Some people are looking to the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) but they don’t understand all the different terms and how are related to other platform.
Considering that VMware is still the leader for the on-prem virtual vinfrastructure, I try to build a table that match VMware terms in Nutanix terms.
Nutanix Architecture
Nutanix Terms Mapping
| Term / Technology / Categogy | VMware | Nutanix |
| Product Suite Name | VMware vSphere = ESXi + vCenter Server | Nutanix Cloud Platform = Acropolis + Prism |
| Hypervisor | ESXi (Server) | Nutanix AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) is the native. But also ESXi or Hyper-V are supported because Nutanix is hypervisor agnostic! |
| Cloud Platform | VCF | Nutanix Cloud Platform |
| Management Plane | vCenter Server (or VCSA) | Nutanix Prism |
| Free edition | No more available (but still exist the evaluation mode for 60 days) | Nutanix CE (Community Edition) for single node or 3 nodes cluster |
| Update / Upgrade Tool | vCenter Lifecycle Manager (included in vCenter Server) | Nutanix LCM (both in Prism Center and Elements) |
| Integrated KMS | vSphere Native Key Provider | Nutanix LKM |
| Cluster | vSphere cluster | Nutanix cluster (always HCI cluster) |
| Cluster HA solution | vSphere HA | AHV VM High Availability (VM HA) |
| Cluster resourse balancer | vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) | Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler |
| Management HA solution | VCHA | Prism Central on 3 nodes |
| Management GUI (HTML5) | vSphere Client Host UI | Prism Central (deployed in a VM like VCSA) Prism Elements (that is much more than the simple Host UI) |
| Host CLI | esxcli | ncli |
| Other CLI | PowerCLI ans some others | acli, Nutanix Powershell |
| Storage Controller / Storage Processor | Usually in the externel storage, except with vSAN | CVM (Nutanix Controller VM) |
| Network Virtualization | NSX | Nutanix Flow |
| Operations tool | Aria Operations | Prism Central |
| Automation tool | Aria Automation | Calm |
| HCI software | VMware vSAN | Acropolis OS (AOS) |
| HCI compute only nodes | vSphere compute cluster using HCI Mesh | Compute only node can be in the same HCI cluster |
| HCI storage only nodes | vSAN Max | Storage only node can be in the same HCI cluster |
| HCI Node imaging tool | VCF VMware Imaging Appliance VxRail NIM (Node Image Management) | Foundation |
| HCI Block Service | vSAN iSCSI Target | Nutanix Volumes (aka Nutanix Block) |
| HCI File Service | vSAN File Service | Nutanix Files |
| HCI Object Service | Through 3rd party solutions | Nutanix Objects |
| Integrated Kubernetes as a Service | Tanzu | Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP aka Karbon) |
| Integrated Database as a Service | VMware Data Services | Nutanix Database Service (NDB aka Era) |
Note that it’s not always have a perfect 1:1 match, some terms or concepts does not exist in both worlds or some of them does overlaps with other concepts.
Of course, the best way is star studing the NCP platform from scratch and use the Nutanix Bible as a reference if you want to learn more.
