Rackspace OpenStack vs VMware vSAN comparison

The compared Rackspace Technology and Broadcom solutions aren't in the same category. Rackspace Technology is ranked #3 in CI , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 7.5% mindshare in the category. Broadcom is ranked #3 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Rackspace Technology users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Rackspace OpenStack

Read 18 Rackspace OpenStack reviews

2,414 Views
1,593 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 234 VMware vSAN reviews

17,781 Views
11,380 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Rackspace OpenStack

VMware vSAN

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Rackspace OpenStack and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Rackspace Technology and others in Converged Infrastructure.

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Converged Infrastructure

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

Rackspace OpenStack

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (3rd)

VMware vSAN

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

234

Ranking in other categories

HCI (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Rackspace OpenStack is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 7.5%, up 4.7% compared to last year.
VMware vSAN, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 8.1% mindshare, down 14.6% since last year.

Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Rackspace OpenStack	7.5%
FlexPod XCS	12.7%
HPE ConvergedSystem	11.2%
Other	68.6%

Converged Infrastructure

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSAN	8.1%
VxRail	10.1%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)	9.0%
Other	72.8%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Shbhaves Shbhaves

Manager Dev Ops at MSD

Private cloud control has deepened my DevOps automation and strengthened security practices

For improvement, I feel the documentation available for setting up and creating infrastructure using Rackspace OpenStack could be enhanced, as I personally find the existing documents are not sufficient for new learners or beginners. We can also work on improving the user interface; the Horizon dashboard is functional, but compared to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, the UI feels somewhat dated. A more modern, intuitive interface with better navigation would enhance the overall user experience, especially for new users. Improving the documentation, including more real-world deployment examples, troubleshooting guides, and architecture best practices, would make onboarding much easier. Faster upgrades would also help; Rackspace OpenStack upgrades can sometimes be complex, so simplifying the upgrade process and minimizing downtime would assist organizations in maintaining their environments more easily. Additionally, improving monitoring capabilities would be beneficial, with advanced monitoring and analytics dashboards providing administrators deeper visibility into performance, capacity, and potential issues without relying heavily on third-party tools. Adding more managed services, similar to what public cloud providers offer, could reduce operational overhead while still allowing customers to retain the flexibility of a private cloud. Lastly, integrating AI could be valuable, with AI-driven recommendations for capacity planning, security monitoring, and automated troubleshooting improving platform management.

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

"Customer Service: Top. Technical Support: Top"

"The open-source nature of OpenStack provides significant value."

"The most useful opinion about Rackspace OpenStack is that it is very flexible, first of all, and the most important feature is that it is feature-rich."

"It created a reusable library with OpenStack features."

"It was a very flexible and scalable solution. It was very useful because we were not dependent on a single vendor's solution. Increasing the number of machines or changing the hardware configuration was very easy."

"Rackspace OpenStack impacted my organization positively in that the drive helped me keep files in an organized folder, and obviously we needed email addresses to be able to communicate with each other and for outsiders to be able to email us."

"The documentation was plentiful and very helpful."

"The initial setup isn't too difficult."

More Rackspace OpenStack pros

"I would definitely recommend vSAN to others."

"It’s a good solution – the trend is going towards converged infrastructure."

"As a function of our core business, it's a sought after tool that helps us provide analytical support across a wide spectrum of client needs. It's allowed us to test out in our connected restaurant - "TheWorks" - a fully-functional restaurant experience center that allows our clients to discover the value of our connected solutions firsthand. We deploy vSAN in this customer-like environment within a hyperconvergent infrastruction (HCI) to give our clients a better understanding and help optimize data and the end-users' experience."

"This is a product that I recommend."

"My advice is if someone is interested in VMware vSAN it is a good solution; it is stable, supportive, and compatible with many solutions, and customers have to consider when choosing VMware that they receive a lot of features, such as replication backup, and if they went with another solution it would be more expensive."

"Very easy to implement in any existing environment."

"The most valuable features are ease of deployment, and ease of management. If you compare it to other software-defined storage products, it's much easier. It's a checkbox. It's lot easier to manage."

"It uncoupled the idea of proprietary technology and component capabilities, and it is basically a proprietary technology for a cost-effective infrastructure."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"The pricing for Rackspace OpenStack is sometimes not competitive according to other market products, as sometimes the price is high for some components like Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) and Advanced Cluster Security, which are very costly add-ons, not the main license."

"Rackspace OpenStack can be improved because it wasn't clear that you have to cancel 30 days before; otherwise they charge you for the month."

"We are moving from Rackspace OpenStack to CloudStack due to the requirement of human resources and technicality. There are lots of moving parts in Rackspace OpenStack."

"As a beginner, I find some difficulties in understanding Rackspace OpenStack, as it can be complex without a foundational grasp of cloud and networking concepts."

"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say the support. Rackspace might have some good support but the open source OpenStack doesn't have support because there are too many versions coming and too many people are customizing it."

"It should have a single dashboard for cloud management and on-premises systems"

"VMware has a side-to-side replication feature, which is still more mature than Rackspace OpenStack's which can't be used in a production environment."

"It could use more examples in different languages (API use cases)."

More Rackspace OpenStack cons

"It would be much improved if we could somehow integrate a better backup with it. Right now, we're using Veeam and it's okay, but I would like more of a VDP vSAN solution. That would be excellent. The VDP, at least the last time we looked at, it was just not quite there."

"We would really like them to look at what Nutanix did for day-one/day-two operations deployment: Bringing in the equipment, getting it deployed, getting it setup, and ease of use of one-click for deploying our 30-node solution. With vSAN we had to go into each one individually and set it up."

"If the vSAN cluster can’t self-heal due to an internal error, we can’t repair the vSAN cluster ourselves. A case with VMware is always needed to fix the issue, resulting in an increased time to resolve."

"The UI could certainly be better. The insight into what's actually going on with vSAN would be nice to know."

"Expand the hardware compatibility list – it's pretty short. Definitely also the diagnostic and monitoring could be improved."

"Perhaps they could provide encryption without having to use an encryption manager."

"vSAN health reporting needs some work."

"Improvements are also needed as per the customer's requirements."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use it as an open-source tool."

"The pricing is low."

"It is too expensive."

"The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"

"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."

"ROI from an administrative perspective is clearly much better because I only have to deal with one user interface."

"I would like to see this technology be made available to smaller businesses, who might benefit from high availability but struggle with the entry fee."

"I'd love for this product to be cheaper."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	8

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

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Rackspace OpenStack?

Rackspace OpenStack can be improved because it wasn't clear that you have to cancel 30 days before; otherwise they charge you for the month. I didn't really feel there was anywhere I could go if I ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Rackspace OpenStack?

My main use case for Rackspace OpenStack was for storage, such as cloud drive storage for all the photography and paperwork that we have for the association, and then I also had multiple email addr...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Rackspace OpenStack?

The accessibility of Rackspace OpenStack was kind of hard to add to iPhone; many of the board members had issues with it when adding it to their cell phones. The way you would add the mail server h...

See all answers

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

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 16% of the time

FlexPod XCS vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 15% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 14% of the time

HPE ConvergedSystem vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 11% of the time

IBM PureSystems vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 6% of the time

More Rackspace OpenStack Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

Everpure FlashArray vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Rackspace OpenStack

July 2026

Download Rackspace OpenStack product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

July 2026

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

OpenStack

vSAN

Overview

Rackspace OpenStack offers potent infrastructure concepts, customization options, and scalability with commodity servers, supporting microservices, virtualization, and numerous integrations, all beneficial for advanced IT deployments.

Known for its robust infrastructure and flexible deployments, Rackspace OpenStack caters to enterprises with complex IT management needs. It excels in virtualization and data analytics while enhancing server management with microservices architecture. Companies leverage it for effective infrastructure as code management, integrating tools like GitLab and Jenkins, offering a sought-after platform for deploying private clouds and managing diverse workloads efficiently.

What are the standout features of Rackspace OpenStack?

Infrastructure Flexibility: Easily configurable infrastructure with commodity servers.
Customization Options: Adaptable for unique enterprise needs.
Scalability: Supports increasing workloads effectively.
Integrations: Seamless integration with tools like GitLab and Jenkins.
Virtualization Capabilities: Lowers operational expenses and simplifies hardware changes.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Lower operational costs through virtualization.
Enhanced Flexibility: Microservices architecture offers advanced adaptability.
Data Management: Effective for big data services and data analytics.
Migration Support: Facilitates on-premises migration from the cloud.

Enterprises utilize Rackspace OpenStack across industries for tasks like large data management and private cloud deployment. It supports streamlined infrastructure management and eCommerce integration with Akamai. Often chosen for website development and deploying managed services, it meets diverse deployment needs efficiently.

Rackspace Technology

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

X.commerce

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

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July 2026

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