VMware vSAN Reviews

VMware comes with different stacks like VMware Cloud Foundation, which is integrated with different VMware modules. There's interoperability between VMware products. 

Another good feature is that you can create profiles for each VM. You can mirror one set of VMs according to another set of VMs. You can also define the quality of service for that profile.

I would like to see more support for applications. I think currently it only supports applications between two vSAN clusters. I heard that VMware is planning to have applications using vSAN at the hypervisor layer. I'm not sure whether it's available or it's being planned for the next release. I would prefer it to be on the storage layer than on the hypervisor layer.

I've been working with VMware vSAN for two years.

I haven't had any issues with the stability of VMware vSAN.

I haven't had any issues with scalability, but I think historically it supports only 64 nodes. It's a VMware limitation, but in our deployment in Sri Lanka, hardly any customers use that many nodes. If you consider that aspect, then scalability is okay. The largest customer we have here uses two nodes.

For Nutanix, there is no such limit as far as I know.

I'm not happy with the VMware support. There are so many delays attributed to different reasons, like when you transfer the case from one engineer to the other, the second engineer is not aware of what the first engineer has done, so we need to update the second engineer from the beginning. 

Their response is also not that fast. We have seen that sometimes the competency of the backend engineers is not that high, and because of that VMware support is a bit of a concern for us. Apart from that, I don't have many issues with the product.

Setup is not that difficult. We have had a few issues with the implementation. Initial setup is not as straightforward as Nutanix.

Compared to Nutanix, the design of VMware vSAN is probably the highest in the marketplace in terms of market penetration. I think it's number one, and Nutanix is not that far behind.

From an upgrade perspective, it's not as straightforward compared to a Nutanix. You need to do a lot of checks and balances before you do the upgrade. With Nutanix, you don't need to worry about it at all, probably because those nodes are coming from Nutanix itself. Because of that, they kind of keep everything to a single file where all these checks will be done initially when you run it. With vSAN, the server could be coming from different vendors like HP or Huawei. So it won't be that easy to come up with a single package to check all of these formula licenses because the upgrade is not that smooth compared to Nutanix.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

My advice is to plan well which workload you're going to use for VMware vSAN. Not all workloads are suitable for VMware vSAN. Before using VMware vSAN, you should consider implementation planning, network sites, and group layout.

We primarily use the solution for remote offices as well as medium-sized businesses.

The solution works well to help businesses simplify their administration. They unify the technology in boxes like vSAN. You see the performance improvements in the configuration with All-Flash.

The solution's unified administration is its most valuable aspect.

Our customers like the HCI functionality, and tiering. My customers enjoy the portion of the solution that can improve the performance of virtual machines

There isn't too much learning involved when picking up the system.

The solution could maybe improve failure protection. The failure protection for vSAN is very expensive sometimes within the clients. The customers want to be able to tolerate two or three nodes in failure. However, sometimes, the budget is limited. Implementing hyper-converged solutions sometimes are very expensive with the dozens of tolerance of failure.

I've been using the solution for at least the last 12 months.

In terms of vSAN functionality for stability, I haven't had any client complaints. It seems to work as it is supposed to. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze at all. Our customers are happy.

Sometimes our clients find the scalability to be lacking and it affects performance. They're not sure, if they scale up, how much performance they will have left afterward.

Our clients are small to medium-sized businesses typically. They aren't to big.

I'm not sure if any of our clients plan to increase usage. It's hard to predict, due to the pandemic situation. The majority of my customers don't have plans to upgrade or acquire some additional equipment.

I'm usually in pre-sales and therefore don't have any experience with VMware support. I've never personally reached out to them.

The company does, however, offer good documentation.

We also sell other solutions. We aren't exclusively using VMware. We also, for example, sell HP solutions. We also work with UHCI with Nimble and SimpliVity and with Cisco, with Nexus, Huawei, or hyper-convergence solutions like Cisco HyperFlex.

My customers typically choose VMware as it is a known platform. The main deciding factor seems to be knowledge of the product itself.

The initial setup isn't too complex. It's pretty straightforward. The entire implementation process, in fact, is very simple.

If I have an infrastructure already in place then deploy it, the configuration of vSAN will take less than an hour. If the implementation is happening from the scratch, with new equipment, then it will take four hours approximately.

We are a partner of VMware.

Customers considering the solution should be aware that the principal benefits they will get from the solution include integration with HCI, NSX, and cloud solutions.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine ut of ten. We've had a good experience overall and our clients are happy with the product.

Our primary use case of this solution is for performance storage and management, we are a training center. I'm the information and communication technology trainer and we have a  partnership with VMware vSan. 

The solution allows our technicians to deploy multiple lab environments for different classes at any time, without requiring any manual installation.

This solution has provided us with good performance, something we were looking for as well as integration with deployment tools. One of our main aims is to be able to deploy lab environments in an automated fashion and the product enables us to do that, providing more agility in regards to a virtual machine. We can respond to different needs, but every virtual machine will use the same storage.

I'd like to see improvement in the troubleshooting tools, specifically the troubleshooting mechanism. We like the product, but once in a while there are problems that require us to reboot the host to fix things, and that creates an impact on production. 

For additional features, I'd like to see a better monitoring tool. 

I've been using this solution for 14 years. 

It's pretty stable most of the time, but you need to make sure your hardware is supported and is compatible.

Scalability of the solution is easy, you simply have a new host and provide a few contributions and then compute. We only have a few people using this product. 

We don't use the technical support, we troubleshoot problems ourselves.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Make sure your hardware is up to date and make sure you test beforehand. It's a good idea to try and combine the solution with some third party products, such as products for automation.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

Within our organization, there are many people using VMware vSAN.

It's completely hyper-converged, so it's very convenient. We get everything in a bundle.

It should be easier to use. Only trained people can properly use it. For untrained, system administrators, it's tough to get a firm understanding of the basics, that's why I'm still studying it.

I have been using this solution for two years.

VMware vSAN is both scalable and stable.

If I have an issue, their technical support team helps me.

For me personally, the initial setup was not straightforward; I struggled quite a bit.

In preparation, I had to study a lot about the documentation, etc. It took at least one week to complete that.

I would definitely recommend this solution, but be sure to study or complete part of the VMware documentation before you start implementing it.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

The primary use case is for VDI. In fact, we have created what's called a virtual research desktop with VDI, which is insulated because we're dealing with HIPAA data. I think it has performed pretty well.

I like the fact that I've got some degree of redundancy built in and, of course, the performance is great.

It would be much improved if we could somehow integrate a better backup with it. Right now, we're using Veeam and it's okay, but I would like more of a VDP vSAN solution. That would be excellent. The VDP, at least the last time we looked at, it was just not quite there.

I was a little bit worried about the stability initially, because I had an experience about three years ago and I wasn't very happy. But so far, it looks pretty good. I'm actually very surprised that its stability has been improved significantly. So far, so good.

I would have liked it to have been more scalable. It's scalable but not as much as, for example, the ScaleIO systems were or the Kaminario. We looked at Kaminario but that was a risky technology, so we didn't want to go there. I think vSAN is okay. It could use a bit more work on the scalability. I think that's key.

I have not had to use technical support myself but my team has. One of the things that I've heard from my team is that, even when they run into significant issues, they have to go through the whole order of support, and they get frustrated. They get a level-one guy or girl, and that person knows less than my team members do, so that's frustrating. When they get to a level-two or level-three, it's okay.

We were using Compellent. I was okay with it, but it wasn't performing as well as I would've liked and, certainly, the expense and scaling the thing was just too expensive. The other issue was that the natural redundancy you can build with vSAN, you can't really build that with Compellent, unless you have at least two of them. With two you can replicate between them, but, again, they are expensive systems.

When selecting a vendor, what's important to me is a partnership. That sums it up. To me, a vendor has to go in with us for the long haul. We can help the vendor and the vendor can help us. We can help each other out. To me, a partnership is key.

So far, we've been able to replace two Compellents which have cost an arm and a leg. And they're just not as performant as the vSAN. So the ROI has been good.

Let's put it this way: I think the VDI/vSAN has replaced quite a few of our desktops or laptops. Over the course of time, give us another year or two, I think the ROI will be very significant.

While vSAN performs pretty well, when we were doing all the performance tests, ScaleIO did pretty well. In fact, it did better than vSAN, but we liked vSAN better because it was more integrated with our VMware environment, obviously. We chose it and we're happy with it.

The hybrid storage strategy is not the best thing you can do; for example, when you're mixing standard drives and flash drives, SSDs. Do all SSDs if you can afford it. 

I give vSAN an eight out of ten. It can stand some improvement, but it's much better than it was three years ago when I looked at it.

In a lot of cases, the primary use case for vSAN is in small to medium businesses, where they may not have the space or the funds for an actual storage array to provide a shared storage medium for their virtual environment. And even if they do, they may not have the expertise to maintain that and a separate network. vSAN gives them the ability to make use of storage they already own, across their host. As they add more, more storage, more compute, they'll add more memory. It makes their environment simpler to manage and keeps it moving smoothly for them.

The most valuable feature is the simplicity of its scalability: being able to grow it without having to make sure you get the right disks and the right nodes.

The solution is also easy to manage. It's all right there in the vSphere Client. You're not going through multiple things. You don't have to know, once you've created the vSAN node. You add storage, it sees it, and you create your data storage from there. Everything is right there for you.

What I would like to see,  for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes.

I find it to be incredibly stable.

I've seen it scale up to large databases. I've got some customers who utilize a small vSAN cluster for their Exchange environments because it keeps it encapsulated for them.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

I would definitely go with the vSAN solution. A lot of times, it's less expensive than third-party software, and it's not managed via third-party plugins. It's there, it's native to the ecosystem, and it works.

Our primary use case is server workload and mission critical work.

It has improved our organization in all situations.

All the features are working great.

Only the stretched cluster requires a minor improvement.  

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.