Nutanix Weekly

We recently commissioned International Data Corporation (IDC) to evaluate the use of Nutanix Objects Storage for modern, data-intensive workloads. IDC examined the evolution of Object Storage which has ranged from cold data repositories for backups and archives to newer, high-performance object stores for data-intensive workloads. The study also involves insightful interviews with Nutanix customers who are using Nutanix Objects Storage for analytics workloads.

https://www.nutanix.com/blog/modern-data-intensive-workloads-requiring-high-performance

Host: Phil Sellers (@infraphilip)
Co-Host: Harvey Green III
Co-Host: Jirah Cox
Co-Host: Ben Rogers

As organizations adopt strategies to remain agile and competitive, cloud-native containerized applications are becoming a business imperative. In fact, the 5th annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index article reported nearly all 1,450 IT decision makers surveyed (94%) reported having deployed Kubernetes® containerization which is the most commonly used cloud-native framework.

Embracing the concept of containerized apps requires a significant paradigm shift across every aspect of an organization—but with the right cultural mindset and the right tools and platforms, a cloud-native approach can set you up for current and future success.

Based on blog post - Going Cloud Native: Build Apps Once, Deploy Anywhere, https://www.nutanix.com/blog/build-apps-once-deploy-anywhere

Host: Phil Sellers
Co-Host: Harvey Green
Co-Host: Jirah Cox
Co-Host: Ben Rogers

As organizations advance in their digital transformation journeys, they’re creating more applications than ever to meet modern customer and internal demands. Whether its cloud-native applications, traditional applications deployed in on-premises datacenters or modern applications deployed at edge locations, the number of apps is skyrocketing. In the 5th Annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) study commissioned by Nutanix, nearly all (94%) of the 1,450 respondents surveyed agreed with the statement that “one place to run and manage all applications and data across clouds is ideal for my organization.”

Modern organizations are faced with the dual challenge of not only building infrastructure that accommodates their newly developed apps but also ensuring seamless mobility for apps and data across diverse environments and between different clouds and on-premises setups. Workload migration and portability are essential to modernizing your applications and fully embracing the benefits of the cloud.

Discussing a blog from Marc Trouard-Riolle:
https://www.nutanix.com/blog/making-workload-migration-efficient-and-cost-effective

Host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Harvey Green
Co-host: Jirah Cox
Co-host: Ben Rogers

In the first installment of our What If You Could series, we defined hybrid multicloud and showed how Nutanix was the only vendor to make hybrid multicloud simple and cost-effective across on-premises and multiple public clouds. In this article, we take a deeper look into multiple cloud deployments—which often don’t equate to true multicloud—and why they can be a challenge. 

To survive in an increasingly competitive and shifting marketplace, organizations continue to look for ways to increase agility, scalability, and innovation with public and private cloud services. Today the cloud is a vital component of practically every business, regardless of industry and size. And when it comes to the cloud, the concept of “one-stop shop” doesn’t apply. 

Organizations are using multiple clouds to find the right balance between business and technical requirements and varying cloud services for their different workloads, so they can work as efficiently as possible. With the multiple cloud approach quickly becoming the de facto standard for modern enterprises, the term “multicloud” is often used to describe this approach, but that can be a bit of a misnomer. 

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Harvey Green
Co-host: Jirah Cox
Co-host: Ben Rogers

In the past, the Hyperscalers have always been positioned as the default/ “you can’t go wrong” deployment zone for AI/ML workloads. But this is not true for many use-cases, see why AI and machine learning are drifting away from the cloud. 

Real-world examples from many ISVs and customers tell a different story with multiple drivers: low-latency, data privacy and cost (especially at scale) that make the Core DC (owned or hosted) a better choice. With leading market analysts agreeing on explosive data growth at storefront/ branch/ customer service center locations, for Edge AI/ML use cases, on-prem deployments are a ‘no-brainer’.

Blog: https://www.nutanix.dev/2023/10/12/deliver-enterprise-grade-edge-ai-ml-with-nutanix/

Host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Harvey Green
Co-host: Jirah Cox
Co-host: Ben Rogers

Unstructured Data Under Siege

In today’s digital age, data is the lifeline of businesses. It drives decision-making, influences strategies, and unveils market insights that can propel any organization ahead of its competitors. However, much of this data is unstructured, creating challenges with data visibility, and making it more vulnerable to cyber attacks and insider threats. 

The complexity of defending unstructured data from ransomware is a key obstacle hampering an organization's security posture. Protecting only the endpoints and employing network-centric tools, and device authentication is no longer sufficient. For organizations, it's imperative to deploy a holistic approach to data security, ensuring that the very essence of their business—its data—is safeguarded from these evolving threats. 

Starting with Storage: Laying The Foundation for Robust Data Security

To protect against ransomware and other malicious threats, IT and Security leaders should look beyond endpoints. To achieve true ransomware resiliency, an organization needs to be able to detect attacks from within the data layer, block the activity, determine the scope of the affected systems, and recover quickly. 

The Nutanix Data Lens™ SaaS-based data security solution helps proactively assess and mitigate unstructured data security risks by identifying anomalous activity, auditing user behavior, and adhering to monitoring requirements - all at the primary storage layer, where your data is stored. Additionally, global data visibility across clouds helps with intelligent decision-making and lifecycle management of unstructured data stored on the Nutanix Unified Storage™ (NUS) platform

The latest release packs powerful features for cyber resilience, permissions visualization, risk scoring, and support for the  Nutanix Objects Storage™ product

What’s New Today?

• Threat Containment Window:  Proactively detect and block a threat, defend from further damage and get alerted to begin a One-Click Recovery process within 20 minutes of exposure. Don’t just take our word for it, read this report to see how Data Lens delivers on the promise. 
• One-Click Recovery: Seamlessly recover from the last good snapshot available and restore your data and operations swiftly.
• Permissions and Risk Visualization: Identify the root cause of access control risks and monitor the risk score to track vulnerabilities within your data and user groups.
• Objects support: Nutanix Data Lens has increased its coverage to include Nutanix Objects Storage, enabling customers to effortlessly access S3-available data, providing an intelligent understanding and forensic capabilities similar to those available for the Nutanix Files Storage™ product today. 

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Harvey Green
Co-host: Jirah Cox

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, the ability for businesses to seamlessly scale applications, data, and infrastructure across data centers, edge, and the cloud is critical for innovation and growth. Our recent announcement of the Nutanix and Cisco strategic partnership reshapes the landscape of hybrid multicloud adoption and data center modernization, delivering a joint solution that is now generally available.

Our partnership with Cisco is built upon our shared leadership in application, data, infrastructure management and security. It represents our collective commitment to deliver a cohesive and consistent cloud operating model that transforms how businesses procure, deploy, secure, and manage IT services. This new platform is a fully integrated and validated solution that combines Cisco’s SaaS-managed compute and networking infrastructure (Cisco Unified Computing System with Cisco Intersight), networking (ACI), and management (UCS Manager)  with Nutanix Cloud Platform–which includes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and its built-in AHV Hypervisor, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), and Desktop Services solutions. 

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers
Co- host: Harvey Green
Co-host: Jirah Cox
Co-host: Ben Rogers

For mission-critical applications in various industries like banking, capital markets, insurance and healthcare, there is a need to support highly available synchronous data replication to ensure high level platform protection and availability. Providing this functionality is key for a business to function unhindered. The cost of data unavailability can be significant to a business, with some estimates measuring the impact at several thousand dollars per minute and upwards of six figures or more if the unavailability lasts for an hour or more. And this doesn’t take into account recoverability to the latest dataset right before the failure. With these types of dollar amounts, the inability to bring the system back to its latest data point can have a tremendous impact on the viability of a business. Customers need RPOs of zero to help ensure any incident that takes down a primary site will allow a secondary disaster recovery site to be brought online quickly with the latest copy of the data.

So without further ado, drum roll please…Nutanix™  Files Storage now supports establishing a metro cluster with our 4.4 release. This is not a drill and you are not seeing things, this isn’t a mirage, it’s here. This capability is built on top of our already mature and customer validated Metro offering that has been used for years now to protect applications running on our hyperconverged platform. I know what you are thinking: how does it work, so let's dive in! 

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Jirah Cox
Co-host: Ben Rogers

As new cybersecurity threats evolve, Nutanix has been hard at work improving the way you patch, upgrade, and operate your Nutanix Cloud Platform. We understand how critical and difficult patching and upgrading can be, especially in a world under constant attack. You must be resilient, and proper lifecycle management improves your cyber resilience!

We know that upgrades can be a bit intimidating, but fear not! Nutanix is continually working to make the process smoother and more efficient. We’re thrilled to announce a new version of Nutanix Life Cycle Management (LCM), 2.6!

Blog: https://next.nutanix.com/community-blog-154/nutanix-lifecycle-management-2-6-is-here-check-out-the-top-5-coolest-features-of-lcm-41843
Thanks to Mike Baronde - the blog author! 

Host: Phil Sellers
Co-Host: Jirah Cox

Federation is an exciting and important new feature that was added to Nutanix Objects in the 4.0 release (Spring 2023). It enables a global namespace to be created across multiple Nutanix object stores, even if they are thousands of miles apart in entirely different geographic locations. Buckets hosted by these different object stores then appear to exist within a single object store, offering a consolidated view of the data.

https://www.nutanix.dev/2023/07/10/simplifying-access-to-geo-distributed-object-data-using-global-namespaces/

Host: Philip Sellers 
Co-Host: Jirah Cox
Co-Host: Ben Rogers