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IBM SoftLayer vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM SoftLayer
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (8th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (2nd), File and Object Storage (3rd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 2.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 2.9%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)2.9%
IBM SoftLayer2.0%
Other95.1%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.
NISHANTPANCHAL - PeerSpot reviewer
Principle Technical Specialist at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Unified storage has simplified private cloud operations and delivers strong security and ROI
Regarding areas for improvement, I think Data Lens could be enhanced from Nutanix's side, but it has been a long time since I logged into that console, so I do not remember much. It is a SaaS-based offering on the Nutanix portal. It is not something you deploy on-premises; it is not on-prem access. You connect your cluster to the SaaS-based Nutanix and then access the Lens console. I need to check it since it has been almost two or three months since I logged in. Nutanix Enterprise AI actually needs to improve a lot if I compare it with any other product such as NVIDIA and other offerings in the market. Nutanix Enterprise AI still requires a lot of work. I did not check that in much detail technically, but whatever I thoroughly checked, it still lags behind in many features. When it comes to AI-related features, I think the ecosystem of Nutanix is not as big as NVIDIA because NVIDIA has its own inferencing system and model training platform such as NeMo, NeMoTron, and others. Nutanix does not have such things. It can be built using NVIDIA CUDA libraries, but what I saw when I was testing the product is that you can run NVIDIA NeMo and PyTorch and two other things, but as a software, Nutanix does not have an end-to-end platform. That is something Nutanix should focus on.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ability to extract from your current location, load into your future location with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
"The solution is highly stable."
"The most valuable features are the interface and support."
"What I appreciate most about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is its user-friendly nature."
"The interface is quite simple. It is very good. It is easy to configure. It also has a powerful CLI."
"My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads is that we have many SQL Servers and they perform much better than they did when we used hybrid converged previously."
"The reliability and stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are very good, and after almost four or five years of usage, we haven't encountered significant issues."
"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Unified Storage is the ease of setting up file shares. As a global company with data centers around the world, our files clusters are accessible globally. Managing and setting up shares for our over 12,000 employees is straightforward."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is a stable solution that provides good storage and efficiency."
"The most important point is the simplicity of the API integration. We can leverage the API integrations and connect our hybrid-cloud network environment with Nutanix's cloud storage."
 

Cons

"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"The product does not offer one console."
"The feature request I have is for the consistent improvement of how user account permissions are assigned in Nutanix Unified Storage."
"It functions as intended. We don't have any real requests or improvements. We're primarily focused on protecting our data. However, we use Varonis, so it would be nice to have better integration with that."
"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved involve the limitations I've seen in Files Analytics, specifically to the number of FSVMs today that File Analytics can analyze."
"There are some processes, like if I like to change the data storage to another place, I have to use CLI, and I don't like it since I believe that it could have been simpler in GUI."
"It would be beneficial if there were a migration tool for the new way of syncing data for data protection. Currently, we have 30 days' worth of snapshots going back and forth for data protection. A migration tool to transition to better syncing for DR would be valuable, as otherwise, we lose 30 days because of the storage requirement."
"As you have to go through all of the steps of technical support, it takes longer to get to an escalated level."
"We have had to deal with some infrastructure and general cluster issues but these issues don't impact storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The licensing model the tool has is cheaper than an HCI storage solution."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, making it a solution offering a price range that is in the middle."
"The licensing currently works based on a software license. If we have files, volumes, and other licenses combined, that would be more valuable. I don't want to go for a separate license for files and a separate license for volumes. We have unified storage, so the licensing should also be unified. That would be helpful."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price."
"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."
"The price of the license is expensive when comparing it to traditional storage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
The pricing for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is subscription-based with capacity-based licensing and has moderate to high setup complexity depending on the size of the environment. Costs depend on...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
One area for improvement I noticed while using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is expanding advanced analytics and predictive capacity planning capabilities to help administrators make even better lo...
What advice do you have for others considering Nutanix Unified Storage?
My advice for others looking into using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is to clearly understand your storage requirements before implementation and evaluate current and future needs for file, object...
 

Also Known As

CloudLayer
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SoftLayer vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.