VMware vSAN Reviews

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.

The valuable features are:

• Easily provided storage
• Easy setup
• No need to be a “storage engineer”
• No need to have FC switches

It is less costly than typical storage and faster to set up than a typical SAN. It does not require “storage competency.”

During some intensive I/O workloads, and on a configuration that had SSDs sub-sized, we reached the limit of the system. When our SSDs became full (due to having too much I/O to manage), performance went down.

We have been using this solution since March, 2015.

There have been no stability issues.

I have never asked anything from technical support. It’s handled by VMware.

The setup is really easy and straightforward. vSAN is built in vSphere, and you have a dashboard to manage the system.

The pricing and licensing models are quite simple. Be careful with the sizing of the SSDs.

Be careful with the sizing of the SSDs, as they’re a big part of the infrastructure. Don’t hesitate to go to 10Gb for the network, even if it can work with 1Gb.

vMotion and the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) load-balancing resources are the most valuable features.

We can manage capacity and performance in linear fashion.

We get better performance with a better cost efficiency.

The management of vSAN (dashboard, alerts, monitoring) has a significant amount of growth potential.

No issues encountered.

The stability is dependent on how we scale and stabilize I/O across the host(s). We have encountered issues, but have worked through them.

There are no issues because it is linear.

Prior to VSAN, we used SAN Storage, and we switched because we needed a more cost-effective solution for our cloud environment, coupled with easy scalability. Currently, SAN Storage has risks and bottlenecks, due to having only two storage processors which are not enough to handle our needs.

It was straightforward.

We implemented in-house.

• NetApp
• Nutanix

Make sure you size correctly when you do the initial implementation.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our customers. Our clients are in different industries, including banking and finance, and utilities such as oil and gas.

I do not use this product personally. Rather, I sell it and my clients use it.

I generally sell vSAN on VxRail version 7.

The integration with other VMware products is good.

Improvements can be made with respect to scalability.

I have been working with VMware vSAN for five years.

This is a stable product.

The scalability of this solution can be improved a little bit.

The technical support is good. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward. People with existing knowledge in VMware technology will find it easy to set up because it's not a different platform than what they are used to.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing vSAN is that it's a good platform if you're working with VMware. My customers generally do not complain about vSAN. However, if they are interested in a Hyper-V or Nutanix environment then this is not a good solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We sell and deploy this solution for our customers in a variety of settings from small data centers to big data analytics clusters. Most recently, we have deployed vSAN for VDI solution. We are VMware partners and I'm a solutions architect.

I like the reliability of this product because we can lose more than one host, more than one disk, and everything still works okay. It's also good on performance and agility. You can change and add things without any issues. 

It would help if the cost of the solution was reduced for smaller sized companies. 

We've been using this solution for two years. 

This is a stable solution. 

Scalability is good. We had a customer who bought five hosts a year ago and this year they expanded their infrastructure to 12 hosts, and everything was fine. 

I think the support is very good. They figured out what the issue was and responded very quickly. The problems we had were from a network perspective, nothing to do with the solution. 

The initial setup is very simple and doesn't take long, perhaps two to five days. 

The license is perpetual and there is an additional payment for technical support which is an annual subscription fee. I think it could be cheaper, especially for smaller companies. It's okay for big deployments with a lot of servers and high level of input-output IOPS.

I like this solution very much and I would recommend it. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We use it for VDI.

It's supposed to provide low-cost for storage arrays to do VDI. We're on the fence with it. We're still looking at other solutions. We're not sold on it.

It has provided some value when it's working. Instead of hitting our production SAN array, it has its own array, storage-wise. It keeps workload off production.

It could be more robust. The latency is also an issue for us, and the reliability. I would like it to be faster and a little more flexible.

On a scale of one to ten I would give the stability a six.

Scalability should be pretty good, but we're not getting the performance we want out of it right now, so we're not going to scale it unless something changes.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

We have seen value in it but, since it's not performing the way we think it should. We're probably not going to move forward with it.

We went with it because of the cost. It's definitely cheaper than buying a storage array.

VMware was used to manage multiple servers in a DMZ for an eCormerce service (Coy). VMware made the server management, migration and backup/maintenance efficient.

The management of servers was easy from a central standpoint. The server rooms were less cluttered as servers were virtual and easy to manage.

The migration of servers feature makes server rack maintenance easy.

It is a memory intensive app, which should be improved. Also, the server files are larger than before.

The ability to scale out incrementally instead of doing a big five year capital expense purchase that hurts the budget. Vith vSAN, you buy x86 servers and you're done, and you can scale up.

The cost. VSAN allows us to do storage cheaper and better than before.

Deduplication feature is needed, and I'm thinking maybe it needs a lot of nodes to store all redundant data. This will be addressed in their next beta version.

Assuming we get policies set up where they need to be, it's a stable technology. It's distributed architecture is slick, and will hold up.

First and foremost, it offers a different way to scale, it’s smaller and easier to digest in smaller bites. As older ESXi hosts are phased out, you can replace with VSAN and add more nodes. Very incremental approach.

I've never had to use it.

It feels forward thinking and I can see this as big game changer, which is exciting, but it's only one-and-a-half-years old -- a toddler. There are some minor things wrong, but it's potential value could far overshadow it curent weaknesses, Currently we don’t have NSX, and that could be a pivotal thing, but we don’t have that licensing yet.