In a significant step forward for flexible infrastructure, Nutanix has announced the general availability (GA) support for Dell PowerFlex within the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) ecosystem. This update reinforces Nutanix’s vision of a genuinely open, hybrid multicloud platform, one that gives IT teams the freedom to choose the best storage for their workloads without being locked into a rigid architecture.
What’s New? Nutanix and External Storage: Traditionally, Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) model has tightly coupled compute and storage. While ideal for many use cases, enterprise environments increasingly require architectural flexibility, especially for performance-intensive workloads that benefit from disaggregated infrastructure, such as Dell PowerFlex.
At the heart of this solution is a disaggregated architecture that decouples compute and storage, a crucial capability for optimizing resource utilization. Here’s how it’s structured:
- Compute Layer: Powered by Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure Compute (NCI-C) clusters running Nutanix AOS and AHV on Dell PowerFlex servers.
- Storage Layer: Enabled by Dell PowerFlex software-defined storage (SDS), delivering high-performance, scalable external storage.
This model supports both brownfield and greenfield deployments, making it highly adaptable to existing IT investments and new infrastructure rollouts alike.
Why PowerFlex? Dell PowerFlex is a software-defined storage solution known for its high performance, scalability, and flexibility. It’s often used in mission-critical environments that demand sub-millisecond latency and massive IOPS. With PowerFlex, Nutanix users can now extend the capabilities of NCI to workloads that were previously better suited to traditional three-tier architectures.
Key Benefits
- Freedom of choice: Leverage Nutanix AHV and AOS with PowerFlex’s high-performance storage backend.
- Improved resource efficiency: Maximize compute density while offloading storage-heavy workloads to PowerFlex.
- Hybrid-ready architecture: Simplify integration of on-prem and cloud-native storage environments.
- Compute-only flexibility: Run Nutanix software on compute-only nodes while using PowerFlex as the external storage layer.
- Consolidated infrastructure: Avoid duplication by pooling storage across multiple services and applications.
- Independent scaling: Align resource growth with actual workload demand, enhancing cost efficiency and agility.
Management: One Interface, Full Control: A key strength of this solution lies in its unified management experience via Nutanix Prism:
- Add PowerFlex as external storage using a wizard-driven process in Prism Element
- Clone, protect, and monitor VMs from Prism Central — no need to toggle between platforms
- Security, data protection, and compliance features remain native to NCP, while PowerFlex manages storage-level services, including compression, encryption, and snapshot resiliency.
This separation of responsibilities reduces complexity, providing administrators with end-to-end visibility and control over the health, performance, and security posture of their infrastructure.
Summary: The PowerFlex + Nutanix Cloud Platform integration is purpose-built for modern enterprises seeking flexibility, performance, and simplified management. It allows IT teams to scale infrastructure on demand, streamline operations, and maintain strong security, all while avoiding vendor lock-in.
This release signals a broader industry shift: infrastructure should be adaptable, not prescriptive. With support for PowerFlex, Nutanix empowers organizations to build the infrastructure that best suits their needs, whether that’s on-premises, in the cloud, or a combination of both.
Whether you’re running a Tier-1 database or expanding an existing Nutanix footprint, this new integration gives you more tools, more choice, and more control over your infrastructure strategy.
Check out the official press release here.
What Do You Think?
Is this something you’re excited about? Did we miss any features you’re curious about? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below—we’d love to hear from you!
