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Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Executive Summary

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 MX Certif...
Ranking in HCI
31st
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
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
233
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 7.8%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN7.8%
Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node1.0%
Other91.2%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

N_R - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Account Manager at Emirates Business Machines (EBM)
Provides a valuable concept of hyper-convergence, but its support services could be faster
The product’s most valuable feature is the concept of hyper-convergence Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node’s support services could be faster. We have been using Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node for four to five years. From the hardware perspective, it is a stable product. The product is…
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product’s most valuable feature is the concept of hyper-convergence."
"Technical support has been fantastic. We always get answers quickly whenever we call."
"VMware vSAN is easy to implement in a VMware environment and it is not expensive."
"Easy to deploy and manage."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"VMware vSAN has benefited our company mainly from the flexibility and redundancy, as we have a two-node cluster where if one of the servers goes down, we will still be in operation and it provides high availability."
"The product is highly scalable and significantly supports our organization's needs."
"We get better performance with a better cost efficiency."
"It's improved the organization overall primarily because the storage is local on the boxes."
 

Cons

"Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node’s support services could be faster."
"The vSphere Web Client is slow and clunky, making interacting with the system difficult and often times painful."
"Compatibility with the previous version, stability, performance, and upgradeability of the solution with the previous version all need to be improved."
"We want see a better monitoring tool in vSAN. Monitoring is not that great as of now because it shows us false alarms in the Health status. We would like that to be improved."
"The list of hardware supported should be increased in the future."
"I think it needs to be more cost-effective. I would also say that even though the capacity is good, there is also room for improvement there. Also, they could improve the security of the system."
"An integrated backup solution within the vSAN platform would improve the product."
"I'd like to see better integration with the Update Manager, with respect to firmware updates for hardware."
"The web console, VMware vSphere Web Client, is not based on HTML5, which makes it difficult to manage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product has competitive pricing."
"We have increased our user productivity."
"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."
"If they could reduce the cost, it would be better. Licensing costs are something that they could take care of. If you are a smaller and strong IT team, then VMware vSAN is a very good product. If you want to expand in the service provider space, then you will have to go for an open-source solution like OpenStack. We are now looking at OpenStack because we sell licensing costs. We are a service provider, so the IT component data is a substantial component in our overall costing. We feel that OpenStack might help us to cut down the licensing cost. Therefore, we are looking at SAS storage instead of vSAN. SAS is open source, but it is not wise to have open source without having the backend support. We are using RedHat SAS, and it is an open-source solution. You can also have a free version, but we are using it with support from RedHat so that we have somebody to back us up in case we have a problem. If you do normal business, then IT expense is 1% or 2% of the total turnover. The higher licensing costs sometimes don't make difference to the big companies who are not service providers and are using it only for their internal use. For them, the IT cost is 1% or 2%, but for an IT service provider, the IT costs will go up to 15% to 16% of the total cost of the operations. This is where the licensing costs become irrelevant. For example, the licensing cost of using VMware, VC, and vSAN is 8% of my monthly revenue. Every month, I pay about $35,000, and, with the revised plan, it will be something like $50,000 or revenue of 600k per month, which means almost 8% of the revenue is going into VMware licensing. In a very competitive world, 8% as a cost element is huge. So, if I can bring it down to 2%, I save 6% in revenue expenditure. In terms of profit, 6% of 30% is something like another 25% increase in my profit. My profit can be almost 25%. It would be 20% to 25% in case I am able to handle the licensing costs and bring them to a very low level. Because these IT costs are substantial for us, that is why we are going with OpenStack. OpenStack has a limitation that it requires more hardware. There will be some increase in the hardware cost, but overall we will save 5% to 6% of our licensing cost by using OpenStack."
"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."
"In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey."
"ROI from an administrative perspective is clearly much better because I only have to deal with one user interface."
"My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive."
"It could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business102
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise137
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
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 ...
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...
 

Also Known As

Lenovo MX Certified Node, ThinkAgile MX Certified Node
vSAN
 

Overview

 

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