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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP 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

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
229
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.
Lipaz Hessel - PeerSpot reviewer
Expensive solution that requires professional services for installation and implementation
I'm still using a different solution. I only took two servers with vSAN to support one application that needs one feature that only VMware has. If not for that feature, I wouldn't touch VMware. Now, I'm looking at products like Nutanix, Silver Peak, Flexione, and FortiGate. For products that I choose, I don't need a specialist of that vendor. In VMware, I need a specialist in VMware. That's the issue I have with VMware. It's not like I can take any IT person, and they will know what to do. I need to make sure he will do the call, get the certificate and time to practice.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships."
"Unified Manager, System Manager, and Cloud Manager are all GUI-based. It's easy for somebody who has not been exposed to this for years to pick it up and work with it."
"The solution’s unified file and block-storage access across our infrastructure is invaluable. Without it, we can't do what we do."
"Another feature which gets a lot of attention in our environment is the File Services Solutions in the cloud, because it's a completely, fully-managed service. We don't have to take care of any updates, upgrades, or configurations."
"One thing I have noticed is that it is very simple to move the data where we need to move it, delete it, or archive it if we need to archive it to StorageGRID."
"If anything happens, their technical support will come onsite and fix it."
"The stability has been really good."
"SnapMirror helps mirror metadata and data volumes between endpoints in a data fabric."
"vSAN is very integrated."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to continue our business needs and have higher visibility. It has definitely increased our business productivity levels."
"The solution is stable."
"It is easier to deploy than the traditional SAN."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The most valuable features are productivity and data storage."
"Since the storage space is local to the hosts, it reduces the overall response time and improves the performance."
"The solution's unified administration is its most valuable aspect."
 

Cons

"When it comes to a critical or a read-write-intensive application, it doesn't provide the performance that some applications require, especially for SAP. The SAP HANA database has a write-latency of less than 2 milliseconds and the CVO solution does not fit there. It could be used for other databases, where the requirements are not so demanding, especially when it comes to write-latency."
"I'm very happy with the solution, the only thing that needs improvement is the web services API. It could be a little bit more straightforward. That's my only issue with it. It can get pretty complex."
"Only AWS and Azure public clouds are currently available from China, and I would like to see support for Aliyun (Alibaba Cloud)."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs to have customizable pricing options such as 10 TB increments. They seem to have only two options: 10 TB or 250 TB."
"I would like this solution to be brought to all the three major players. Right now it's supported only on AWS and Azure. They should bring it to Google as well, because we would like to have flexibility in choosing the underlying cloud storage provider."
"When Azure does their maintenance, they do maintenance on one node at a time. With the two nodes of the CVO, it can automatically fail over from one node to the node that is staying up. And when the first node comes back online, it will fail back to the first node. We have had issues with everything failing back 100 percent correctly."
"Not a perfect ten because it's not very efficient with upgrades and management."
"The solution could be better when we're connecting to our S3 side of the house. Right now, it doesn't see it, and I'm not sure why."
"They should make the software updates easier. We should be able to upgrade it more easily."
"I would have liked it to have been more scalable. It's scalable but not as much as, for example, the ScaleIO systems were or the Kaminario"
"Improvements are also needed as per the customer's requirements."
"I would love to see vSAN integrate Persistent Memory and NVDIMMs. I know they're supposed to be working on an elastic tier so that we don't have the issues with destaging from the cache to the capacity. Those are the things that I'm interested in."
"They can package it in a way that is specific to the hardware infrastructure and the hardware platform. It should stay fairly up to date with the drivers and the manufacturer issues. The problem with uncoupling the proprietary technology and component capabilities is that by uncoupling them, you run into some concerns or challenges over the poor performance model. These concerns really come when you start talking about high performance, high bandwidth, and high availability types of environments. While vSAN is a leader, in a critical view, it is not about being cost-effective. It is more about the immediate impact of money loss to the business in critical applications where we want to maintain a continuous operational 59 model. It is, however, good for QA/QC tasks. I don't necessarily know how it works in regards to VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure."
"Because of virtual storage, the system reaches reserve storage for its functions. It also consumes a certain amount of storage, which then results in the creation of a fault tolerance for the system. All of this adds to a lot of capacity being consumed in terms of storage for each drive for vSan. I find this to be one drawback of using vSan."
"Improvements can be made with respect to scalability."
"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."
"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."
"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."
"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable."
"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."
"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."
"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."
"The solution is relatively expensive compared to similar products."
"The first 1-2 years of purchasing vSAN will be expensive. Thereafter, the longer you are running it, the more cost savings you will have."
"vSAN has many versions with standard and advanced including Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Regarding the Enterprise and the Advanced, it could be lower."
"It is too expensive."
"​I would like to see this technology be made available to smaller businesses, who might benefit from high availability but struggle with the entry fee.​"
"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."
"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."
"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
55%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
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Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
vSAN
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.