We performed a comparison between NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cloud Software Defined Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."NetApp's XCP Migration Tool... was pretty awesome. It replicated the data faster than any other tool that I've seen. That was a big help."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We started with a small pilot and we then moved to production with no downtime at all."
"CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud itself, but it took too long for us to retrieve it from cold or deep storage. If we have it ONTAP or on-prem, it's so much easier to pull it within minutes."
"I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships."
"We use the mirroring to mirror our volumes to our DR location. We also create snapshots for backups. Snapshots will create a specified snapshot to be able to do a DR test without disrupting our standard mirrors. That means we can create a point-in-time snapshot, then use the ability of FlexClones to make a writeable volume to test with, and then blow it away after the DR test."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are good. Snapshot copies are pretty much the write-in time data backups. Obviously, critical data is snapshotted a lot more frequently, and even clients and end users find it easier to restore whatever they need if it's file-based, statical, etc."
"The most valuable features are tiering to S3 and being able to turn it on and off, based on a schedule."
"Replication to the cloud is the most valuable feature. Deduplication and compression are also very important to us. We are in the process of adopting to the cloud. We are going to AWS and we are trying to do a safety technician call out with integration to the cloud. NetApp allows us to move some of the volume to the cloud, at the same time that we continue providing the cloud services that we have on premises."
"The most valuable features are its price point and that you can use existing storage; no specific storage requirements are needed."
"We've found the solution to be scalable."
"Everyone uses virtualization to more efficiently utilize hardware resources. That's the main point of vSAN and VMware."
"vSAN that has been most effective in streamlining storage operations. For data recovery alerts, it uses tools like snapshots and vMotion."
"The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is the ease of management. VMware vSAN it's a part of VMware ESXi and when you do patching for VMware ESXi, VMware vSAN receives the patches too."
"The feature we have found most valuable is the compatibility of VMware products with VCF and VMware Cloud Foundation."
"If we decide to expand, vSAN could offer us some flexibility. We are researching ways to set this up from a new data center, which is located somewhere different from the current location right now."
"Storage is expandable with no extra cost."
"I would want more visibility and data analytics where we can see anomalies within the shares within the GUI."
"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."
"There is room for improvement with the capacity. There's a very hard limit to how many disks you can have and how much space you can have. That is something they should work to fix, because it's limiting. Right now, the limit is about 360 terabytes or 36 disks."
"The cost needs improvement."
"I would like this solution to be brought to all the three major players. Right now it's supported only on AWS and Azure. They should bring it to Google as well, because we would like to have flexibility in choosing the underlying cloud storage provider."
"One difficulty is that it has no SAP HANA certification. The asset performance restrictions create challenges with the infrastructure underneath: The disks and stuff like that often have lower latencies than SAP HANA itself has to have."
"I would like to have more management tools. They are difficult to work with, so I would like them to be a bit more user-friendly."
"I would like to see something from NetApp about backups. I know that NetApp offers some backup for Office 365, but I would like to see something from NetApp for more backup solutions."
"We plan to switch products since the hardware nowadays is a little bit outdated and we need to scale up a bit."
"A vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array. Deduplication and compression work better with an all-flash array, so I think that VMware should give customers the option to activate and support this feature for hybrid arrays. Other products like Nutanix support this."
"We would like to see even more storage capacity."
"It needs to be vanilla. There shouldn't be any custom drivers, any custom anything. It should just be, "Hey, you know what? These drivers are going to work for this version, the next version, and the following version after that." That's the difficulty in this. It takes too much upkeep... The main issue is drivers. Every time we move to a new vSAN version, we're having problems finding the correct drivers for the vendor."
"The UI could certainly be better. The inside into what's actually going on with vSAN would be nice to know."
"Dedupe in non flash drives can be improved."
"It should be easier to use."
"The server files are larger than before."
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked 1st in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 60 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 226 reviews. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is rated 8.8, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP writes "Its data tiering helps keep storage costs under control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Google Cloud Storage and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). See our NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN report.
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