VMware vSAN Reviews

Some of the most valuable features of VSAN include the ability to be able to provision and grow your storage as you need to without a very large upfront cost. Also the ability to be able to carry along the licenses as part of a refresh as opposed to traditional storage systems, you end up losing that investment after every single refresh which usually occurs every three to five years.

The great thing about VSAN in terms of resiliency and recoverability is the fact that with policy-based storage, you can actual decide what level of recoverability you want, what level of redundancy you want. This no longer the case of trying to figure out complex RAID-systems or anything like that. You set the policy, and you will get the level of redundancy and resiliency that you want. Something that has been in the enterprise space for quite sometime, with some of the more expensive arrays, now you can bring it down into the commercial even the mid-market space. That's pretty amazing.

For scalability of VSAN, I mean, you've seen the blog post out there. They've taken up to four million IOPS. In terms of scalability, we haven't seen any roof, any limit, any ceiling to the scalability there. We are extremely surprised that VSAN has been able to keep up with solutions that are four or five times more expensive.

The technical support for VSAN has been really surprising in a good way. In our experience, there are very few vendors that take full ownership of a problem when it occurs. What VMware has done is that whenever there is a VSAN issue or a question, as long as the hardware is on the hardware compatibility list, they took full ownership. They escalate with the hardware vendor. It's really one throat to choke. Where else can you say that?

We've been a VMware partner for quite sometime. When VSAN was announced, we were actually working with the beta. We decided that this is really the track that we want to follow because we believe in the software-defined data center. Everything is becoming software-defined. For us to not do the same thing with storage when we're doing it with networking and with compute, it just really doesn't make sense. The same kind of savings had been brought by server virtualization, the same kind of flexibility, agility, that can also be applied to storage. So, it just seems like the next natural place to go. For us as a VMware-focused partner, it made sense to get on board with VSAN right from the get-go.

Previously before VSAN, we're using a whole host of different technologies because there were a lot of corner cases where we would have to use an enterprise array. Other times we would end up using something that's a little bit smaller. What VSAN has done is, not only bridge some of the gaps that we had in storage before, but it's allowed us to replace a lot of solutions that didn't really meet the needs perfectly. Here we've got a more custom-fit that we can provide our customers and be able to address about 80% of customer's needs.

From a cost-benefit perspective, especially in regards to TCO, total cost of ownership, CFOs, CEOs that are looking to really cut down the cost of their storage systems because that's becoming a larger part of their overall IT budget. This uncontrolled cost is running along the same lines with the uncontrolled growth and data. So, you know, when more and more of that IT budget is going to storage, you have CFOs, CEOs looking to try to control those costs. What VSAN allows us to do is give them an enterprise-class array, enterprise-class solution at usually half the cost of the traditional arrays.

I would easily give it a 9, because 10 would be perfect and nothing is perfect. After the next few releases, who knows? Maybe that 10 will happen.

For people who are evaluating bringing VSAN into their environment, one of the most important things to do is really get an idea of what the performance the requirements are and what workloads are going to go into that environment. That's best done with an assessment. Right now, VMware partners are providing a assessment service for VSAN. That's a great jumping off point to make sure that the VSAN implementation is going to go as expected and have an immediate win.

Scalability, and flexibility.

My conversations, now, have to do with trying to help customers on how to grow with VSAN.

It offers a lower cost of growth for a lot of our customers. They can meet immediate needs, but don’t need to spend a lot of money now. Balancing between capital budget and operational budget, instead of buying SAN to SAN, they can buy what they need now and then have operational costs after that.

If you don't have vRealize Operations, it would detract from usability of VSAN. It allows our customers to see more granularly than other storage solutions.

Never used. Last week, I got in touch with a channel partner, and he talked about different tools and different things they had implemented. Our team excited about it because there we don’t have many resources, but now we have with channel partner.

We set it up for our healthcare customer with our in-house team only.

Look outside of upfraont costs, because it’ll be equivalent to Nutanix. Its biggest value is its scalability. You can buy a little bit, and not a whole infrastructure box when you want to grow. Customers can just spin up half a dozen additional hosts quickly of they want.

I have a lot of confidence in it, but it’s a challenge to convince customers because they’re intrigued but don’t want to take the steps. All the specs and concept of having storage within servers is interesting to customers, but not ready to pull trigger. If we can sell more with Horizon, then licenses included for pricing, and must refresh hosts anyways.

VMware vSAN is easy to implement in a VMware environment and it is not expensive.

The architecture of vSAN is not good. vSAN works with objects, such as disks, and it causes problems with availability. When we send users caches we lose the total cache disk of the group. It's really a red line for using vSAN. We don't lose all the data because it is replicated in other groups, but when the object is lost in one group, we only have one remaining and this creates a higher risk of losing data.

Another is the restrictions of using deduplication and compression, it requires all-flash for it meaning that deduplication is on for all clusters and you can't control it for specific ones. I would like VMware vSAN to give hybrid configurations more caches and to add deduplication and compression for hybrid configurations.

I have been using VMware vSAN for a year.

The architecture of VMware vSAN is a major issue with stability. 

There have been no problems with scalability of this solution.

The initial set up of VMware vSAN is easy. The implementation requires just one click and VMware will take care of the rest.

VMware vSAN is not expensive. We compare it with Nutanix and the discounts from VMware are really good for vSAN.

If you want vSAN it is important that you understand all sides of the solution and have the right hardware solution. For example, you should consider if you need reliable disks for cache and split it into more clusters or groups.

I would give this solution a five out of 10.

The majority of our customers already vSphere in their infrastructure, so we usually upgrade the infrastructure by adding new hardware, or we migrate to a hyperconverged solution with vSAN ReadyNode and VxRail in some cases.

The vSAN storage cluster is the most interesting feature.

Many VMware products are specialized, where one solution does one thing and another does something else. It would be better if VMware consolidated these products and offered modules or add-ons instead of selling 10 different solutions.

Also, a vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array. Deduplication and compression work better with an all-flash array, so I think that VMware should give customers the option to activate and support this feature for hybrid arrays. Other products like Nutanix support this.

We first implemented vSAN about three or four years ago.

We had some complaints about the recent firmware update. 

I think vSAN is more scalable than some solutions we've tried. We don't have the same issues as we do with VxRail. It's less of a concern because the software is more independent of the hardware.

I've never had to contact support. 

Our engineers have a lot of experience with vSAN, so we think it's easy to implement. One person is usually enough to set up the solution and apply updates. 

I rate VMware vSAN eight out of 10. In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent. It causes fewer disruptions from changing the administration. You need about the same amount of knowledge and expertise as vSphere.

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. 

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. 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

We primarily use the solution for virtualization for our organization.

The solution is easy to manage due to the fact that it uses the same dashboard as Center.

vSAN is okay for HCI.

The solution fits well with my requirements. 

The stability is good.

The product can scale.

I have always found the technical support to be helpful and responsive. 

So far, the solution is okay with me. 

It would be ideal if the solution offered some intelligent monitoring. Right now, most of these features are in another subscription such as Log Insight.

I've used the solution for three years. 

The stability has been very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We currently have ten people that directly use the solution in our organization. 

The scalability is simple. It's very easy to scale the HCI node.

We rarely use technical support. We might use them for consulting purposes sometimes if, for example, we have a new system and then we are concerned that it might or might not be running on vSAN. We might need them to probe it first. So far, we have been satisfied with the level of support we get.

I was not a part of the implementation process and therefore cannot speak to how easy or difficult it may be. 

The solution has very few maintenance requirements. Occasionally, they may recommend a fix or patch by updating it, and we do so. However, other than that, it's pretty simple to maintain.

Normally we use a local system integrator or distributor to do the setup for us.

The pricing is competitive with other vendors. It's mid-range in terms of pricing. It's not cheap and it's not overly expensive.

We are a customer and an end-user.

We are using the latest version of the solution at this time. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users. It's easy to deploy and great for virtualization. 

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for 95% of our hyper-converged infrastructure deployments.

The solution is very stable.

The installation is very easy. The deployment is fast and only takes, at a maximum, 2 days.

The scaling could be a bit better.

The monitoring capabilities could be improved. It would be ideal if clients didn't need to monitor the solution on a daily basis.

I've been using the solution for about five years at this point. It's been a while. 

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. the performance has been good.

We do have plans to continue to work with the solution. However, we do not use the solution ourselves. We are integrators. Deployments and their sizes depend on the clients.

We have about 60 to 100 clients that use the solution.

The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult. It's very straightforward and very simple to set up.

It took us about two days to deploy the product.

We had about five people who handled the deployment.

We did not need the help of a consultant or integrator. We are integrators ourselves. We were able to handle everything in-house with our own team.

I can't speak to the licensing arrangements or specific costs of the product.

We are integrators and a partner to the vendor.

We are working with the latest version of the solution at this time.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. Our clients are pretty happy with it overall.

I'd recommend it to other users and companies. 

We are service providers. 

vSan is a system with defined storage, it doesn't work on a public cloud. It works and is built in your private cloud.

The most valuable features are Erasure Coding, Deduplication, and Compression, and the advancement in stretching regarding replication.

They should provide Deduplication and Compression over the hybrid drives. The Deduplication and Compression are locally only on all flash drives.

When you compare with Nutanix, you will find the performance in the Deduplication and Compression is over hybrid and on the flash drives. This feature is needed in vSan.

I have been working with VMware vSan for five years.

We are using the latest version.

VMware vSAN is very stable.

It's scalable up to 96 nodes. We have over 500 users in our company who are using this solution.

VMware technical support is remarkable.

We did not work with a similar software preciously. We were working with traditional solutions such as storage, and servers, but not software-defined storage like vSAN.

The vSAN is very easy to deploy.

To deploy a full cluster in a data center, can take four hours.

We are all engineers. We don't need a team to maintain this solution, as everyone services themselves.

The price could be lower. vSAN has many versions with standard and advanced including Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Regarding the Enterprise and the Advanced, it could be lower.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.