VMware vSAN Reviews

We use it for our management cluster. All of our network services are on this cluster, on vSAN. That way, it's off the production network, it's off by itself. We have four nodes in case there is an issue with it, it has the failover capabilities.

The performance is very good. We have NVMe performance in it so it's very fast.

The most valuable features are being able to keep it off by itself and the ease of use.

We have been talking to VMware about things we'd like to see and I think they have done them in their 6.6 release. I don't think we need any more enhancements at this time.

The stability is very good. We have some HCI solutions like this in our environment and this one is on par with those solutions.

The scalability is very good. If we know that we need more CPU, more memory, we can add more nodes to it. We don't need to do that today but we know, tomorrow, that we have that capability.

We have a VMware TAM and they have helped us out with technical support. We haven't needed to call support. Things have been very smooth, no issues whatsoever.

We knew from doing the DR project and from having some issues with our production vSphere that we needed some type of solution to help us out, to keep it off the production network. But we did not have a product before this one. This is a new product for us.

For us, the most important criteria when selecting a new vendor are

• ease of use, because we have an operations group that we need to worry about
• cost is always up there
• the future of it - making sure it has a future because we hate to get something and then, after a year or so, it goes out-of-support and no one is using it anymore and there are no upgrades.

The initial setup was a little complex. We did it a couple of years ago and we've heard that it is so much easier now. I know that they are working on that capability right now.

I don't see this solution as an ROI type of thing. We tried to do it as a DR solution, or for making sure that it's a solution that is off by itself. At this point, cost was not a major factor for this.

We were using Dell and then we had a Dell EMC box, a hybrid. But it was a lot more money and it seemed we would always be a version behind. But with this one, the vSAN that we chose, we can upgrade it as needed. We can always be at the latest and greatest.

Make sure you use a solution that is supported. There are a lot of companies out there that are new and sometimes they don't have a life. We have been in that situation before where we have bought something and then it has gone end-of-life or no more support. Make sure you get a solution that is going to be supported for five to seven years, such as vSAN.

I would rate it at nine out of 10. I know it's very young and that they're growing it or doing a lot of updates to it, so I'm thinking it will be a 10. It's just very new to us. To make it a 10 will take some time.

VMware vSAN is a global solution, so we can manage all the storage solutions in one place. It's embedded in VCI solutions. 

When you upgrade the vSAN, there are some issues like lost data and problems with the log. The log disappears. When you upgrade the solution, you must have several logs, so if you have some problems, you can check the log server to find them. But this solution has some improvements, like its snapshot feature. When you have to upgrade the version, vSAN makes a snapshot, and if there is a problem, you can revert to the old version.

The company has been using vSAN for about 18 or 19 months. 

vSAN isn't very stable. 

It's easy to manage and scale vSAN. We can increase the volume as necessary for the VM or the user. We have around 2,000 users. Right now, we're not planning to increase usage yet, but maybe we will take another look in six months to see if we need to scale the solution or not.

I'm satisfied with VMware support. 

If you have some networking skills, it's straightforward to install, deploy, and manage vSAN. 
We have three engineers maintaining all the VSI and vSAN solutions as well as all the features and management components.

We're looking for another solution like Nutanix to use concurrently with vSAN. Nutanix is more efficient but also more expensive. Nutanix is a little more stable, efficient, and simple to manage. However, I expect VMware and EMC will improve soon. I think in the next year, VMware's solution will become more stable and easier to manage.

We're primarily using it in a VDI environment, a four-node VDI environment. Performance is very good. We're very happy with it. Networking setup was a little bit of a challenge, but we got around that.

Reduced complexity. We don't have to worry about the physical SAN anymore. That makes it easier. The learning curve as well, when people learn vSAN, they find it very easy to manage compared to a physical SAN.

Flexibility, growth, and expansion are probably the more important features for us.

As our environment grows, the more users come on, the more VDI workstations that we need, we can easily expand either horizontally or vertically with the environment. We're very happy with that.

A bit more information on the upgrade path, upgrade availability, how to upgrade, that would be very useful.

We find the stability very good. It really reduces our overall operations.

We find the scalability very good. We've been able to upgrade very easily as users come on, as we need to create more VDI workstations. Adding the extra drives gives us the capacity we need.

We haven't needed to use technical support so far; nothing at all.

Up until about a year-and-a-half ago, we were using physical SANs. Space is a problem in our environments that we deploy, so we knew we had to get rid of the physical SAN and go toward the more virtual environment. The number of nodes we deploy, we need them. By integrating the vSAN, we're able to get the space requirements we need.

I was involved in the initial setup. In fact, I was involved with the selection of vSAN compared to other products, as well as physical SANs, and I was involved in some of the design and configuration.

It was fairly straightforward, actually. After we got around the networking issues, we found that the vSAN setup was very good.

In terms of return on investment, we don't have any kind of requirement there.

We considered EMC as well. We considered HPE LeftHand, which we had used in the past, so we were familiar with the virtualized SAN. We like the vSAN a lot.

The advice I would give is to properly analyze your host infrastructure. Make sure that your network cards are sufficient for the environment you're trying to deploy in, whether it be all-flash. There are already some Ready Nodes available. Go with the Ready Nodes when it comes to vSAN. Don't try and buy your own parts - something we looked at originally that we scrapped. That would be my main advice. Go with Ready Nodes when it comes to virtual SAN.

In terms of improving the product, we're very familiar with the new features in 6.7, which we're going to be upgrading to. Data encryption, we would like to deploy, as well as compression and deduplication. Those features are already available in the new version. We just have to take the time to deploy them.

Out of ten, I'd give it an eight. We're very happy with the product. To bring it to a ten we'd rather not upgrade as often. Right now, we're at 6.2 and that wasn't long ago. They're already going to 6.8 now. We'd like to have a little bit of a normalization period before we get to the next product. I understand it's a focus for VMware. We're very happy they're focusing on it.

We use it for our DMZ and any test environments that we put into our industry.

It's performing pretty well. We have no issues with vSAN at all.

It has improved our organization in a way of scaling it. 

• Cost was big for us.
• Speed
• Scalability

We can scale it very easily for a test environment. We were able to segment our DMZ so it wasn't connected to anything, which we really liked.

One thing in vSAN that I would like to improve is using vSAN as a repository for files or other things. For example, with Horizon, maybe we can save profiles with UEM on there. That would be a good feature that I would like.

The stability has been great with vSAN. We have not yet seen downtime.

We scale it with our test environment. We are looking to do it with Horizon. We are able to scale it to see how many VMs that we can host and how long it will take us to add new hosts, if needed.

Technical support has been very good. They respond pretty fast, especially if we have a critical issue. Their responses have been great.

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. So, vSAN is very easy to set up.

We did consider other hyperconverged solutions. It usually came down to price. vSan was the most cost effective thing. That's why we went with it. Also, we didn't have to get a connected array. We can put it in small places, remote sites, etc.

Nutanix, Cisco HyperFlex Edge, and VxRail were on our shortlist.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. To make it a ten, it needs to be able to scale the amount of data that we can hold so we can put bigger, more data-intensive apps on it.

My advice to a person looking at vSAN is get your hands dirty in the labs. Show how easy it is to set up, because it's not very complicated. It's an easy solution that you can implement at your company.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Since we're a hospital, we have multiple hospitals in the area. We look at local site resiliency, so we're looking to see if we can put it in each of our hospitals.

Our primary use case is production data and the performance has been great.

• Cost
• Being hyperconverged, it simplifies what equipment we have to buy

I'd like to see better integration with the Update Manager, in terms of firmware updates for hardware.

It has been pretty stable for us.

It's very scalable. I like that. Adding a node is easy. Adding a disk group is easy.

Tech support has been very knowledgeable for the issues that we've had. They have been able to troubleshoot or determine exactly what is going on and then resolve it in a timely manner.

We were end-of-life on our previous storage and looking at replacements. It made sense to look at something that was going to integrate both the servers and the storage.

The most important criteria, for me, when selecting a vendor are

• reputation
• ease of use
• value.

We went with vSAN because of cost and ultimate value. Ease of use and the cost, compared to some of the alternatives, were pretty compelling. I also liked that we could choose whatever hardware we wanted, rather than having to use one particular vendor.

The setup had some complexity, and some of that was figuring out newer releases. Networking, originally, was kind of a pain, with having to have everything talk Multicast. They've gone to Unicast which simplifies things.

It has simplified things for us. It was one purchase for servers and storage so that made it easier on us. It's been a good product, it's something that we'll continue to use.

For our shortlist, we looked at SimpliVity, some Dell EMC solutions, and Nutanix. 

Make sure you do a proof of concept. And look at your options for hardware if you're looking at vSAN, compared to some competitors where you have just one option.

I would rate the solution at eight out of ten. To get to a ten they would have to drop the cost. That would get a point right there. Then, going forward, I'd like to see better integration with Update Manager. Some of the manual processes that you still have to do, being able to automate those, have it do them on its own, would be great.

The value that VSAN brings to our organization, really there are two major areas. One is the ability to replace very expensive proprietary SANs. The other is the need to replicate and keep data available at all times across three separate data centers. Those two elements are really where VSAN plays.

Probably the biggest benefit we get is the replacement of the SANS and it's purely a cost one. To give you an idea, we spend roughly 50% less on equivalent storage by using VSAN to replace our more traditional SAN architecture. Further, the operating costs are 20, 30 percent less. The ability to scale our storage as we need it is far simpler with VSAN than buying the more traditional route. So I would argue that that's probably the single best feature we get.

There are features that I would love to see added to VSAN and I think they're being worked on. One of the major limitations is its inability to provide storage to things outside the hyper-converged world. Any traditional SAN we have left over in our institution will be for that function. Ultimately, if we can remove that by simply extending VSAN's access outside of its little virtual bubble, so to speak, that's the key. And as I said I think that's going to be added.

VeriTech is a consulting and engineering firm specializing in health care. We provide, management and technical skills often acting as the CTO of, healthcare institutions. One of our engagements is I'm actually the interim acting CTO of Baystate Health, in western Massachusetts. VSAN is one of the primary ones but, software defined, architecture and complete hyper-convergence is really what we use VMware for. We use NSX and VSAN as part of our, absolute total infrastructure. And that's all part of vCloud, initiative. We also use Horizon for our VDI, implementation. And that pretty much-those products are 99% of what we use.

The stability of VSAN so far has been excellent. We're just beginning to enter production. We're beginning to migrate our data off a traditional SANS which are a collection of EMC, IBM, NetApp, whole range of them onto the VSAN platform and so far we haven't had any problems.

It's actually the internal feature that I think gets us the great feature of savings out of it. With VSAN I simply add disk drives and hosts to my infrastructure at any of the facilities I have. The net result is an increase of both storage and processing.

In the older model, if I need to add, let's say a terabyte of space for some particular tier one application, I have to add a terabyte, from let's say EMC, into data center one, a terabyte into data center two, a terabyte into data center three, and if, in my adding of those, I cross one of those magic boundaries where I'm out of cabinet space or whatever, then I have all those expenses. None of that is true with VSAN. In VSAN, I simply add drives into a chassis anywhere in my system. If I need more space, I buy a simple chassis, throw it in there, and continue to add the drives. Much more scalable. There really is no limit to it.

Technical support on VSAN has been excellent also. It's been a bit of a paradigm shift for our employees. They're used to that traditional sort of big iron, I'm going to call it stair-step limited approach and it's taken a little bit of skill to get them used to it, but VMware has been there right for us from the beginning. They've helped our people understand the difference and we're pretty much now self-sufficient.

The choice of VSAN was almost made for us. And let me step back for a minute and say it's not particularly the product, although we love the product, it's where we suggested after quite a lot of testing of other-of other competing products, we knew that traditional SAN architecture and the cost of deploying it, maintaining it, was unsustainable. Our budgets in healthcare IT are flat. No one's giving us extra money. But, with all the images and the doctors and the sharing of data, the need to store data is not being held flat. It's going way up.

We simply don't have the money. So we needed some new, way to address storage. And that meant software defined storage. So that was a given. The next step was we needed something that would provide the levels of service we have, and stability we have with the traditional architecture but at far less price. That's where VSAN shone. That's where when we did all the necessary testing and reviews VSAN acted in a secure performance and cost, areas needed.

The selection of VSAN, it's really part of a larger hyper-convergence model and for technical reasons and for simplicity, we wanted products. If we were going to move our entire, siloed approach of storage here, processing here, networking there, onto one single platform, we wanted all of those abilities buried into the extraction or the hypervisor level itself. We didn't want to buy independent little products and snap them in so to speak. Really, that means the only solution suite was the VMware world of products -- NSX for networking, VSAN for storage, and vCloud for everything else. So it really was a no brainer. That was really the essential relationship between VSAN and the other products.

The implementation of VSAN along with the implementation of all hyper-convergence technology is tricky. Although we benefit greatly for it now, there were a lot of issues that, we simply had to work through. And these are not really an issue related to the product itself but more related to the nature of what the product does. Since VSAN is a software component that allows you to add storage to your hyper-converged system, which in turn is based on products like Cisco’s UCS, the revision of code in the Cisco UCS chassis, the types of drives, the levels of drivers across the entire platform are essential to keep in lock step. So, we had many cases where, as we added capacity, turned on new features, began to migrate, we ran into all sorts of, um, difficulty. But the truth is, with our people, with VMware’s, with Cisco’s, everybody supplied the skills we needed and now we're pretty much, we're there.

Well, VSAN is a solution of replacement. VSAN is going to replace all of our traditional SAN. So ultimately at the end of the day a couple years from now, almost all of our storage should be on VSAN. It really should be very little if anything left.

When we selected VSAN, as I said, remember, it's part of a total package, so the better question is, when we were selecting hyper-convergence, who would be the vendor for that. Well, there aren't that many options out there. There's really three. You have Microsoft. You have, open stack solutions and open source solutions, and then you have VMware. The Microsoft product, although engaging, isn't really ready for prime time according to our needs. The open source open/stack option is potentially interesting but requires a great deal of internal engineering and support that healthcare systems really don't have. Really left VMware as the only viable, affordable, complete solution. And hence we chose it.

On one side is a strategic vendor and that's where VMware, Microsoft, in the medical case, Cerner, which is a large application provider. There are four or five vendors that I would consider strategic and these are vendors that we could simply not operate without the function that they provide. So when a vendor's classified as strategic and then we look at the function they provide, there has to be a level of commitment. They must be a market leader. They must have enormous R&D capabilities. They must be flexible. They must interact with our engineers at a peering level, not simply as a dictatorial here, use this, and that's what's good for you and no more. VMware clearly acts appropriately like that. So, because, VSAN is part of hyper-convergence, hyper-convergence is a strategic imperative you can connect the dots where a company like VMware is necessary.

I would say, that they are definitely there. They're a high nine [out of 10]. Anybody that's looking to do hyper-convergence I think needs to understand a few basic principals. And all of these apply to VSAN as it applies to any of the elements of hyper-convergence. This is a long project. It's not something that's going to happen all at once and the value is after completion, the sum total of the parts.

If you go through a project like this for example, at Baystate, it's a two to three year project with required funding across that period of time. If, for some reason, we withdrew funding halfway through this process we would end up with less than the sum of our parts, we would end up with a lot of disconnected stuff. So be sure to make sure that your management and the people involved understand that this is a major commitment. It's not, oh, I'm just going to buy this once and forget it.

The other thing I would suggest, be paid attention to, is the affect this has on your people, on your engineers, on your workers, your HR considerations. In a traditional environment like ours, we're siloed. We have our storage guys here, our networking guys here and so on and so on - very expensive, a lot of duplication. In a hyper-converged model, all of that becomes one. Really what you have is a series of better trained, more effective engineers, but less of them. That doesn't mean you fire people.

That means you now put those people to other projects that have been sort of languishing because we just could never get around to them. That's, I think, a big thing to understand, that you will affect the way your users work. If they're not willing to learn new skills, if they're not willing to cross boundaries which were once siloed, your project could be in jeopardy.

When researching anything like hyper-convergence, the more information the better. We spent a great deal of time talking to not just health care institutions, and to be fair, this is a relatively new trend in health care so there really aren't all that many to talk to, but there are a number of non-healthcare institutions that are further along in some of these projects than healthcare is. We spoke with them, we spoke with vendors, we spoke with even other consulting firms. I think it's very important to gather as much information as you can before, you know, embarking on this.

Finding the resources for the gathering of this information is both hard and easy. It depends on which one we're talking about. The ability to get information from other institutions if they're outside of healthcare, and remember I'm speaking from a healthcare point of view, may be difficult, because they may not be allowed to share certain information. Getting consulting information is difficult unless you, of course, engage them. And I would argue that it's not necessarily such a bad idea to engage for a small amount of money the relative experts in some of these consulting firms and just have a quick conversation with them. If all of a sudden they seem to be knowledgeable, you do your homework on them, I would argue a further engagement is not necessarily a bad idea. But you do have to put some efforts into finding the info. It's not just going to fall out of space.

I use VMware vSAN for storage management, particularly for managing our data center and virtual machines (VMs). It significantly reduces downtime, especially during maintenance, allowing seamless machine movement.

The platform's most valuable features are centralized management capability and vMotion. These features provide a central management point and allow seamless VM movement during maintenance.

We have encountered some challenges related to administrative tasks and licensing issues for the product. 

I suggest improvements in processing speed, user-friendliness, and resource utilization for the next release. Additionally, making the system more user-friendly and easier to manage would be beneficial.

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

I rate the product stability a six and a half. We encountered issues related to hardware and vulnerability patches. 

The product is highly scalable and significantly supports our organization's needs. Our company has approximately seven to eight users who manage and work with VMware vSAN. We plan to increase the usage in the future.

I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support team takes time to respond to queries. 

Neutral

We have had experience with Hyper-V. We decided to switch to VMware vSAN due to its advantages in management, scalability, and overall performance compared to other solutions like Hyper-V.

I rate the initial setup process an eight out of ten, as it is relatively straightforward. The deployment typically takes up to 30 minutes.

The solution is relatively expensive compared to similar products.

The product has simplified our storage management by reducing downtime during maintenance and allowing for seamless VM migration without disrupting ongoing work.

It was most beneficial during our migration phase when we transitioned from a third-party storage solution to VMware vSAN. The seamless process helped resolve the challenges we faced with the previous solution.

Integrating VMware vSAN into our existing vSphere environment has been smooth. It works seamlessly with our existing hardware platforms, such as those from HP and IBM, thereby increasing operational efficiency and reducing hardware costs.

I recommend it to others and rate it an eight. 

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.