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Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs VMware vSAN comparison

Red Hat and VMware are both solutions in the HCI category. Red Hat is ranked #23, while VMware is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. Red Hat holds a 0.6% mindshare in HCI, compared to VMware’s 16.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...
Read 6 Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure reviews
  • 543 Views
  • 411 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
VMware vSAN
Read 229 VMware vSAN reviews
  • 18,927 Views
  • 13,554 Comparison Views
87% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

VMware vSAN and Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market with distinct advantages depending on organizational needs. VMware vSAN has an edge in features, while Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure excels in flexibility and technology integration, potentially making it a superior choice for some environments.

Features: VMware vSAN offers seamless integration within the VMware ecosystem, comprehensive storage functionalities, and optimized management for VMware environments. It is ideal for organizations heavily invested in VMware technologies. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure leverages its open-source nature, allowing extensive customization and integration with a wide array of software ecosystems, catering to enterprises with diverse IT landscapes.

Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN can enhance its flexibility across non-VMware environments and improve ease of deployment for those unfamiliar with VMware ecosystems. It could also benefit from more competitive pricing. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure could improve by simplifying its deployment process, tightening integration with legacy systems, and expanding its support resources to match the scale and scope of closed-source competitors.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN integrates smoothly within VMware environments, providing a streamlined deployment process with extensive support resources. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure offers a more adaptable but potentially complex deployment, supported by Red Hat's community support and documentation. While VMware vSAN enables a straightforward setup for VMware users, Red Hat's comprehensive support aids in managing complex, custom environments.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN typically involves a higher upfront cost but provides significant ROI in VMware-centric data centers due to its seamless integration. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure offers a more appealing cost-to-value ratio for those utilizing open-source solutions, leading to competitive ROI, particularly in environments exploiting its flexibility to reduce licensing expenses.

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To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: January 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs. VMware vSAN
January 2025
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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

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...
Ranking in HCI
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
229
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 16.4%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

systemar777972 - PeerSpot reviewer
Comes in a small, compact model that does not have any separate management but it is not so stable
This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development. When we upgrading from one version to another, there have been some hiccups. There have been a few times where upgraded features cause changes that make problems with existing implementation on the deployment side. I'm not sure if I really need any new features in this product at this point. For us, it is a fixed solution. It's not a full-blown solution and doesn't need to be. It is not really a cloud product, but we use it like some kind of cloud in a box. It is very limited in our use case. It has limited capability in general. You can not really have something like private security domains. Or there are so few servers that you can not really use the different kinds of applications you could with different physical servers. So you cannot select the kind of security that you can have on a cloud with separate layers.
Read full review
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.
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

"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."
"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable. The whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point. The documentation is also pretty good."
"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."
"It is stable and scalable."
"I like that you can add other types of services."
"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."
"vSAN that has been most effective in streamlining storage operations. For data recovery alerts, it uses tools like snapshots and vMotion."
"It's very scalable. I like that. Adding a node is easy. Adding a disk group is easy."
"The most valuable feature is fhe flexibility, the ability to move the machines around without hesitation."
"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."
"Good performance, reliable and agile."
"The most valuable feature is the fast performance."
"It uncoupled the idea of proprietary technology and component capabilities. It is basically a proprietary technology for a cost-effective infrastructure."
"The ability to have an HA cluster in the absence of a shared storage device or SAN."
More VMware vSAN pros
 

Cons

"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."
"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."
"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"The cloud deployment could be improved."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"The solution could maybe improve failure protection."
"It could be cheaper."
"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."
"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."
"The product's complex setup phase is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would love for this product to be cheaper and easier to configure."
"Lacks sufficient storage terabytes."
More VMware vSAN cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite pricey."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."
"I'd love for this product to be cheaper."
"vSAN has many versions with standard and advanced including Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Regarding the Enterprise and the Advanced, it could be lower."
"With the new pricing model, it's expensive for the customer."
"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."
"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."
"My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive."
"It is expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"The vSAN licensing is not an inexpensive product. It does cost more than hypervisor."
More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
8%
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

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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

VxRail vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Logo
VxRail vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Compared 22% of the time
Azure Stack HCI vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Logo
Azure Stack HCI vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Compared 13% of the time
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Logo
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Compared 11% of the time
More Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Competitors
VxRail vs VMware vSAN Logo
VxRail vs VMware vSAN
Compared 17% of the time
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN Logo
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN
Compared 15% of the time
HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN Logo
HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN
Compared 9% of the time
Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN Logo
Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN
Compared 8% of the time
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN Logo
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN
Compared 7% of the time
More VMware vSAN Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
HCI
January 2025
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure reportDownload Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure product report
Buyer's Guide
VMware vSAN
December 2024
VMware vSAN reportDownload VMware vSAN product report
 

Also Known As

Red Hat HCI, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization
vSAN
 

Learn More

Red Hat
VMware
 

Overview

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure - based on our leading OpenStack and virtualization platforms - provides co-located, scalable, software-defined compute and storage, driven by Red Hat Ansible Automation on economical, industry-standard hardware.

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

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Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs. VMware vSAN
January 2025
Free Report: Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs. VMware vSAN
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