“Nutanix’s key differentiator is that it does not limit customer database choices,” Tony Baer, a recognized industry expert in databases, cloud and data analytics, said in a 2020 interview with The Forecast.
He said most commercial DBaaS services are designed around specific databases, but Nutanix allows customers to “take advantage of the benefits of DBaaS with the databases of their choice.”
Further, the Nutanix Database Service offers one-click provisioning, patching, snapshots, backup, and upgrades across all major database engines including Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, MariaDB, PostgresSQL and SAP HANA.
“IT and the business are the beneficiaries,” Baer explained. “IT, because it can devote its efforts to higher value-added tasks, and the business, because they can reduce time to benefit and grow more agile in response to changes in their competitive landscapes.”
Less Complexity
Database management has always been a time- and resource-intensive process. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it is the only IT function that needs an “database administrator” position other than “system/network administrator.” If a hybrid cloud-database combo succeeds in freeing up time spent in admin work, it could be productively channeled towards performance optimization, innovation or strategic objectives.
DBAs at RBL Bank, one of India’s top rated mid-sized banks and a leader in the digital space, were constantly playing catch-up with routine maintenance tasks. Primary among these was user acceptance testing (UAT), which took up 70% of their time. RBL Bank went for a database, end-user computing (EUC) and HCI solution from Nutanix, post which they pared the time spent on UAT right down to 30%.
“I’ve never had it before where one administrator can do everything – database set up, virtual machine set up, and platform management,” said Nimish Valia, Head of Center of Excellence, Strategic Technologies at RBL Bank.
“I had to figure out how to re-allocate the staff from our infrastructure teams. It was a great issue to have.”
Better Performance
Provisioning is one of the biggest areas where traditional DBMSs such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server lag behind modern cloud database services. RBL was able to bring down their database provisioning time by nearly 90%. As a result, they were able to create zero-byte DB clones in less than four hours, which in turn speeded up their time-to-market from 2-4 days to 4-6 hours.