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Abbasi Poonawala - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Enterprise Architect at Alinma Bank
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Functional dashboard, scalable, but more volume views needed
Pros and Cons
  • "This solution has a dashboard that you can log into and control if you need too while the VM is getting created."
  • "The solution could be improved by having more filtered and multiple view volumes instead of a single view."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use of the solution is the virtualization and storage process in a simple platform. 

The solution is not independent, it is interlaced with other solution such as vSphere and NSX. If you work with one you will be working with others. vSphere is connected to NSX and the NSX will connect to the vSAN. vSphere connects for storage purpose. When the virtualization process is happening, the storage area network would be vSAN. It resembles a managed service from VMware, where all the data and everything will be put into the vSAN.

What is most valuable?

This solution has a dashboard that you can log into and control if you need too while the VM is getting created.

What needs improvement?

The solution could be improved by having more filtered and multiple view volumes instead of a single view.

In the next release, I would like to see a more user-friendly dashboard with the potential to display issues. It should be capable of detecting the issues faster. For example, if something is wrong with your LAN, controller, or storage volumes.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used the solution for ten years.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. We have more than 50 administrators and approximately 200 operators using the solution.

How are customer service and support?

The technical team is provided by VMware and has workers in all different areas. For example, there will be people working in the storage control part or in the technical area.

How was the initial setup?

It was quite easy to install and took a couple of hours.

What about the implementation team?

I did the installation by myself. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution requires a license. The payment is on a yearly basis and It is not overly expensive. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Microsoft Hyper-V which has a similar storage area network. However, it can not be used together with NSX and vSpere like this solution. 

What other advice do I have?

I will continue using and recommend this solution.

I rate VMware vSAN a seven out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Devendra-Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Ease of integration is key in addition to a very good VCG notification feature
Pros and Cons
  • "Very good VCG notification feature."
  • "Reporting currently depends on third party applications and that could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

The VCG notification feature is key for me. 

What needs improvement?

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. 

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and technical support?

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

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
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VMware vSAN
June 2025
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reviewer1502748 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager IT Services at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
A stable solution with integrated storage and a single pane of glass for management and operational control
Pros and Cons
  • "It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable."
  • "Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes. The maximum number of nodes is okay, but our use cases could probably do with more nodes, probably up to 64. In terms of new features, it should probably have the basic support for high-speed networking spaces."

What is most valuable?

It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable.

What needs improvement?

Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes. The maximum number of nodes is okay, but our use cases could probably do with more nodes, probably up to 64.

In terms of new features, it should probably have the basic support for high-speed networking spaces.

For how long have I used the solution?

My experience with it has been for about 12 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has good stability. It is better than the non-hyper-converged one that we had previously.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Its scalability can be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their support is good. If you are a big enough user, you get enough support. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This is the first one that we used.

How was the initial setup?

For us, it was fairly straightforward. You need to have knowledge of vCenter. The deployment took about two to three days in total.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is expensive, but you get what you pay for.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution, but you have to be careful about the license cost. It can get quite expensive.

I would rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Sr. Manager-Data Center and Virtualization at Omgea Exim Ltd
MSP
Flexible, reliable, and has easy to scale-out architecture with good security
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are secure IOPs and LAN security."
  • "The price can be reduced. Small businesses cannot afford this solution."

What is our primary use case?

We are service providers. We offer pre-billed services anywhere from three-year or five-year contracts for our customers. We provide the maintenance of the solution during that time, and on the backend, we provide L1 and L2 support.

The primary use case of this solution is for third party storage, and to leverage the local hard disk. This avoids the cost of expensive storage, sandboxes, and SAN switches.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are secure IOPs and LAN security.

Also, we can provide VMware with IOPs assurity from the vSAN policy, vSAN cluster, which is an expensive solution from the storage.

It has the iSCSI feature.

What needs improvement?

The price can be reduced. Small businesses cannot afford this solution.

There are limitations with Kubernetes and vSAN.

In the next release, I would like to have a hybrid flash available with this product.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with this solution for more than three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a very stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very easy to scale. It's out of the box. You can add to it at any time.

You can add any OEM or any hardware with no problem. There is no hardware lockin. For example, if you are working with HP hardware,  you can store in DELL, or you can add a fifth node from Huawei.

It's a scale-out architecture.

Our customers are medium and enterprise companies. Small companies cannot afford the services.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very simple.

It is less than five minutes to deploy.

What about the implementation team?

We are service providers for our clients. We have a dedicated team in our organization that deploys the products, maintains, and provides support for our customers. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is expensive. This solution is not an option for SBM customers because of the price.

There are limitations because of nodes. There is a minimum purchase requirement of three or four nodes along with two processors, which also increases the price.

The price will go from a small storage box to a higher storage box.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

When comparing, other vendors have their own hardware with vSAN. They have hardware with HCI, for example, Hyperflex is a hardware that is OEM locked. If a customer purchased three nodes, with Hyperflex, the next time they will have to buy from Cisco. 

It's the same with HPE; if customers purchase three or four nodes from HPE, the next ones can only be purchased from HPE.

VMware vSAN has the flexibility to buy from anywhere. There is no lock key. They can purchase from any customers and any OEM.

What other advice do I have?

VMware vSAN is a very good product and I would recommend it for other customers.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Patrick-Campbell - PeerSpot reviewer
Patrick-CampbellSenior Strategic Technical Marketing Engineer at Nutanix
Real User

What challenges did you have with Kubernetes and vSAN? Disclaimer: I work for the competition. Thanks!

reviewer1320009 - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Easy to set up, fairly stable, and cost-effective
Pros and Cons
  • "It uncoupled the idea of proprietary technology and component capabilities. It is basically a proprietary technology for a cost-effective infrastructure."
  • "They can package it in a way that is specific to the hardware infrastructure and the hardware platform. It should stay fairly up to date with the drivers and the manufacturer issues. The problem with uncoupling the proprietary technology and component capabilities is that by uncoupling them, you run into some concerns or challenges over the poor performance model. These concerns really come when you start talking about high performance, high bandwidth, and high availability types of environments. While vSAN is a leader, in a critical view, it is not about being cost-effective. It is more about the immediate impact of money loss to the business in critical applications where we want to maintain a continuous operational 59 model. It is, however, good for QA/QC tasks. I don't necessarily know how it works in regards to VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for commoditization and cost-effectiveness. We use it only to be able to spin up instances for monitoring and to do some application testing for other contracts. We are using the latest version.

What is most valuable?

It uncoupled the idea of proprietary technology and component capabilities. It is basically a proprietary technology for a cost-effective infrastructure. 

What needs improvement?

They can package it in a way that is specific to the hardware infrastructure and the hardware platform. It should stay fairly up to date with the drivers and the manufacturer issues.

The problem with uncoupling the proprietary technology and component capabilities is that by uncoupling them, you run into some concerns or challenges over the poor performance model. These concerns really come when you start talking about high performance, high bandwidth, and high availability types of environments. While vSAN is a leader, in a critical view, it is not about being cost-effective. It is more about the immediate impact of money loss to the business in critical applications where we want to maintain a continuous operational 59 model. It is, however, good for QA/QC tasks. I don't necessarily know how it works in regards to VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using VMware vSAN for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is fairly good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I wouldn't really be able to comment on that because we don't really have enough of an environment to understand what the cost of scale would look like. Our customers are small to medium enterprises.

How are customer service and technical support?

They are pretty good. I would rate them a seven out of ten. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't use any solution previously. We just had monolithic storage. We just wanted to test this solution out.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is fairly straightforward. You just need to do a level of due diligence before you do the installation. You can run into issues depending upon the compatibility with drivers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise doing your homework and making sure that it scales according to your expectations, performance, and ownership cost.

DataCore is a company that competes against them. DataCore is more focused, whereas VMware is wide. DataCore is a little bit better in terms of due diligence and information. vSAN is one of the many products based on the VMware industry, whereas DataCore is very focused and very niche. They've been doing virtualization since 1986.

I would rate VMware vSAN an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Vishal Bhatia - PeerSpot reviewer
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Easy to configure, deploy, and manage
Pros and Cons
  • "The deduplication and compression are excellent."
  • "There's a lot that can be done to segregate. That may be available now in vSAN 7, I suppose, however, the deduplication and compression can be segregated."

What is our primary use case?

We don't have any specific use cases, however, we do have a variety of workloads running on vSAN.

How has it helped my organization?

It's a massive shift now to have it in the portfolio and to have a complete software-defined data center.

What is most valuable?

The policies the solution has been very good. We use them a lot.

The deduplication and compression are excellent. 

There are a couple of features which we are using right now that we really like.

It's the kind of solution that is very easy to use, which may be its most valuable aspect for our organization.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution overall is very easy to manage and configure.

What needs improvement?

There's a lot that can be done to segregate. That may be available now in vSAN 7, I suppose, however, the deduplication and compression can be segregated. 

Increasing the classifiers to maybe more than 64 could be done in future releases.

The file service is something that can be integrated.

Something more could be done to integrate from a monitoring perspective right in the console itself so that we have deeper monitoring capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about three years, however, I suspect it's been even longer than that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues I can recall in terms of stability. It's pretty reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In our organization's case, we started with a number of nodes and I scaled it up from there. I didn't find any issues expanding the product. Scalability was not a problem.

This is a pretty recent deployment. While I've been working with the solution for three or four years, it's new to the company for the most part.

We plan to increase usage in the coming year. New workloads will get deployed and we'll begin to expand it more.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive. We're satisfied with the level of support we get.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

My organization didn't previously use a different hyper-converged solution. This product is their first in this particular area.

How was the initial setup?

There's no complexity in the original setup of the solution. The implementation is very straightforward.

Deployment was pretty quick. Just testing it out and finally rolling it out we managed to do in a couple of days. I would say within a week we were able to be up and running. 

What about the implementation team?

My company was involved directly with a reseller. The other nitty-gritty elements were something that I took care of it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I was not directly involved from a pricing perspective. I suppose it was competitive and that's why the company went ahead and with vSAN, therefore I assume the pricing is okay.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did look at other options. We ended up choosing vSAN mostly due to the price. However, we also liked how easy it was to set up, configure, and manage compared to other options.

What other advice do I have?

We're a partner with VMware.

Overall, I would rate them eight out of ten. They still have room for improvement. However, overall, we've been pleased with the results. It's easy to use, manage, and monitor.

The solution is best suited for small to medium-sized organizations.

If the solution is ideal for a company depends on the workloads and what they're trying to do right now. If a company would like to make a choice between the All-Flash or the Hybrid, I would definitely go for All-Flash. It may be a bit expensive as compared to Hybrid, however, definitely from a feature perspective and a performance perspective, All-Flash is the way to go.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
PeerSpot user
Genesis Dapoza - PeerSpot reviewer
Email Administrator at Technopaq, Inc.
Reseller
Top 5
Offers good availability and save on external storage and use the internal storage for the VMware environment
Pros and Cons
  • "vSAN that has been most effective in streamlining storage operations. For data recovery alerts, it uses tools like snapshots and vMotion."
  • "Better options would be clustered nodes, or even cloud configuration. There is room for improvement in cloud configuration, we typically do web browsing for management."

What is our primary use case?

The purpose of vSAN is to cluster nodes and distribute storage usage. Like, if a server has ten hard disks, for example, and the main server also has ten hard disks, and the two other nodes or servers each have ten hard disks as well, then it will combine them all. Once combined, it becomes clustered. That's the reason why most clients want to use vSAN - to save on external storage and use the internal storage for the VMware environment.

How has it helped my organization?

vSAN that has been most effective in streamlining storage operations.

For data recovery alerts, it uses tools like snapshots and vMotion.

What is most valuable?

Overall, the features I find most valuable are related to the reliability and availability of the servers.

vSAN is the fastest in regards to creating VMs and connecting them to virtual networks. It compresses data, and if you have a physical server form factor, it fits only on one cluster node. That's why we use vSAN.

What needs improvement?

Better options would be clustered nodes, or even cloud configuration.

There is room for improvement in cloud configuration, we typically do web browsing for management. So, when we configure or manage VMs or vSAN, we usually open a browser and use VMware credentials. That's what we call cloud configuration.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been dealing with it since 2016. And since that year, we've been a distributor.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability depends on the network. Some clients use networks with slow switches. Here, we're using ten gig to twenty-five gig. So, more often, it's the fastest network connectivity. But if the client is using one gig or ten Mbps. Some smaller companies face issues with a slow network.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

When it comes to scale up or scale out, it means that the servers or the clustered nodes can be added, or another cluster can be installed to increase the resources of the clustered nodes.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and support are quite good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The deployment process is complex because it's a GUI infrastructure. There are two-ways configurations for the nodes or vSAN setup. You can do it on a GUI management interface or by console or CRM recommendation.

So, it could take half a day or a whole day.

It is sort of difficult to maintain without any training. If you don't have any ideas on maintaining, then it could be difficult. But if you're a master of VMware, you know how to handle it. You're already a professional and can easily handle it.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
PeerSpot user
Omar_Samir - PeerSpot reviewer
Public Sector Sales Manager and DBA at Diverse
Real User
Very easy to implement in any existing environment
Pros and Cons
  • "Very easy to implement in any existing environment."
  • "Lacks sufficient storage terabytes."

What is our primary use case?

The use case is mainly for greenfields deployment. I'm a senior solutions architect and we are system integrators. Our company is a partner with VMware.

What is most valuable?

Very easy to implement in any existing environment.

What needs improvement?

I'd like to see more storage terabytes available after excluding the management. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for two years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very good. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward and it's very easy to implement in any X86 server so anyone can use it in their existing environment. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
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