VMware vSAN Reviews

I think performance and cost are the most valuable features of VMware Virtual SAN. We're stringing up an entire virtualization environment for VDI and RDSH through Horizon View. When we compared the cost of a traditional SAN versus VSAN, that’s what actually made it all possible for us. We're actually able to deploy Virtual SAN for a fraction, like 1/5th, of the cost, of what we're paying for our SAN. It was crazy. The reduced cost made it very palatable and then the actual performance of it made it even that much more functional.

I'm from the cloud virtualization side of things, so consolidating the data allowed us to set up the VSAN instead of a traditional SAN, and allowed us to do faster deployments without having to interact with as many teams. It's simplified our deployment methodology a fair amount, and it gave us the better performance we're looking for from a SAN perspective.

Beyond that, it didn't change a lot how we function, necessarily, but it gave us a better tool, or a tool specific for our use case, or something that opens up the door for more. I think that the product itself is going to be paramount in other expansions and other aspects of the corporation. We'll likely keep expanding it into general computing and servers across the globe. It might help with some of the other deployments, cache centers and data centers, so that we don't necessarily have to buy SAN. It gives us the performance for the cost that really makes it attractive overall. Beyond that, I don't know.

I know it's coming, but I'm really excited for the encryption. I know it's on the all-flash, which is fine, because we're migrating to that anyways. Nonetheless, the encryption would be great for at-rest data, because I don't want to rely on a third party. I don't want to get some self-encrypting drives or anything like that; drives me nuts. That would be very good to get.

I'm looking forward to being able to do VSAN shares with other clusters; sharing the VSAN storage outside of its existing cluster so that we can actually move data a little bit easier between them, or allocate VMs across the entire frame and all the different VSAN storage. I want to try to make more use of the VSAN storage and do some better vMotions across hosts and clusters. That, I think, would be the best.

I like its stability. I think we probably need to get an additional node in there. Right now, we're running some 4-node VSANs. We probably should be at a 5 with a 2-RAID parity on that. Four is okay; it's stable, it's efficient. I haven't really run into any issues with it.

Some of the earlier versions were a little rough; we saw some weird, crooked behavior. Beyond that, it's been solid, and it just works. No issues yet.

Our early deployments of VSAN ran into a few issues with performance. Some of the nodes we installed initially had very high IO utilization when nothing was occurring on the disks; likely related to some replication tasks. Additionally, our fault tolerance was low using just a four-node VSAN (giving an N+1 configuration). We really should be a N+2 (which apparently takes six nodes, not five…).

Performance since then has been outstanding.

We're actually scaling out right now from several 4-node VSAN clusters to - I think we're going to go to - some 8-, and then eventually 12-, node VSANs. That's one of the really nice parts about it; we'll just be able to scale out. The only downside I think I have with it from a scale perspective is, we've got some hybrid VSAN right now. That's what we all started out with. We really liked the all-flash VSAN arrays that you can get, so we're doing that. However, we can't merge the two, so we have to create whole new clusters for the all-flash VSAN. That makes scaling a little bit rough there, but I don't think that will be much of an issue going forward, because flash is pretty inexpensive now and that's probably going to be the standard from here on out.

I think we used technical support earlier on. I didn't personally, but I know our engineers had to work with technical support on some issues with a couple of our VSAN nodes kind of going crazy when they were doing some initial configuration setup. They were just sitting there idle, and one of them would spike up; I don't know if it was trying to replicate data or do something odd. They worked with the support team, got it resolved and addressed it, upgraded to a new version and haven't seen any problems since.

I think there could always be improvement. Whenever we interact with the VMware technical support, it's usually because we have issues that aren't easily solved. We've got our own set of engineers that are really intelligent guys, very capable individuals. Whenever we call in, we always get the initial first line of defense, "Hey, give us your logs." Okay, here's our logs. And then they ask us silly questions and basic troubleshooting and, "Did you do this?" Of course we did. I guess the initial support services guys are just that basic line of defense. They don't always really understand the people that they're dealing with nor have that knowledge of the customer base. That knowledge set they're working with makes it difficult to interact with them a lot of times and getting issues escalated. It's always been kind of a tricky thing for us.

We've been using traditional SAN for a long time. Our engineers had to do test with an initial project to do some developer builds, and they wanted some persistent VMs, and they wanted humongous amounts of storage in them, because they're crazy people. The goal was to give them some virtual machines to replace all these physical machines that they had, because whenever they mess up a machine and they want to rebuild, it takes a long time. You have to rebuild the whole machine, give it back to them, and then they have to build it out all over again.

Using the VDI solution, Horizon View, and VSAN made it actually cost-effective, because if we were try to do the amount of storage that they were looking for on the VMs with traditional SAN, it would have cost us a lot more than anybody's willing to spend or to endure. The VSAN made it very possible and gave us the performance needed to actually facilitate and even perform better on the VMs than they do on the physical boxes that they were using, which is good. It all helped.

At the time, we did not look into other solutions. It was either SAN or VSAN. From a SAN perspective, we have a partnership with HP for some 3PAR storage, and we have some EMC storage as well. When it comes to VSAN, it was included in our ELA that we agreed with from VMware's perspective. We figured, if we're paying for it, we might as well try using it. It worked out really well.

When selecting a vendor like VMware, a lot of the decision comes down to functionality. Functionality, performance, and cost, those are the usually big factors. A lot of times, my company's really focused on cost, which is a pain in the butt. We're a very big VMware shop to start with, so whenever we can use a product that can simplify deployments, simplify management, and integrate with everything that we already have, that makes it really desirable. That's I think what VSAN did; it really simplified the way for us to get our storage for virtual machines and give us that performance and at a lower cost. That satisfied all the different aspects we look for in products.

I gave VSAN a perfect rating because it's been great. We really haven't had any problems with it; it's been solid. I haven't had to deal with the SAN guys, so that makes my life much better. We get much better performance out of it than I would have ever thought. We get all the IOPS we need from it; we get dedupe on the all-flash array. It's my own little SAN and nobody else gets to mess with. I think it's fantastic. I just love it, I really do.

If you have the budget or it's available to you, definitely go for it, because it's going to save money over the traditional SAN.

The only caveat I ever give to anybody about it is that the initial investments are a little rough. You can't just build a 1-node VSAN; you can do a 2-node VSAN, but, boy, no one ever wants to do it. To really get to a point where you get the data redundancy and the high availability, you need a 4-node VSAN, which can cost a fair amount for that initial investment.

If you're trying to do something small, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but if you're in a larger organisation like we are and you have to do a lot, this is a fantastic tool.

The product’s most valuable features are performance and expandability.

The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it.

We have been using VMware vSAN for seven out of years.

The product is stable.

It is a scalable product. It is suitable for enterprises.

Since we are an advanced partner, we receive on-time and adequate support services. However, their response time needs improvement for critical cases.

Neutral

It is an easy-to-install and maintain product. It requires one or two executives, depending on the environment, to conduct implementation.

VMware vSAN is an expensive platform. We purchase its yearly license.

I recommend VMware vSAN and rate it an eight out of ten. The product’s support team’s response time and pricing could be better.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I use the solution in my company for the security patches. I just use it to upgrade the security patches and be secure.

The product's complex setup phase is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I want the solution to be made available at a lower price since it is currently expensive.

I have been using VMware vSAN for two years. I use the solution's latest version.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

You can say that everything about VMware vSAN is that it is very scalable, making it more than a perfect solution.

Around 500 people in my company use the product. My company manages 90,00,000 endpoints of our clients who use the product.

The product is extensively and regularly used in our company.

The product's initial setup phase was very complex.

During the deployment process, my company ensures that the product is deployed on an on-premises model, which takes about a day to complete and has 13 to 14 steps to be followed.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a day because it was implemented with Dell VxRail. All the solutions from Dell VxRail, including the virtual machine and VMware, were implemented in one day. My company implemented the solution with the help of a third party for the implementation of all the solutions, including Dell VxRail, VMware, and VMware vSAN.

One person is required to take care of the implementation process.

My company had implemented the solution with the help of a third party.

The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it.

The tool does not make much of a difference in improving data center storage efficiency as it only shows some changes in appearance and offers a few additional features.

When it comes to the projects managed by my company, I think VMware vSAN is very good for our organization's infrastructure, as it can add big value for us because in the past, we had used some traditional solutions, like Hyper-V from Microsoft. At the present time, I can't even compare Hyper-V and VMware since VMware vSAN is the black horse of virtualization.

The specific feature of the product that has had the largest impact on our company's operations stems from the use of its virtualization capabilities. I don't need the tool for anything more than the virtualization part it offers.

The product's scalability has been good and supportive of my organization's growth.

I don't have any issues with the setup phase since I don't deploy it on the systems but I know that it is a complex process.

The management of the product is very straightforward. I haven't had to handle any issues related to product management.

VMware vSAN is a very good solution which is also very handy. I think the implementation isn't easy enough for someone to figure it out. You have to seek help from professionals to take care of the implementation because one mistake can cost you a lot.

My company had no budget plans, so the implementation did not affect our company's overall IT budget and cost efficiency.

The product has had a very good impact on our business since it has improved our overall speed and response time.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

VMware vSAN is a highly scalable solution. We can start with as few nodes as possible and scale up according to our needs. Another advantage is deploying a stretched solution across two sites, with data synchronization between the two data centers. Setting up a stretch cluster is made easy with vSAN.

VMware vSAN provides seamless integration within the hypervisor core, providing stability and eliminating the need for additional VM gateways per node, as required by solutions like Nutanix. This integration simplifies the ecosystem, making it easier to adopt and manage.

The main improvement in VMware vSAN is its licensing mode. Its acquisition prioritizes doubling the EBITA rather than focusing on technological advancement. This is a common issue in the IT market, where companies may be acquired by financial entities, potentially leading to stagnation in technological innovation. The technology is mature and stable, with no significant improvements currently evident.
The new feature allows for the use of only two nodes in an active-active setup.

I have been using VMware vSAN for eight years.

The performance is up to our expectations. The initial performance is high solution because we use flash storage. The complete solution is good.

The solution’s scalability is good. 200 users are using this solution. We have a private cloud with many intelligent users who can connect to the cloud.

We can manage the solution ourselves. 

There may be an opportunity for vSAN to explore new avenues for open-cycle solutions with the recent reorganization of Broadcom impacting VMware.

We use VMware vSAN with 50 instances, but we must change the licensing. Broadcom buys VMware.

We had been using the Dell VxRail solution. Due to Dell's cessation of collaboration with VMware and Broadcom's decision to overhaul the licensing model, our future with VxRail is uncertain. We can purchase VxRail with vSAN, which is integrated into Dell's portfolio. We lack assurance now that Dell and Broadcom are separate entities.
Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

VMware vSAN is used for virtualization and general-purpose computing. Instead of going for the SAN (storage area network) storage, customers go for VSAN (virtual storage area network). The solution is used for general-purpose computing, production computing, and storage.

Instead of going for SAN storage, customers can use the scale-up and scale-out features of VMware vSAN.

Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers. Maintenance-wise, when the capacity is utilized beyond 60% to 70%, then the time of the upgrade is a little higher compared to the standard SAN storage.

I have been using VMware vSAN for more than five years.

VMware vSAN is a pretty stable solution. We haven't seen any issues with the solution's stability in five to seven years. The customers would face issues if they ignore some key points.

I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten for stability.

In terms of scalability, we have to just add the nodes. If you require more computing or storage, you have to add the nodes to the existing cluster. Our clients for VMware vSAN are medium and enterprise businesses.

I rate the solution nine and a half out of ten for scalability.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight or eight and a half out of ten.

The solution's deployment time totally depends on the customer or the deployment guide. However, we can deploy VMware vSAN in a day.

The solution's licensing pricing could be improved. The level of discounts available on the solution's licensing price varies from customer to customer. Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten.

Our clients are government and private customers working with VMware vSAN in the manufacturing, defense, oil and gas, and ITIS industries. The solution is generally built on top of the virtualization layer with VMware. It's a part of virtualization. The solution's performance and management are pretty easy.

VMware vSAN is tightly integrated with other VMware products because it's a part of vSphere. It is tightly integrated with the virtualization layer. We can integrate and utilize VMware vSAN for other VMware products very easily.

Using VMware vSAN is totally dependent on the customer's use case. A standard three-tier architecture is recommended for customers who want to use a tier-one application for ERP protection. VMware vSAN is recommended to customers with a use case for VDI, general-purpose computing, and test development environments.

Overall, I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

I have been using this solution for six years.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Our primary use case is to host our hyperconverged solutions. I'm a project manager and team leader and we are implementers of this solution. We carry out everything from implementation to rollout. We are customers of VMware vSAN.

The VCG notification feature is key for me. 

We faced some latency issues but it's been a little better lately. I'd like to see a single dashboard product and an improvement in reporting which currently depends on third party applications. 

I've been using this solution for almost seven years. 

It's relatively stable now although we had some issues in the past. 

The solution is scalable, we have around 5,000 users. I think there are about 15 people in the company who deal with monitoring, management, and implementation.

We had a very good team early on so we were not dependent on Microsoft or VMware to help mitigate issues.

We previously used Nutanix and I was very happy using Prism. We ended up with vSAN following a bidding process.

The initial setup took around 15 months. It was reasonably simple but there were some issues. We migrated around 150 VMs with applications on them.

We have a deal with them so we don't pay for individual licenses, it's a complete solution with an overall license. 

There are many similar solutions on the market. With VMware you get ease of integration because any new product they bring to the market has VMware. 

I rate this solution an eight out of 10.