Nutanix invited inside Dell’s Private Cloud

Dell is adding Nutanix AHV support to its private cloud offering, alongside the existing VMware and Red Hat.

It quotes a Gartner document which says that that 52 percent of IT leaders are considering multi-hypervisor strategies, following Broadcom’s VMware acquisition and licensing changes, to avoid vendor lock-in. Dell’s private cloud uses Dell server and storage hardware as a base for running virtualized server software; hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), suites. With Dell’s disaggregated approach, customers can scale compute and storage independently.

Caitlin Gordon, Dell VP of Product Management for Private Cloud and AI Solutions, blogs: “With support for VMware, Red Hat, and now Nutanix, Dell Private Cloud delivers a consistent foundation across diverse workload requirements. Organizations can deploy the right platform for each workload without multiplying management complexity, match infrastructure investments to actual demand, and adapt as business priorities shift.”

The Gartner document, “A Guide to Choosing a VMware Alternative in the Wake of Broadcom Acquisition, September 2024,” advises IT buyers and planners to look at VMware alternatives following Broadcom’s price rises and licensing condition changes. VMware hypervisor replacement candidates include Nutanix AHV, Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure Local, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, and other KVM-based offerings.

Private cloud or HCI can provide, the Gartnerites say, cost-effective, long-term stability for steady state workloads. Consider public cloud IaaS or container-native offerings for changeable workloads.

In August 2024, Dell announced updated XC Plus HCI appliances and PowerFlex support for Nutanix AHV as external storage. This followed a Dell-Nutanix partnership deal signed un June. Now Dell has expanded the Nutanix partnership to add AHV to its private cloud offering. Initially PowerFlex storage is supported with PowerStore integration coming this summer. XC Plus is Dell's Nutanix HCI offering, complementing its vSphere-only VxRail. PowerFlex is SW-defined block storage product for scale-out storage using x86 nodes and TCP. PowerStore is Dell’s unified file and block, dual-controller, all-flash, storage array.

Dell says customers adopting its private cloud with Nutanix can continue using familiar Nutanix tools like the Prism UI without workflow disruption.

Microsoft Azure Local is coming to Dell’s private cloud soon. PowerStore and PowerFlex are already supported on Azure Local. Caitlin Gordon’s blog provides a little more background on this latest Dell-Nutanix deal.