VMware vSAN OverviewUNIXBusinessApplication

VMware vSAN is the #2 ranked solution in HCI Software. PeerSpot users give VMware vSAN an average rating of 8.2 out of 10. VMware vSAN is most commonly compared to VxRail: VMware vSAN vs VxRail. VMware vSAN is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 59% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 20% of all views.
VMware vSAN Buyer's Guide

Download the VMware vSAN Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: February 2023

What is VMware vSAN?

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 vSAN was previously known as vSAN.

VMware vSAN Customers

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VMware vSAN Pricing Advice

What users are saying about VMware vSAN pricing:
  • "ROI from an administrative perspective is clearly much better because I only have to deal with one user interface."
  • "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."
  • "The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers."
  • VMware vSAN Reviews

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    Yves Sandfort - PeerSpot reviewer
    CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH
    Video Review
    Real User
    Top 5
    Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources
    Pros and Cons
    • "When we do to do more scaled load testing, we can run more dense workloads and still have the same results across all specific nodes"
    • "When we talk about improvements for vSAN, there is some way to go from a at least stability perspective. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level that most of the features you need in production are there."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily use vSAN for cloud automation, so we provide test workloads for specific test use cases for customers who want to do software testing. In these specific cases, we also use vSAN because it gives us flexibility from a profile perspective on how we roll out specific workloads and specific test scenarios, making it easier for us to actually deploy things in comparison to legacy storage platforms.

    How has it helped my organization?

    vSAN improved our organization by allowing us to deploy scenarios or workloads more easily because, from a vSAN perspective, we don't need to reconfigure underlying storage or anything else. We can actually adjust for each individual machine and individual workload characteristics. We don't have to deal with different types of disk shelves, rate groups, etc. We can directly take that off.

    What is most valuable?

    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 tests and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment. This is an advantage when we use vSAN.

    We have pretty constant performance results, which are sometimes, on a normal three-tier storage architecture, harder for us to achieve because the customer doesn't want us to verify that the performance of a specific device works. What we typically have to test is that we have a constant scenario across different versions, platforms, and similar things. Here, vSAN gives us an advantage that we can actually work with it. 

    We can also create test cases, which is maybe not something in other customer scenarios, but for us, it's important. We can even throttle down performance or release more performance. So, we can run more precise test scenarios. If someone says, "We need to run this later on a relatively small or lower-scale edge device," we can actually configure vSAN in a way that reduces the number of resources.

    When we do more scaled load testing, we can run more dense workloads and still have the same results across all specific nodes. Otherwise, we could have that noisy neighbor effect when we work with legacy output.

    What needs improvement?

    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. 

    Buyer's Guide
    VMware vSAN
    February 2023
    Learn what your peers think about VMware vSAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2023.
    685,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for six years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We had some issues in very early releases, and it has become much better over time. Stability with vSAN has come it's way. When we look at 5.5, then 6.0, 6.2, 6.6, 6.7 it has moved ahead every time. Clearly, 5.5 and 6.0 have their issues, but the product is constantly improving. 

    We need to keep in mind that we are talking about relatively new technology. Whenever you are adopting something early on, you need to accept not everything runs as smoothly as you would expect it to. However, we can see the progress with vSAN, and that's one of the reasons why we built our platforms on it.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability for us is an important part of the product because we resize clusters all the time in our environment. We clean them out and actually start from scratch. With vSAN, it's easier for us to add nodes. If in a test scenario that we are building, we currently might have only four or five nodes in the beginning. If we add more, it's an easy add-on for us. It's easier for us to manage it this way than with legacy storage, where we would have to add additional disk shelves.

    How are customer service and support?

    Tech support with vSAN is a mixed relationship. We have had issues with tech support because sometimes VMware comes out of the software-defined space. 

    In the software-defined space, you start off with the approach that you can basically tell the customer to change everything. However, vSAN needs a different approach. It's a storage platform. I cannot actually say, "You need to upgrade everything or replace everything." That sometimes has been a bit of a challenge with the support teams, explaining to them, "No, it's not an option that we completely upgrade the stack. We need to get a different fix for it." 

    However, over the last few years, it has improved. I think VMware gets the story now that doing support on the storage side is different than for a lot of the other software programs. So, I think we are getting there, but it could definitely improve.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We previously used Legacy 3-tier storage architecture with a multi-tier disk approach.

    How was the initial setup?

    From a setup perspective with vSAN, I was involved in the original architecture and design of our specific platform. It was pretty straightforward. It's more or less point-and-click. The most challenging part is choosing the correct hardware and platform behind it. It's not so much about the fact of how to deploy vSAN. 

    Once the physical hardware is there, the ESXi is installed, and configuring vSAN is pretty straightforward. It's just a few clicks. It's much easier than most other storage platforms, but the challenge is to identify the correct hardware for the use case. There are ReadyNotes and all types of other solutions, but sometimes the ReadyNote configuration doesn't match exactly what you need.

    You need to be careful with some of these vendors because they might upgrade individual devices. That was one case that we had, and all of a sudden that version was no longer supported. So, we had to fight the battle of whether it is now the fault of the hardware vendor versus VMware. Those are scenarios where I can always only warn people. It's like sticking very strictly with what's in the HCL because it's nice that vSAN tells you in the UI that you are in an unsupported state, but at that point, you have the hardware already in your environment, cabled up, and in production. So, you should identify that early on. However, I think that's going to get better as well.

    What was our ROI?

    ROI is difficult for us to deal with because of our approach and what we do in our business with test and demo cases. It's hard for us to judge because some of the hardware and stuff we get during tests is actually provided by vendors. 

    Therefore, I don't necessarily have what an online customer would pay for it. We still pay for the stuff. But it's a different story.

    ROI from an administrative perspective is clearly much better because I only have to deal with one user interface. I can go into one place and be on top of it for some scenarios, even using vCloud Director. So, it's much easier to use vSAN from that perspective because it's all in the vSphere Client. I can configure my profiles and use them on all the other tools. Whereas, in the legacy storage approach, I still have to deal with all these additional details on each individual storage, which can be challenging, even though some of these vendors provide integration into the vSphere Client. In many ways, that's just the HTML UI of their storage device in the vSphere Client. That's not really integration. It's still a different UI. It's still a different training effort.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Setup cost, pricing, and licensing should be secondary factors. We talk about primary system storage, which if not performing well or if the storing is reliable, can have a massive business impact.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We evaluated different 3-tier approaches, 2-tier and HCI approaches.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would rate the solution somewhere around an eight out of ten. It is in the perfect place. There is room for improvement, but with the current versions, we are in a good stage.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
    Flag as inappropriate
    PeerSpot user
    Technical Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    It offers us some flexibility, but it could be integrated better with the cloud
    Pros and Cons
    • "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."
    • "I would like to see better integration between the cloud and our VMware virtual environment. We only have one virtual environment, which is VMware vSAN. Right now, there is little interoperability with the cloud solution at the moment."

    What is our primary use case?

    I work at a small company, and we have VxRail. Like Rubrik, VxRail can be upgraded brick by brick. Now we are studying considering deploying another traditional setup comprising a host and SAN Storage. VMware vSAN is a virtual SAN Storage. 

    We are planning to expand the resources of our system, including CPU, RAM, and storage. Currently, we are utilizing the basic VxRail setup, which consists of only three nodes, and we're in the process of acquiring another. I'm upgrading because it's at capacity, so we have no choice but to add another node so we can expand the loads for some new applications that we need to employ under the virtual servers. Our expansion to a new data center will add some more capacity to the current setup.

    In the end, we could wind up with around six nodes, SAN storage, or flash array storage. But we don't have a definite plan yet. Everything is being drafted at the moment, and we're researching some details on backup solutions and VR solutions. We also have some cloud-based and server-hosted applications from Azure and AWS. So maybe the on-premises solution could involve some VMs or a hybrid backup solution that goes back and forth between the cloud and on-premises. 

    What is most valuable?

    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.

    What needs improvement?

    I would like to see better integration between the cloud and our VMware virtual environment. We only have one virtual environment, which is VMware vSAN. Right now, there is little interoperability with the cloud solution at the moment. We are currently researching to figure out if we can achieve that. 

    It's possible that we'll need to acquire new infrastructure for the new data center. And for that, we need to consult some architects, whether it's a VMware architect or some AWS and Azure architects. And we could come up with a workable blueprint that to use as a guideline so we can manage our infrastructure.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I am new to this company, but I worked with different solutions at my previous company, including vSAN and the traditional VMware vSphere setup. So I've been using vSAN for two years or three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    VMware vSAN is stable, although there's is some room for improvement. 

    How are customer service and support?

    I've been working with VMware technical support since I had my own company. It's pretty dependable because I used to work primarily with level three infrastructure support. We are the last escalation. I am one of the contact people between the company and the VMware vendor. The final escalations would be working with the vendor itself or some VMware engineer, whether it's vSAN, vSphere, Center, or anything else within the scope of our license.

    In my environment right now, we only handle a limited set of VMware products. These solutions are not perfect because we must apply patches and updates to deal with glitches and minor bugs. Byt I think vSAN will be reliable, especially if the after-sales support and engineers are excellent and could help us work seamlessly and comfortably.

    How was the initial setup?

    Our initial vSAN setup is a backup from Rubrik being thrown up to AWS for Glacier. But in the near term, maybe we could migrate that kind of solution in a more seamless and resilient way. That's what we're considering right now.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    VMware is quite expensive compared to Microsoft's Hyper-V. However, when you factor in flexibility and comparability of use, it's reasonable enough. For the high price of VMware, you get seamless operation and manageability. At the same time, I think VMware is lowering the price for its cloud-based solutions. And it's stable enough that some organizations might want to put part of their setup on the cloud and the other part on-premises. VMware's advantage is that they were already preparing for cloud solutions many years ago. 

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    There are several virtual solutions that I have hands-on experience with, including VMware, Hyper-V, and some open source software. I could only compare Microsoft and VMware. VMware is significantly more expensive than Microsoft, but I still prefer VMware because it's manageable and easy to set up.

    As a VMware customer, it's hard to judge the value I'm getting for the price in terms of operability and manageability. Then there are other factors, such as the amount of resources used. So when we're evaluating, we're not just looking at the price. We don't want to settle for something cheaper that might cost us some headaches.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate VMware vSAN seven out of 10. I prefer a traditional SAN storage solution. Right now, we're only using vSAN for small solutions. At the basic level, it's good enough because it operates the same way as the traditional setup. It's suitable for companies that are starting and might expand in the near future. For those use cases, vSAN is a great choice compared to Hyper-V. It's much easier to maintain. However, I haven't deployed vSAN for a larger configuration.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    VMware vSAN
    February 2023
    Learn what your peers think about VMware vSAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2023.
    685,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Infrastructure Security with 201-500 employees
    Real User
    Easy to use and straightforward to upgrade with helpful technical support available
    Pros and Cons
    • "The ease of use is great."
    • "The updating process could be easier."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily use the solution on Microsoft Windows Active Directory and loads of applications. Most of our stuff, over 90% of our servers, are on VMware.

    What is most valuable?

    The ease of use is great.

    The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. 

    Technical support is great.

    What needs improvement?

    The updating process could be easier. It's just a bit more complex. I don't update very often. It's something I do infrequently, and therefore, we haven't got that much experience with it. That said, this Lifecycle looks better. There's a new feature called Lifecycle, which is dealing with the issue sI mainly have.

    I haven't done an update yet with the new system. My understanding is it's an improvement from what I can see. 

    Guests that are pinned to hosts for various reasons, for antivirus or the backups should be able to be reported that they are being pinned, and also reported if things have snapshots. When you're doing certain things, they don't work so well if you've got snapshots on or if you've got things that are pinned. They can't move. When you're doing things, if there was something that was going to stop it from working that's within VMware, these should automatically be checked. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability of the product is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is good.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability is quite good. I don't know any others, to be honest. I've never used Hyper-V or any of the others. It's quite a de facto standard so I'm happy enough. I'm not informed as to how difficult or easy it is compared to others.

    We'd like to expand in the future. We've tried to utilize it for everything. We can't do that at the moment due to licensing. Not the VMware licensing. It's more due to Oracle.

    How are customer service and support?

    Technical support is very good. We have two places to get assistance. We have this vendor who supplied the new VMware and installed it and converted it, and we got another supplier who maintains everything and they're both very good. I'd recommend both of them.

    How was the initial setup?

    The last setup was an upgrade. It's not so complex as we had to upgrade an existing system. It's not overly complex. I'd rate the process at a four out of five. 

    The issues we had were mainly due to other things like the backup and data transfer. It wasn't actually to do so much with VMware itself and the other things. It was the transfer of data from one storage device to another and VMware wouldn't let us do it.

    The deployment took about two weeks. 

    What about the implementation team?

    We had a third party do it. They are a lot more experienced than us so we paid them for all the new hardware and we paid for them for the engineering to fit it and install it. We paid for them to convert from the old system to the new system - from the old VMware to the new VMware.

    Our experience with them was very good. They were extremely helpful.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I don't deal with the licensing. I can't speak to the costs involved.

    What other advice do I have?

    I work for the portrait gallery and we just serve our own people. We don't sell to the outside. I don't use it for outside organizations.

    I'd advise potential new users to ask around for different suppliers who do it, just do a proper tender on supplying, and just to watch out for, if you're upgrading, how your backup treats the upgrade. That's a problem we had. We have Veeam, which is VMware, however, we made a mistake on using a new machine and trying to move stuff across and Veeam made it more complicated, which we didn't realize would happen. It's caused some issues.

    Our experience was good, however, I haven't got enough experience with the outside vendors who do this as I only work for this company and we only do the upgrade once every three years or so. That said, I'd advise users to go with someone who's got a good background or reputation. 

    Overall, I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Director at SOFTLOGIC
    Real User
    Enables us to easily create and delete virtual servers
    Pros and Cons
    • "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."
    • "The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."

    What is most valuable?

    The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy.

    It is also easy to configure with the vCenter and the other solutions that we have. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering, and the new version includes different features that allow us to quickly see what happened if we shut down a virtual server. It is an arrays of disks. It works like a RAID file. You shut down one server and you can start the two others that work together.

    VMware vSAN is better than SimpliVity. We once tried to run SimpliVity, but it was difficult for us, because the people from HP were not easy to work with, the costs of their white papers where higher, and it was not as easy to deploy as VMware. VMware vSAN also costs for licensing, but it costs less than HPE SimpliVity and I'm not depending on the HP team. I can run it myself with my engineers.

    What needs improvement?

    The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using VMware vSAN for two and a half years.

    We are using version 6.7 and we are processing now to switch to 7.0 because we are testing the new version.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    VMware vSAN is a stable solution.

    We have made many tests, we have also shut down the servers and made an extraction of the disk and everything, and vSAN was very good.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    VMware vSAN is scalable, if you choose good servers at the beginning with many slots for disks, you can then add disks and extend the storage. You can add memory if you have good servers, and then you can enable your construction. But you have to choose good servers for production from the beginning.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    VMware has very good support. They have technical support which is divided into three areas. In each area you always have the one who can reply to you and they are really good at the technical support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We previously worked with Nutanix, which HP bought. At the beginning, we were also working with a free solution called KVM. There was no licensing cost with them, but there was also no real support and the customers were afraid of that. They wanted something that is known in the market. We also worked with Dell in the past.

    How was the initial setup?

    If you already work with vCenter and VMware, the initial setup is easy. The process is easy to understand and easy to configure. You just have to be sure that when you connect the servers with the LAN that everything is in 10 giga, then it will be easy to configure. You have to configure the root storage of the LAN and give it a switch.

    You have to configure everything from the beginning to make everything work, so you must have an expert on vSAN from your side and an expert for LAN on the other side.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I do think that VMware vSAN's cost could be lower.

    We pay for the license every year.

    The cost depends on your contract. The pricing for the government is not the best, but for each licensing, because its arrays are in your servers, it can cost $4,000 for each of the servers for a simple solution and up to $20,000 per server for vSAN solutions. It's very, very expensive.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    I am also working with Microsoft and Safe Key, another solution for the clustering, and I tried HPE SimpliVity for simple cluster and for multi-cluster. When I saw the costs of HPE SimpliVity for multi-cluster, there were two points that made me not feel good about it: the price and that when we needed more than 20 or 40 terabytes of data, the HP license was such that I could not use this solution alone. We had to use the HP team at the beginning.

    What other advice do I have?

    On a scale of one to ten I would give VMware vSAN an eight for the technology, eight for scalability, and a six for the price. Overall, I give it an eight.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Director - IT Strategy Lead at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 10
    We're able to manage multiple platforms with ease, and we were surprised at how fast it was implemented
    Pros and Cons
    • "The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."
    • "It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using it for a redundant, local front-end environment for our WiFi portal. We're also using it for critical backend services, our DCP instances, and our internal monitoring environments. We have instances inside that system right now.

    I believe we are using its latest update.

    What is most valuable?

    The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it. 

    It is pretty straightforward. We're able to manage multiple platforms with ease. In terms of the overhead of understanding how the entire platform is being administered, it was fairly quick for our team to get the hang of it.

    What needs improvement?

    It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins.

    We were trying to explore a solution for a hybrid setup, and VMware had proposed something, but we wanted to understand a deeper setup where our existing vSAN and our HCI environment can interact better with our platforms on the cloud in AWS. So, there should be those types of interactions wherein we can better explore cost-saving opportunities from some platforms in the cloud versus the one that we have on-prem.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for more than two years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It has been a pretty stable system so far.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We had a long discussion with our vendor partner about a plan to scale up the system. They gave us several options, but we ended up with the most cost-effective one where we had to trim down some of the node requirements that we were planning to buy initially.

    How are customer service and support?

    We had an experience with them recently, and the correspondence with the technical support from VMware was fairly quick. It was aligned with the expected SLA. There were no major issues with the support people who assisted us during that time.

    How was the initial setup?

    It was fairly straightforward. We were surprised at how fast it was implemented. The entire implementation took about two weeks. After that, it was turned over to us, and then we planned on the migration of the platforms from our old converged environment into this new environment.

    In terms of the maintenance, apart from the normal operational maintenance that we're doing, we always ensure that there is a back-to-back maintenance agreement with VMware and the vendor partner who sold us the solution. So far, there has been very low admin maintenance on the platform. There have been no major issues except the last one where one node got affected by a power problem in the data center. That's just about it.

    What about the implementation team?

    We worked with a vendor partner for its implementation. Right now, in our team, we have around five admins who work with this solution.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    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.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    When we were exploring an HCI solution, we zoned in on the VMware vSAN, HPE solution, and Nutanix solution. 

    What other advice do I have?

    I would recommend this solution to others. It is easy to implement, scale, and maintain. The operational work required to maintain the platform is not that difficult.

    I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Country Manager at Gilat Satellite Networks
    Real User
    Top 5Leaderboard
    Expensive solution that requires professional services for installation and implementation
    Pros and Cons
    • "We didn't only choose vSAN; we chose VMware because of SR-IOV, which is more on the hypervisor level and not on the vSAN storage. It's part of the whole system."
    • "There could be more features with the automatic backup."

    What is our primary use case?

    I'm running an application that's running under a virtual machine on vSAN. That vSAN environment is only for this specific application. We didn't only choose vSAN; we chose VMware because of SR-IOV, which is more on the hypervisor level and not on the vSAN storage. It's part of the whole system.

    The solution is deployed on-prem.

    There are seven users in my organization. They are all in IT roles.

    What needs improvement?

    There could be more features with the automatic backup.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using this solution for a year and a half. I'm still using the solution with a bigger environment, not vSAN.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It's stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The solution is scalable.

    How are customer service and support?

    Technical support is bad. They pointed me to professional services, and I had to pay someone when I already had the basic support agreement. I think we took the standard support agreement with VMware.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I'm still using a different solution. I only took two servers with vSAN to support one application that needs one feature that only VMware has. If not for that feature, I wouldn't touch VMware.

    Now, I'm looking at products like Nutanix, Silver Peak, Flexione, and FortiGate. For products that I choose, I don't need a specialist of that vendor. In VMware, I need a specialist in VMware.

    That's the issue I have with VMware. It's not like I can take any IT person, and they will know what to do. I need to make sure he will do the call, get the certificate and time to practice.

    How was the initial setup?

    Initial setup was complex. I would rate the complexity a 5 on a scale of 1 to 5.

    For an experienced IT person, it isn't that complex. But if I compare it to the  competition, Nutanix would be a 1, and VMware would be a 5. If you have never touched Nutanix, VMware is not that complex. But if I compare it to Nutanix, it's complex.

    Deployment of VMware vSAN took four days.

    What about the implementation team?

    We used a third party for deployment. We didn't have a good experience with them.

    The person didn't have knowledge in VMware, and we had to pay someone to do the installation, and they said things like, "We need this. We need a certificate. We need another VLAN. We need another number."

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would rate this solution 4 out of 10. 

    For my needs on virtual machine and HCI, which is hyperconverged infrastructure, I have another solution that costs less and gives me better features. When it comes to one feature that only VMware supports, I had to pay. They have the patents, and they have things that only they can do. But I work in the telecom world, and we give services to a lot of companies. On my infrastructure, there are more than 80 million people using the infrastructure on a daily basis. Most of it is not VMware, and I'm so happy.

    For the last two years, Gartner and even Nutanix have been above VMware.

    My advice is to be sure you really need it, as there are other vendors in the market that give good solutions. Nutanix and Hyper-V give a solution that is good for most cases in the market. If I take the business world, 80% of the businesses in the world will be okay with other vendors and they cost less. 

    My environment is 26 physical servers that aren't VMware and two physical servers that are VMware.

    Previously, we had 400 servers, and only five of them were VMware. When you look in the market, you know the better solution for your needs. No one in the world has been fired or lost their job for purchasing Cisco; it's the name. It's the same with VMware; it's just too expensive.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Head of network and web at a maritime company with 501-1,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    Good performance and pricing but needs load balancing features
    Pros and Cons
    • "Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues."
    • "Hardware load balancing is available on the enterprise version of the solution, however, it's extremely expensive and therefore out of our budget."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are mainly using the solution for our Windows environment. 

    What is most valuable?

    We're largely happy with the solution overall. 

    The performance has been good in general.

    The initial setup is simple.

    Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues.

    The pricing is decent.

    What needs improvement?

    We are looking for more load balancing at an application level.

    For the hardware level, we're looking at some other solutions. For example, we're checking out Nutanix and Sangfor. 

    We've had issues with load balancing. Suppose, for example, if the physical ESXi host is down, the virtual machine you have handle manually. We need to have load balancing and RAM and processor balancing also.

    Hardware load balancing is available on the enterprise version of the solution, however, it's extremely expensive and therefore out of our budget.

    In general, we're looking for more features. This solution doesn't really offer us that much.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We've been using the solution for three to four years at this point.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We had some issues about a year ago with stability. We took the problem to support and they were able to resolve whatever the issue was. It's been stable since then, and we haven't had issues with bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    My colleague and I are the IT people, and we are managing vSAN for the most part. We haven't necessarily attempted to scale the solution at all. Therefore, it would be hard to say how easy or difficult the process is or how scalable in general the product is.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We've used technical support in the past to resolve issues, and they have been very helpful and responsive They were able to fix any problems we've had. We're quite satisfied with them. They've been very good, very helpful.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is not complex. It's very simple and very straightforward. 

    While we handle the maintenance ourselves in-house, we have the option of calling our integration partner if we run into any issues.

    What about the implementation team?

    We had an integration partner that came in and assisted us with the initial implementation. We did not handle it completely in-house. They were very helpful.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The pricing is mid-range. It's pretty good compared to other options. Everything is included. There are no additional or hidden costs.

    The enterprise version, however, is very, very high. Currently, we are using the standard version. To move to the enterprise level, there is a big price jump.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We're currently evaluating Nutanix and Sangfor as options to replace VMware in our organization. We want more load balancing and therefore are looking for a solution that could potentially offer us that.

    What other advice do I have?

    We are just a customer and an end-user.

    I'd recommend the solution to other organizations.

    I would rate it at a seven out of ten. We've been happy with it for the most part, however, we are looking at other options that offer more features. The standard version just isn't giving us enough of what we need. That said, it;'s a good product.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Head of IT-Department at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
    Real User
    Top 10
    Fast and stable with good integration capabilities
    Pros and Cons
    • "We had very good access to technical support."
    • "The ability to access SAN environments with fiber channels (or even NVMe) would be a good addition."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily used the solution for development, tests and UAT proposals. We did initially run it without backup and later added Commvault.

    How has it helped my organization?

    introducing vSAN dramatically increased the speed for deployment and decomissioning VMs for developers without the requierement to involve storage team

    What is most valuable?

    When we started using vSAN, the speed (performance) of the solution was dramatically higher than the speed of our production systems. 

    The integration with the rest of the DVM suite is great as always. The look and feel for the administrators is like a classic virtualization environment and it cannot be better. 

    The solution is very easy to set up. 

    The stability is good.

    We had very good access to technical support.

    What needs improvement?

    The ability to access SAN environments via fiber channel (or even NVMe) would be a good addition.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    While I do not currently use the product in my new company, I used the solution up until I left my former company. I had used it for nearly six years up until then.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    In my former company, we had a direct technical account manager. We were very satisfied with the level of assistance we were able to get when we needed it. 

    But you have to consider the level of support you purchase and the amount of systems covered by this support - of course a TAM isn't effordable for each and every company.

    How was the initial setup?

    It was easy to set up. 

    If I would have introduce vSAN in an environment without any existing VMWare virtualization deployment and with the intention to expand to cloud based resoruces as a next step, I would not choose the product itself, I would do it with Dell and would implement the VxRail, what is actually vSAN based, it's the same product, however, in the end, you have better services. If you cover hardware and software management as well underneath one GUI, it's better for the administrators.

    In the past deployment, it took us about a week to set everything up and to get everything up and running. We did need this week to bring up two 6 node clusters and today, these original six node clusters both expanded to 16 nodes on both sides.

    What other advice do I have?

    We had a vSAN at my last company. I started my employment here at this new company one month ago and we do not have VMware products at all. Previously, I worked with vSAN simply as a customer and an end-user.

    I've used many versions of the solution. We started shortly before the 6.0 came out. We may have started with vSAN 5.5. That was the first version we ever used, and then we upgraded again and again over the years.

    I'd advise those considering the solution to think and plan before you simply do. You should do an accounting of what capacities, what performance, which backup you require or have. Do you need redundancy? Do you need network isolation? All the steps that normal people do afterwards should be done before you do it. Everything is about planning.

    I'd give the solution a perfect ten out of ten rating. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free VMware vSAN Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: February 2023
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    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free VMware vSAN Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.