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HPE Alletra dHCI vs VMware vSAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE Alletra dHCI
Ranking in HCI
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE Alletra dHCI is 4.6%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 13.9%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSAN13.9%
HPE Alletra dHCI4.6%
Other81.5%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Antonin Pavlik - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortless upgrades with one-click feature while new server deployment needs a smoother process
I have a data center, and all the servers are connected to HPE Alletra dHCI. I use it for data management with VMware running on the servers The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra dHCI is the one-click upgrade function, which allows all drivers and services to be downloaded to all servers…
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables efficient multi-environment cluster deployment and resource management with versatile features
While VMware vSAN is quite comprehensive, if we are running multiple infrastructures, applications, databases, and other elements, having a diagnostic tool to identify the actual problem area, whether application-side or infrastructure-side, would be beneficial. A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's helpful as you stand on high-end storage. Alletra offers up to 99% availability, providing excellent stability. You also get the benefits of an HCI solution with a template and upgradability at any time."
"We have the ability to increase the storage without any additional costs."
"The latency is very low."
"The solution is useful for taking storage snapshots, has high performance, and the CASL architecture is good for optimizing workloads."
"Very good in-line compression."
"We have this feature in Nimble dHCI, wherein we can upgrade individual components in the infrastructure."
"The product has cut down a lot of service tickets. Earlier, people complained about slowness."
"The technical support services are good."
"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."
"vSAN provides default HA configurations, where if any host goes down, the VM moves around within the host. Even though the disks are local, the VMs moves around with the vSAN disk and vSAN provides a high availability on its own."
"The product’s ecosystem is better than Nutanix’s."
"Storage is expandable with no extra cost."
"Provides good performance as well as integration with deployment tools."
"Everyone uses virtualization to more efficiently utilize hardware resources. That's the main point of vSAN and VMware."
"Its ease of use is most valuable. It is easy to configure, and there is a unified interface, which makes things slightly easier."
"The solution is quite stable."
 

Cons

"I would like the HPE Alletra dHCI to provide options to install products separately."
"I can tier my data in different storage on the cloud, but I cannot tier the data with HPE Alletra dHCI."
"The product is expensive."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI only works with a hypervisor like VMware. There are plenty of other hypervisors that HP doesn't support. This is an area for improvement."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI's website does not open properly or work consistently."
"Software upgrade is still more complicated than the competitors, so that's an area of improvement."
"The initial setup is a little bit complicated."
"The product does not support file services."
"I would like to see some of the more traditional SAN functions that are out the now. I can list them: being able to Snapshot on the back-end, better de-dupe, and better compression. Those are the major ones."
"vSAN itself is a great storage platform, but one of the issues with it is that you have to be fully locked into the VMware package to use it. We're going to be deploying 72 Kubernetes nodes, and we're not going to buy VMware licenses for 72 of them, just so they can access vSAN. That's what we're using the Pure for. Opening it up so you could have vSAN as a data store, use it as a data lake, hit it with an NFS, S3 from outside the VMware ecosystem, would be great."
"My experience with the technical support by VMware is acceptable but not great. Sometimes the issue is that you don't get the best experience, whether it's the response time or first-level support quality."
"I see room for improvement for vSAN just around general hardware compatibility and expanding that sort of matrix."
"We would like to see even more storage capacity."
"One area that could be improved is the management feature."
"The solution could maybe improve failure protection."
"Based on my testing, I would like to expand deduplication to include hybrid deployments and not just for all-flash deployments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the licensing is reasonable."
"The product licensing costs vary depending on whether VMware or other solutions are used."
"The prices are very high."
"The price of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is expensive."
"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is cheap."
"With the features that HPE Nimble Storage dHCI provides, I cannot say its pricing is more."
"The customers have found the solution to be expensive. However, when compared to the competition the price is reasonable."
"I think it's priced right and it's extremely intelligent."
"The current pricing needs to meet the customers' expectations, posing significant issues."
"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."
"The price is expensive."
"It could be cheaper."
"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."
"Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"
"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."
"VMware vSAN is an expensive platform. We purchase its yearly license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business98
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise128
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
Pricing is rated at six, which is normal. The price is appropriate for the capabilities and features that the customers receive.
What needs improvement with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
I would like the HPE Alletra dHCI to provide options to install products separately. When extending or when servers are already present, normal Alletra systems are more suitable. dHCI projects ofte...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...
 

Also Known As

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra dHCI vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.