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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs VMware vSAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (2nd), Cloud Backup (14th), Public Cloud Storage Services (7th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables efficient multi-environment cluster deployment and resource management with versatile features
While VMware vSAN is quite comprehensive, if we are running multiple infrastructures, applications, databases, and other elements, having a diagnostic tool to identify the actual problem area, whether application-side or infrastructure-side, would be beneficial. A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of use in terms of how the product works is valuable. We are able to work with it and deploy the storage that we need."
"SnapMirror helps mirror metadata and data volumes between endpoints in a data fabric."
"Unified Manager, System Manager, and Cloud Manager are all GUI-based. It's easy for somebody who has not been exposed to this for years to pick it up and work with it."
"The ability for our users to restore data from the Snapshots is very valuable."
"This solution has helped us because it is easy to use."
"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."
"The fast recovery time objective with the ability to bring the environment back to production in case something happens."
"The ability to do a straight SnapMirror from our on-prem to the cloud with no other data transitions is excellent."
"VMware comes with different stacks like VMware Cloud Foundation, which is integrated with different VMware modules. There's interoperability between VMware products."
"I like the scalability and the fact that it reduces your total cost for storage over several years."
"All the features are working great."
"The technical support is good."
"vSAN is very integrated."
"The most valuable features are secure IOPs and LAN security."
"By eliminating dependency on that back-end storage, we now depend on everything that's in the VMkernel with vSAN. We eliminate the middleman."
"We don't have to order a storage system, we can just use whatever we have on hand and roll it into our virtualization system."
 

Cons

"The integration wizard requires a bit of streamlining. There are small things that misconfigure or repeat the deployment that will create errors, specifically in Azure."
"When Azure does their maintenance, they do maintenance on one node at a time. With the two nodes of the CVO, it can automatically fail over from one node to the node that is staying up. And when the first node comes back online, it will fail back to the first node. We have had issues with everything failing back 100 percent correctly."
"Multipathing for iSCSI LUNs is difficult to deal with from the client-side and I'd love to see a single entry point that can be moved around within the cluster to simplify the client configuration."
"The only area for improvement would be some guidance in terms of the future products that NetApp is planning on releasing. I would like to see communication around that or advice such as, "Hey, the world is moving towards this particular trend, and NetApp can help you do that." I do get promotional emails from NetApp, but customer-specific advice would be helpful, based on our use cases."
"The DR has room for improvement. For example, we now have NetApp in Western Europe and we would like to back up the information to another region. It's impossible. We need to bring up an additional NetApp in that other region and create a Cloud Manager automation to copy the data... I would prefer it to be a more integrated solution like it was in the NetApp solution about a year ago. I would like to see something like AltaVault but in the cloud."
"I would like to see them improve the perspective of start and search in the panels. This would allow for better visualization of the contents that are captured in the tool."
"I would like some more performance matrices to know what it is doing. It has some matrices inherent to the Cloud Volumes ONTAP. But inside Cloud Manager, it would also be nice to see. You can have a little Snapshot, then drill down if you go a little deeper."
"The solution could be better when we're connecting to our S3 side of the house. Right now, it doesn't see it, and I'm not sure why."
"Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes. The maximum number of nodes is okay, but our use cases could probably do with more nodes, probably up to 64. In terms of new features, it should probably have the basic support for high-speed networking spaces."
"The only thing that can be improved is the cost."
"It would be ideal if clients didn't need to monitor the solution on a daily basis."
"They can improve the manageability of the solution to make it more simple. It is not that complicated, but it will be good if they can make it more simple."
"I would love to see vSAN integrate Persistent Memory and NVDIMMs. I know they're supposed to be working on an elastic tier so that we don't have the issues with destaging from the cache to the capacity. Those are the things that I'm interested in."
"There needs to be an increase in the supported memory and hard disk space, as it is an area where the product currently has certain shortcomings."
"We often run out of space but we have enough capacity for memory and CPU. It's difficult to find the balance between storage and memory CPU."
"It could be cheaper."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."
"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."
"They give us a good price for CVO licenses. It is one of the reasons that we went with the product."
"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."
"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."
"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."
"Cost is a big factor, because a lot of companies can't afford enterprise grade equipment all the time. They skimp where they can. I would recommend that they improve the cost."
"Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp."
"My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive."
"In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey."
"The price of vSAN could be lower."
"It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components."
"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."
"The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account."
"The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
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Also Known As

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
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Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.