As HCI Evolves to Private Cloud, Storage Plays a Big Part | Nutanix Community
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This post was authored by Devon Helms, Senior Product Marketing Manager - Storage Services

IT departments around the world are realizing how much better life can be when they simplify their architecture with hyperconverged infrastructure like Nutanix. As organizations adopt Nutanix for HCI, IT leaders are coming to understand that simplicity of invisible infrastructure can extend beyond hypervisors and VM storage and into the very fabric of their datacenters. And by fabric, I mean the storage that houses all of their data. Nutanix identified this evolution early and is leading the way in providing a platform that can service a broader range of IT solution than anyone in the industry. As IT leaders look to simplify their file and object unstructured storage architecture, Nutanix is ready to serve.

In the Magic Quadrant on HCI, Gartner noted that draw backs from many competitor HCI platforms is their lack of breadth in storage protocol support. Supporting VM storage is table stakes. But now HCI is evolving to a true private cloud with support for any use case or application through file, object, and block storage all on one platform.

Nutanix has been at the forefront of this evolution offering files storage with Nutanix Files for almost three years. This first mover advantage means that Nutanix Files customers get the most advanced file storage solution available for HCI. And due to the software defined nature of Nutanix Files, we can add features in an agile manner without disruption. Customers simply do a rolling upgrade of their file storage and file server VMs update in series keeping services online with updating software. Our most recent release of Nutanix Files, version 3.6 is no different. It has several key features that our customers will appreciate.

  • NearSync DR: Nutanix Files now supports up to 1-min RPO with NearSync for your File data thereby minimizing data loss in case of a disaster.
  • Selective File Blocking: Customers can now block specific types of files (based on extension) users can save, and generate notifications when users attempt to save unauthorized files. File Blocking policies can be defined (as a list of extensions) at file server or share level.
  • In-Flight Encryption (SMB): In-flight Encryption provides end-to-end encryption of SMB data and protects data from eavesdropping occurrences on untrusted networks. In flight encryption can be configured on a per share basis to provide greater flexibility.
  • Higher Density Nodes: Nutanix Files now offer higher density node configuration (128TB) for your capacity optimized use cases. You can now use 2x7.68 SSDs plus  10x12TB HDDs configuration in your new or existing AOS clusters with Nutanix 8000 series and certified 3rd party servers.
  • Durable Handles (SMB): Durable Handles allows SMB (both 2.x and 3.x) clients to open a file and survive a temporary client-side connection loss situations (like network glitches) allowing clients to reconnect transparently and improving usage experience.
  • Performance Boosts: Files also got a lot faster in 3.6 which means customers can now squeeze more IO from their existing resources dues to improvements in software e.g. you can now server approximately 33-50% more SMB active client connections per FSVM based on your FSVM configuration.
  • Windows 2019 Server Support: Nutanix Files now Supports Windows 2019 Server as a client and as a Domain controller (allowing Files to join 2019 domain level). We also simplified and drastically reduced the user permissions required for joining domain.

Our more than 1,800 active customers continue to be raving fans of Nutanix Files. Lawrence Lozano of Sheppard Mullin mentioned in a recent testimonial video that he is seeing better uptime than ever before for his mission critical file storage because of self-healing and nondisruptive upgrade features of Nutanix Files

Perhaps the best part of Nutanix Files is how easy it is to try. Unlike heavy metal storage which requires a special project to deploy, even in a proof of concept, Nutanix Files is software defined. That means that any Nutanix cluster can spin up the necessary file server VMs so that you can try Files today. And better than that, Nutanix customers are entitled to a free 1TB of file storage for each cluster they do have making trying Files or even using Files that much easier. If you’d like to try it for yourself take a look at this simple install video for details.

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