Red Hat Gluster Storage vs VMware vSAN comparison

The compared Red Hat and VMware solutions aren't in the same category. Red Hat is ranked #10 in SDS , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 3.0% mindshare in the category. VMware is ranked #2 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 16.7% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Red Hat Gluster Storage

Read 4 Red Hat Gluster Storage reviews

802 Views
449 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 229 VMware vSAN reviews

19,643 Views
14,087 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Red Hat Gluster Storage

VMware vSAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Red Hat Gluster Storage and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Red Hat, Nutanix and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS).

To learn more, read our detailed Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Red Hat Gluster Storage

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (10th)

VMware vSAN

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

229

Ranking in other categories

HCI (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

Red Hat Gluster Storage and VMware vSAN aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Red Hat Gluster Storage is designed for Software Defined Storage (SDS) and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, down 3.1% compared to last year.
VMware vSAN, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 16.7% mindshare, down 18.2% since last year.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

HCI

Featured Reviews

GiovanniRamirez

Senior IT Consultant at Xerif

Flexible and scalable file system for growing storage needs

Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is also applied in personal environments. Some specific use cases mentioned include scaling a three-terabyte file system into a 12-terabyte file system with minimal downtime Gluster…

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Lipaz Hessel

Integration Manager at Gilat Satellite Networks

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy to upgrade storage."

"The price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."

"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."

"The technical support team is excellent."

"We have found the solution to be very scalable."

"It is scalable, overall. If you need to add storage, it makes it easy to scale by adding additional hard drives into the existing servers or you can add storage by just adding more servers."

"This solution has a dashboard that you can log into and control if you need too while the VM is getting created."

"Stretched Cluster is one of the big features that we use across multiple data centers."

"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."

"It is easier to deploy than the traditional SAN."

"It uncoupled the idea of proprietary technology and component capabilities. It is basically a proprietary technology for a cost-effective infrastructure."

"The solution has high performance."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."

"There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version."

"The performance of the solution must be improved."

"The user interface could be simplified."

"The customer service is good but there is a cost for it. It does not come free."

"I would like to see better performance graphs, maybe something that you can export outside to a different console, and maybe a little bit longer time period. The 18-hour maximum, or 24-hour maximum, is kind of short. Also, the hardware compatibility limitations are a little frustrating sometimes, but as everybody's starting to adopt vSAN more, you get more options for hardware."

"Only the stretched cluster requires a minor improvement."

"It should be easier to use."

"In a future release, they can bring in the object storage capabilities to this solution. Currently, there is not any compatibility."

"The platform's cost affects the business. This particular area needs improvement."

"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."

"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."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."

"There is a license required for this solution, it is a one-time payment. However, if they want support for the solution, it can be paid annually or for three years."

"Basically, vSAN is a license in addition to that of the classic VMware Vsphere, which is also mandatory."

"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."

"The solution requires a license. The payment is on a yearly basis and It is not overly expensive."

"The current pricing needs to meet the customers' expectations, posing significant issues."

"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."

"Cost-wise, the Nutanix licenses were cheaper, but in terms of the hardware, there was some contention around it. So, in terms of implementation, the way Nutanix was projecting the implementation on their end was that there were a lot of open-source admin platforms. vSAN is a licensed product in VMware, and Nutanix was proposing a KVM solution, which is open source. That's why their pricing was a bit cheaper, but when we were trying to compare it with an enterprise version of their management platform, it boiled down to the VMware vSAN being most effective in the long run."

"For a classical node plus storage solution, the price is higher."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Educational Organization

51%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Red Hat Gluster Storage?

The technical support team is excellent.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Gluster Storage?

There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version. This feature involves managing storage pools with different technologies and ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Red Hat Gluster Storage?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

LizardFS vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 24% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 11% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 8% of the time

More Red Hat Gluster Storage Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 15% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

November 2024

Download Red Hat Gluster Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

November 2024

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server

vSAN

Learn More

Red Hat

VMware

Overview

Red Hat Gluster Storage (formerly known as Red Hat Storage Server) is a software-defined storage (SDS) platform designed to handle the requirements of traditional file storage—high-capacity tasks like backup and archival as well as high-performance tasks of analytics and virtualization. But unlike traditional storage systems, Red Hat Gluster Storage isn’t rigid and expensive. It easily scales across bare metal, virtual, container, and cloud deployments.

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

Sample Customers

NTT Plala, McMaster University, University of Basque Country, Goodtech ASA, Cox Automotive, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), SaskTel, Glashart Media, Casio

Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

November 2024

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