ScaleIO [EOL] vs VMware vSAN comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and Broadcom solutions aren't in the same category. Broadcom is ranked #3 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Dell Technologies 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 ScaleIO [EOL] and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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

Everpure FlashArray

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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SunilKumar

Manager at Securetech

Meets our customers' needs but they should move towards high-level scaling

I the product already has scalability features, but in terms of size maybe they could do more to work with parent storage and move to high-level scaling. That area, I feel, is a place where there could be some more options in this solution. It would be a way to improve the scalability in another direction, maybe options to scale out rather than just up. So far we have done very few installations. So maybe in the coming days, weeks and months, we would be able to come up with some additional features that are needed, but right now the product has the competitive features that our clients need.

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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

"Pure Storage FlashArray has helped us to improve the reporting and the billing cycle."

"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."

"If it's financially viable for you and you can afford it, it's worth it."

"Pure Storage FlashArray has helped us decrease the storage footprint in a significant way; the dedupe and compression that they have is really good, and we're getting about four to ten in the deduplication and compression."

"Even if it costs a little bit more, you do get more for what you pay."

"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."

"It has good stability for our company."

"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"We are using it as the primary virtualization storage (both for internal corporate users and external customers) for VMware and Hyper-V virtualization platforms."

"Automatic rebalancing is the feature saving administration time, and also auto rebuilding."

"The ScaleIO UI: EMC has been working with storage for a long time; therefore, they know how to clearly present any important data, including data flow and each drive's IOPS/bandwidth, and allow the user to easily monitor bottlenecks and problems, especially the rebuild and rebalance status of child objects."

"Comparing other products that are competing with Dell EMC (Enhanced Memory Controller), Dell seems to us to always come out on the high-side."

"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."

"Straightforward and easy to use."

"It is easy to work with, easy to handle, and easy to manage."

"Adding new nodes and expanding vSAN forward is simple and non-disruptive for a lot of our customers."

"Previously, we were going to use traditional systems, so when vSAN was launched it gave us a lot of value."

"I like vSAN because they release features incrementally, every year, and you don't have to upgrade your hardware to get those features. If you bought a traditional SAN, you would have to upgrade your hardware constantly, every three years: You would get it, and it is how it is for three years. But on vSAN, you upgrade when you have to, when your hardware gets old or when you need more capacity. It's great, you get new features constantly."

"The implementation is simple, it was very straightforward. It took us approximately three weeks because it was installed in four locations."

"We have found the solution to be very scalable."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"Automation could be simplified."

"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."

"The connectivity needs improvement. You do not have the possibility to have a file and block connectivity at the same time on the same machine. It has limited ability to do so."

"The only minor issues that come to mind are that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad. Also, the solution should be cheaper."

"More cloud connectivity would enhance the solution."

"The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything."

"With the introduction of Albireo technology and 81x data de-duplication reduction, Pure Storage better start looking at more effective de-duplication techniques."

"If there is one thing that I did not appreciate about Pure, it is that between the two different lines, which would be FlashBlade and Everpure FlashArray, there is no easy way to migrate LUNs as far as being able to replicate across those platforms."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"Ecosystem around the product: There is no built-in system for viewing history data, such as volume IOPS. We have to provide graphing by Prometheus and Grafana, which would be a good new feature in ScaleIO."

"It would be nice to set minimum IOPS per volume, besides just the maximum, to be able to satisfy this demand from customers out-of-the-box, not by calculating number of disks, etc."

"There is room for improvement in the area of horizontal scaling."

"I think ScaleIO already has some features for scalability as it is part of the reason for the product, but in terms of size, maybe they should try to address parent storage."

"If they could introduce a write cache feature, the product would be perfect overall."

"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."

"The main problem we had was hardware compatibility, finding the right hardware that was certified."

"The solution must provide better customization."

"Hardware compatibility needs to be increased to be able to use more RAID controllers available on the market."

"I would like to see replication as part of it. I would also like to see direct file access, being able to run SIF shares and NFS and the like. I think that would be critical to continuing the use of it going forward."

"It is an expensive solution."

"Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support."

"If one node out of your ten nodes fails, it takes a lot of time to replicate and rebalance VMware vSAN. This time can be reduced. When a node fails and the data is not accessible, vSAN has to be rebalanced to make the redundancy level of two again. However, if it is taking a lot of time and any other hardware fails during that time, then we have a problem. Two disk failures mean that all data will be lost, and we may have to recover it from the backup. So, the number of threads that run to do the rebalancing could be more so that the time taken to make it fully redundant again is not so much."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."

"We evaluated Oracle and Hitachi, but Pure Storage had the better pricing."

"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."

"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."

"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."

"Pure came in at a better price point than EMC and performed better than Compellent."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."

"It is expensive, but you get what you pay for."

"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."

"My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive."

"VMware is not a cost effective solution, especially if you have a Microsoft shop. In this case, you would have to purchase the VMware license when there are already Hyper-V solutions that could do it for much cheaper."

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

"VMware vSAN is a little bit expensive and we pay annually. We have an educational institute where we receive discount prices from VMware. We do receive a reasonable discount but it's still expensive."

"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."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

10%

Computer Software Company

No data available

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	71
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	159

No data available

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

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...

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

I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...

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HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...

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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...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp AFF 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 7% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 4% of the time

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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs ScaleIO [EOL]

Compared 41% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs ScaleIO [EOL]

Compared 29% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs ScaleIO [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

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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

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

July 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

July 2026

Download ScaleIO [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

July 2026

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

EMC ScaleIO

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)

ScaleIO is purposely designed to be an enterprise-grade scale-out software-defined storage solution. It applies the principles of server virtualization to standard x86 server flash and hybrid media, turning them into high performance, sharable, pools of storage. Whether your block storage needs are for traditional, modern or cloud workloads, ScaleIO has you covered.

Dell Technologies

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

Check Point Software Technologies, Blue Central, Deltares, Sentinel Technologies, The Binding Site Group, Swisscom, Itrica

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

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Software Defined Storage (SDS)

July 2026

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