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Pivot3 vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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

Pivot3
Ranking in HCI
25th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
3rd
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 September 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Pivot3 is 1.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 7.7%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN7.7%
Pivot31.7%
Other90.6%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1124199 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Stable, good technical support, and the the visual encoding works well
The most valuable feature is the visual encoding I would like to see better video compression. Snapshot notification would be a good addition. The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered. I have been using Pivot3 for between four and five years. This…
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 most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"The technical support is very good."
"It greatly streamlined the time it took to scale out the enterprise and it completely eliminated the need for a SAN/Storage engineer, with the simplicity the Pivot3 Stack Manager brought with it for managing storage."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"With vSAN coming in, we have stability within the cluster of resources which has been grouped together in a local storage, and this is a wonderful feature in vSAN."
"Technical support has been very good. They respond pretty fast, especially if we have a critical issue. Their responses have been great."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature is that it is software-defined storage. Also, being able to do maintenance on the fly is a real benefit: migrating off, updating, and then moving the guest back on to the nodes."
"VMware vSAN is a global solution, so we can manage all the storage solutions in one place. It's embedded in VCI solutions."
"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."
"VMware vSAN is easy to implement in a VMware environment and it is not expensive."
"Previously, we couldn’t consolidate more workloads on different types of storage, and now with VSAN, we have the ability to virtualize across multiple data centers."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"Marketing needs improvement."
"The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered."
"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."
"Its installation should be easier, and its price should be cheaper. It would be good for the product if they can include the data locality feature."
"It depends on the use case, but it can be very expensive."
"There could be more features with the automatic backup."
"Licensing costs are a little too high for smaller sized companies."
"Currently, one of the available features is shareable VMBKs. You can create the VMBK disc and you can make them shareable between the ends. But as soon as you start using this feature, you lose the ability to create snapshots."
"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good."
"We faced some latency issues but it's been a little better lately."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"The solution requires a license. The payment is on a yearly basis and It is not overly expensive."
"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."
"Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective."
"The product’s pricing is a bit higher than other solutions."
"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."
"It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components."
"It is expensive. It should be cheaper. It has a perpetual license as well as a subscription-based license, but they are moving towards subscription-based licenses."
"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business102
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise135
 

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

No data available
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SNHMC, HPD Software, The Hurlingham Club, NHS, Rochester Police Department, The Doe Run Company, 101 Casino, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
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Find out what your peers are saying about Pivot3 vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.