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HPE Alletra dHCI vs VMware vSAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE Alletra dHCI
Ranking in HCI
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE Alletra dHCI is 4.0%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 11.4%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSAN11.4%
HPE Alletra dHCI4.0%
Other84.6%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

TW
IT Consultant at Autonubil System GmbH
Synchronous replication and strong support enhance storage and data protection
The most valuable features of HPE Alletra dHCI are the synchronous replication, the easy extension for more storage, and its strong support. Data protection is very good, offering features such as virtual lock for snapshots, multi-factor authentication, and encryption for volumes. The solution handles workload variability very well without any performance issues even for demanding applications like SAP, SQL, and Citrix.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution works well."
"Artificial intelligence is built into the product. If there's a failure, HP support will proactively call the client about the issue."
"HPE's InfoSight software, which does the comparative analysis and artificial intelligence built-in in the box, and with Nimble they do well against the competition. Additionally, the dashboards are good."
"The product provides zero downtime."
"I love InfoSite. That gets you a lot of good detailed information."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI's user interface is very easy to work with."
"We have this feature in Nimble dHCI, wherein we can upgrade individual components in the infrastructure."
"With regards to performance, configuration, and longevity it is upgradeable, which means it has a good TCO rate. These are valuable aspects to me."
"The installation is very easy."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The ease of use is great."
"One of the valuable features for us is the ability to restrict the performance capacity per client. Other solutions don't have this feature."
"The most valuable features are productivity and data storage."
"VMware comes with different stacks like VMware Cloud Foundation, which is integrated with different VMware modules. There's interoperability between VMware products."
"Data management and recovery processes are the most valuable features."
"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."
 

Cons

"I rate Nimble one out of 10 for ease of setup. Setting up Nimble Storage was a nightmare. It took us three months to deal with all the kinks and bugs. We had two people from HPE assisting us and two from our team."
"It can be made cheaper."
"I can tier my data in different storage on the cloud, but I cannot tier the data with HPE Alletra dHCI."
"The product's active controller feature needs improvement."
"Software upgrade is still more complicated than the competitors, so that's an area of improvement."
"Cost-wise, this solution is slightly more expensive than other hyperconverged solutions."
"This year 2022, we have the possibility to include new kinds of storage with a high disk availability, such as Alletra 6000 and Alletra 9000. Those are the new storage available. If we would like to improve the quality and the capability and the high availability of these products, we can choose between different costs. This is another benefit from this HPE Nimble Storage dHCI solution of hyper-converged."
"The solution could improve by providing better file-level restoration and DVX system options."
"The solution functions as the marketing says, as long as you follow certain rules."
"There could be more features with the automatic backup."
"I would like to see more comprehensive lifecycle management. The current path and process for upgrading or updating the firmware, as well as the storage controller software to interact with that firmware, is fairly manual and not very well documented. A little more time and effort spent on the documentation of the lifecycle management for vSan would be really great."
"The interface is a little complicated, it could be simplified with more graphical gadgets. We have many servers, and the built-in functions, such as rate configuration, are a bit complex."
"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good. From a scalability point of view, scaling the storage from network or compute should be easier. It is again all around the cost, and it would be good if it was easier to scale your storage separately from your compute."
"In a future release, they can bring in the object storage capabilities to this solution. Currently, there is not any compatibility."
"Because of virtual storage, the system reaches reserve storage for its functions. It also consumes a certain amount of storage, which then results in the creation of a fault tolerance for the system. All of this adds to a lot of capacity being consumed in terms of storage for each drive for vSan. I find this to be one drawback of using vSan."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product licensing costs vary depending on whether VMware or other solutions are used."
"The price of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is expensive."
"The customers have found the solution to be expensive. However, when compared to the competition the price is reasonable."
"With the features that HPE Nimble Storage dHCI provides, I cannot say its pricing is more."
"The cost of the licensing is reasonable."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is much cheaper than the competition and has value proposition. Customers can see an ROI in three months. There are no additional costs, and VMware licenses can be reutilized."
"The product is costly."
"I think it's priced right and it's extremely intelligent."
"I feel the pricing to be reasonable."
"Cost-wise, the Nutanix licenses were cheaper, but in terms of the hardware, there was some contention around it. So, in terms of implementation, the way Nutanix was projecting the implementation on their end was that there were a lot of open-source admin platforms. vSAN is a licensed product in VMware, and Nutanix was proposing a KVM solution, which is open source. That's why their pricing was a bit cheaper, but when we were trying to compare it with an enterprise version of their management platform, it boiled down to the VMware vSAN being most effective in the long run."
"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."
"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."
"It is not that expensive, and it is not even cheap. If it is designed in a proper way, it has good pricing, but if you do oversizing, the price will be high. There are different licensing models."
"This solution is expensive. Nutanix provides us with Acropolis Operating System (AOS) along with its hardware, while VMware provides vSAN, vCenter, and vSphere which all have separate licenses and costs."
"The product's price has been increasing lately...VMware vSAN is expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business100
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise129
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
Pricing is rated at six, which is normal. The price is appropriate for the capabilities and features that the customers receive.
What needs improvement with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
I would like the HPE Alletra dHCI to provide options to install products separately. When extending or when servers are already present, normal Alletra systems are more suitable. dHCI projects ofte...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
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 fac...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
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 ...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...
 

Also Known As

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra dHCI vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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