VMware vSAN Reviews

We have a traditional, multi-host cluster with SAN and a small (three host) vSAN cluster alongside it. I built the vSAN cluster mostly to experiment with the platform. 

As a VAR, it has been about gaining expertise in the platform. Additionally, it has allowed us to benchmark against traditional systems. We are now in a good position to help our clients decide when and where to deploy this solution.

The ability to have an HA cluster in the absence of a shared storage device or SAN. Not having to retain SAN expertise and the cost of a storage area network (SAN) warranty are big pluses, too.

Perhaps a bundle, like Essentials, would allow more businesses to make the leap to the product.

I would like to see this technology be made available to smaller businesses, who might benefit from high availability but struggle with the entry fee.

Coming from the early networking days when storage was software-defined, and seeing the announcement of this product caught my interest. The platform has been improved much over the first version. Today, we are comfortable running any of our mission critical apps on it.

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) implementation on vSAN with an environment of about 2000 desktops and 1000 servers.

Teams required to manage the storage for the entire VDI infrastructure were not required after implementing the vSAN solution. Any seasoned VMware engineer can easily manage the whole vSAN without any issues. 

It is simple to manage, very easy to implement and troubleshoot in case of any failures.

• Hot add
• Upgrades
• Ease of management

Any VMware engineer can easily manage vSAN, troubleshoot issues, and perform an upgrade on the vSAN without any downtime. Since the storage space is local to the hosts, it reduces the overall response time and improves the performance.

Some storage tiering options can be included, like other mature storage systems. Some intelligence can be added to the newest version to provide more flexibility between storage tiers, like Nutanix, to make this product a true software defined storage product.

VNF apps.

Storage policies are used to perform operations in the VMs. This feature allows you to create storage policies for VMs to get performance, high availability, I/O policies, etc.

Hardware supported by VMware vSAN: The list of hardware supported should be increased in the future. I would improve these areas by increasing the number of partners to support as many as possible.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is perfect. VMware provides some of the best support in the market.

We had no previous solution.

With a good hardware design, the setup is straightforward.

I have no advice about pricing.

We evaluated Cisco vSAN.

It is easy to design and deploy to react to a changing environment.

Deduplication and compression: Software-based deduplication and compression optimizes the all-flash storage capacity.

Compared to other vendors, vSAN is compatible with more expensive hardware, and Nutanix is available on multiple hardware platforms, like Supermicro, Dell and Lenovo.

I have used it for two months; just for test purposes.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 10/10.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was straightforward; I had the KB from VMware to help me deploy the solution.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated OpenStack Object Storage.

It is a good solution for customers that are looking for performance, storage efficiency, and scalability.

Snapshot: You know, that is amazing.

In our routine work, there is repeatable testing and validation. With the snapshot feature, we are able to keep our system in a specific status, including application parameters and network settings.

That has totally reduced our valuable time.

Currently, the work style of our organization has changed; when we get new projects, we can rapidly handle them.

If vSAN developed a "unified system" (that can support block + file + object), it would help users a lot in facing hybrid cloud environments.

I would prefer to use a complete and deep dashboard so I can give a supervisor a way to easily monitor the status of all drives and pool tiers. I think that would be a powerful feature for the future.

I have used it for two years.

Stability is great; however, you have to notify your counterparts if the system breaks down. :-D

Many popular SDS products can support up to 1000 nodes. This is an area where I hope vSAN is improved.

Hmmm, the level of technical support depends on the engineer who supports you when you contact the call center.

Traditional storage is scale-up type, which means there are a lot of supplier limitations and it costs too much.

Why not break though this situation? Now, flash is getting cheaper and bigger. With the changes mentioned, I think it will just stimulate SDS.

Initial setup was very simple for me. It is easy to set up if you get used to using vCenter.

SDS is going to be popular and common. If vSAN wants to remain #1 in the market, offering more discounts or something to attract customers is inevitable.

Currently, our environment is running VMware; therefore, we can consider using original distributed storage that connects directly to the kernel. That would reduce latency and data transfer loss.

It is easy to use and rapidly build up.

It's fast – it’s really blazing fast.

It saves us the expense of an all-flash array. All-flash would work for us, but VSAN is cheaper. I think that this solution is really new, but it has real benefits over all-flash arrays.

We are seeing some improvements coming up, but at the moment you have to store every object on multiple disks to protect it, and they should be better distributed over disks to help parity.

It's very stable – we have had no failures.

It’s really scalable in terms of both capacity and performance, at least for our needs.

We haven’t had to use it – the product is really stable.

We were using a traditional storage array from Dell and we will see more VSAN usage in the future.

The initial setup was a little bit complicated because we have to do everything from scratch. It’s a new world, and much easier in the newer releases.

We looked at other vendors – classic storage vendors – but we thought this direction was faster as things are moving towards a software designed storage.

I think you should try it – its really stable and valuable and help to drill your costs down.

Simple to set up, manage, and integrate it with tools you’re already familiar (vCenter, vClient) with.

It also gives us a policy-based storage on a per-VM level.

Also if you can apply redundancies to machines, they’re all different.

• All built within hypervisor
• Easily stood up with hardware you already have
• Truly virtualized storage
• Get rid of all hardware, and you get a much smaller footprint
• Nodes can be in different datacenter, and so can stretch cluster

• Good job integrating with vRealize, vCOPS, etc.
• Needs complete integration with vRealize for GUI for drill down analysis
• Would be nice to see features like dedupe because it wastes a lot of mass when striping across multiple nodes and vSphere hosts.

Some difficulty finding compatible hardware, but if you follow the HCL provided by VMware. and make sure you're buying the correct nodes, storage devices, and SSD’s that are all supported, then it’s a stable product. Even if you have problems, it's still only one phonecall.

It supports up to 64 nodes so huge scalability.

As a VMware customer for many years, sometimes it takes a few calls, but they have some brilliant people who can solve difficult technical problems.

• Setup just a few clicks after hardware all connected, “pretty stupid easy”.
• Customers can test and validate without going out and buying vSAN ready nodes.

It loses points because it lacks lots of performance and deduplication abilities that competitors have.