Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs VMware vSAN comparison

Lenovo and Broadcom are both solutions in the HCI category. Lenovo is ranked #22, while Broadcom is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.9. Lenovo holds a 1.8% mindshare in HCI, compared to Broadcom’s 10.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Lenovo users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

Read 5 Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series reviews

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1,143 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 234 VMware vSAN reviews

15,097 Views
9,662 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

VMware vSAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

VMware vSAN and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market. VMware vSAN often stands out with its advantage in pricing, while Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series justifies its price with robust features.

Features: VMware vSAN integrates seamlessly within VMware environments, enhancing storage management and scalability. It supports simple storage policy management and provides advanced data compression. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series offers comprehensive application-aware data management and robust hardware integration. It also features intelligent data tiering and provides a solution tailored for specific workloads.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN facilitates smoother deployment due to its integration with existing VMware environments and offers reliable customer support within the VMware ecosystem. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series provides a streamlined, hardware-based deployment with strong service support, particularly appealing for those who prefer turnkey solutions with integrated service offerings.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN generally has a lower entry cost, making it attractive to businesses prioritizing cost-effectiveness. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series might require a higher initial investment but offers greater ROI in the long term through its extensive feature set and robust infrastructure integration, which may prove beneficial for enterprises looking for a comprehensive solution.

To learn more, read our detailed Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs. VMware vSAN

March 2026

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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

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

Ranking in HCI

22nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.0

Number of Reviews

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 March 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is 1.8%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 10.0%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSAN	10.0%
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series	1.8%
Other	88.2%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Genesis Dapoza

Email Administrator at Technopaq, Inc.

simplifies management for clients familiar with VMware, and offers a user-friendly management and configuration experience

With the VX machines, the clients often confuse the hardware itself with the services and resources. VMs are configured according to resources - memory, hard disk capacity, and network. These resources, including memory and processor, are actually shared on the VX Series. So, if the server's processor is underpowered or unreliable for the VMs, many of the VMs will encounter issues. Ideally, the physical server configuration should align more closely with the needs of the virtual servers. The drawback is that the hardware resources (CPU, memory, storage) are shared among all the VMs running on the VX Series. If the server's processor is underpowered for the VMs, many of the VMs might have performance issues. An improvement could be to have more granular control over resource allocation to VMs.

Read full review

ShyamikaThamel

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The various scenarios for this solution are great."

"We find the setup quite straightforward and very easy."

"Installation is straightforward because it's a vSAN. It only took one or two days."

"The VX machines are scalable."

"The clients like the solution’s simplicity."

"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series' deployment is easy. We are a tier-one platinum partner who is into multiple implementations."

"It's stable. We haven't had any issues with the hardware or software in the past seven months."

"Stretched Cluster is one of the big features that we use across multiple data centers."

"We've found the solution to be scalable."

"Technical support is good."

"The solution is quite stable."

"So far, we've been able to replace two Compellents which have cost an arm and a leg, and they're just not as performant as the vSAN, so the ROI has been good."

"Without any doubts, I recommend this solution."

"Its ease of use is most valuable. It is easy to configure, and there is a unified interface, which makes things slightly easier."

"The most valuable feature is fhe flexibility, the ability to move the machines around without hesitation."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"The user management could be a bit better. It's something they could improve upon in future releases."

"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series needs to improve its stability. Its resolution should be faster."

"Lenovo has less technical support than Dell because of the engineer availability, so there's a little bit of delay."

"Support could be better."

"With the VX machines, the clients often confuse the hardware itself with the services and resources. VMs are configured according to resources - memory, hard disk capacity, and network. These resources, including memory and processor, are actually shared on the VX Series. So, if the server's processor is underpowered or unreliable for the VMs, many of the VMs will encounter issues. Ideally, the physical server configuration should align more closely with the needs of the virtual servers."

"The user management could be a bit better."

"The product must provide AI features."

"The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it."

"We are facing some problems with updates with the VMware vSAN. When we upgraded from version 6.5 to 7, we have been faced with many problems."

"Room for improvement would be support for more NVMe-based devices and especially firmware combinations; that's sometimes a problem."

"The technical support, it's not satisfactory. Whenever we raise a ticket it takes a lot of time to have an engineer get involved sometimes, or we receive a less experienced engineer. We then have to repeat the situation to the next engineer which all takes time."

"vSAN health monitoring has room for improvement because they have many known and unknown bugs which may be resolved in a future release version."

"An integrated backup solution within the vSAN platform would improve the product."

"I would like to see the availability of more template based VMware systems, combined with the ability to check and measure multiple and converging data segments. Another issue I've seen is that the tool seems to be slow when first starting up."

"The interface is a little complicated, it could be simplified with more graphical gadgets."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You need to pay a license for additional features. If we need to monitor hardware for the automatic alert notification, we need to pay them."

"The tool is expensive."

"The tool's pricing is competitive."

"There is room for improvement in the licensing structure, maybe. Regarding sizing the resources, sometimes it's difficult to calculate/compute them based on the client's requirements."

"There is a license to use this solution and we pay approximately $30,000 annually. There were not any additional fees required other than the license. The solution is expensive."

"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."

"I'd love for this product to be cheaper."

"If they could reduce the cost, it would be better. Licensing costs are something that they could take care of. If you are a smaller and strong IT team, then VMware vSAN is a very good product. If you want to expand in the service provider space, then you will have to go for an open-source solution like OpenStack. We are now looking at OpenStack because we sell licensing costs. We are a service provider, so the IT component data is a substantial component in our overall costing. We feel that OpenStack might help us to cut down the licensing cost. Therefore, we are looking at SAS storage instead of vSAN. SAS is open source, but it is not wise to have open source without having the backend support. We are using RedHat SAS, and it is an open-source solution. You can also have a free version, but we are using it with support from RedHat so that we have somebody to back us up in case we have a problem. If you do normal business, then IT expense is 1% or 2% of the total turnover. The higher licensing costs sometimes don't make difference to the big companies who are not service providers and are using it only for their internal use. For them, the IT cost is 1% or 2%, but for an IT service provider, the IT costs will go up to 15% to 16% of the total cost of the operations. This is where the licensing costs become irrelevant. For example, the licensing cost of using VMware, VC, and vSAN is 8% of my monthly revenue. Every month, I pay about $35,000, and, with the revised plan, it will be something like $50,000 or revenue of 600k per month, which means almost 8% of the revenue is going into VMware licensing. In a very competitive world, 8% as a cost element is huge. So, if I can bring it down to 2%, I save 6% in revenue expenditure. In terms of profit, 6% of 30% is something like another 25% increase in my profit. My profit can be almost 25%. It would be 20% to 25% in case I am able to handle the licensing costs and bring them to a very low level. Because these IT costs are substantial for us, that is why we are going with OpenStack. OpenStack has a limitation that it requires more hardware. There will be some increase in the hardware cost, but overall we will save 5% to 6% of our licensing cost by using OpenStack."

"The price of vSAN could be lower."

"Its price could be improved."

"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."

"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."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Government

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	100
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	129

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series?

The VX machines are scalable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series?

The licensing model is moderately complex. The tool is expensive. It is VMware’s fault, though.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series?

The product must provide AI features. It depends on VMware since the core is software. The solution must provide a more detailed plan to enable simplicity of use.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

VxRail vs Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

Compared 21% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

Compared 9% of the time

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

Compared 9% of the time

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

Compared 8% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series

Compared 7% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 16% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 7% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HCI

March 2026

Download Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

March 2026

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

Lenovo VX Series, ThinkAgile VX Series

vSAN

Overview

Differentiating yourself from the competition is vital in today’s fast-moving business environment. To support your business, IT systems must be simple, agile, and cost-effective so you can meet your customers’ requirements to be ever online. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series enables you to meet these requirements by focusing on the business outcome you require, rather than on building your infrastructure.

ThinkAgile VX Series, powered by VMware vSAN, is available in several models. Each is preconfigured, pretested, and optimized to provide the simplest way to bring a new VMware hyperconverged environment online. If you have an existing VMware environment, the VX Series can integrate into it easily.

Designed for any size business from SMBs through large enterprises, VX Series can be used as infrastructure for remote office/branch office (ROBO) and retail stores as well as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and enterprise applications.

Lenovo

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."

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs. VMware vSAN

March 2026

Free Report: Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs. VMware vSAN

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