Sunlight vs VMware vSAN comparison

Sunlight.io and Broadcom are both solutions in the HCI category. Sunlight.io is ranked #29, while Broadcom is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7. Sunlight.io holds a 1.2% mindshare in HCI, compared to Broadcom’s 9.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Sunlight.io users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Sunlight

Read 2 Sunlight reviews

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643 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 234 VMware vSAN reviews

15,767 Views
10,091 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Sunlight

VMware vSAN

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

VMware vSAN and Sunlight compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure solutions category, focusing on high-performance storage and computing capabilities. VMware vSAN seems to have an edge due to its extensive integration with the VMware ecosystem and seamless storage solutions for virtual environments.

Features: VMware vSAN offers integration and scalability within VMware’s suite, robust data protection, deduplication, and compression. Sunlight provides a lightweight hypervisor, better storage performance, and lower resource consumption.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN deployment integrates with existing VMware environments, offering ease through familiarity for users and comprehensive documentation. Its customer support is extensive due to VMware’s established network. Sunlight deployment focuses on simplicity and quick installation, ideal for rapid edge scenarios. Although responsive, its customer service lacks VMware’s global reach.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN involves a significant setup cost associated with its comprehensive features, leading to a higher ROI within a VMware ecosystem. Sunlight provides a cost-effective solution with lower initial costs, offering strong ROI through efficient resource usage in specialized environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Sunlight vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Sunlight vs. VMware vSAN

April 2026

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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

Sunlight

Ranking in HCI

29th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware vSAN

Ranking in HCI

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

234

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Sunlight is 1.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 9.3%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSAN	9.3%
Sunlight	1.2%
Other	89.5%

HCI

Featured Reviews

RajeshKANUMURY

Chief Executive Officer at GniYes Inc.

Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support

Sunlight is a scalable solution. It supports on-premises and distributed deployments, as well as public deployments. It has a single pane of management so I can manage all of my VM installations in a distributed manner. It also has a footprint, that allows me to operate on Edge. If for example, you have a retail shop with 2,000 locations and they use a networked point of sale system, or if you are Chipotle and they have so many locations and they have to use a backend system at each location. At the moment, these are all standalone systems that operate with very little connection to the central. We could, however, connect and create a network using Sunlight. We can virtualize and run with Edge thanks to Sunlight. This allows us to operate and obtain high-end computing on Edge for retail. Sunlight is a startup. I am not sure how many users they have, but we have been using it constantly and using the technology to bring in customers.

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ShyamikaThamel

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.

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 performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."

"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."

"If I had to use VMware or Nutanix, the same application would take three nodes and provide 400,000 IOPS, or input-output operations, but with Sunlight, I can get four million IOPS for the same price, allowing me to run an application on much less hardware."

"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD, and it has very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN because for the same system I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS."

"The most valuable feature for our customers is vMotion. It allows them to shut down virtual machines and migrate them to others servers."

"We don't have to order a storage system, we can just use whatever we have on hand and roll it into our virtualization system."

"The scalability is very good and the solution is stable and reliable."

"The valuable features are: The integration into the web client (health, component compatibility checks such as controller drivers and re-sync), integration with storage profiles, simple patching process, and integration into the VMkernel."

"It's easy to scale, it's easy to predict IOPS needs, you can design for low latency using all-flash, and for setting up new clusters for VDI quickly, it's nice because you don't have to wait on an order for a storage vendor to ship you a system and help you configure it, you do it all yourself."

"The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is the ease of management. VMware vSAN it's a part of VMware ESXi and when you do patching for VMware ESXi, VMware vSAN receives the patches too."

"The performance has exceeded our expectations and exceeded our traditional converged infrastructure."

"In terms of stability, vSAN is very resilient, self-adapting, and self-healing."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"It lacks the bells and whistles that are typically associated with Amazon Services or Nutanix."

"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."

"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."

"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options."

"We have encountered some scalability issues and got a couple of performance tickets."

"One area that could be improved is the management feature."

"We do see weird things crop up every now and again. It will say that a drive gets kicked off even though it's fine, and we have to re-add it."

"I would like to be able to limit IOPS."

"More focus has to be put on deduplication and compression with a hybrid architecture."

"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good. From a scalability point of view, scaling the storage from network or compute should be easier. It is again all around the cost, and it would be good if it was easier to scale your storage separately from your compute."

"The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."

"vSAN health monitoring has room for improvement because they have many known and unknown bugs which may be resolved in a future release version."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."

"With the new pricing model, it's expensive for the customer."

"I feel the pricing to be reasonable."

"I'd love for this product to be cheaper."

"I would like to use more advanced models of the solution but the price needs to be reduced. There are some extra costs for this solution including a license."

"There is a license to use this solution and we pay approximately $30,000 annually. There were not any additional fees required other than the license. The solution is expensive."

"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."

"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."

"The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	100
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	129

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...

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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 ...

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs Sunlight

Compared 6% of the time

Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series vs Sunlight

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs Sunlight

Compared 6% of the time

More Sunlight Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 15% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 11% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2026

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Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

April 2026

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Also Known As

No data available

vSAN

Overview

Sunlight offers tailored solutions for businesses aiming to optimize their operations through innovative technology, providing enhanced performance and efficiency.

As a leader in technological advancement, Sunlight provides tools that enhance productivity, ensuring seamless integration with current systems while maintaining high adaptability. With an emphasis on performance, it supports businesses in navigating the complexities of modern technologies, ensuring they stay ahead of the competition.

What are the most important features of Sunlight?

Scalability: Easily adapt to changing business demands without sacrificing performance.
Integration: Blend effortlessly with existing systems for minimal disruption.
Security: Protects data with robust security protocols.
Customization: Offers tailored solutions to meet specific business requirements.

What benefits should users look for in Sunlight reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces operational costs through optimized resource allocation.
Enhanced Productivity: Streamlines processes, allowing staff to focus on core tasks.
Reliability: Ensures consistent performance across all platforms.
Support: Provides comprehensive customer service for a seamless user experience.

In specific industries, such as finance and healthcare, Sunlight is implemented to manage large volumes of data accurately, ensuring critical information is processed effectively and securely. It assists in achieving compliance with industry regulations, promoting a trustworthy reputation.

Sunlight.io

VMware vSAN is renowned for scalability, speed, and management ease. Its performance equals traditional SANs, offering fast speeds with diverse disk types at a reduced cost, ensuring VM access amidst hardware failures, and integrating effortlessly with VMware tools for straightforward setup.

As a leader in virtualization solutions, VMware vSAN offers high-performance storage comparable to traditional SANs, allowing SSD-like speeds with a mix of disk types. It integrates into VMware tools, leading to easy setup and policy-driven management, leveraging diverse storage policies, deduplication, and compression for enhanced efficiency. It's especially valued for its ability to scale storage and applications affordably, supporting growth without heavy initial investments. Despite the advantages, areas for improvement include encryption, UI, hardware compatibility, and affordability for SMBs, with notable resync and performance monitoring challenges. Compatibility issues with non-VMware environments and complex updates and support are critical points highlighting a need for improved management interfaces and troubleshooting to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of VMware vSAN?

Scalability: Allows easy scaling of storage and applications without significant initial investments.
Speed: Rivals traditional SANs, offering SSD-like speeds.
Management: Seamless management through integration with VMware tools and policy-driven frameworks.
Resilience: Ensures VM access during hardware failures.
Efficiency: Offers deduplication and compression to optimize storage use.

What benefits or ROI should organizations consider in reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Supports horizontal and vertical growth without heavy costs.
Integration: Enhances cloud infrastructure and VDI with easy integration.
Automation: Provides automation for storage and compute consolidation.
Availability: Ensures high availability for VMs and workloads.
Performance: Known for strong performance suited for diverse workloads.

VMware vSAN is implemented across industries for virtualization and cloud infrastructure enhancements, being a cornerstone for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and the management of VMs. It supports major workloads like ERP and hyperconverged infrastructure, widely respected for its performance, seamless integration into VMware's ecosystem, and cost-efficiency, particularly appealing to small and medium businesses without extensive storage infrastructure investments.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Lavazza, Infraspace

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Buyer's Guide

Sunlight vs. VMware vSAN

April 2026

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