VMware vSAN Reviews

VMware has been around for a long time are are doing a decent job at catching up with the latest technologies i.e. bringing in kubernetes and containerization. Overall, this is a great tool for virtualization.

I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper.

I have been using VMware vSAN for 10+ years.

VMware is not a cost effective solution, especially if you have a Microsoft shop. In this case, you would have to purchase the VMware license when there are already Hyper-V solutions that could do it for much cheaper.

If you are already using VMware, then it is great to fun your applications and carries your infrastructure to the cloud. But, I would not recommend this solution to new customers. I give this solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution on Microsoft Windows Active Directory and loads of applications. Most of our stuff, over 90% of our servers, are on VMware.

The ease of use is great.

The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. 

Technical support is great.

The updating process could be easier. It's just a bit more complex. I don't update very often. It's something I do infrequently, and therefore, we haven't got that much experience with it. That said, this Lifecycle looks better. There's a new feature called Lifecycle, which is dealing with the issue sI mainly have.

I haven't done an update yet with the new system. My understanding is it's an improvement from what I can see. 

Guests that are pinned to hosts for various reasons, for antivirus or the backups should be able to be reported that they are being pinned, and also reported if things have snapshots. When you're doing certain things, they don't work so well if you've got snapshots on or if you've got things that are pinned. They can't move. When you're doing things, if there was something that was going to stop it from working that's within VMware, these should automatically be checked. 

The stability of the product is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is good.

The scalability is quite good. I don't know any others, to be honest. I've never used Hyper-V or any of the others. It's quite a de facto standard so I'm happy enough. I'm not informed as to how difficult or easy it is compared to others.

We'd like to expand in the future. We've tried to utilize it for everything. We can't do that at the moment due to licensing. Not the VMware licensing. It's more due to Oracle.

Technical support is very good. We have two places to get assistance. We have this vendor who supplied the new VMware and installed it and converted it, and we got another supplier who maintains everything and they're both very good. I'd recommend both of them.

The last setup was an upgrade. It's not so complex as we had to upgrade an existing system. It's not overly complex. I'd rate the process at a four out of five. 

The issues we had were mainly due to other things like the backup and data transfer. It wasn't actually to do so much with VMware itself and the other things. It was the transfer of data from one storage device to another and VMware wouldn't let us do it.

The deployment took about two weeks. 

We had a third party do it. They are a lot more experienced than us so we paid them for all the new hardware and we paid for them for the engineering to fit it and install it. We paid for them to convert from the old system to the new system - from the old VMware to the new VMware.

Our experience with them was very good. They were extremely helpful.

I don't deal with the licensing. I can't speak to the costs involved.

I work for the portrait gallery and we just serve our own people. We don't sell to the outside. I don't use it for outside organizations.

I'd advise potential new users to ask around for different suppliers who do it, just do a proper tender on supplying, and just to watch out for, if you're upgrading, how your backup treats the upgrade. That's a problem we had. We have Veeam, which is VMware, however, we made a mistake on using a new machine and trying to move stuff across and Veeam made it more complicated, which we didn't realize would happen. It's caused some issues.

Our experience was good, however, I haven't got enough experience with the outside vendors who do this as I only work for this company and we only do the upgrade once every three years or so. That said, I'd advise users to go with someone who's got a good background or reputation. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We are an implementation partner for VMware vSAN and we use it alongside our hyperconverged infrastructure solutions with products such as Nutanix, HyperFlex, and SimpliVity. It is currently implemented in key areas off-site for over seven customers.

The most valuable thing about vSAN is that all of its features have been working well for us for the past two years. We haven't had an issue with them.

When designing the implementation for vSAN, I have noticed that it requires a minimum of six nodes, and this creates a problem when it comes to maintenance. If, out of the six nodes, I put one node in maintenance mode, then vSAN does not create other VM components. I think the reason for this is that the minimum configuration is a six node arrangement. If any one of the six nodes is put into maintenance mode, we're simply unable to create a VM, but if there are seven nodes in that cluster, then we are able to put one under maintenance. That's one thing that should be looked at.

More generally, the features of vSAN as we see them are dependent on the quality of the storage, since each different storage technology has its own separate features that go along with it.

I have been working with VMware vSAN for at least two years. 

It is a stable product, especially now that we have it fully implemented. However, if any two or three of the nodes go away, vSAN goes down. I think we've had a few VMs where the data has been lost for this reason. I guess that the way it works would be similar to other technologies, but that's what we have observed.

You can increase the compute capability as well as the disk storage, so it is scalable.

I've already escalated the issue regarding the six nodes, which I've mentioned. This has been escalated to VMware and they know that it is a limitation, because apparently it is normal behavior for any nodes that are put in maintenance mode.

The setup is easy.

We have been working with vSAN for the last two years, and we haven't seen too many issues overall, but because of the troubles we have faced with the fact that vSAN doesn't let you put a node in maintenance mode unless you have six or more nodes, I would rate VMware vSAN a six out of ten.

Our customers who use VMware vSAN are in these industries: government, healthcare, education, and supply.

The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is that it's easy to manage and it's also comfortable to use. Another unique feature is its hardware upgrade, but I'm unsure if this is also present in other players in the market. Upgrade and authorization for this product is very easy. Deployment of VMware vSAN is also easy. Everything in this product is perfect.

As no product is 100% perfect, the price for VMware vSAN could still be improved, though it is good when compared to some of its competitors.

We've been working with VMware vSAN for seven years.

This product is stable and comfortable to use.

Technical support for VMware vSAN is very good.

This product is easy to set up. It is easy to deploy.

If you compare the price of VMware vSAN with other players like Nutanix and Cisco, its price is good, but could still have some improvement.

We evaluated Nutanix and Cisco.

We are a partner of different vendors, e.g. Dell, VMware, Microsoft, AWS, Azure, etc. As we are a partner, we don't use the technology. It's our customers who use it. We've been working with the newest model of VMware vSAN.

There are four engineers who handle the deployment and maintenance of this product.

I strongly recommend VMware vSAN to others because it is easy to manage, especially if you compare it with traditional server and network storage solutions. It's also easy to deploy. Upgrade and authorization for this product is also very easy. These are the reasons why I strongly recommend VMware vSAN to people looking into using it.

I'm giving VMware vSAN a score of ten out of ten.

I am a system integrator, and this is one of the products that we implement for our customers.

VMware vSAN is used in the deployment of OpenShift Containers.

It is simple to manage without the need for configuration which is the feature that I like the most. The simplicity, as well as the integration with virtualization.

On the troubleshooting front, it was occasionally difficult for me to perform some troubleshooting. We are currently working in a demo environment, so we are not encountering many issues. However, when you reach production with a heavy load, troubleshooting the vSAN may become difficult. 

Troubleshooting with vSAN is an area that needs improvement.

Based on my testing, I would like to expand deduplication to include hybrid deployments and not just for all-flash deployments.

I have been working with VMware vSAN for four years.

I use version 6.7 ESXi with vSAN

So far the stability has been good. We have not had any problems with the stability of VMware vSAN.

The scalability appears to be good. I have not tested it that much, but it seems fine similar to clusters in VMware. 

At the moment, we have approximately 300 users who use this solution.

In reality, we haven't used technical support yet. I don't have an opinion on the support at this time.

I have experience with Cisco HyperFlex solutions.

The initial setup was straightforward. We did not have any problems with it at all.

The deployment did not take more than two or three days. It was very fast.

We have two people to deploy this solution.

We completed the deployment ourselves.

As an architect, I am not involved in the negotiating process and don't have many details about the cost and licensing.

I would rate VMware vSAN an eight out of ten.

All of our customers are either doing virtual storage on the cloud, or they're trying to extend their on-prem storage solution into the cloud. Our typical use case is providing features in the cloud that are typically on-premise, and that includes storage as well. For example, we might have vSAN on-prem storage that the workloads are accessing, and we want to extend it to the cloud to start spanning workloads out there. 

Most customers have a hybrid setup, with some of their infrastructure on-prem and some on the cloud. Other customers are getting out of the data center business altogether and moving everything into the cloud.

There is a lot that VMware could improve from a marketing perspective. The cloud is still new for many people, so extending storage should be effortless. It shouldn't be so complicated to extend the storage so workloads can access it no matter where they go. 

When you're moving a workload, you don't want to worry about whether the storage will be there or not. Ideally, that should be easily replicated and extended to a cloud environment. We have a lot of vendors trying to extend their on-prem infrastructure seamlessly. That could be workloads. It could be extending the virtual hardware to on-prem storage or the physical storage to virtual storage in the cloud. Everything should be easy for customers to consume and configure, but some of this stuff is still pretty complex because it's so new.

I've been using vSAN for about five years.

I think vSAN's stability is good. It's an underlying solution for both on-prem and in the cloud, especially the VMC on AWS stuff too. VMware has been around for a long time, so it's pretty stable.

All the vendors are working on making the setup more straightforward. Things are becoming a little more scripted. More automation and installations where you don't have to check every box are always good.

I rate VMware vSAN nine out of 10. 

VMware vSAN is easy to implement in a VMware environment and it is not expensive.

The architecture of vSAN is not good. vSAN works with objects, such as disks, and it causes problems with availability. When we send users caches we lose the total cache disk of the group. It's really a red line for using vSAN. We don't lose all the data because it is replicated in other groups, but when the object is lost in one group, we only have one remaining and this creates a higher risk of losing data.

Another is the restrictions of using deduplication and compression, it requires all-flash for it meaning that deduplication is on for all clusters and you can't control it for specific ones. I would like VMware vSAN to give hybrid configurations more caches and to add deduplication and compression for hybrid configurations.

I have been using VMware vSAN for a year.

The architecture of VMware vSAN is a major issue with stability. 

There have been no problems with scalability of this solution.

The initial set up of VMware vSAN is easy. The implementation requires just one click and VMware will take care of the rest.

VMware vSAN is not expensive. We compare it with Nutanix and the discounts from VMware are really good for vSAN.

If you want vSAN it is important that you understand all sides of the solution and have the right hardware solution. For example, you should consider if you need reliable disks for cache and split it into more clusters or groups.

I would give this solution a five out of 10.

We are using VMware vSAN for the transformation from the physical server to the virtual environment.

By using VMware vSAN we have limited the need to maintain multiple physical servers. Additionally, we have been able to reduce the entire cost of the IT operation and management because of the reduction of physical servers. There are fewer electricity and cooling systems needed.

The most valuable feature for our customers is vMotion. It allows them to shut down virtual machines and migrate them to others servers.

I have been using VMware vSAN for approximately six years.

The stability of the solution is very good. From customer feedback, VMware is much more stable compared to Hyper-V.

The scalability of VMware vSAN is good.

We currently have approximately 80 customers using this solution.

We plan to increase usage. Our sales team prefers this solution over other solutions.

We use online documentation and videos for support, such as YouTube. If there is a problem we cannot solve then we email the support of VMware.

We deploy many other solutions for our customers, such as Hyper-V, which some of them prefer.

The initial setup is quite simple according to our customer feedback. The time it takes for the deployment depends on many factors, such as use case and environment size.

We have a six-person technical team for maintenance.

We have received a return on investment. Our customers are happy, we do not need to employ a technician after deployment which is good. There is a decent return on investment but it also depends on the customers' use case.

The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy.

We have used VMware for different kinds of customers. Our target customers are SMB or SME, they normally choose VMware and their first package. We do have customers who use our own data center services, in this case, we use the VMware manage service license.

We typically propose VMware to our customers. We advise the customer to switch to virtualization. The main point is the customer would like to recover their data. If they'll use the physical server they cannot meet the requirement of fast recovery of the data. That's why we ask customers to do the server control check into the virtualization. You can save a lot of time managing the physical server and have a lower cost for the backup option. You can have a better recovery solution is the main point our customer use VMware.

I rate VMware vSAN an eight out of ten.

our primary use case is storage; hyper-converged solutions for our customers. We develop and design higher availability infrastructure for customers with the vSAN as its base. I'm a consultant and an architect for solutions with the software. My company is a partner with VMware.

High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution.

An integrated backup solution within the vSAN platform would improve the product. Competitors like SimpliVity, UCS, and Cisco Hyperconverged all have a backup feature in their hyper converged infrastructure, it's something that a lot of people use now.

I've been using this solution for four years. 

This solution is super stable. 

This solution is very scalable. However, we've seen some limits within the platform although I believe the latest version may have solved those problems. 

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. If the setup also involves hardware deployment, the process can take a day or so, but if it's just the vSAN deployment, it can be done in several minutes. I generally carry out the implementation. 

It's important to use someone who is familiar with the solution to carry out the implementation. It's fairly straightforward but if you set it up incorrectly then you'll have issues with your underlying storage. It's worth having a professional service to manage things. 

I rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

The main use case for VMware vSAN is auxiliary services, such as Windows, Linux, and not a specific server, but mixed loads.

We were able to replace lots of negative servers and replace them with VMware.

VMware vSAN is compatible with the legacy hypervisor solutions and most of the features are good.

I have been using VMware vSAN for approximately five years.

The solution is stable.

The scalability of the solution is good. The node cluster they are using has been enough for them.

we have approximately 1,000 users using this solution.

The technical support, it's not satisfactory. Whenever we raise a ticket it takes a lot of time to have an engineer get involved sometimes, or we receive a less experienced engineer. We then have to repeat the situation to the next engineer which all takes time.

The setup is not complicated. The deployment of VMware vSAN with VxRail can be completed in three to four hours, for one cluster out of the physical setup. The physical setup could take approximately one day. After that, deployment is very easy to complete.

We have four people that do the deployment and physical setup of the solution.

The price of the solution package depends on the nodes and other factors. The cost some of our customers paid was $500,000. The licensing cost for the components is very good.

My customers were comfortable with VMware and then they decided to use VMware instead of another solution.

My advice is if someone is interested in VMware vSAN it is a good solution. It is stable, supportive, and compatible with many solutions. VMware vSAN is the best.

Customers have to consider when choosing VMware to receive a lot of features, such as replication backup, and if they went with another solution it would be more expensive.

I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.