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INFINIDAT InfiniBox vs VMware vSAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

INFINIDAT InfiniBox
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise SAN (7th)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
HCI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. INFINIDAT InfiniBox is designed for Enterprise SAN and holds a mindshare of 8.3%, up 1.6% compared to last year.
VMware vSAN, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 7.9% mindshare, down 14.4% since last year.
Enterprise SAN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
INFINIDAT InfiniBox8.3%
Dell PowerStore14.0%
Dell PowerVault12.3%
Other65.4%
Enterprise SAN
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN7.9%
VxRail9.9%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
Other73.2%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

GM
Project Deployment at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Good performance, suitable for big data, but the response time could be improved
The primary use case for this product is high-performance storage This product has good performance. It is similar to the Dell PowerMax and Pure Storage FlashArray. The InfiniBox has three active controllers. The response time for read requests can be improved. It is not as good as the solution…
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Mostly, their support is also great at reacting to issues but moreover, proactive to prevent issues."
"Its ease of use, smooth integration into the existing environment, quick and easy management, the number of other features available such as snaps, remote replica, etc are valuable features."
"Overall, this is a good product with good performance."
"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."
"Technical support has been very good. They respond pretty fast, especially if we have a critical issue. Their responses have been great."
"Today, we are comfortable running any of our mission critical apps on it."
"Now it is stable, and we trust it more."
"I like the tolerance of VMware vSAN."
"It's relatively low-cost for a high-performance solution."
"Simplified datacenter failover in the VMware environment is the most valuable feature of this product."
"For a PaaS platform which I’ve developed, the scalability of VMware vSAN was a necessary feature enabling us to grow with the onboard customers."
 

Cons

"InfiniBox, right now, offers only asynchronous replication between two storages."
"The response time for read requests can be improved. It is not as good as the solution from Pure Storage."
"The solution isn’t scalable by itself. It’s a self-contained storage solution, i.e., if you need more space, buy another box."
"We have encountered some scalability issues and got a couple of performance tickets."
"Some intelligence can be added to the newest version to provide more flexibility between storage tiers."
"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."
"Better options would be clustered nodes, or even cloud configuration. There is room for improvement in cloud configuration, we typically do web browsing for management."
"I would like to see more basic reporting, or even expert reporting. I think with our licensing that we've paid our dues, and we should get the information."
"The features I'd like to see in future releases of VSAN are around back-up and recovery."
"I would like to see it be more hardware-agnostic. Other than that, the only other complication is - and it has gotten better with the newer versions - that lately, once you're running an all-flash, if you need to grow or scale down your infrastructure, it's a long process. You need to evacuate all data and make sure you have enough space on the host, then add more hosts or take out hosts. That process is a little bit complex. You cannot scale as needed or shrink as needed."
"If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The best features come included without any additional cost."
"The license covers any feature and also, the future features are already included. It is as easy as a 1, 2 and 3."
"It is expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"This solution is expensive. Nutanix provides us with Acropolis Operating System (AOS) along with its hardware, while VMware provides vSAN, vCenter, and vSphere which all have separate licenses and costs."
"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."
"The only problem I have with VMware is the price. It is a good product, but it is expensive."
"The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account."
"Enterprise customers can customize their licenses according to their own needs and budget."
"If they could reduce the cost, it would be better. Licensing costs are something that they could take care of. If you are a smaller and strong IT team, then VMware vSAN is a very good product. If you want to expand in the service provider space, then you will have to go for an open-source solution like OpenStack. We are now looking at OpenStack because we sell licensing costs. We are a service provider, so the IT component data is a substantial component in our overall costing. We feel that OpenStack might help us to cut down the licensing cost. Therefore, we are looking at SAS storage instead of vSAN. SAS is open source, but it is not wise to have open source without having the backend support. We are using RedHat SAS, and it is an open-source solution. You can also have a free version, but we are using it with support from RedHat so that we have somebody to back us up in case we have a problem. If you do normal business, then IT expense is 1% or 2% of the total turnover. The higher licensing costs sometimes don't make difference to the big companies who are not service providers and are using it only for their internal use. For them, the IT cost is 1% or 2%, but for an IT service provider, the IT costs will go up to 15% to 16% of the total cost of the operations. This is where the licensing costs become irrelevant. For example, the licensing cost of using VMware, VC, and vSAN is 8% of my monthly revenue. Every month, I pay about $35,000, and, with the revised plan, it will be something like $50,000 or revenue of 600k per month, which means almost 8% of the revenue is going into VMware licensing. In a very competitive world, 8% as a cost element is huge. So, if I can bring it down to 2%, I save 6% in revenue expenditure. In terms of profit, 6% of 30% is something like another 25% increase in my profit. My profit can be almost 25%. It would be 20% to 25% in case I am able to handle the licensing costs and bring them to a very low level. Because these IT costs are substantial for us, that is why we are going with OpenStack. OpenStack has a limitation that it requires more hardware. There will be some increase in the hardware cost, but overall we will save 5% to 6% of our licensing cost by using OpenStack."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business102
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise135
 

Questions from the Community

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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

No data available
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TriCore Solutions
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