IBM Cloud Object Storage vs VMware vSAN comparison

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IBM Logo
1,933 views|1,212 comparisons
85% willing to recommend
VMware Logo
24,341 views|18,191 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cloud Object Storage and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two File and Object Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions.""IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage.""The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments.""IBM Cloud Object Storage integrates well.""The most valuable feature I like is when you connect it via CLI plug-in...It is a stable solution.""One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity. This is one of the main advantages if you don't want to use your own storage. You also have the ability to write only, write once, and read many. It's like tape storage but software-based. This feature is essential for financial institutions that require that kind of protection if you write backup or data there."

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"The most valuable feature is fhe flexibility, the ability to move the machines around without hesitation.""it's easy to scale, it's easy to predict IOP needs, and you can design for low latency using all-flash... Also, for setting up new clusters for VDI quickly, it's nice. You don't have to wait on an order for a storage vendor to ship you a system and help you configure it, you do it all yourself. And the sizing guides are pretty straightforward.""The feature we have found most valuable is the compatibility of VMware products with VCF and VMware Cloud Foundation.""The migration of servers feature makes server rack maintenance easy.""To me, VMware is a leader of the visualizations. I think everyone just follow VMware.""Being hyperconverged, it simplifies what equipment we have to buy.""vSAN is very integrated.""VMware vSAN is easy to configure, with basic functionality and the customer can maintain the solution."

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Cons
"The performance could be better. It isn't bad, but everything is network-based, so you have a performance penalty on the network. You can never achieve the same performance as hardware. That's the disadvantage of cloud storage solutions in general. Cloud performance is one of the main issues clients have.""The performance could improve in IBM Cloud Object Storage. The throughput or objects per second can have degradation.""One area where IBM Cloud Object Storage could potentially improve is in modernizing its underlying codebase.""If I had to choose one area, it would be making the consoles more intuitive would be helpful. Sometimes, they can be a little complicated if you're not familiar with them.""IBM has limited cloud storage.""One improvement could be incorporating a feature similar to Dropbox's version history. This would allow users to track modifications made to files over time, which is particularly important for maintaining a record of changes. While the free version might not include this feature, it could be included in the paid version to provide added value to clients. Additionally, having a version history feature that allows users to access modifications made to files over the past three months could be beneficial.""IBM Cloud storage is not cheap, but it could be."

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"I would like to see better integration between the cloud and our VMware virtual environment. We only have one virtual environment, which is VMware vSAN. Right now, there is little interoperability with the cloud solution at the moment.""I think it needs to be more cost-effective. I would also say that even though the capacity is good, there is also room for improvement there. Also, they could improve the security of the system.""The usability is pretty good but it could use a little tweaking on the UI, with a clearer definition of exactly what some of the things do.""Disaster recovery needs to be improved, when there is a crisis, there is a problem with what is the quickest way to get out of it.""Virtual machines disk size cannot cap more than a single node. For a VDI user, it may not save enough to hold a file server or exchange server on a single node storage space.""As no product is 100% perfect, the price for VMware vSAN could still be improved, though it is good when compared to some of its competitors.""I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper.""More focus has to be put on deduplication and compression with a hybrid architecture."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Pricing is not cheap."
  • "You have the option of a monthly or yearly license. Most customers choose the monthly option. I understand what you would like to say. IBM also lets you choose among four types of Cloud Object Storage. The difference is usage, performance, etc. Of course, high-performance storage is more expensive, while low-performance storage is for cold data, and it's really cheap."
  • "IBM Cloud is cheaper than AWS. If you want to scale your cloud infrastructure, it can be bought at almost the same price."
  • "Like most cloud providers, IBM likely charges based on storage capacity, typically per gigabyte or terabyte. Their pricing is competitive when compared to AWS or Microsoft."
  • More IBM Cloud Object Storage Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The first 1-2 years of purchasing vSAN will be expensive. Thereafter, the longer you are running it, the more cost savings you will have."
  • "Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"
  • "Basically, vSAN is a license in addition to that of the classic VMware Vsphere, which is also mandatory."
  • "​I would like to see this technology be made available to smaller businesses, who might benefit from high availability but struggle with the entry fee.​"
  • "Perhaps a bundle, like Essentials, would allow more businesses to make the leap to the product."
  • "We have increased our user productivity."
  • "What made us go with this solution was price point. When you can utilize existing storage infrastructure, and not have to continually purchase new SAN products out there that are going up in price as time goes by, then it's a wonderful thing."
  • "We did consider other hyperconverged solutions. It usually came down to price. vSan was the most cost effective thing."
  • More VMware vSAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments.
    Top Answer:Like most cloud providers, IBM likely charges based on storage capacity, typically per gigabyte or terabyte. Their pricing is competitive when compared to AWS or Microsoft. I don't believe it's… more »
    Top Answer:All cloud environments have been pretty robust over the last few years. Of course, there's always room for improvement. If I had to choose one area, it would be making the consoles more intuitive… more »
    Top Answer:While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We found… more »
    Top Answer:HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us HPE SimpliVity has… more »
    Ranking
    10th
    Views
    1,933
    Comparisons
    1,212
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    881
    Rating
    8.8
    2nd
    out of 45 in HCI
    Views
    24,341
    Comparisons
    18,191
    Reviews
    12
    Average Words per Review
    644
    Rating
    9.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cleversafe
    vSAN
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Cloud Object Storage is a web-scale platform that stores unstructured data - from petabyte to exabyte - with reliability, security, availability and disaster recovery without replication.

    VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

    VMware vSAN Features

    VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.
    • Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.
    • Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.
    • High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.
    • Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.
    • HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.
    • Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

    VMware vSAN Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution. 
    • Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance. 
    • Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.
    • Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly. 
    • Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

    PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

    A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

    Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

    Sample Customers
    Bitly, Dreamstime, Prime Research
    Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization46%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Government5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise54%
    Large Enterprise33%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. VMware vSAN
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Cloud Object Storage is ranked 10th in File and Object Storage with 7 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. IBM Cloud Object Storage is rated 8.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM Cloud Object Storage writes "Offers the ease with which you can move data between on-premises storage and the cloud and then retrieve it back on-premises when necessary". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". IBM Cloud Object Storage is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, MinIO, Dell ECS and IBM Spectrum Scale, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Dell PowerFlex. See our IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. VMware vSAN report.

    We monitor all File and Object Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.