VMware vSAN Reviews

We primarily rely on VMware vSAN for our virtualization infrastructure, with all servers virtualized using this platform. We've implemented a hyper-converged infrastructure with vSAN handling all storage needs across our primary and disaster recovery sites.

While we haven't made major changes to our disaster recovery and business continuity processes yet, moving towards stretch vSAN across sites will simplify and expedite our DR processes in the future.                 

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.

There is a significant limitation with this feature as it prevents VMs using shared VMDKs from creating snapshots, which is a crucial functionality. This limitation greatly reduces the practicality of using shared VMDKs despite their benefits in cluster environments. Integrating shared VMDKs with snapshot functionality, even if it means excluding them from snapshots, would greatly enhance the usability of this feature and make it more valuable for many users.

I have been using Vmare vSAN for the past 15 years.

We faced a specific issue with vSan, related to a known bug in VMware, which led to activating our DR vSan on our primary production site. This required us to switch to our DR site for a period. While vSan is generally stable and performs well, this event does impact my overall review. I would rate it a 8 out of 10.

The support we received for vSAN was excellent.

Positive

We switched to vSAN for HCI after reaching end-of-life with our external vSAN storage and physical hosts. We compared different options, including renewing with updated vSAN infrastructure, but found vSAN on Dell infrastructure to be the best in terms of management simplicity and cost-effectiveness.

Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective.

I use the solution in my company for virtual servers.

The solution's most valuable feature stems from its ability to add a lot of servers and the fact that it allows users to use different operating systems. Sometimes, I can use the product on Windows XP. There are certain products for which I might need to use Windows XP. I load different operating systems on VMware vSAN, and sometimes, I even use iOS on it.

The product is not user-friendly. From an improvement perspective, the product needs to be made more user-friendly. Lately, I have noticed that there is a possibility of data leakage by hackers in the product. Hackers are able to manage to leak information or data from the product using some corrupt files, making it an area of major concern where improvements are required. From a security perspective, leakage happens when some of the company's internal information is exposed to outsiders. VMware vSAN should release a version that is faster than the current ones offered.

I have been using VMware vSAN since 2015. I have around nine years of experience with the product. My company is a customer of VMware.

It is a stable solution. I have never encountered any stability issues with the product unless there is an update. I update the product whenever needed so that I don't have to face any issues.

Considering the IT support team and engineers in my company, I would say that around 25 people use the product.

If I face any issues with a product that I don't understand, I normally use Google and forums to get answers to deal with the problems since it is an easy process for me.

I have experience with Oracle.

The product's initial setup phase is simple.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

Users can use the free version of the product. Users may also start off with the demo version of the tool. After you learn to use the solution, you can buy it if it is beneficial.

My company chose VMware vSAN over other products, considering the stability it offers.

Considering my IT background, I would say that it is easy to learn to use the product.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

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.

The majority of our customers already vSphere in their infrastructure, so we usually upgrade the infrastructure by adding new hardware, or we migrate to a hyperconverged solution with vSAN ReadyNode and VxRail in some cases.

The vSAN storage cluster is the most interesting feature.

Many VMware products are specialized, where one solution does one thing and another does something else. It would be better if VMware consolidated these products and offered modules or add-ons instead of selling 10 different solutions.

Also, a vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array. Deduplication and compression work better with an all-flash array, so I think that VMware should give customers the option to activate and support this feature for hybrid arrays. Other products like Nutanix support this.

We first implemented vSAN about three or four years ago.

We had some complaints about the recent firmware update. 

I think vSAN is more scalable than some solutions we've tried. We don't have the same issues as we do with VxRail. It's less of a concern because the software is more independent of the hardware.

I've never had to contact support. 

Our engineers have a lot of experience with vSAN, so we think it's easy to implement. One person is usually enough to set up the solution and apply updates. 

I rate VMware vSAN eight out of 10. In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent. It causes fewer disruptions from changing the administration. You need about the same amount of knowledge and expertise as vSphere.

The primary use of the solution is the virtualization and storage process in a simple platform. 

The solution is not independent, it is interlaced with other solution such as vSphere and NSX. If you work with one you will be working with others. vSphere is connected to NSX and the NSX will connect to the vSAN. vSphere connects for storage purpose. When the virtualization process is happening, the storage area network would be vSAN. It resembles a managed service from VMware, where all the data and everything will be put into the vSAN.

This solution has a dashboard that you can log into and control if you need too while the VM is getting created.

The solution could be improved by having more filtered and multiple view volumes instead of a single view.

In the next release, I would like to see a more user-friendly dashboard with the potential to display issues. It should be capable of detecting the issues faster. For example, if something is wrong with your LAN, controller, or storage volumes.

I have used the solution for ten years.

The solution is scalable. We have more than 50 administrators and approximately 200 operators using the solution.

The technical team is provided by VMware and has workers in all different areas. For example, there will be people working in the storage control part or in the technical area.

It was quite easy to install and took a couple of hours.

I did the installation by myself. 

The solution requires a license. The payment is on a yearly basis and It is not overly expensive. 

We evaluated Microsoft Hyper-V which has a similar storage area network. However, it can not be used together with NSX and vSpere like this solution. 

I will continue using and recommend this solution.

I rate VMware vSAN a seven out of ten. 

Today, we use it for general compute and VDI. We have not put our VDI into production yet, but on the general compute side, it works great. The performance has been exemplary.

The most valuable features are ease of deployment and ease of management. If you compare it to other software-defined storage products, it's much easier. It's a checkbox. It's lot easier to manage.

The Snapshots feature looks pretty cool, so that will be nice to have. External storage would be a good thing to have in the next release, something other than iSCZI, something a little more, not HA, a little more production-oriented, than iSCZI.

So far we haven't had any issues at all. It has worked very well.

We're not that large at Boys Town. We probably only have 500 VMs. Realistically we have about 50 VSXi hosts. So for us, it's great because we can just buy servers and expand any cluster we need. We split clusters based on other needs, like licensing or something else. It's not like we get to 64 nodes. So we don't have any issues with scalability. It works great for us.

We were having some problems with another software-defined storage vendor so we switched to vSAN. We had problems with the previous vendor's support. While I have never talked to VMware vSAN support, I've talked to GSS, but I've never had issues with GSS, other than their not calling you back right away.

For me, the most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• ease of use
• single pane of glass - that is huge for me
• enterprise class, obviously
• availability.

We've had no issues with the product. We put it in in two days. The initial deployment was straightforward, easy.

On our shortlist were Dell EMC Vx Rack FLEX, VxRail, and we looked at Nutanix a little bit. We chose vSAN because we had done PoCs in the past and, comparing it to every other software-defined storage product out there, its ease of use is unparalleled. It's very easy to set up and very easy to administer, comparatively.

I would ask a colleague who is looking at this type of solution, "Do you need storage for VMs?" Hands-down, if you need storage for VMs, vSAN is your option. If you need a SAN for some other reason, other than storage for VMs, then go for it. But if you're running VMware VMs, buy vSAN.

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.

I would rate vSAN at eight out of ten. It could get to a ten, once we have more time running it.

This solution has improved our organization by allowing us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance. However, it doesn't change the internal organization much.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the simplicity to implement and to maintain.

One area that could be improved is the management feature. The link between the virtualization layer and the application layer can be improved as well.

An additional feature I would like to see in the next release is integration between virtualization with vSAN and network virtualization.

I've been using the solution for the last three years.

My impression of the stability is that it's a very good solution for our usage.

For the product cloud, scalability is okay. However, when we try to use a larger cloud, we can add more new nodes into the same vSAN configuration.

Every year, our number of users increases.

The customer support is very good, depending on the contract support that you supply. We are using a premium support and the quality is quite good.

The complexity of the initial setup is not really on the VMware, but only the hyper-layer because we need to check if the hyper-layer, underlying VMware are strictly compatible.

For the first implementation, it took more or less one year, but now it takes much less time to add new material and new configuration.

In the beginning, we saw a huge return on investment from VMware, from 10 years ago to five years ago, but now we are used to the product. So the ROI doesn't make much enough for us because we only use vSAN. Now VMware is the baseline.

The product is quite expensive, regarding the open-source solution.

The cost of the solution is a mixture of monthly user and licenses purchasing. So for the internal user, we use licenses purchasing. For an external customer, we use the Pay-Per-View model.

Before choosing VMware, we evaluated Microsoft Nutanix and Cisco HyperFlex. VMware design is more mature than the other solutions, generally.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We have vSAN, and have built-in storage capabilities. We have many hosts, and we use the host through our providers with vSAN, with the storage. This improves everything because it is all internally between the servers. We use an NSX protocol. And what NSX does, it uses an internal network between hosts, so there is no use of an external switch. We create an internal connection between the host and the VMware product. So traffic is all internal and you can create all the firewalls and switches, everything. It becomes virtual. But, it is sometimes complicated when you try to deploy new systems or when you have to scale a system very quickly.

I think the vSAN product uses vSphere to monitor the system. It is sometimes difficult to manage the PCs within the system. VMware is currently working towards moving things to the cloud network. This is a great new addition to the VMware product.

To me, it is very stable. I never have problems. I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability. Like any normal system, you may sometimes have problems with one little platform, or with a host that is not working. But, there are no major issues.

We have 130,000 people connected to the platform and to the servers. Eventually, we want to use the cloud, which will help with the volume.

You can speak with VMware and they will provide you service that you need.

I can set up a platform of VMware in a week, easily. It took me about a week to deploy our platform and we basically set up all he servers, all the network and everything else. Then, it took about two or three days to work and patch everything, and cable in everything.

The older versions were a little more complicated. Nowadays, there are more documentations, videos, and tutorials. So, it is less complicated. There are still some issues, until you have to look at everything. But, I think that because there is more documentation now, and more information, you can speak with VMware and they can provide you service.

The only problem I see with VMware is the price tag. This may start causing problems because there are other solutions out there, like AWS, that are open source and free. So, there is no license fee. VMware is very good, but expensive, in comparison.

I compared VMware to Oracle. They're very good, but Oracle is expensive, so people buy it and then start using open-source. Oasis is another option because it's cheaper and it's a similar process. So that is the problem I think VMware is going to have to compete with them in the future, and it is only going to get worse.

To me, VMware is a leader of virtualization. I think everyone just follows VMware. 

The reason why we use VMware is because all of the areas that VMware can provide. They fill a need for our platforms. There are other platforms now that provide similar solutions. In the old days, it was a simple Microsoft platform, and they had no management costs. Now they use VMN to create a cross-test and to link all of the servers they want. So they can provide restoration of servers. Furthermore, now they are integrating the movement towards cloud solutions. The only issues concerning the future of vSAN is the price. If someone builds a platform that is free, and only has to pay a license fee for a server, that may cause a problem for VMware.