We performed a comparison between VMware vSAN and Zadara based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"
"We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer."
"Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs."
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."
"The implementation is simple, it was very straightforward. It took us approximately three weeks because it was installed in four locations."
"It is simple to manage, very easy to implement and troubleshoot in case of any failures."
"One of the valuable features for us is the ability to restrict the performance capacity per client. Other solutions don't have this feature."
"The solution is simple to use compared to other solutions, such as Hyperflex, VxRail, and Nutanix"
"The most valuable features are its performance, simplicity, and synchronicity with vSphere."
"It easily integrates with all types of storage."
"It is easy to use. It is easy to implement for us, and it is also easy to maintain for the customers. It is not necessary to buy some extra devices and talk with other vendors."
"Storage policies are used to perform operations in the VMs. This feature allows you to create storage policies for VMs to get performance, high availability, I/O policies, etc."
"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."
"The processing is much faster with this product."
"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."
"The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed."
"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam."
"Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important."
"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."
"Ability to to test the virtual storage are network area and storage speed from StarWind Management Console."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"The quality of the customer service and support depends on the vSAN case. For example, if I open ten cases, maybe two or three get resolved quickly. But the other cases have a slow response."
"There is a lot that VMware could improve from a marketing perspective. The cloud is still new for many people, so extending storage should be effortless. It shouldn't be so complicated to extend the storage so workloads can access it no matter where they go."
"The solution must provide better customization."
"There are certain shortcomings in the stability of the product where improvements are required."
"In a future release, they could add micro-segmentation or security level features integrated into vSAN."
"Hackers are able to manage to leak information or data from the product using some corrupt files, making it an area of major concern where improvements are required."
"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."
"I would like a better Hardware Certification List (HCL). The HCL should a little easier to deal with."
"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."
"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."
"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."
"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."
"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."
"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."
"The initial setup of the solution is complex."
"The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve."
VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 226 reviews while Zadara is ranked 22nd in All-Flash Storage with 9 reviews. VMware vSAN is rated 8.4, while Zadara is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zadara writes "We're able to scale up or down almost instantly, and changes are handled efficiently by their managed services team ". VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray, whereas Zadara is most compared with MinIO, Amazon S3, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Wasabi and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP. See our VMware vSAN vs. Zadara report.
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