Amazon Web Services adds support for the Nutanix AHV hypervisor within its Storage Gateway service. This allows organizations using Nutanix AHV to connect their on-premises infrastructure to AWS storage via S3 file, tape, and volume gateways.
The extension applies to all AWS Regions and allows Storage Gateway to be implemented in environments running on AHV, in addition to existing options such as VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Linux KVM.
According to Amazon Web Services, Storage Gateway is designed as a hybrid cloud solution that allows on-premises applications access to virtually unlimited cloud storage. The service supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and iSCSI-VTL, and is used for backup, archiving, and moving from on-premises storage to cloud-based file shares. Storage Gateway can be deployed either as an on-premises virtual appliance or as an Amazon EC2 instance in the AWS cloud.
With the addition of AHV, AWS further extends the reach of Storage Gateway. Nutanix AHV, or Acropolis Hypervisor, is a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)-based hypervisor that is part of Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure solutions. AWS notes that AHV is KVM-based, which simplifies integration compared to fully proprietary hypervisor platforms.
Nutanix is increasingly becoming an alternative to VMware
The Register places this announcement in a broader market context. According to the media, Nutanix is a frequently discussed alternative to VMware, particularly among organizations that are rethinking their virtualization strategy since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. Broadcom has focused on VMware Cloud Foundation as an integrated platform, which has led to concerns about cost and product choice among some customers. Gartner analysts expect that VMware could lose a significant portion of its workloads within a few years.
The Register also points out that Nutanix has recently taken several steps to expand its storage strategy. In 2025, the company announced integrations with external storage providers such as Pure Storage and Dell. In doing so, Nutanix recognizes that many customers continue to work with existing storage arrays, in addition to its own software-defined storage.
AHV support within Storage Gateway is part of this evolution. AWS makes its hybrid storage service available to a broader spectrum of virtualization platforms, while Nutanix environments benefit from direct access to AWS S3-based storage.
