Red Hat Gluster Storage vs VMware vSAN comparison

The compared Red Hat and VMware solutions aren't in the same category. Red Hat is ranked #10 in SDS , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 3.0% mindshare in the category. VMware is ranked #2 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 15.0% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

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

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

To learn more, read our detailed Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

April 2025

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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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

HCI

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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GiovanniRamirez

Senior IT Consultant at Xerif

Flexible and scalable file system for growing storage needs

Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is also applied in personal environments. Some specific use cases mentioned include scaling a three-terabyte file system into a 12-terabyte file system with minimal downtime Gluster…

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Yves Sandfort

CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH

Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources

Stability can be improved. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level where most of the features you need in production are there. The stability is not from a day-to-day operations perspective, but more from a supportability perspective, because currently some of the support scenarios require you to completely evacuate hosts or the complete cluster. That sometimes can be a stretch. This would clearly be an improvement if the support teams were given additional tools to make that easier. Upgradability could be a bit easier sometimes. We are now where vSAN can be updated without ESXi, but there is still enough dependency. So that would be good if that actually would be uncoupled even more. Dashboards are there, and we use vROps as well. So, we have all the beauty of capacity planning and everything over there. That's not really something where we need a lot of other things.

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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

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."

"It's very easy to upgrade storage."

"The technical support team is excellent."

"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."

"The product’s ecosystem is better than Nutanix’s."

"The valuable features are its scalability and the standardization - one size fits all. It's also intuitive and easy to use because one size fits all. Obviously, it scales out, but it's the same solution at every physical location I manage."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the simplicity of its scalability: being able to grow it without having to make sure you get the right disks and the right nodes. The solution is also easy to manage. It's all right there in the vSphere Client. You're not going through multiple things. You don't have to know, once you've created the vSAN node. You add storage, it sees it, and you create your data storage from there. Everything is right there for you."

"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."

"It is user-friendly, and its performance is good."

"I like the orchestration feature."

"The lower skill cost of maintaining it meant that we could do more with the people that we had."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version."

"The user interface could be simplified."

"The performance of the solution must be improved."

"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."

"The only thing I can think of at this time is to improve the performance monitoring and performance visibility within the GUI."

"They should make the software updates easier. We should be able to upgrade it more easily."

"They can improve the manageability of the solution to make it more simple. It is not that complicated, but it will be good if they can make it more simple."

"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"I would like to be able to limit IOPS."

"Troubleshooting tools could be improved."

"There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations."

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

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."

"The price of VMware vSAN is expensive and there is an annual license required."

"I feel the pricing to be reasonable."

"Cost-wise, the Nutanix licenses were cheaper, but in terms of the hardware, there was some contention around it. So, in terms of implementation, the way Nutanix was projecting the implementation on their end was that there were a lot of open-source admin platforms. vSAN is a licensed product in VMware, and Nutanix was proposing a KVM solution, which is open source. That's why their pricing was a bit cheaper, but when we were trying to compare it with an enterprise version of their management platform, it boiled down to the VMware vSAN being most effective in the long run."

"I would like to use more advanced models of the solution but the price needs to be reduced. There are some extra costs for this solution including a license."

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

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

"The price of vSAN could be lower."

"This is a cost-effective product. It's a bit cheaper than the other solutions."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

50%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

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

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Gluster Storage?

The technical support team is excellent.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Gluster Storage?

There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source versio...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Red Hat Gluster Storage?

Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is...

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

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...

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

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

LizardFS vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 27% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 18% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 12% of the time

LINBIT SDS vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 8% of the time

More Red Hat Gluster Storage Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 16% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

April 2025

Download Red Hat Gluster Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

April 2025

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server

vSAN

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Red Hat Gluster Storage (formerly known as Red Hat Storage Server) is a software-defined storage (SDS) platform designed to handle the requirements of traditional file storage—high-capacity tasks like backup and archival as well as high-performance tasks of analytics and virtualization. But unlike traditional storage systems, Red Hat Gluster Storage isn’t rigid and expensive. It easily scales across bare metal, virtual, container, and cloud deployments.

Red Hat

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."

VMware

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

NTT Plala, McMaster University, University of Basque Country, Goodtech ASA, Cox Automotive, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), SaskTel, Glashart Media, Casio

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

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

April 2025

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