Nutanix OS 3.5 Advances Virtual Data Center Operations

A new version of the Nutanix OS (NOS) intelligent software for building and operating virtual data centers was released Tuesday - adding elastic deduplication and a more robust platform, with user-center design. NOS 3.5 delivers an intelligent architecture that understands data access patterns to adaptively manage storage utilization in real-time and applies inline technologies to accelerate application performance.

“The release of Nutanix OS 3.5 represents a significant step forward in datacenter infrastructure,” said Rajiv Mirani, vice president of engineering, Nutanix. “The combination of accelerated performance, advanced storage optimization and consumer-like management will change long-held expectations about what is possible with converged infrastructure technologies and further accelerate market adoption.”

Built specifically for scale-out architectures, a new Nutanix Elastic Deduplication Engine accelerates application performance by spanning memory, flash and hard disk drive resources simultaneously in any storage offering or converged infrastructure platform. It continuously analyzes read I/O access patterns and granularly deduplicates data to deliver the highest possible performance and to maximize effective storage capacity.

With the release of NOS 3.5, Nutanix is introducing Nutanix Prism – a comprehensive management framework, including a completely new interface that simplifies user experience and a REST-based API enabling Nutanix to be easily integrated into enterprise or cloud management systems. Built from the ground up, the new Prism UI  has all system and VM information organized and presented to facilitate easy consumption for immediate insights and actions. The Prism API, which includes a rich explorer for simple and discrete sampling of individual API commands, allows all reporting and management functionality to be programmatically accessed in a cloud orchestration management system, such as OpenStack and VMware vCloud Automation Center.

“Nutanix pioneered the creation of Hyper-converged solutions that dramatically simplify IT infrastructure, reduce costs and improve manageability,” said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst, Taneja Group. “With NOS 3.5, Nutanix is upping the ante by adding their Elastic Deduplication Engine, which improves the performance of the memory and flash layers with software-driven, inline deduplication technology. This, along with a simplified UI and the availability of Prism API, should propel Nutanix and Hyper-convergence into mainstream enterprise data centers.”