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VMware vSAN pros and cons

Vendor: Broadcom
4.2 out of 5
Badge Leader

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

vSAN is highly scalable, allowing easy expansion by adding nodes or storage.
It offers performance, encryption, deduplication, and compression features.
The management of vSAN is straightforward, integrating seamlessly with existing VMware environments.
vSAN eliminates the need for traditional storage systems, reducing costs and infrastructure complexity.
Technical support for vSAN is highly regarded, with quick and effective responses.

CONS

VMware vSAN needs better integration with hardware, especially regarding disk types and modern storage support.
Compression and deduplication should be hardware-offloaded rather than software-driven.
VMware vSAN would benefit from a more comprehensive lifecycle management and better documentation for initial setup and expandability.
Pricing and licensing costs are significant concerns for small to medium-sized businesses.
There are issues with high resource consumption, affecting scalability and storage balance with compute resources.
 

VMware vSAN Pros review quotes

it_user618129 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech services company
Mar 1, 2017
I like the scalability and the fact that it reduces your total cost for storage over several years.
it_user574359 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engagement Cloud Solution Architect - Ericsson Cloud Services at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Jun 28, 2017
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_user473589 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization System Administrator. at a integrator with 51-200 employees
Jul 12, 2017
The most important functionality is the ability to extend cluster storage and cluster computing power securely without loss of data.
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
880,511 professionals have used our research since 2012.
EB
Senior Security Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Dec 8, 2017
The lower skill cost of maintaining it meant that we could do more with the people that we had.
PT
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Dec 12, 2017
It is simple to manage, very easy to implement and troubleshoot in case of any failures.
QH
Presales engineering, Data center solution architect at SYSTEC TECHNOLOGY INC.
Dec 26, 2017
vSAN has just one datastore. so customers do not need to think where to put their VMs, how to design the physical disk RAID, the LUN size, the LUN mapping, etc. when they use NetApp/EMC/HDS or other storage systems.
it_user880662 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Specialist at Techedge
May 30, 2018
All the features are working great.
reviewer909960 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 30, 2018
It is easier to deploy than the traditional SAN.
reviewer910422 - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration & IT at a energy/utilities company with 11-50 employees
Jul 31, 2018
The migration of servers feature makes server rack maintenance easy.
AW
Systems Engineer at Colorado College
Sep 2, 2018
It scales well. We have plenty of room to grow.
 

VMware vSAN Cons review quotes

it_user618129 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech services company
Mar 1, 2017
The only thing I can think of at this time is to improve the performance monitoring and performance visibility within the GUI.
it_user574359 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engagement Cloud Solution Architect - Ericsson Cloud Services at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Jun 28, 2017
he list of hardware supported should be increased in the future.
it_user473589 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization System Administrator. at a integrator with 51-200 employees
Jul 12, 2017
I lose a node in a cluster vSAN, which is also used as a cluster HA. I lose not only the storage part, which is not necessarily serious (depending on the configuration of the vSAN cluster), but on the other hand, I lose also a node of Compute, which can make things complicated quickly.
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
880,511 professionals have used our research since 2012.
EB
Senior Security Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Dec 8, 2017
The main problem we had was hardware compatibility, finding the right hardware that was certified.
PT
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Dec 12, 2017
Some intelligence can be added to the newest version to provide more flexibility between storage tiers.
QH
Presales engineering, Data center solution architect at SYSTEC TECHNOLOGY INC.
Dec 26, 2017
vSAN does not have online dedup. When opening the inline dedupe, the performance will be lower than off inline.
it_user880662 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Specialist at Techedge
May 30, 2018
Only the stretched cluster requires a minor improvement.
reviewer909960 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 30, 2018
Dedupe in non flash drives can be improved.
reviewer910422 - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration & IT at a energy/utilities company with 11-50 employees
Jul 31, 2018
The server files are larger than before.
AW
Systems Engineer at Colorado College
Sep 2, 2018
I would like a better Hardware Certification List (HCL). The HCL should a little easier to deal with.