NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp AFF and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Pure Storage, NetApp and others in All-Flash Storage.
To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: May 2023).
709,643 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
"Support has been helpful.""The scalability is good.""The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray.""I like the speed, and I like the API and how programmable it is.""The tool is simple and easy to use. It has neat features like protection from device removal. Moreover, you can undo the deletes. The solution is easy to work with and not as complicated as CAC""The speed is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray.""Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Pros →

"I actually did major projects where we used NetApp storage for some government agencies, and we were able to keep the storage where the government or the customer is able to own the storage while using AWS as their computing. That part was helpful to the customer.""The NVMe flash cache is the most useful feature. It lowers transactional speed even more.""It also helps to accelerate databases in our environment. First of all, there is the reliability of things staying online and the small response time as well, from the MetroCluster, for all of the data that we're serving; and the applications are talking to the MetroCluster. It provides a very fast response time.""The performance is outstanding when it's all Flash. That's the biggest bang for the buck that we get.""Supports file formatting, the main protocols, and the hot swapping of disks and features.""In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things.""This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud.""It is a stable solution."

More NetApp AFF Pros →

"When we do to do more scaled load testing, we can run more dense workloads and still have the same results across all specific nodes""Its ease of use is most valuable. It is easy to configure, and there is a unified interface, which makes things slightly easier.""Very easy to implement in any existing environment.""The technical support is good.""One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware.""We had very good access to technical support.""It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it.""Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."

More VMware vSAN Pros →

Cons
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release.""Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included.""It is a bit expensive.""Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable.""Self-backup is the only feature lacking in this solution.""This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve.""There was some complexity in the initial setup.""When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Cons →

"When it comes to the connectivity on the back end, where the hardware is concerned—the cabling and the like—it could also be simplified to ease the communication between the nodes and between the other components of the infrastructure. I still find that a little bit complicated.""After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive.""You have a limit in terms of how much you can expand storage. It sounds like a lot. However, over the years, as you grow, it may be smaller than you think.""NetApp should offer more training so everyone can learn about the products. Other vendors have a lot of training options. It would be great if NetApp would highlight how to use the features more so that every admin or person can gain more knowledge about this technology.""It used to give us the volume where LANs should be placed when we created a LAN in the older version. However, in the newer version of ONTAP, it does not give where to place the LAN in the volume. So, that liberty has been taken away. If that was there again, it would be very good.""This is an expensive solution that could be cheaper.""Some of the graphical user interface changes in the later versions of NetApp have not been as good as the older ones, like in the 9.5 era.""It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."

More NetApp AFF Cons →

"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly.""It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins.""When designing the implementation for vSAN, I have noticed that it requires a minimum of six nodes, and this creates a problem when it comes to maintenance. If, out of the six nodes, I put one node in maintenance mode, then vSAN does not create other VM components.""Lacks an integrated backup solution.""We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases.""It would be ideal if the solution offered some intelligent monitoring.""The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses.""I have used the VMware Replication but I can't get it to work properly. The process should be simplified."

More VMware vSAN Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
  • "There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
  • "Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
  • "We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
  • "There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
  • "I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The licensing and pricing are fine. As a reseller for the product, we need to make the differentiation in the minds of the customer. They are not just buying some tool that does only one thing, e.g., showing a LAN for a customer. The pricing is fair for what it is."
  • "In addition to simplifying the management across a mix of solutions, AFF simplifies the cost. That was one of the main reasons we purchased AFF."
  • "NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors."
  • "The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
  • "The list price of AFF is too expensive... they need to be careful with the pricing of the new NVMe disks. They are way too expensive."
  • "I looked at other vendors for other potential projects and thought NetApp's pricing was very competitive."
  • "There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices."
  • "The only area where the product has room for improvement is the cost."
  • More NetApp AFF Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "I feel the pricing to be reasonable."
  • "In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey."
  • "The price of VMware vSAN is expensive and there is an annual license required."
  • "For a classical node plus storage solution, the price is higher."
  • "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."
  • "We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually."
  • "This solution requires the purchase of a license."
  • More VMware vSAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a… more »
    Top Answer:Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in the… more »
    Top Answer:This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost… more »
    Top Answer:The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters… 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… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface… more »
    Top Answer:HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
    vSAN
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    NetApp AFF A-series systems are cloud-connected, flash storage designed to meet and exceed the performance requirements of business-critical applications and enterprise workloads. Powered by NetApp ONTAP data management software, AFF systems deliver industry-leading performance, superior flexibility, and best-in-class data services and cloud integration to accelerate, manage, and protect your business-critical data in the hybrid cloud.

    These systems support end-to-end NVMe technologies to deliver the industry’s lowest latency for an enterprise all-flash array, making them the superior choice for running the most demanding business-critical workloads and AI/ML applications.

    NetApp AFF is a robust, scale-out platform ideal for virtualized environments and can be deployed as an independent system or a high-performance tier in a NetApp ONTAP cluster configuration.

    NetApp AFF Benefits

    The AFF systems yield many benefits:

    • Reduce Cost:  Change the economics of your data center with flash - you'll consume 11 times less electricity, require 11 times less rack space, and spend 67 percent less on support compared to a data center using HDDs.
    • Increase Performance: AFF A-Series systems deliver industry-leading performance proven by SPC-1 and SPEC SFS industry benchmarks, making them ideal for demanding, highly transactional applications such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB databases, VDI, and server virtualization.
    • Simplify Operations on premises or in the cloud: Eliminate fragmented and redundant toolsets and combine visibility and manageability of storage instances with data services in a unified control plane across the hybrid cloud.
    • Secure your data: automatically protect your data from ransomware attacks and avoid paying ransoms, meet compliance requirements with ease, and create a Zero-Trust perimeter around your organizations data on premises or in the cloud.

    NetApp AFF Features

    Many critical features play a role in making AFF systems the optimal flash storage choice:

    • Take advantage of faster host connectivity with NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP support.
    • NetApp SnapMirror replication software reduces overall system costs by replicating to any type of FAS or AFF system, whether it is all-flash, hybrid, or HDD, on premises or in the cloud.
    • Automatically balance and optimize your production all-flash capacity with efficient cloud storage.
    • Built-in, app-integrated backup.
    • Automatic ransomware protection, multifactor admin access, secure multitenant shared storage, and in-flight and at-rest encryption.
    • Unified architecture which supports file, block, and object storage
    • Scale out to 24 nodes, 367PB of effective capacity, and 4 million IOPS non-disruptively.

    Reviews from Real Users

    NetApp AFF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its high performance and simplicity. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    PeerSpot user and Storage Administrator, Daniel Rúnar Friðþjófsson, comments “AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.

    Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high-performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.”

    Additionally, Mohan Reddy, Sr. Technology Architect at a Pharma/Biotech company comments on how “NetApp's ONTAP data management software has also made tasks simpler for us. There's no question about that. It has helped us run operations very quickly, saving us a lot of time. Before ONTAP, we used to spend a long time doing regular operations, but with the latest version of the tool, our day-to-day operations are much quicker and easier.”

    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."

    Offer
    Learn more about Pure Storage FlashArray
    Learn more about NetApp AFF
    Learn more about VMware vSAN
    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
    Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization22%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company16%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization42%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Healthcare Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization26%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Government7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise76%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise50%
    Large Enterprise36%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise36%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    All-Flash Storage
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Pure Storage, NetApp and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: May 2023.
    709,643 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    NetApp AFF is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 30 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 60 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Provides us with quick options when restoring things for customers". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". NetApp AFF is most compared with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage and VAST Data, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and HPE Hyper Converged.

    We monitor all All-Flash 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.