NetApp HCI [EOL] vs VMware vSAN comparison

NetApp and Broadcom are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 88% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Read 32 NetApp HCI [EOL] reviews

88% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 234 VMware vSAN reviews

18,505 Views
12,028 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

VMware vSAN

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp HCI [EOL] and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI.

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

July 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

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware vSAN

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

234

Ranking in other categories

HCI (3rd)

Featured Reviews

Massimiliano Bartolozzi

Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.

Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022

Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Now you don't have to be a storage administrator to provision or do anything, and any VMware system administrator, with the ease of a button, would get storage provision, which makes their lives easier."

"It is easy to set up, and you don't have to do much work to get it to do what it needs to do."

"Since implementing this solution, we have to do less work."

"Everything we've moved over runs two times faster and in some cases, a lot faster, far more than twice, which our users noticed."

"When it comes to DevOps, HCI has saved our organization time and money, especially with the number of resources that we have cut down."

"The most valuables features of it are the deduplication and the compaction because the ratios are much better than what we normally get on our FAS storage."

"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud. The features are very rich, in terms of both avenues. It's helped us flexibly move and shift our workloads around, back and forth."

"It has automated a lot of workloads. It has automated us from ticketing a large number to a very small number."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the simplicity to implement and to maintain."

"vSAN is integrated into VMware."

"The stability is good; the solution doesn't have bugs or glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, it's very reliable and the performance has been great."

"VMware vSAN is included in the Enterprise Plus level of software that we purchase, and our cost savings is in buying commodity server hardware with local hard drives instead of investing in large SAN hardware."

"For the high price of VMware, you get seamless operation and manageability."

"The primary use of the solution is the virtualization and storage process in a simple platform."

"I like the tolerance of VMware vSAN."

"The ROI data on vSAN: I would definitely say it's my staff cutting their time by something like 90 percent."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"In the next version I would like to see bigger GPU types and insurance for including transparency."

"The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment."

"Unfortunately, the solution has not reduced our hypervisor footprint."

"They could improve the packaging."

"We went with a different solution and having run that for a while, I would say that there is a lot more than they could do to make it more streamlined."

"The deployment process has room for improvement. I would like for it to be a cookie-cutter deployment."

"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."

"My biggest pain point is the installation part. I would like to see the appliance itself remove the entire switch that goes behind it and figure out how to do all the cluster interconnects within the box itself."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"Based on my testing, I would like to expand deduplication to include hybrid deployments and not just for all-flash deployments."

"The price can be reduced. Small businesses cannot afford this solution."

"I would love for this product to be cheaper and easier to configure."

"I'd like to see better integration with the Update Manager, with respect to firmware updates for hardware."

"On the troubleshooting front, it was occasionally difficult for me to perform some troubleshooting."

"There are bugs in the SAN Health Check utility. It misreports latency issues when the hosts are actual within the correct tolerances."

"This solution is not great for large file shares/object/rich media repository."

"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."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."

"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."

"The licensing fees are renewed annually."

"This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."

"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."

"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"VMware vSAN is an expensive platform. We purchase its yearly license."

"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."

"The cost of VMware vSAN is reasonable."

"It is an expensive solution. There should be more flexible with licensing to allow small businesses the essentials of the solution's features."

"We have increased our user productivity."

"We pay a yearly licensing fee."

"Perhaps a bundle, like Essentials, would allow more businesses to make the leap to the product."

"What made us go with this solution was price point. When you can utilize existing storage infrastructure, and not have to continually purchase new SAN products out there that are going up in price as time goes by, then it's a wonderful thing."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Marketing Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	101
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	135

Questions from the Community

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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

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 26% of the time

VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 9% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 8% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 10% of the time

Everpure FlashArray vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

July 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

July 2026

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

vSAN

Overview

NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

NetApp

VMware vSAN is renowned for scalability, speed, and management ease. Its performance equals traditional SANs, offering fast speeds with diverse disk types at a reduced cost, ensuring VM access amidst hardware failures, and integrating effortlessly with VMware tools for straightforward setup.

As a leader in virtualization solutions, VMware vSAN offers high-performance storage comparable to traditional SANs, allowing SSD-like speeds with a mix of disk types. It integrates into VMware tools, leading to easy setup and policy-driven management, leveraging diverse storage policies, deduplication, and compression for enhanced efficiency. It's especially valued for its ability to scale storage and applications affordably, supporting growth without heavy initial investments. Despite the advantages, areas for improvement include encryption, UI, hardware compatibility, and affordability for SMBs, with notable resync and performance monitoring challenges. Compatibility issues with non-VMware environments and complex updates and support are critical points highlighting a need for improved management interfaces and troubleshooting to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of VMware vSAN?

Scalability: Allows easy scaling of storage and applications without significant initial investments.
Speed: Rivals traditional SANs, offering SSD-like speeds.
Management: Seamless management through integration with VMware tools and policy-driven frameworks.
Resilience: Ensures VM access during hardware failures.
Efficiency: Offers deduplication and compression to optimize storage use.

What benefits or ROI should organizations consider in reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Supports horizontal and vertical growth without heavy costs.
Integration: Enhances cloud infrastructure and VDI with easy integration.
Automation: Provides automation for storage and compute consolidation.
Availability: Ensures high availability for VMs and workloads.
Performance: Known for strong performance suited for diverse workloads.

VMware vSAN is implemented across industries for virtualization and cloud infrastructure enhancements, being a cornerstone for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and the management of VMs. It supports major workloads like ERP and hyperconverged infrastructure, widely respected for its performance, seamless integration into VMware's ecosystem, and cost-efficiency, particularly appealing to small and medium businesses without extensive storage infrastructure investments.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology

Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI. Updated: July 2026.

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