VMware vSAN Reviews

VMware vSAN is used for virtualization and general-purpose computing. Instead of going for the SAN (storage area network) storage, customers go for VSAN (virtual storage area network). The solution is used for general-purpose computing, production computing, and storage.

Instead of going for SAN storage, customers can use the scale-up and scale-out features of VMware vSAN.

Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers. Maintenance-wise, when the capacity is utilized beyond 60% to 70%, then the time of the upgrade is a little higher compared to the standard SAN storage.

I have been using VMware vSAN for more than five years.

VMware vSAN is a pretty stable solution. We haven't seen any issues with the solution's stability in five to seven years. The customers would face issues if they ignore some key points.

I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten for stability.

In terms of scalability, we have to just add the nodes. If you require more computing or storage, you have to add the nodes to the existing cluster. Our clients for VMware vSAN are medium and enterprise businesses.

I rate the solution nine and a half out of ten for scalability.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight or eight and a half out of ten.

The solution's deployment time totally depends on the customer or the deployment guide. However, we can deploy VMware vSAN in a day.

The solution's licensing pricing could be improved. The level of discounts available on the solution's licensing price varies from customer to customer. Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers.

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.

Our clients are government and private customers working with VMware vSAN in the manufacturing, defense, oil and gas, and ITIS industries. The solution is generally built on top of the virtualization layer with VMware. It's a part of virtualization. The solution's performance and management are pretty easy.

VMware vSAN is tightly integrated with other VMware products because it's a part of vSphere. It is tightly integrated with the virtualization layer. We can integrate and utilize VMware vSAN for other VMware products very easily.

Using VMware vSAN is totally dependent on the customer's use case. A standard three-tier architecture is recommended for customers who want to use a tier-one application for ERP protection. VMware vSAN is recommended to customers with a use case for VDI, general-purpose computing, and test development environments.

Overall, I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.

The product’s most valuable features are performance and expandability.

The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it.

We have been using VMware vSAN for seven out of years.

The product is stable.

It is a scalable product. It is suitable for enterprises.

Since we are an advanced partner, we receive on-time and adequate support services. However, their response time needs improvement for critical cases.

Neutral

It is an easy-to-install and maintain product. It requires one or two executives, depending on the environment, to conduct implementation.

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

I recommend VMware vSAN and rate it an eight out of ten. The product’s support team’s response time and pricing could be better.

We are using it for a redundant, local front-end environment for our WiFi portal. We're also using it for critical backend services, our DCP instances, and our internal monitoring environments. We have instances inside that system right now.

I believe we are using its latest update.

The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it. 

It is pretty straightforward. We're able to manage multiple platforms with ease. In terms of the overhead of understanding how the entire platform is being administered, it was fairly quick for our team to get the hang of it.

It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins.

We were trying to explore a solution for a hybrid setup, and VMware had proposed something, but we wanted to understand a deeper setup where our existing vSAN and our HCI environment can interact better with our platforms on the cloud in AWS. So, there should be those types of interactions wherein we can better explore cost-saving opportunities from some platforms in the cloud versus the one that we have on-prem.

I have been using this solution for more than two years.

It has been a pretty stable system so far.

We had a long discussion with our vendor partner about a plan to scale up the system. They gave us several options, but we ended up with the most cost-effective one where we had to trim down some of the node requirements that we were planning to buy initially.

We had an experience with them recently, and the correspondence with the technical support from VMware was fairly quick. It was aligned with the expected SLA. There were no major issues with the support people who assisted us during that time.

It was fairly straightforward. We were surprised at how fast it was implemented. The entire implementation took about two weeks. After that, it was turned over to us, and then we planned on the migration of the platforms from our old converged environment into this new environment.

In terms of the maintenance, apart from the normal operational maintenance that we're doing, we always ensure that there is a back-to-back maintenance agreement with VMware and the vendor partner who sold us the solution. So far, there has been very low admin maintenance on the platform. There have been no major issues except the last one where one node got affected by a power problem in the data center. That's just about it.

We worked with a vendor partner for its implementation. Right now, in our team, we have around five admins who work with this solution.

Cost-wise, the Nutanix licenses were cheaper, but in terms of the hardware, there was some contention around it. So, in terms of implementation, the way Nutanix was projecting the implementation on their end was that there were a lot of open-source admin platforms. vSAN is a licensed product in VMware, and Nutanix was proposing a KVM solution, which is open source. That's why their pricing was a bit cheaper, but when we were trying to compare it with an enterprise version of their management platform, it boiled down to the VMware vSAN being most effective in the long run.

When we were exploring an HCI solution, we zoned in on the VMware vSAN, HPE solution, and Nutanix solution. 

I would recommend this solution to others. It is easy to implement, scale, and maintain. The operational work required to maintain the platform is not that difficult.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are VMware and Nutanix partners. I'm more into the architecting role. I propose solutions to the customers. I'm not using it as an end-user.

Our customers use it for their core business applications. They use it for production and non-production workloads.

We are mostly working with its latest version.

There are definitely cost benefits. There is also no OEM dependency. I can reach out to any OEM and deploy VMware vSAN. 

Its ease of use is most valuable. It is easy to configure, and there is a unified interface, which makes things slightly easier.

They can be more competitive in terms of pricing.

They should make the software updates easier. We should be able to upgrade it more easily.

If we can have a unified dashboard for managing the public cloud environment, it would be good.

I have been working with this product for more than five years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We had a maximum of around 10,000 users.

Our delivery team contacts them. Their response time was good enough.

It is not really difficult, but you need a skilled resource to manage that. The deployment duration varies. It usually takes a week or so.

We set it up for our customers. We have around four to five people for deployment and maintenance.

It is slightly expensive. They can be more competitive in terms of pricing.

I would definitely recommend it to others. vSAN is not suitable for all environments. It is better to do the assessment before going ahead with vSAN.

I would rate it a seven out of 10.

We mainly use vSAN for two purposes. One is to improve application performance with the HCI. The second is to migrate customers from legacy storage to high-speed SSD-based infrastructure. They are moving the computer network and storage capacity together. 

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. 

Also, if a customer wants to go for a VMware stack, vSAN has flexible, completely integrated solutions for two clouds. Stretched Cluster, vMotion, VXLAN—there are so many features. 

We are an IT solution provider, and we've been using VMware for 15 years. 

I would say vSAN is stable. 

Once you develop all three of your stacks, you can plug in the rack servers and all. If you are increasing in parallel, vSAN automatically increases the overall computing capacity of the IT infrastructure in terms of network storage and what you can compute.

Technical support is also good. I would rate VMware support eight out of 10 because nobody is perfect.

Setting up vSAN isn't too tricky. All HCI providers—Microsoft, Cisco, and VMware—have very smooth implementation except for Microsoft storage, which is complex. 

Maintenance is required. Sometimes hard disks crash, but thanks to the mobility and abstraction of the software from the hardware, we can migrate the entire infrastructure layer to some spare PC's main server and perform maintenance. This is the standard patching practice in the industry.

The pricing model is sometimes a challenge for us because their licenses are very costly.

I rate VMware vSAN nine out of 10. I am a VMware fanatic. As a solution architect, I've designed solutions for many customers. Clients have personal preferences, and they're generally swayed by what the vendors tell them, but my perspective is purely technical. If you are going for features, scalability, and performance, VMware is the best solution. 

It's not dependent on any vendor. The VMware layer is there, and VMware is required, but it saves a lot of costs and provides flexibility. Let's say I bought around 10 or 15 servers, and I'm not satisfied with the performance. I can change my server and migrate all my workloads to the new servers in the future.

VMware has an edge in terms of computing and networking because if we are going for a VMware infrastructure solution, there's a storage layer, so it can work with any kind of server or vendor. Suppose I buy some of my servers from Dell, some from HP, and a few from various companies. VMware gives you the flexibility to work with any vendor, networking, switches, and storage. They can come together in a complete software layer. I can have five servers from five different vendors. If I don't like one, I can plug in a server from any vendor in the stack, and it'll work. 

We are a solution provider and I am a consultant that works with products such as VMware vSAN.

The most valuable feature is the fast performance.

The licensing includes all of the recent features.

This solution should be easier to support and upgrade.

As a software-based product, it requires a lot of system resources.

I have been working with VMware vSAN for approximately two years.

The stability is quite good.

Scalability-wise, I would describe it as medium-level when compared to others.

I have been in contact with technical support but I have not needed to ask them a lot of questions. They are not the best but not the worst. Overall, I am satisfied with the support.

I would rate the support a four out of five.

In addition to VMware vSAN, we have HPE SimpliVity and Nutanix.

VMware vSAN operates at the software level, whereas SimpliVity operates at the hardware level. The price of SimpliVity is higher than a software-based product.

The disadvantage to VMware, operating at the software level, is that you have to have more resources.

The bottom line is that it's cheaper and easier to set up VMware vSAN.

The initial setup is not quite easy but rather, a medium-level difficulty. The installation should be simple but the instructions from the vendor are not quite enough. This means that you have to conduct some trial and error.

On a scale of one to where, where five is the easier, I would rate the initial setup and deployment a three.

This is a cost-effective product. It's a bit cheaper than the other solutions.

Price-wise, I would rate vSAN a four out of five.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is that you need to think about what it's going to be used with. For example, it may be more or less suitable depending on whether it will be used for normal database applications, VDI, or something else. The reason it needs consideration is that the initial hardware purchase depends on it. With respect to the software, there is only one choice, which is the VM license. However, for the hardware, you have to think about the servers, including the storage and other components.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are using VMware vSAN for a SCADA industrial automation system.

VMware vSAN has benefited our company mainly from the flexibility and redundancy. We have a two-node cluster, if one of the servers goes down, we will still be in operation. It provides high availability.

The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is the ease of management. VMware vSAN it's a part of VMware ESXi and when you do patching for VMware ESXi, VMware vSAN receives the patches too.

If we have some complicated issues, you have to use the command lines interface. Not everything is possible to be fixed in the GUI. This is a drawback, that some things have to be fixed via command-line interface and should be able to be done in the GUI.

I have been using VMware vSAN for approximately one year.

The stability of VMware vSAN is excellent. We have been running for one year, and there's there has not been any downtime. The speed is not the fastest, but it's sufficient.

The scalability is excellent because we can expand with more disks if we choose. The expansion is part of the license model which is simple to adjust.

We have approximately 60 people using this solution in my organization. The solution is always running in the background, it is always being used.

I have not contacted the technical support from VMware vSAN. We have not had a need to contact them.

The initial setup of VMware vSAN is of a medium level of difficulty. Since we have a two-node cluster, they have done some very smart innovations. You first have to understand the smart solution before you can fully understand the deployment.

The time of the deployment took approximately one week, this included some experimentation and test.

I did the full implementation myself.

The maintenance of VMware vSAN can be done quarterly, and one person is only needed. It's very easy to manage, the staff required for maintenance is very limited.

We are using the VMware vSAN ROBO which allows us to have a maximum of 25 virtual machines. The approximate cost is €10,000 for a perpetual license.

We evaluated StorMagic before choosing VMware vSAN which was a better git for our use case.

I would highly recommend VMware vSAN to others.

If others want to implement VMware vSAN I have experience with the Remote Office Branch Office(ROBO) solution. It's possible to deploy a virtual center during the installation of VMware vSAN. I recommend doing some studying before deploying it because there are some very good tips on YouTube on how to deploy it. It's a special method of how to deploy it, it's important to understand this method.

I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.

Our customers use the vSAN solution for many use cases. The first one is the installations for the branch office or some production use case where they have a small environment, but they need higher availability. The other use case is inside the data center where we installed a big data center solution for virtualization with VMware.

Most of the customers are using the latest version, but I have also done some vSAN installations with version 6.7.

It is easy to use. It is easy to implement for us, and it is also easy to maintain for the customers. It is not necessary to buy some extra devices and talk with other vendors.

It can be very expensive.

I have been using this solution for about four or five years.

Its stability is good.

Its scalability is quite good.

I don't know exactly how many customers are using vSAN because some of our customers install it on their own, but we probably have more than 20 customers.

I haven't had any problems with the solution, but I have heard from a few people that they are a little bit slow in answering the questions.

It is straightforward. The duration depends on the size and the use case, but it usually takes one to four days.

For its implementation, normally, you only need one engineer or admin from the storage team, but sometimes, you need a specialist from the networking/infrastructure team, which is a very important point for vSAN implementation.

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 would recommend this solution for all use cases. It works for all users and customers. It doesn't matter if it is inside the data center or outside the data center. It also works for VDI use cases. It just works.

We have no problems with the vSAN solution, but it is very important that you use the recommended hardware from the compatibility list. If you follow the recommendations from VMware, you should have no problems.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

We are using VMware vSAN for many purposes, such as NVI workload, edge computing, open run 5G for large customers, onsite installations, and low latency systems like mobile edge computing.

The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is you do not have to use additional hardware for storage. The operation of VMware vSAN does not take a lot of effort. If you have VMware technology on your site, then it's easy for the operational support of the system.

The orchestration is well integrated into the stack of the VMware management suite.

VMware vSAN could improve by having faster reload time and a single point of failure. Resynchronization of many hardware could be better. If you have an outage of a disc or a full system, the replication time is too slow. This has room for improvement.

I have used VMware vSAN for approximately three years.

The stability is satisfactory, it has been working well.

VMware vSAN is scalable, it is easy to scale out.

The number of people that use the solution can be anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000,000 depending on the customer.

We are one of the largest customers on the site for this kind of usage worldwide, and the support is very good. We have direct access to the development, R&D, and third-level support, they are very good.

The cost of VMware vSAN is reasonable.

A good solution should be small and fast and at the moment VMware vSAN is the best product that can solve our use cases.

I rate VMware vSAN a five out of ten.

We use it for our whole infrastructure. We use it for about 50 servers.

We are using its latest version.

We use it on three hosts, and we find it very easy to administer.

It is user-friendly, and its performance is good.

It could be cheaper.

We have been using it for two years.

Its stability is good. Its performance is good. We haven't had any breakdown in the last two years. We are very satisfied with the solution.

At the moment, we have a limit because we host 50 servers. We could have a bit more memory, and we have to buy it.

There are 60 users who are using all the servers. Its usage is moderate.

Normally, when we have a problem, we contact the consultant who had set up the system. He can usually fix the problem, but there haven't been many problems since we set up the system.

We used VMware but not vSAN.

Its setup was done by a consultant. It took about one or two days, but I don't remember exactly.

In terms of maintenance, it doesn't require much. We have to update it once in a while. It takes about two or three days a month.

We don't look at these figures. We buy a system and use it. We don't look at the figures like ROI.

It could be cheaper.

We are very satisfied with this solution. I would advise others to go ahead and just use it.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. It is a good product.