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

15,097 Views
9,662 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

VMware vSAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

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

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 (2nd)

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.

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

"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."

"This is a strong product and it works very well, and the processes around it continue to grow and mature."

"It allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."

"The scalability is great, because it can scale independently."

"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."

"It has reduced our hypervisor footprint by around 20%."

"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."

"The ease of deployment is a positive feature that allows us to scale easily."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"The most valuable features of vSAN are its simplicity to deploy and that we can use commodity disks in our servers without complexity or need for external storage arrays or storage specialists on our teams."

"The scalability of the solution is most valuable."

"I have found the solution to be scalable."

"We didn't only choose vSAN; we chose VMware because of SR-IOV, which is more on the hypervisor level and not on the vSAN storage. It's part of the whole system."

"VMware has been around for a long time are are doing a decent job at catching up with the latest technologies i.e. bringing in kubernetes and containerization. Overall, this is a great tool for virtualization."

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

"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"

"I like the orchestration feature."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"They could improve the packaging."

"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."

"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."

"It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."

"There are some legacy applications which still cannot be migrated. That is why we have to keep two environments: legacy and the new one. We would like to see more compatibility to move stuff."

"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."

"I would like to see the implementation process improved."

"If you want to have a really dense data center then it's hard to have a big chunk of cabling going through everything."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"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."

"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly."

"I would like to see a little bit more documentation on the initial setup, and a little bit more explanation on the expandability: How to extend out your vSAN much more simply through the console because, a lot of the time, you have to do it through the command line."

"Ease of administration is one area where vSAN could be improved."

"I would have liked it to have been more scalable. It's scalable but not as much as, for example, the ScaleIO systems were or the Kaminario"

"Its installation should be easier, and its price should be cheaper. It would be good for the product if they can include the data locality feature."

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

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."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."

"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."

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

"The licensing fees are renewed annually."

"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."

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

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"We have increased our user productivity."

"It could be cheaper."

"Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective."

"We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually."

"With the new pricing model, it's expensive for the customer."

"The solution is relatively expensive compared to similar products."

"If you compare the price of VMware vSAN with other players like Nutanix and Cisco, its price is good, but could still have some improvement."

"It is too expensive."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Marketing Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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	100
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	129

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 100% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 17% 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

Everpure FlashArray vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

February 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

February 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 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

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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: March 2026.

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