Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs VMware vSAN comparison

Lenovo and Broadcom are both solutions in the HCI category. Lenovo is ranked #24, while Broadcom is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.9. Lenovo holds a 1.5% mindshare in HCI, compared to Broadcom’s 10.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Lenovo users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Read 3 Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series reviews

928 Views
928 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 234 VMware vSAN reviews

15,097 Views
9,662 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

VMware vSAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

VMware vSAN and Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series offer hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. VMware vSAN has an edge in scalability and integration, while Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is stronger in performance and hardware efficiency.

Features: VMware vSAN integrates well with VMware environments, supports advanced data management, and provides efficient storage features. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series offers hardware-specific optimizations, pre-configured solutions for faster deployments, and improved performance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series benefits users with its simplified deployment process and strong vendor support. VMware vSAN is better suited for existing VMware users due to potential deployment complexities for new environments.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN can be cost-effective for VMware environments, offering flexible licensing with potential ROI through resource utilization. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, despite higher initial costs, provides high ROI from its performance and resource efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs. VMware vSAN

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 884,976 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Ranking in HCI

24th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware vSAN

Ranking in HCI

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

234

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 10.0%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSAN	10.0%
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series	1.5%
Other	88.5%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Adeel Hashmi

IT Technical Advisor at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees

With an easy deployment phase, the tool offers good scalability and stability

Suppose you don't compare Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series with the newest features available in the other variants of the product, then everything is pretty standard, so I cannot pinpoint any areas of issue in particular. With Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, the firmware from VMware or Nutanix takes time to be made available compared to other products that we use in our company's IT environment. If you want to go to a certain version of VMware and check what Nutanix offers, you see that both the offerings don't go hand in hand, and you have to wait for a quarter or two quarters until you see the same versions of both being made available for the other products, like Dell or HPE. There is a delay in the availability of similar versions of firmware from both the products, which are VMware and Nutanix for Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, due to the delayed releases from both products, maybe by a quarter or so. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in a solution. In future releases of the product, I may want some improvements to be made in the products from Nutanix and VMware.

Read full review

ShyamikaThamel

Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium

Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance

VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series are the ease of use and simple configuration."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's deployment phase is pretty easy."

"The initial setup is simple. We were able to deliver the hyper-convergence solution in a very good time."

"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series are the ease of use and simple configuration."

"The most valuable features for us are the ability to scale out the nodes independently, and the flexibility of the nodes. We can put almost any type of server in there with our connectivity and everything works great."

"The ability to scale as you need – we can start with a very small footprint as opposed to a monolithic storage solution where you buy the entire solution up front."

"We probably reduced our hardware footprint by 50 percent, which is a lot."

"Being able to deploy multiple applications with virtual servers is the most valuable for us. The capacity of the system is quite constant so it's got some of the good features."

"Its biggest value is its scalability; you can buy a little bit, and not a whole infrastructure box when you want to grow, and customers can just spin up half a dozen additional hosts quickly if they want."

"it's easy to scale, it's easy to predict IOP needs, and you can design for low latency using all-flash... Also, for setting up new clusters for VDI quickly, it's nice. You don't have to wait on an order for a storage vendor to ship you a system and help you configure it, you do it all yourself. And the sizing guides are pretty straightforward."

"The setup is straightforward."

"Scalability and future upgrades are a piece of cake."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series could improve by having better integration with the solutions from VMware and vCenter"

"Here in Nigeria, the only challenge that we have, which I think is also experienced globally is the delay in bringing in the spare parts. This is a challenge facing our country, such as the Forex market. However, this is beyond the control of Lenovo themselves."

"The technical support of Lenovo ThinkAgile HX can improve. I rate the support from Lenovo ThinkAgile HX a three out of five."

"There is a delay in the availability of similar versions of firmware from both the products, which are VMware and Nutanix for Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, due to the delayed releases from both products, maybe by a quarter or so."

"During some intensive I/O workloads, and on a configuration that had SSDs sub-sized, we reached the limit of the system."

"I would love for this product to be cheaper and easier to configure."

"VMware vSAN could improve by having better integration with other vendors and the storage is limited, I prefer it to the traditional storage."

"I would like to see a little bit more documentation on the initial setup, and a little bit more explanation on the expandability: How to extend out your vSAN much more simply through the console because, a lot of the time, you have to do it through the command line."

"More modularity in terms of how nodes are provisioned (all nodes having to be the same size when deployed)."

"The vSan product uses a software system called Vsphere to monitor the system. It is sometimes difficult to manage the PCs within the systems."

"We plan to switch products since the hardware nowadays is a little bit outdated and we need to scale up a bit."

"Disaster recovery needs to be improved, when there is a crisis, there is a problem with what is the quickest way to get out of it."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, it is a pretty good product. The product's price was one of the main criteria that made my company choose it over the other products in the market."

"When comparing this solution to other OEM solutions it is relatively inexpensive."

"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."

"The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy."

"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."

"It is not that expensive, and it is not even cheap. If it is designed in a proper way, it has good pricing, but if you do oversizing, the price will be high. There are different licensing models."

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

"Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective."

"It is not a subscription model. It is a purchase model, but it is very important that you also buy technical support from VMware. This is probably the only disadvantage of vSAN. It depends on the use case, but it can be very expensive."

"I feel the pricing to be reasonable."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

12%

Retailer

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	100
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	129

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...

See all answers

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...

See all answers

How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Local vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 17% of the time

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 11% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 8% of the time

Dell XC Appliance vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 5% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 16% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 7% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HCI

March 2026

Download Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

February 2026

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

Lenovo HX Series, ThinkAgile HX Series

vSAN

Overview

Designed for easy deployment and manageability in scale-out clusters, the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series combines Nutanix software with Lenovo’s highly reliable and scalable servers. These appliances ship fully integrated, tested, and configured so that you can dramatically accelerate your time to value and reduce your infrastructure maintenance.

Lenovo

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “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 test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here

Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs. VMware vSAN

March 2026

Free Report: Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs. VMware vSAN

Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs. VMware vSAN report.

See our list of best HCI vendors.

We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.