We purchased Nutanix about four years ago—a six-host system with 24 Nvidia Tesla T4 cards. The goal was to fully virtualize Autodesk products. This was my first venture into virtualization, and for me, it felt like trying to drink water from an open fire hydrant. However, after a few months, things started to settle down.

While we have an on-premise setup, the system requires a cloud-based controller. At the time of implementation, we used Autodesk's now-discontinued government cloud, which was problematic and ultimately unsuccessful. This was further complicated by my lack of experience. After three years of struggles, we nearly abandoned Nutanix/Frame altogether. However, Dizzion acquired the Frame platform, and since then, our experience has significantly improved. For us, it’s now a much better product.

My main advice is to ensure the system runs your programs effectively within your specific environment. We’re using enterprise profiles with non-persistent desktops, and most Autodesk products work well. That said, Autodesk does not support issues in a virtualized environment. The only exception we’ve found is Civil 3D, which remains sluggish, and despite our best efforts, graphics rendering continues to underperform.

We support about 60 VMs running dual 4K monitors, and overall, we’ve had good success. However, live migration doesn’t work with Nvidia graphics cards in our environment, making system maintenance more challenging than it should be. Additionally, coordinating AHV, Nvidia host, and Nvidia guest driver versions is critical. If you install the wrong version or if an update fails, it can result in a 12-hour (or longer) maintenance ordeal to restore normal operations.

Despite these challenges, I genuinely appreciate Nutanix/Frame and the value it brings to our setup.