.NEXT was three days of keynotes, breakouts, hands-on-labs, and certification sessions all around the Nutanix product portfolio. There
was plenty of the hyper-converged hyper-visors where Nutanix have made their name,
topped with all the multicloud, AI, and cybersecurity topics you’d expect from an IT conference in 2024.
Keynote Announcements
Many people visit conferences such as these to find out all the new releases for the technologies. There were several in the opening Keynote at .NEXT to choose from, here are a few.
NXRail - Nutanix broadening their partnership with Dell. A new appliance, Dell hardware and Nutanix software, sold and serviced by Dell. Actual product name to be determined!
Support for external storage, starting with Dell Powerflex and later expanding to other IP-connected storage
Nutanix Central, the hybrid cloud management platform, was now Generally Available (GA).
Snapshots from NC2 on AWS into S3 buckets, restore anywhere- GA imminently.
Project Beacon. introducing new Kubernetes Management (NKP) and Infrastructure Data Services (AOS on containers for portability) to the Nutanix “Build Once, Run Anywhere” project.
*GPT in a box 2.0- the new turnkey GPT solution.
Breakouts
I attended a number of Breakouts at the event. These sessions varied in length from 20 minutes to 90, so there was good opportunity to pick up the fundamentals on a topic or to dive in deeper if you wanted. These were my favourite two from the event.
10 years of AHV
With the full title “10 Years of AHV: Key Features and Milestones for AHV Enterprise Maturity” I was expecting just to get the history of the Nutanix hypervisor product, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary in 2024. But this hour long session went further, looking into the future of the platform.
One interesting bit of news is Nutanix is switching to a conventional version numbering scheme for AHV. Prior to the 2024 release, which will be AHV 10.0, the version numbering has been based on the date of a chosen branch in their internal code repository. This new version numbering was also being used retrospectively, with 9.0 being the versions formerly known as 2023xxxx, 8.0 being 2022xxxx and so-on.
We were told to expect a major release a year, continuing the existing cadence. This will be late in the calendar year and will include things like the big Linux kernel and hypervisor bumps. Minor changes will be launched about 6 months later- adding features such as support for newer CPUs. Micro and patch releases will be as required through the year.
Nutanix Architecture Super Session
At 90 minutes, this was one of the longer sessions and was somewhat bravely held at the end of the first day just before the celebratory welcome reception. It really hit the right level for me, giving key details about the components of the AOS storage platform and peeking under the hood to see how these components worked and interacted with each other.
One topic that came up in a discussion I had with fellow delegates after this session was the differences in product naming at Nutanix. On the one hand we have their migration tool “Move” (so called because it moves things), but then we hear of services called “Frodo” or “Stargate”.
vOpportunities?
Understandably, the team at Nutanix have seen the ongoing uncertainty around VMware following the Broadcom takeover as an opportunity to gain new customers, and this
was very obvious right from the Session Catalogue for this event. There were several Breakout sessions and Hands-on-Labs on migrating from vSphere to Nutanix AOS and AHV,
and even a session titled “Practical Considerations for Reducing Risk in Light of the Broadcom Acquisition” delivered in multiple languages.
The Keynote speakers initially referred to the Broadcom/VMware situation as the “elephant in the room”, but any tip-toeing around the subject was quickly lost and all three keynotes, plus many of the breakout sessions, were all out pitching for conversions of VMware customers.
As a company Nutanix started out providing a hyper-converged platform for VMware ESXi. This changed over ten years ago with “Project Acropolis”, now AHV. We were told 70% of Nutanix customer platforms are now running AHV, but that leaves 30% which I suspect is largely ESXi. These customers are essentially paying for both AHV (which is included with the platform) and vSphere so any changes in pricing from Broadcom could see some migrations there, and with their “Move” product Nutanix are looking to grease the wheels of any transition- either from their hardware or others.
Many VMware vExperts (myself included) were invited out to the event and given exclusive targeted sessions. I know in advance some were a little sceptical and
concerned that they would be used as a marketing tool but I was optimistic that this was going to play as a friendly “come and learn about what our products can do”.
That was definitely the case and it was a week of expanding my horizons without any pressure to flip any allegiances! I heard directly from several Nutanix employees about their desire to build on the shared community we have.
Certifications
All .NEXT attendees can sit free certification exams during the event (and as many tests as they can fit into the three days). I personally took this opportunity to sit the “Nutanix Certified Associate” exam, and am pleased to say I passed first time.
Highlights Video
If all that’s too much to read through, here’s a 1 minute video of my 3 days in Barcelona.
2025
Next year Nutanix .NEXT will be returning across the pond to the Americas, the exact host city still to be publicly announced.
