In today’s evolving cloud landscape, service providers are under growing pressure to offer scalable, secure, and agile infrastructure-as-a- service platforms that rival hyperscaler experiences – without incurring hyperscaler complexity or cost.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Self-Service bridges this gap, enabling service providers to rapidly build and operate a managed multitenant cloud with tenant-aware control, strong isolation and extensibility.

This blog introduces the NCM Self-Service VM-based architecture and highlights how service providers can harness it to deliver a robust managed IaaS offering for enterprise tenants.

High-level architecture

At the heart of the architecture lies a tenant self-service portal powered by NCM Self-Service. This portal gives each tenant isolated access to their infrastructure resources while allowing service providers to retain control over provisioning, automation and governance.

Key layers

• Tenant self-service portal – Each tenant is presented with an isolated portal that includes only their compute, network and storage infrastructure resources as well as blueprints, automation workflows and runbooks.
• Tenant-specific marketplace catalog – Service providers can curate and publish tenant-specific app blueprint templates with target VM images – including Linux, Windows, CentOS and Ubuntu – and application stack as required with automation runbooks so tenants can self-manage the lifecycle of their workloads.
• Unified multicloud infrastructure – NCM Self-Service supports multiple on-premises availability zones and regions and enables customers to run any workload and app anywhere.

Key Capabilities of Service Provider-Managed IaaS with NCM-SS

Tenant isolation

• Data plane isolation – Separate compute, network, and storage for each tenant.
• Control plane isolation – Dedicated self-service portals and RBAC scoped permissions.
• Project-level boundaries for workloads, users and quotas.

Self-service automation

• Role-based access control (RBAC) across service provider admin, tenant admin and tenant users.
• Automated provisioning via blueprints and runbooks.
• Customizable workflows aligned with tenant SLAs.

Curated marketplace

• Service providers can publish and manage application stacks, infrastructure blueprints and templates.
• Tenants deploy workloads, VMs and applications with one click.

Quota and usage governance

• Tenant-specific quotas on CPU, memory and storage.
• Visibility and control for resource usage per tenant.
• Usage tracking to support metering and billing models.

Multi-region, multicloud support

• Orchestration across on-premises clusters and public cloud endpoints.
• Regional and AZ-based scaling using consistent policies and templates.

Benefits of Building a Multitenant Service Provider Cloud with Nutanix

• Service providers looking to build scalable, profitable multitenant cloud offerings can unlock significant value with Nutanix. NCM Self-Service is designed to run any workload and app on-premises, at the edge and in the public cloud across a unified infrastructure with shared and dedicated environments.    
• Nutanix enables automated and simple operations through integrated self-service workflows, blueprints and runbooks. This enables service providers and tenants to drive agility without complexity.    
• As demand grows, Nutanix offers scalable, high-performance infrastructure that allows service providers to independently scale compute and storage with predictable, linear performance across a wide range of node types.    
• NCM Self-Service is cost-optimized with flexible consumption models and predictable pricing backed by world-class support and an industry-leading Net Promoter Score of 90+ in customer satisfaction. Together, these benefits make Nutanix an ideal foundation for modern, service provider-managed multitenant cloud services.

Final Thoughts

NCM Self-Service offers a compelling and modern approach for service providers who want to deliver cloud-native IaaS capabilities to tenants without the legacy baggage of traditional virtualization platforms. With rich automation, project-based isolation and scalable orchestration, service providers can deliver the next generation of cloud services efficiently and securely.

If you're considering modernizing your IaaS stack or replacing legacy solutions, NCM Self-Service is ready to help you build the future of your service provider cloud.

To learn more, reach out to your Nutanix account team or visit our service provider solutions web page.

See us at the .NEXT Customer Conference in May

Be sure to attend this important service provider session at .NEXT in Washington, D.C. at 10 a.m. on May 9.

Build and Operate Managed Multi-Tenant Service Provider Clouds with Nutanix

Learn best practices for isolating and securing shared infrastructure, automating repeatable service deployments, and meeting each tenant’s unique requirements, all while maintaining strong security and operational simplicity.

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