Division at Intel. "The advanced performance capabilities
Nutanix announced today, in addition to ultra low latency Intel® OptaneTM
technology and high bandwidth NVMe storage technologies from Intel,
will deliver our joint customers the HCI solutions they need to support
their most intensive applications, allowing them to more readily
innovate and develop new business models."
Simplified Zero-Trust Security
Continuing its long-standing commitment to deliver secure infrastructure services, Nutanix announced Flow Security Central,
a centralized SaaS-based management plane delivering compliance
monitoring, network visibility, and security operations across both
Nutanix-powered private clouds and public cloud environments.
A
Zero-Trust strategy requires granular network policy controls and the
ability to monitor and update those controls in real-time. Many
organizations, however, struggle with application visibility and unified
security management. Security Central provides customers with a hub for
their security operations so they can easily assess the overall
security posture of their Nutanix deployments, generate detailed
recommendations to bring environments into compliance, and provide the
network visibility and context needed to secure cloud networks and
applications.
In
addition to Security Central, Nutanix also announced new security
capabilities, currently under development, to help customers strengthen
their Zero-Trust strategy. These include extensions to Nutanix's native
key manager and data encryption to deliver a simplified and secure
environment for edge and ROBO deployments; AHV support for Microsoft's
Virtualization-based Security (VBS) and Credential Guard that helps
protect Windows VDI desktops against sophisticated memory attacks.
Lastly, the company announced new security certifications, including
updated FIPS 140-2 certificates, the government's acceptance of all
Common Criteria evaluation work, as well as the completion of testing
for a listing on the DoDIN Approved Products List (APL).
Virtual Networking to Simplify Cloud Deployments
Today,
the company announced that new virtual networking capabilities in
Nutanix Flow, which are natively integrated into the Nutanix HCI
software stack, are under development. Based on well-understood VPC
(virtual private cloud) constructs used by major public cloud providers, Flow Networking will
simplify the tasks of creating, isolating, and managing
software-defined networks that connect applications running in private
data centers and in public cloud environments, significantly simplifying
networking for hybrid and multicloud deployments.
This
new VPC technology is a result of the company's multi-year investment
in Nutanix Xi Cloud, which powers Nutanix's cloud-based solutions.
Integrated with the company's AHV virtualization, it will provide
customers with expanded options to connect their multiple clouds,
incorporate advanced networking features, and support DevOps teams
through agile networking that facilitates rapid and automated
provisioning of new applications into multiple environments.
Applications Insight and Automation
Nutanix
also announced enhanced infrastructure operations management to better
serve IT teams and application developers. Prism Ultimate, a new edition
to Prism, adds advanced application insights and automation for
troubleshooting application-related infrastructure bottlenecks. It also
offers visibility of cloud IT resource consumption for targeted IT cost
reductions and more accurate budgeting. Additionally, Nutanix Prism can
monitor non-Nutanix environments, including popular virtualization
stacks, giving Nutanix customers a single pane of glass for their entire
infrastructure, including legacy infrastructure environments.
"Our
engineers and architects are building the foundation for hybrid
architectures to run their applications and manage their growing volume
of data, something even more important now as IT is playing a more
strategic role," said Rajiv Mirani, Chief Technology Officer at Nutanix.
"To help our customers transition to hybrid and multicloud operating
models, Nutanix has made significant investments in research and
development to advance our core software stack. These new capabilities
will help further strengthen the performance and reliability of our
software, extending our journey across networking, security,
performance, and automation."
New software-defined networking capabilities in Nutanix Flow are currently under development.