I recently stumbled across an old article I was interviewed for years ago about one of the bigger infrastructure decisions I was involved in early in my career.

I hadn’t read it in a long time, so of course I clicked on it.

Some of it aged pretty well. A few parts made me laugh. What stood out most was how much the technology — and the way I evaluate it — has changed since then.

One thing hasn’t changed: I still believe in Nutanix.

Taking a Chance on Something Different

Back around 2013–2014, we needed a major infrastructure refresh. The traditional answer was familiar: more servers, another SAN, and more of what we already had.

We priced out a Dell server and EqualLogic SAN solution at around $200,000.

And yes, that was $200,000 in 2013–2014 money — before inflation, AI, and seemingly everything else decided to drive technology costs through the roof. 😂

Then we looked at Nutanix.

Hyperconverged infrastructure wasn’t the obvious choice yet. Nutanix was still relatively young, and choosing HCI over the traditional server-and-SAN model meant being willing to challenge the default architecture.

We were early enough to become one of Nutanix’s first 5,000 customers. They sent me an award recognizing it, and I still have it today.

The economics were hard to ignore: roughly three times the compute and storage for less than one-third of what we were considering spending on the traditional architecture.

So we took the chance. It worked.

From One Cluster to a Different Way of Thinking

That first deployment eventually grew into three clusters, including production and disaster-recovery infrastructure.

As the environment expanded, Prism Central became one of the things I appreciated most. Being able to manage multiple clusters through one interface sounds normal today, but coming from a world where servers, storage, virtualization, and management all had their own consoles, it was a breath of fresh air.

It changed what I expected infrastructure management to look like and reinforced a lesson that still matters to me: adding technology is easy; managing the complexity you create afterward is the hard part.

That ties back to something I said in the original interview about Steve Jobs. What I always admired wasn’t just his ability to think differently. It was his ability to look at what existed, see what it could become, and turn that possibility into something real.

I’ve tried to carry some of that mindset into my own work. Not being different for the sake of being different, but being willing to ask a better question than “What do we normally buy?”

“What could this look like if we built it around what we actually need?”

Why VMware Was the Right Answer Then

We ran VMware on top of Nutanix, and I believed VMware was the right hypervisor for us at the time.

It was mature, proven, and supported by practically everyone. That last part mattered.

One of AHV’s early challenges wasn’t simply whether the hypervisor could run a VM. It was the ecosystem around it. A lot of enterprise products came as virtual appliances that were built, tested, and officially supported on VMware.

Could you sometimes get them running somewhere else? Sure. But there’s a huge difference between “I got it to work” and “the vendor will support this when production is down at 2:00 in the morning.”

That’s why supportability, compatibility, migration risk, staff skills, and economics matter just as much as features.

Back then, VMware won that evaluation. I still believe it was the right decision.

But technology doesn’t stand still. AHV matured. Vendor support improved. Migration tooling improved. Networking and security improved. The ecosystem expanded.

If you had asked me years ago whether I would replace VMware with AHV, I would have said no. Today, AHV absolutely gets a seat at the table.

That doesn’t mean it automatically wins. Nothing should.

The right answer depends on the workloads, applications, team, budget, risk tolerance, and what the organization is actually trying to accomplish.

You can’t evaluate today’s technology based on what you remember it being ten years ago.

Staying Connected to Nutanix

For roughly six years, Nutanix hasn’t been something I’ve administered every day, but I never really stopped following it.

I stayed involved with the community, watched the technology evolve, and in 2026 I’m still a Nutanix Technology Champion.

My perspective comes from having evaluated the platform, implemented it, operated it, expanded it, and lived with the decision afterward.

Buying technology is one thing. Living with what you bought is another.

At one point along the way, I even heard Nutanix referred to as a “little boy toy,” with the suggestion that serious enterprise IT meant playing with the “big boy toys.”

I never forgot that — not because of who said it, but because of the mindset behind it. Sometimes in IT we confuse familiar with better, or more expensive with more enterprise.

The logo matters a lot less than whether the solution solves the problem, scales, can be supported, fits the team, and makes economic sense.

The VMware Conversation Changed

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware changed the business side of the virtualization market.

VMware didn’t suddenly become bad technology. I used it. I trusted it. I chose it. There are still organizations where VMware will absolutely be the right answer.

But licensing, packaging, and bundles changed. VMware itself documented the shift away from perpetual licensing and the consolidation of its portfolio into subscription offerings. At the same time, customers and partners publicly reported renewal increases several times higher than what they had historically been paying, with CRN reporting examples ranging from roughly 3x to 8x to 10x.

At some point, even a customer who loves the technology has to ask: “What else is out there?”

For years, VMware often didn’t have to win that conversation. VMware was the conversation.

Nutanix was ready when that changed because the work had already been happening for years: AHV had matured, Prism had matured, migration tooling had improved, and the ecosystem had grown.

Broadcom made the opening. Nutanix kicked the door wide open.

That doesn’t mean VMware is disappearing, and it doesn’t mean Nutanix automatically wins every evaluation. It means customers have a real choice again — and competition is good.

What Thirteen Years Taught Me

Thirteen years ago, I looked at infrastructure decisions mainly through the eyes of a systems administrator. I still care deeply about the architecture, but the questions I ask today are broader.

• What’s the real problem we’re trying to solve?
• What’s the long-term cost?
• Can the team support it?
• What’s the migration path and the risk?
• What happens if the vendor changes direction or gets acquired?
• What’s the exit strategy?

And probably the biggest question: Are we choosing this because it’s actually the best answer, or because it’s the answer we’re most comfortable with?

Sometimes the incumbent wins. But it should have to earn the win.

Years on the customer side of the table have also taught me that the technically coolest solution isn’t always the right one. A demo can look amazing and still be completely wrong for the organization buying it.

You have to understand the environment, the people, the risks, the budget, the support model, what the customer is trying to accomplish, and what they’re worried could go wrong.

That’s where good architecture decisions actually get made.

In that original interview, I said, “Having a clear vision is crucial to innovation.” I still believe that, but experience has added something else: vision also requires enough humility to change your mind when the facts change.

Years ago, VMware was the right answer for us on Nutanix. Today, I would evaluate that decision differently. That’s not inconsistency. That’s what we’re supposed to do in technology — make the best decision with the facts in front of us, then be willing to reevaluate when those facts change.

The biggest lesson for me isn’t really about Nutanix or VMware. It’s that the best technology decisions happen when you understand the architecture, understand the business, understand the people who have to live with the decision — and you’re willing to challenge the default answer when you believe there’s a better path.

Read the original customer story that started this retrospective.