VMware vSAN Reviews

It is precisely the possibility of being able to extend the capacities of the cluster of storage and calculation by the simple addition of one or more physical server which makes us lean on this solution in a secure way.

Moreover, with the storage policy, we were able to create different security policies depending on the virtual machines according to their needs for performance or availability.

The most important functionality is the ability to extend cluster storage and cluster computing power securely without loss of data. Also, the ability to set up an extended cluster on multiple sites in a much simpler and easier way than with a traditional storage solution.

This product is usable in many cases. It can be used for a wide range of applications.

It is also possible, for example, to parameterize a stretch cluster at the very least without going to a costly solution based on conventional storage, such as MetroCluster, or another solution of the same level.

No, for the moment, we have not had any unpleasantness related to stability from the time the technical prerequisites are met (hardware in the VMware Compatibility Guide, par example), as well as best practice to design.

No. It's no problem. To be honest, we have not upgraded any vSAN infrastructure to date.

I just had to increase the capacity of a cluster in production by a simple addition of hosts, from the moment the compatibility with the existing one has been checked, there are no problems.

Adding this very simply by drag and drop from the host to the vSAN cluster, beforehand, the host must be placed in maintenance mode. Then, we have more than to add the HDD and SSD to the cluster vSAN in place -- either they are claimed automatically or manually. It all depends on the cluster configuration.

I have never had to contact VMware technical support.

No, I didn’t use other solutions previously, because converged solutions are new technologies and I knew VMware Technology's reputation. But, I am developing other competencies, especially with Nutanix Technology.

From the moment you're used to the VMware vSphere Web Client interface, there are no problems.

The activation is really simple, since it is done with a simple click if one can stay at the level of the parameters of the cluster VMware vSphere.

Then, depending on the number of hosts in the cluster, it will be possible to define a certain number of Fault Domains, that is to say, a quantity of permissible hosts losses, for example.

Moreover, depending on the amount of RAM available in each host and the amount of SSD, we can define one or more Disk Group, as well as host more or fewer objects. But this is more a question of design, which must intervene upstream of course.

The biggest difficulty lies in the design of the solution in order to be closer to the Service-Level Agreement of the company. There are a lot of possibilities according to the number of fault domain one wishes to have, if one makes vSAN on a site or multi-site, the degree of protection of virtual machines, etc,

Basically, vSAN is a license in addition to that of the classic VMware Vsphere, which is also mandatory.

The easiest way is to get closer to VMware directly; it's much simpler and easier.

Yes, at the time, like everyone else, we looked at the classic option, storage bay with SSD caches, but the prices were not necessarily interesting.

Moreover, it requires knowing all the management consoles and specificities related to particular types of storage, network, and infrastructure.

With the use of VMware vSAN, we have not had this worry, since by mastering the VMware vSphere Web Client, I manage all from a single interface, and it is very simple.

Today, I am looking at Nutanix products, and other VxRAIL, and the goal is to identify a concurrent product which can interest us.

Test the product before implementation to see if it fits your needs. Above all, be careful with technical prerequisites and other technical constraints.

To be accompanied by the pre-sales of editor would be the simplest.

Most importantly, the interface is simple, but it is clear that bad handling can have unfortunate consequences.

A simple example: 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.

The most valuable features are:

• Automation
• RecoverPoint for VMware
• Self-healing capability

In a production environment, these features ramp up the provisioning, security and provides faster deployment.

There is not much improvement needed. If you work with the HC Platform, vSAN is not directly touched, i.e., once the HC appliance takes care of it.

I have worked with VxRail, which is a Hyper converged Platform, as it has vSAN embedded as well as it is fully automated the vSAN configuration.

As I did not work with the implementation, but the analyses of functionalities of VxRAIL, would be unfair tell how vSAN would be improved.

I have used this solution for nine months (but only for sales proposal, it has not been implemented, just technical sales information).

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Always when I was in need of any technical support, I was promptly answered by them.

As I have worked with the HC Platform, the setup was very simple and easy.

For Latin America, the costs are very higher; even if you go deep on functionalities, but still it is sellable.

Work hard on the sizing matters.

Easy to configure vSAN. I have configured with in 30 minutes. IOPS is comparatively best to run VDI solution. Policy based profiling is a best advantage. Recently VMware launched iscsi support for vSAN is an added advantage.

2 months back we started using this.

Yes. MTU settings will be vary depending upon network switch.

No.

No.

9

I haven't contacted any technical support.

Earlier customer has used Netapp and EMC storages, In that they faced issues on stability and scalablity.

Its straightforward.

I have deployed this solution to end customer.

Not yet calculated

Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors

No

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).

Firstly, I want to offer an example in terms of the deployment process and manageability of the vSAN storage environment. vSphere admins can handle all infra tasks and, due to policy based storage, we can manage the I/O performance as well.

vSAN health monitoring has room for improvement because they have many known and unknown bugs which may be resolved in a future release version.

We are using it for the last two and a half years, and started working with vSAN 5.5 and drives file system 1 and in the last six months it has been upgraded to vSAN version 6.2 and drive file system 3.

Yes, in some of cases after I have built a big vSAN cluster of 64 nodes, all hosts start showing different network partition groups. In that case, without correction, you can’t go further on next level.

In scalability I didn’t face any issues.

I can give them an 8 out of ten because it is a game-changing technology so we need to add more vSAN engineers to our team.

In my past experience, I didn’t use policy based storage; I always worked with standard storage.

Initial setup is straightforward but somehow we need to understand the high level topology and way of working with it.

In terms of pricing and licensing, we need to understand the requirements of the project and the cost model as well, because that has a very important effect on our project delivery.

Nutanix and VxRail because these also serve the same function.

The feature that is most valuable is the simplicity of implementation, as you only have to enable the feature on the already existing cluster(s).

For a PaaS platform which I’ve developed, the scalability of VMware vSAN was a necessary feature enabling us to grow with the onboard customers.

Although the product is very scalable, it is not scalable in a way that the different host sizes can effectively be added to an existing cluster. All the hosts/disk configuration have to be consistent, for a consistent performance experience.

I’ve been using VMware vSAN for about two years, i.e., since VMware vSAN 6.0 was released.

The stability of VMware vSAN 6.0 is good. You sometimes have to resynchronize the data over the cluster (which is a single button task).

As stated earlier, all the hosts have to be exactly the same for a consistent performance experience, which limits the scalability of the product. Also, the computer and storage components within the HCI solution are linked to each other, it’s not possible to add only storage nodes.

The documentation of VMware vSAN is good. I’ve had no experience with VMware support regarding vSAN.

I haven’t used a different HCI solution before.

The initial setup is really straightforward, you only have to enable it on the VMware cluster. But, before the initial setup you will have to check the HCL of vSAN for the compatibility of the different components. With VMware vSAN-ready nodes, this process is made simple, but it still is something you have to take into consideration.

VMware vSAN is licensed per CPU and the cost is to the other VMware (and Microsoft) products. VMware vSAN is reasonably priced, but with the addition of more nodes to the cluster, the needed CPU licenses (for VMware/Microsoft/etc.) are increasing rapidly, which makes it an expensive solution.

I’ve looked at HPE SimpliVity, but it has a special hardware requirement whereby it failed in terms of the project requirements.

Use VMware vSAN for special use-cases only and don’t use it as an all-purpose storage solution.

Use VMware vSAN for VDI, small VSI, and dev-test environments. Don’t use it for messaging/database solutions as the licensing costs are huge.

VNF apps.

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.

Hardware supported by VMware vSAN: The list of hardware supported should be increased in the future. I would improve these areas by increasing the number of partners to support as many as possible.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is perfect. VMware provides some of the best support in the market.

We had no previous solution.

With a good hardware design, the setup is straightforward.

I have no advice about pricing.

We evaluated Cisco vSAN.

It is easy to design and deploy to react to a changing environment.

• HA
• No physical SAN overhead

Having high availability without the need for a full vCentre/host license is a plus that, along with not needing a physical SAN, makes this solution great when you need functionality without the extra overhead of additional hardware and licences.

It accelerated our P2V plan.

There are bugs in the SAN Health Check utility. It misreports latency issues when the hosts are actual within the correct tolerances. I have been on the phone with VMware about this and they have said it’s a bug.

I have used it for 10 months.

I have not encountered any stability issues yet.

We have not crossed this bridge yet.

So far, technical support is 8/10.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was straightforward.

Licensing is fairly straightforward.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Take a look at the network requirements and use 10GbE.

• Allows for very easy administration
• You don't have LUNs to set up and assign
• The ability to set up storage policies and assign them at the disk level
• Allows for different setups for different workload requirements

• Allows for the expansion of our public library patron computer environment into a three-node VMware cluster using commodity servers
• Eliminates the need for expensive disk arrays and controllers
• Provides greater reliability and performance

We have been using vSAN in one environment for about eight months and in another environment for about four months.

The only issue I encountered during deployment was with the hardware and not with vSAN itself.

The disks in the new servers were installed at the factory as RAID disks. I had to mark them as non-RAID disks so that vSAN would be able to see them correctly in order to add them to disk groups.

There have been no issues with stability.

We have had no issues with scalability.

Fortunately, I have not had to contact support for any issues with my implementations.

We chose VMware vSAN for these reasons:

• It is part of the ESXi kernel. This allows for the product to be very fast with little overhead.
• It is included in the Enterprise Plus version of ESXi. Compared with competing products, it provides great cost savings.

We have a Nutanix environment running in production as well.

The initial setup was straightforward as was learning the vSAN environment.

The complexity comes in setting up and managing the storage policies. These can be simple or complex depending on the environment.

When using VMware Horizon View, there are several storage policies that are auto-created and managed. Creating and managing your own policies and rule sets depend on your needs and workloads.

VMware vSAN is included in the enterprise plus level of software that we purchased. Our cost savings were due to buying commodity server hardware with local hard drives instead of investing in large SAN hardware.