No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SteelFusion vs VMware vSAN comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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

SteelFusion
Ranking in HCI
29th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of SteelFusion is 1.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 7.8%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN7.8%
SteelFusion1.4%
Other90.8%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

it_user866178 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at MAZZETTI+GBA
Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices
The level of tech support depends on who you get. There are some techs that just read the script and ask you if you’ve rebooted, but once you get past that - or if you have a very technical issue - the support is great. They really know the product and get you up and running again ASAP.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices. All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers. Users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central, and protected. If an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."
"That is why Riverbed SteelFusion has delivered a masterclass technology that not only abstracted and virtualized the storage vendors’ unique logical storage structures, it has made it logically closer and seamless to the branch applications from a performance and experience perspective."
"While we haven't made major changes to our disaster recovery and business continuity processes yet, moving towards stretch vSAN across sites will simplify and expedite our DR processes in the future."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the simplicity to implement and to maintain."
"The valuable features of vSAN are that you can get it up and running quickly, you get redundancy built-in, and it's pretty much the perfect solution for a cluster."
"If we decide to expand, vSAN could offer us some flexibility. We are researching ways to set this up from a new data center, which is located somewhere different from the current location right now."
"Ease of use and the cost, compared to some of the alternatives, were pretty compelling."
"The most valuable features are scalability and speed."
"If we are looking for a valuable prospective, then we can go with the All-Flash vSAN cluster which will provide data compression and deduplication (i.e. actual used storage 30TB; in that case deduplication will be stored in 10TB and save 20TB storage)."
"Scalability and future upgrades are a piece of cake."
 

Cons

"Setting up disks for use is a multi-step process that could use some refinement. Setting up a core-to-core replication or DR strategy is also cumbersome."
"Anytime I have encountered issues with stability, it usually was the result of a poor design or poor implementation."
"The pricing is something of a concern."
"It is quite an expensive solution for us and I would like to see some improvements on the backup side of the solution."
"The only thing I care about is that the solution is stable, reliable. They need to improve on those factors."
"I would like to see some of the more traditional SAN functions that are out the now. I can list them: being able to Snapshot on the back-end, better de-dupe, and better compression. Those are the major ones."
"I would rate the stability a seven out of ten."
"I need some additional features, and to learn more, to develop best practices for the Brazilian federal government."
"vSAN does not have online dedup. When opening the inline dedupe, the performance will be lower than off inline."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price is an issue – this is expensive stuff. My advice is to beat up Riverbed as much as possible on price. These things are expensive and there is room for negotiation."
"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."
"The price is okay."
"Clients have to pay for VMware vSAN licensing based on the number of CPUs. The purchases would be lifetime or perpetual, but you need to have support, e.g. the support is negotiated from one, two, three, or four years."
"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."
"​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.​"
"It is too expensive."
"The solution is relatively expensive compared to similar products."
"We have increased our user productivity."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
917,884 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business102
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise135
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
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 ...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Roxtec, Engen, Bobst, CBP, IUCN, Mahoning County, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI. Updated: October 2026.
917,884 professionals have used our research since 2012.