Nutanix this week launched new platforms and partnerships to expand external storage options for its customers. Among these include a new partnership with NetApp; expanded partnerships with Cisco, Dell, Everpure and Lenovo; the launch of NKP (Nutanix Kubernetes Platform) Metal.
The launch and expansions represent a broader strategy from Nutanix, betting that enterprises will prioritize development flexibility and vendor independence by supporting external storage providers.
"It enables choice," said Steven Dickens, CEO and principal analyst at HyperFRAME Research. "Instead of putting a restriction of 'You've got to be all-in on Nutanix,' now you can be all-in on Nutanix and make your own choices about storage."
Previously, Nutanix's strategy was focused on a traditional HCI approach, where storage is coupled with its HCI platform. This newer strategy, however, makes it easier for customers to deploy Nutanix into environments they already have.
"The idea here is that platforms are expanding to include workloads of all types that can run anywhere. " said Lee Caswell, senior vice president of product and solutions marketing at Nutanix. "We're expanding the reach of our platform beyond where we first innovated in hyper-converged infrastructure. We're now applying that same operating model, the ease of use … and choice into storage platforms."
New and expanded storage partnerships
New or expanded support for storage-centric and other major vendors include:
Cisco. Nutanix expanded its partnership with Cisco and will add support for edge computing and AI infrastructure tools later this year -- including Cisco Unified Edge, Cisco Secure AI Factory and Cisco AI Pod.
Dell. Nutanix has added support for Dell PowerStore, an all-flash unified storage platform, which is in early access. Nutanix also expanded its previous support for Dell PowerFlex by adding synchronous disaster recovery capabilities. It will add support for Dell PowerFlex 5.0 Ultra environments later this year.
Everpure. Nutanix added support for the Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) FlashArray//C platform, expanding from its existing support of //X and //XL FlashArrays. Nutanix also added support for synchronous disaster recovery.
Lenovo. Nutanix will expand its Lenovo partnership to support Lenovo ThinkSystem, a server and storage system, later this year. Included in this expansion is support for ThinkSystem servers and XClarity One automation.
NetApp. Nutanix also plans to add support for NetApp OnTap, a storage-optimized OS, later this year. This will support NetApp AFF all-flash A-Series and select FAS hybrid flash systems.
"If you'd have seen Nutanix partner with NetApp, you would have been shocked two years ago," Dickens said. "Those are probably unheard of partnerships ... and I think it speaks to the pivot that Nutanix has grown from being an HCI infrastructure stack to a holistic platform for containers and virtual machines."
If you'd have seen Nutanix partner with NetApp, you would have been shocked two years ago.
Steven DickensCEO and principal analyst, HyperFRAME Research
External, disaggregated and SAN-connected storage will likely remain a widely accepted part of enterprise architectures. And this is a sign that Nutanix is pivoting to provide storage flexibility.
"Increasing flexibility is absolutely what they're trying to do," said Scott Sinclair, analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget. "By doing this, it shows external storage is something that's going to be part of their strategic vision moving forward."
VMware by Broadcom, by comparison, is taking the opposite approach. VMware reorganized its licensing to require its customers to purchase its full technology stack, including its built-in storage management offering, vSAN -- with the goal of enticing customers to stay within the VMware stack. Nutanix, however, is positioning itself as the more flexible alternative, enabling customers to use the Nutanix Cloud Platform with separate third-party storage providers -- essentially building out, not up, storage options.
Red Hat is another vendor with a strategy focused on flexibility -- as Red Hat OpenShift and OpenShift Data Foundation also offer flexible storage integrations.
"I think where Nutanix is trying to differentiate is around simplicity…" Sinclair said. "They're trying to take the benefits of simplification that they've already been able to deliver to enterprise environments and extend that to both external storage and to container environments."
NKP Metal for bare-metal servers
NKP Metal, a new product, expands on the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform. Where NKP was a hybrid and multi-cloud container platform that enabled users to deploy containers within VMs, NKP Metal enables NKP to run on bare-metal servers. The aim is to make the process more efficient and lead to better performance, as containerized workloads don't have to go through the virtualization layer to access infrastructure resources.
With this release, Nutanix is aiming to become an application platform on par with VMware or Red Hat for VMs and containers.
"So the goal is to give a more flexible, simpler path forward to manage both virtual machines and containers for the foreseeable future, wherever they reside," Sinclair said.
Underlying this environment is the need for storage. For container environments, storage options include the existing Nutanix container storage interface or Cloud Native AOS as a purpose-built storage option. NKP Metal will also be able to integrate with Nutanix's established partnerships, such as with Lenovo ThinkSystem servers and the Cisco Unified Edge platform.
Nutanix launched NKP Metal in early access to select license holders, and will be generally available to users in the second half of 2026.
Alexander Gillis is a Technical Writer and Editor at Informa TechTarget, with more than 8 years of experience writing about technology.
