Nutanix Software Solution Product Guide

The Lenovo-Nutanix partnership has been going strong since 2015, with deep cross-functional collaboration that delivers to market the most advanced and efficient solutions for customer’s edge-to cloud IT needs. The highly secure and compliant infrastructure products from Lenovo seamlessly integrate and interoperate with the customer’s existing environment and are optimized to lower the costs.

The Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series deliver the industry’s most feature-rich hyperconverged infrastructure to enterprise datacenters. Nutanix brings the benefits of web-scale technologies to enterprise applications through enterprise storage, data protection, infrastructure resilience, management and analytics, and security.

Lenovo has proven experience in developing and delivering Nutanix-based solutions that help customers modernize and simplify their IT infrastructure to dramatically drive down operating costs and open the door to cutting-edge innovations. Built around the latest Lenovo ThinkSystem servers' hardware, the Lenovo solution with Nutanix provides businesses with an affordable, interoperable, and reliable industry-leading solution to manage their virtualized workloads.

Enterprise licensing agreements (> US$250K) are also available. Please contact your Lenovo salesperson for more information.

Nutanix PnP licenses are sold as a license which include 3 years, 4 years, or 5 years of support and subscription with Lenovo hardware. There is also an option to buy standalone software with licenses that include a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5-year subscription. The license is transferable to Lenovo and non-Lenovo x86 hardware. Nutanix software licenses can be sold with Lenovo Part Number to simplify the configuration and purchase cycle. The support provided by Lenovo is only valid for Lenovo servers. Lenovo can provide Nutanix based Level 0 support and subscription offerings with end-to-end case management. For PnP software licenses, all software support is offered only by Nutanix. Additionally, for Integrated Systems, Lenovo provides end-to-end single point of contact support.

Continuing with the strong relationship between partners, Lenovo has included in the Lenovo-Nutanix portfolio a new licensing option, PnP licensing. As Nutanix is moving to a subscription-based model, Lenovo is progressively including new parts that align with this licensing model.

The following table provides details on the charge metric for each of the Nutanix software options.

In next sections you will see the latest Nutanix PnP software options. The software options listed in this section offer PnP licenses which include 3 years, 4 years, or 5 years of support and subscription with Lenovo hardware. There is also an option to buy standalone software (customer needs to upgrade software on the existing HX hardware) with licenses that include a 1-year, 2-year, 3-year, 4-year or 5-year subscription.

To upgrade products, customers must have the original base product on a current Lenovo services contract and must have registered for Lenovo support on the original base product so that upgrades can be added to an existing service contract.

The new, simplified product portfolio includes:

• Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
• Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) along with additional packages
• Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP)
• Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
• Nutanix Database Service (NDB)
• Nutanix Desktop Services (NDS): Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Nutanix Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

The Nutanix software is available for all base CTO models.

The three licensing levels are Starter, Pro and Ultimate.

Note: For PnP, part numbers are available only for licenses and separately not for S&S.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a complete software stack to unify your hybrid cloud infrastructure including compute, storage and network, hypervisors, and containers, in public or enterprise clouds; all with built-in resilience, self-healing, disaster recovery capabilities, and security. It includes enterprise data services and consolidated storage, data protection and disaster recovery, native virtualization and container management, networking, and security.

For more information on NCI, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/nutanix-cloud-infrastructure

For details on software editions, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/cloud-platform/software-options#nci 

For details on Mission Critical and Production Support, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/sg/support-services/product-support/product-support-programs

The following table lists the ordering part numbers for Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI).

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) offers our customers simplicity and ease of use to build and grow their cloud deployments faster and realize rapid ROI, by providing intelligent operations, self-service and orchestration, visibility, and governance of spend, security and teams, all through a unified multi-cloud management solution.

For details on NCM, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/cloud-manager

For details on software editions, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/cloud-platform/software-options#ncm

The following table lists the ordering part numbers for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

Nutanix Cloud Platform is the complete software edition package that includes both Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). It is available in several editions to meet your infrastructure needs with the right set of capabilities, as listed in the following table.

The following table lists the ordering part numbers for Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) Bundles.

Nutanix Unified Storage provides software-defined, scale-out storage solutions for enterprise NAS and object workloads for unstructured data, block storage for structured data, and backup storage. Nutanix Unified Storage replaces traditional independent storage services and brings NAS, object, and block workloads into a consolidated unified storage platform with all its benefits, including a unified control plane.

Nutanix Data Lens delivers cloud-based data governance for unstructured data stored in the Nutanix Unified Storage platform, including data lifecycle management, data security, ransomware protection, and audit compliance.

Nutanix Unified Storage and Data Lens are purchased and licensed on a per TiB usable basis. A tebibyte (TiB) is a unit of measure used to describe computing capacity.

For more information on Nutanix Unified Storage, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/solutions/unified-storage

For details on software editions, see
https://www.nutanix.com/products/cloud-platform/software-options#nus

The following table lists the ordering part numbers for Nutanix Unified Storage.

Nutanix Database Service (NDB) is a Hybrid Multicloud Database as-a-Service (DBaaS) that enables small, nimble teams of DBAs to easily manage large fleets of databases using a single console and API, while enabling developers to self-service their database requests.  NDB is purchased and licensed on a per core basis and is available either as a standalone or as an add-on to NCI.

In the standalone version, NDB includes NCI Ultimate functionality in addition to database-specific capabilities and is licensed on a per-core basis.

For more information about NDB, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/database-service

For details on software editions, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/cloud-platform/software-options#database

The following table lists the ordering part numbers for Nutanix Database Service.

The Nutanix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) per user model offers hybrid cloud infrastructure capabilities appropriate for on-prem VDI and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) use cases with pricing based on a Maximum Concurrent User basis (maximum number of provisioned end-user VMs).

VDI per user model is designed to provide simple, transparent licensing for all VDI users, regardless of the underlying hardware, hypervisor, or cloud.

Features of the licensing model:

• Agnostic: Works with any EUC management platform including Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and VMware Horizon
• Term license: 1-year through 5-year options
  • Term license must run on a dedicated software licensed VDI cluster with no core-based licensing. Mixing of non-VDI workloads is not supported.
• Unified Storage: Built-in and available as a per TiB base add-on
• No additional license cost for DR site
• Portable across on-premises and public cloud, public cloud use requires Ultimate edition
• Available in Starter, Pro, and Ultimate editions
• Cloud Native and Database Service Add-ons not available with NCI VDI. Advanced Replication and Security Add-on features require NCI Ultimate edition

For more information about Nutanix VDI, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/vdi

For details on software editions, see:
https://www.nutanix.com/products/cloud-platform/software-options#vdi

The following table lists the ordering part numbers for Nutanix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Nutanix Desktop as a Service (DaaS).

Lenovo offers a broad range of Nutanix based solutions in varying levels of integration to meet different customer requirements and business needs. Solutions range from the turnkey factory-integrated, highly configured Lenovo ThinkAgile HX series of Integrated Systems to Certified Nodes based on Lenovo’s proven reference architecture, and everything in between.

ThinkAgile HX Integrated System

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is designed to help you simplify IT infrastructure, reduce costs, and accelerate time to value. These offerings are factory-integrated, highly configured ready-to-go solutions and are based on Lenovo ThinkSystem servers and Nutanix Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) software. Nutanix offers a unique, software-defined approach to hyper convergence, leveraging the hypervisor to deliver compute, storage, and management in a tightly integrated software stack.

Key attributes include:

• Firmware controlled
• Lifecycle managed
• Single Lenovo point of support

For more information, refer to the ThinkAgile HX Series data sheet:
https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/datasheet/ds0019-lenovo-thinkagile-hx-series

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series Integrated Systems include Lenovo ThinkAgile Advantage, a unique Lenovo Service that helps to ensure your systems are up and running quickly and easily. Lenovo Services will set up and configure your new solution and provide any training needed to get the system operational. Lenovo ThinkAgile Advantage includes a direct phone line to a team of experts who support only ThinkAgile solutions. The experts will rapidly diagnose any hardware or software issues and remain as your single point of contact throughout the entire support process.

ThinkAgile HX Certified Node

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Certified Nodes allow customers to purchase hardware from Lenovo that does not include the software licensing or deployment services bundled in. ThinkAgile HX Certified Nodes include Nutanix software preloaded at the factory. Hardware firmware, drivers, and software updates are tested for interoperability and release with the product. ThinkAgile Certified Nodes are assigned Lenovo part numbers for ease of ordering.

Key attributes include:

• Firmware controlled
• Lifecycle managed
• Requires specialized IT skills

For more information, refer to the ThinkAgile HX Certified Nodes data sheet:
https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/datasheet/ds0046-lenovo-thinkagile-hx-certified-nodes

See the following documents for information about Nutanix offerings from Lenovo.

Reference Architecture for SAP Applications using Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

This document provides a technical overview of SAP applications ThinkAgile HX Series and explains why the combination of Lenovo servers and Nutanix software provides best of breed system performance and reliability.

https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1413-reference-architecture-for-sap-applications-using-lenovo-thinkagile-hx-series

Reference Architecture for Workloads using Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

This document includes following workloads:

• Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
• VMware Horizon
• VMware vCloud Suite

https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp0665-thinkagile-hx-series-reference-architecture