By Simon Sharwood
Publication Date: 2026-04-07 18:30:00
.NEXT Nutanix exists to abstract hardware into a pool of logical resources, leaving servers and storage forgotten by all but a few datacenter hardheads. But the company’s annual .NEXT conference, which kicked off in Chicago on Tuesday, put hardware at the top of the agenda.
The supply chain crunch that has made memory a scarce and expensive commodity is one reason Nutanix is thinking about hardware again because it means customers can’t quickly buy the boxes they need to run the company’s stack. Nutanix’s answer is an expansion to the hardware compatibility list (HCL) of servers it certifies to run its wares.
One reason for the expansion is to attract more of the organizations that are either ditching VMware or reducing their use of the virtualization pioneer’s wares. Outfits making that move may want to reuse existing hardware rather than replace it. Nutanix therefore needs to support more server models and specs. The supply chain crunch also means fewer servers are available in the short term. Supporting more of them means Nutanix has a better chance of selling its software. The expanded HCL also reflects Nutanix’s recent alliance with AMD.
Nutanix’s move to expand its HCL is helped by its decision to allow independent scaling of compute and storage nodes. The latter have rigorous I/O requirements that mean only certain boxes can do the job. Nutanix thinks its stack will perform acceptably on more…
