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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs VMware vSAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (2nd), Cloud Backup (14th), Public Cloud Storage Services (7th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables efficient multi-environment cluster deployment and resource management with versatile features
While VMware vSAN is quite comprehensive, if we are running multiple infrastructures, applications, databases, and other elements, having a diagnostic tool to identify the actual problem area, whether application-side or infrastructure-side, would be beneficial. A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SnapMirror helps mirror metadata and data volumes between endpoints in a data fabric."
"Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup."
"If anything happens, their technical support will come onsite and fix it."
"The most valuable features are tiering to S3 and being able to turn it on and off, based on a schedule."
"The feature which I like the most is that it has the capabilities that the traditional storage system offers. It provides all the functionality. The deduplication and compression work exactly like ONTAP's traditional storage. So people who have experience with that find it very easy to manage."
"NetApp's Integration with AWS has helped us because we had a tough time transferring data when we used an ONTAP competitor as our storage partner. They don't have integration with AWS tools, so we had to figure it out on our own. ONTAP has built-in integration and allows us to replicate a copy to our second data center."
"One thing I have noticed is that it is very simple to move the data where we need to move it, delete it, or archive it if we need to archive it to StorageGRID."
"It gives a solution for storage one place to go across everything. So, the customer is very familiar with NetApp on-prem. It allows them to gain access to the file piece. It helps them with the training aspect of it, so they don't have to relearn something new. They already know this product. They just have to learn some widgets or what it's like in the cloud to operate and deploy it in different ways."
"It's stable and scalable. Also, you can virtualize SAN so that you don't have to have a separate storage area network and can have your computer and storage on the same box or computer."
"VMware has been around for a long time are are doing a decent job at catching up with the latest technologies i.e. bringing in kubernetes and containerization. Overall, this is a great tool for virtualization."
"The product is highly scalable and significantly supports our organization's needs."
"vSAN is one of the easiest implementations of any VMware product. It's almost like click it to enable it, then you're almost done."
"I like vSAN because they release features incrementally, every year, and you don't have to upgrade your hardware to get those features. If you bought a traditional SAN, you would have to upgrade your hardware constantly, every three years: You would get it, and it is how it is for three years. But on vSAN, you upgrade when you have to, when your hardware gets old or when you need more capacity. It's great, you get new features constantly."
"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."
"The vSAN features we've found most helpful are live application migrations and storage policies. It has storage, policies, application, and DRS policies. Automation is there."
"The product's initial setup phase was very straightforward."
 

Cons

"Scale-up and scale-out could be improved. It would be interesting to have multiple HA pairs on one cluster, for example, or to increase the single instances more, from a performance perspective. It would be good to get more performance out of a single HA pair."
"The only issue we had lately was that outside our VPC we could not reach the virtual IP, the floating IP. I heard that they have fixed that..."
"I would like NetApp to come up with an easier setup for the solution."
"Multipathing for iSCSI LUNs is difficult to deal with from the client-side and I'd love to see a single entry point that can be moved around within the cluster to simplify the client configuration."
"We want to be able to add more than six disks in aggregate, but there is a limit of the number of disks in aggregate. In GCP, they provide less by limiting the sixth disk in aggregate. In Azure, the same solution provides 12 disks in an aggregate versus GCP where it is just half that amount. They should bump up the disk in aggregate requirement so we don't have to migrate the aggregate from one to another when the capacities are full."
"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."
"I would like this solution to be brought to all the three major players. Right now it's supported only on AWS and Azure. They should bring it to Google as well, because we would like to have flexibility in choosing the underlying cloud storage provider."
"I would like to see something from NetApp about backups. I know that NetApp offers some backup for Office 365, but I would like to see something from NetApp for more backup solutions."
"The vSan product uses a software system called Vsphere to monitor the system. It is sometimes difficult to manage the PCs within the systems."
"The only thing I can think of at this time is to improve the performance monitoring and performance visibility within the GUI."
"Based on my testing, I would like to expand deduplication to include hybrid deployments and not just for all-flash deployments."
"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."
"It needs to be vanilla. There shouldn't be any custom drivers, any custom anything. It should just be, "Hey, you know what? These drivers are going to work for this version, the next version, and the following version after that." That's the difficulty in this. It takes too much upkeep... The main issue is drivers. Every time we move to a new vSAN version, we're having problems finding the correct drivers for the vendor."
"Virtual machines disk size cannot cap more than a single node. For a VDI user, it may not save enough to hold a file server or exchange server on a single node storage space."
"vSAN does not have online dedup. When opening the inline dedupe, the performance will be lower than off inline."
"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloud is cloud. It's still expensive. Any good solution comes with a price tag. That's where we are looking to see how well we can manage our data in the cloud by trying to optimize the costs."
"Cost is a big factor, because a lot of companies can't afford enterprise grade equipment all the time. They skimp where they can. I would recommend that they improve the cost."
"If we wanted to use the AWS solution, we would have to manage two or three different platforms and pay more money than what we should have to pay, as some of the features don't even exist. If we wanted to, we could use AWS cloning, but it is useless because it uses more space, is more expensive, and takes more time."
"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."
"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."
"The cost is quite high."
"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."
"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."
"The price is expensive."
"The first 1-2 years of purchasing vSAN will be expensive. Thereafter, the longer you are running it, the more cost savings you will have."
"Basically, vSAN is a license in addition to that of the classic VMware Vsphere, which is also mandatory."
"vSAN has many versions with standard and advanced including Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Regarding the Enterprise and the Advanced, it could be lower."
"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."
"My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive."
"The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers."
"From a cost perspective, it is expensive. From a usability perspective, it reduces the overhead costs attached to its users' servers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
28%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
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Also Known As

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
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Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.