Tag Archives: advantage

MS Exchange Performance – Nutanix vs VSAN 6.0

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When I saw a post (20+ Common VSAN Questions) by Chuck Hollis on VMware’s corporate blog claiming (extract below) “stunning performance advantage (over Nutanix) on identical hardware with most demanding datacenter workloads” I honestly wondering where does he get this nonsense?

FUDfromChuckles

Then when I saw Microsoft Applications on Virtual SAN 6.0 white paper released I thought I would check out what VMware is claiming in terms of this stunning performance advantage for an application I have done lots of work with lately, MS Exchange.

I have summarized the VMware Whitepaper and the Nutanix testing I personally performed in the below table. Now these tests were not exactly the same, however the ESXi Host CPU and RAM were identical, both tests used 2 x 10Gb as well as 4 x SSD devices.

The main differences were ESXi 6.0 for VSAN testing and ESXi 5.5 U2 for Nutanix, I’d say that’s advantage number 1 for VMware, Advantage Number 2 is VMware use two LSI controllers, my testing used 1, and VMware had a cluster size of 8 whereas my testing (in this case) only used 3. The larger cluster size is a huge advantage for a distributed platform, especially VSAN since it does not have data locality, so the more nodes in the cluster, the less chance of a bottleneck.

Nutanix has one advantage, more spindles, but the advantage really goes away when you consider they are SATA compared to VSAN using SAS. But if you really want to kick up a stink about Nutanix having more HDDs, take 100 IOPS per drive (which is much more than you can get from a SATA drive consistently) off the Nutanix Jetstress result.

So the areas where I feel one vendor is at a disadvantage I have highlighted in Red, and to opposing solution in Green. Regardless of these opinions, the results really do speak for themselves.

So here is a summary of the testing performed by each vendor and the results:

 

VSANvNutanixThe VMware white paper did not show the Jetstress report, however for transparency I have copied the Nutanix Test Summary below.

NutanixNX8150Jetstress

Summary: Nutanix has a stunning performance advantage over VSAN 6.0 even on identical lesser hardware, and an older version of ESXi using lower spec HDDs while (apparently) having a significant disadvantage by not running in the Kernel.

The VCDX candidates advantage over the panellists.

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As the candidate, you submit a VCDX application based on a project you have worked on from start to finish and in most case, lead from a technical/architectural perspective.

You therefore should have:

  • Had Initial discussions with the customer about requirements.
  • Lead or been involved in Design workshops
  • Considered design decisions
  • Documented the detailed design along with implementation & test plans etc
  • Either overseen or been actively involved with implementation

As a result of the above, you have spent many hours, potentially hundreds or thousands of hours depending on the size of the project and you will have intimate knowledge of the design & solution.

On the other hand, VCDX panellists, while they are experts in the field, have been given your application, including the design and a very limited amount of time to review and prepare for the defence.

As a result, the VCDX candidate has a HUGE advantage over the panellists!

So in a defence, who is the expert in the room on the design? The Candidate!

As a result, the candidate should be an expert in the design being presented and answering questions from the panel about the design should not be intimidating.

To all VCDX candidates, understand that you have a major advantage and go defend your design with confidence!