Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN comparison

Why PeerSpot?

The compared Red Hat and Broadcom solutions aren't in the same category. Red Hat is ranked #3 in SDS , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 9.4% mindshare in the category. Broadcom is ranked #2 in HCI , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 7.8% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Red Hat Ceph Storage and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Nutanix, Red Hat and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS).

To learn more, read our detailed Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

November 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

Everpure FlashArray

Mindshare comparison

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Red Hat Ceph Storage	9.4%
DataCore SANsymphony	6.7%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)	6.5%
Other	77.4%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSAN	7.8%
VxRail	9.3%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)	9.0%
Other	73.9%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

Technical Lead at Wipro Limited

Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades

The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.

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Rifat Rahman

Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited

Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments

I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

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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

"It is all-flash. This makes it a lot faster than the rest of what we have, as it is able to drive high I/O loads, which is big for us."

"The zero latency and high IOPS utilization we observe with it are significantly better than other storage solutions."

"It makes things ten times easier."

"Pure Storage has been the go-to storage array for me; it's a lot smaller, easier to set up, faster to upgrade, more reliable, and the performance is very stable."

"I like its speed. It has all the features that I need."

"For VMware, it has been a humongous savings."

"When you put all of the features in a box, leverage them and migrate your application to one of these arrays, it will give you a lot of benefits."

"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"Replicated and erasure coded pools have allowed for multiple copies to be kept, easy scale-out of additional nodes, and easy replacement of failed hard drives, and the solution continues working even when there are errors."

"The product allows our OpenStack environment to move away from the classic network type of backend storage and enables increased resilience using commodity hardware pricing, which is a major benefit."

"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers) and we didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server or disk failures."

"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."

"Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud."

"What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in. In particular, Red Hat Ceph Storage becomes a single solution for managing the entire environment in terms of the container or the infrastructure, or the worker nodes because it all comes from a single plug."

"It opens doors for completely open-source cloud."

"The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

"Some of the valuable features of this product are: Software-defined class which is one of the building blocks for SDDC, flexible as it scales as and when needed, simple as it is easy to manage, and high performance as the local server can access data at full speed with low latency in SSD, while the absence of network-attached storage appliances lowers infrastructure cost."

"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."

"Technical support is good. They know what we need."

"Having high availability without the need for a full vCentre/host license is a plus that, along with not needing a physical SAN, makes this solution great when you need functionality without the extra overhead of additional hardware and licences."

"I would recommend this solution to others. It is easy to implement, scale, and maintain."

"Flexibility, growth, and expansion are probably the more important features for us. As our environment grows, the more users come on, the more VDI workstations that we need, we can easily expand either horizontally or vertically with the environment"

"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."

"vSAN is software-defined networking; the advantage of vSAN is that if one of the servers goes down, nothing happens."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."

"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."

"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."

"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."

"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services."

"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."

"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."

"Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"We have encountered slight integration issues."

"If troubleshooting is needed, the response should be faster."

"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."

"In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures."

"I would like to see better performance and stability when Ceph is in recovery."

"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."

"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."

"I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

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

"When it comes to the renewal of the license, it's a very expensive solution."

"There could be more features with the automatic backup."

"Technical support is no better or worse than what we have seen from other vendors. Usually it works well, but once in a while there are cases that seem to run in circles where you need to get in touch with your account manager and have them escalate the case to get progress."

"Areas of improvement could be the UIs. The UIs are kind of cumbersome."

"It is an expensive solution."

"When you don’t have a chance to build upon an existing vCenter service, you have to think about the deployment of vCenter without having vSAN. There are several options, like deploying vCenter temporarily on a client PC and then migrating it later onto the vSAN cluster, but it’s always a bit tricky and you probably need some extra time to get the installation done."

"vSAN is very complex inside."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."

"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."

"In terms of other contemporary arrays, Pure is something you need to have a use case for, as it's not priced for you to buy one off-the-shelf. If you have a use case, heavy lift Oracle Databases, any type of noticeable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or need low latency and high throughput, you should consider all-flash at least and probably Pure Storage."

"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."

"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."

"There should be quite a bit of reduction of TCO with just licensing (and stuff) because we run the VM environment off it."

"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"We never used the paid support."

"The price of this product isn't high."

"There is no cost for software."

"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."

"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

"The price is okay."

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

"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."

"The product is quite expensive, regarding the open source solution."

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

"With vSAN, we didn't find the market that competitive."

"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."

"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."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	73
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	161

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	102
Midsize Enterprise	56
Large Enterprise	137

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?

Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?

When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.

See all answers

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Ceph Storage?

I do not have experience working with solutions such as Red Hat Ceph Storage and StorPool. I have plenty of experienc...

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 e...

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 resea...

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 bes...

See all answers

Comparisons

NetApp AFF vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 6% of the time

INFINIDAT InfiniBox vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 3% of the time

More Everpure FlashArray Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 34% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 2% of the time

Scality RING vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 2% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 2% of the time

Everpure FlashBlade vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 2% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 9% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 4% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN

Compared 4% of the time

Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs VMware vSAN

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

November 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage

October 2026

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

October 2026

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

Ceph

vSAN

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

Red Hat Ceph Storage unifies block, object, and file storage, offering scalability and high availability. It's open-source, promoting flexibility and cost efficiency across diverse environments, making it a reliable choice for integrating with stack solutions.

Red Hat Ceph Storage integrates well with OpenStack and Kubernetes, serving as back-end storage for private clouds and critical applications. Its open-source nature ensures economic efficiency, while support for commodity hardware enhances resilience and adaptability. The platform provides seamless scalability and robust performance, vital for large file systems and demanding environments. Users appreciate its ability to manage infrastructure through a single platform, supporting diverse needs from object storage to hyperconverged systems.

What are the key features of Red Hat Ceph Storage?

Unified Storage System: Provides block, object, and file storage in one platform.
Scalability: Easily supports expanding storage needs.
High Availability: Ensures data reliability even during failures.
Open-Source Flexibility: Promotes customization and cost savings.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Reliable Infrastructure: Delivers consistent data access and performance.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces expenses with open-source licensing.
Adaptability: Integrates well with commodity hardware and diverse environments.
Scalable Growth: Supports future expansion with ease.

In industries like cloud computing, Red Hat Ceph Storage is used for deploying OpenShift clusters and supporting archive and media storage needs. Its application in hyperconverged systems and video surveillance benefits from its scalability and reliability, making it a preferred choice for large-scale deployments and critical storage solutions.

Red Hat

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

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Dell, DreamHost

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

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

November 2026

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