VMware vSAN Reviews

The primary use case is for VDI. In fact, we have created what's called a virtual research desktop with VDI, which is insulated because we're dealing with HIPAA data. I think it has performed pretty well.

I like the fact that I've got some degree of redundancy built in and, of course, the performance is great.

It would be much improved if we could somehow integrate a better backup with it. Right now, we're using Veeam and it's okay, but I would like more of a VDP vSAN solution. That would be excellent. The VDP, at least the last time we looked at, it was just not quite there.

I was a little bit worried about the stability initially, because I had an experience about three years ago and I wasn't very happy. But so far, it looks pretty good. I'm actually very surprised that its stability has been improved significantly. So far, so good.

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. We looked at Kaminario but that was a risky technology, so we didn't want to go there. I think vSAN is okay. It could use a bit more work on the scalability. I think that's key.

I have not had to use technical support myself but my team has. One of the things that I've heard from my team is that, even when they run into significant issues, they have to go through the whole order of support, and they get frustrated. They get a level-one guy or girl, and that person knows less than my team members do, so that's frustrating. When they get to a level-two or level-three, it's okay.

We were using Compellent. I was okay with it, but it wasn't performing as well as I would've liked and, certainly, the expense and scaling the thing was just too expensive. The other issue was that the natural redundancy you can build with vSAN, you can't really build that with Compellent, unless you have at least two of them. With two you can replicate between them, but, again, they are expensive systems.

When selecting a vendor, what's important to me is a partnership. That sums it up. To me, a vendor has to go in with us for the long haul. We can help the vendor and the vendor can help us. We can help each other out. To me, a partnership is key.

So far, we've been able to replace two Compellents which have cost an arm and a leg. And they're just not as performant as the vSAN. So the ROI has been good.

Let's put it this way: I think the VDI/vSAN has replaced quite a few of our desktops or laptops. Over the course of time, give us another year or two, I think the ROI will be very significant.

While vSAN performs pretty well, when we were doing all the performance tests, ScaleIO did pretty well. In fact, it did better than vSAN, but we liked vSAN better because it was more integrated with our VMware environment, obviously. We chose it and we're happy with it.

The hybrid storage strategy is not the best thing you can do; for example, when you're mixing standard drives and flash drives, SSDs. Do all SSDs if you can afford it. 

I give vSAN an eight out of ten. It can stand some improvement, but it's much better than it was three years ago when I looked at it.

In a lot of cases, the primary use case for vSAN is in small to medium businesses, where they may not have the space or the funds for an actual storage array to provide a shared storage medium for their virtual environment. And even if they do, they may not have the expertise to maintain that and a separate network. vSAN gives them the ability to make use of storage they already own, across their host. As they add more, more storage, more compute, they'll add more memory. It makes their environment simpler to manage and keeps it moving smoothly for them.

The most valuable feature is the simplicity of its scalability: being able to grow it without having to make sure you get the right disks and the right nodes.

The solution is also easy to manage. It's all right there in the vSphere Client. You're not going through multiple things. You don't have to know, once you've created the vSAN node. You add storage, it sees it, and you create your data storage from there. Everything is right there for you.

What I would like to see,  for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes.

I find it to be incredibly stable.

I've seen it scale up to large databases. I've got some customers who utilize a small vSAN cluster for their Exchange environments because it keeps it encapsulated for them.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

I would definitely go with the vSAN solution. A lot of times, it's less expensive than third-party software, and it's not managed via third-party plugins. It's there, it's native to the ecosystem, and it works.

Our primary use case is server workload and mission critical work.

It has improved our organization in all situations.

All the features are working great.

Only the stretched cluster requires a minor improvement.  

It is precisely the possibility of being able to extend the capacities of the cluster of storage and calculation by the simple addition of one or more physical server which makes us lean on this solution in a secure way.

Moreover, with the storage policy, we were able to create different security policies depending on the virtual machines according to their needs for performance or availability.

The most important functionality is the ability to extend cluster storage and cluster computing power securely without loss of data. Also, the ability to set up an extended cluster on multiple sites in a much simpler and easier way than with a traditional storage solution.

This product is usable in many cases. It can be used for a wide range of applications.

It is also possible, for example, to parameterize a stretch cluster at the very least without going to a costly solution based on conventional storage, such as MetroCluster, or another solution of the same level.

No, for the moment, we have not had any unpleasantness related to stability from the time the technical prerequisites are met (hardware in the VMware Compatibility Guide, par example), as well as best practice to design.

No. It's no problem. To be honest, we have not upgraded any vSAN infrastructure to date.

I just had to increase the capacity of a cluster in production by a simple addition of hosts, from the moment the compatibility with the existing one has been checked, there are no problems.

Adding this very simply by drag and drop from the host to the vSAN cluster, beforehand, the host must be placed in maintenance mode. Then, we have more than to add the HDD and SSD to the cluster vSAN in place -- either they are claimed automatically or manually. It all depends on the cluster configuration.

I have never had to contact VMware technical support.

No, I didn’t use other solutions previously, because converged solutions are new technologies and I knew VMware Technology's reputation. But, I am developing other competencies, especially with Nutanix Technology.

From the moment you're used to the VMware vSphere Web Client interface, there are no problems.

The activation is really simple, since it is done with a simple click if one can stay at the level of the parameters of the cluster VMware vSphere.

Then, depending on the number of hosts in the cluster, it will be possible to define a certain number of Fault Domains, that is to say, a quantity of permissible hosts losses, for example.

Moreover, depending on the amount of RAM available in each host and the amount of SSD, we can define one or more Disk Group, as well as host more or fewer objects. But this is more a question of design, which must intervene upstream of course.

The biggest difficulty lies in the design of the solution in order to be closer to the Service-Level Agreement of the company. There are a lot of possibilities according to the number of fault domain one wishes to have, if one makes vSAN on a site or multi-site, the degree of protection of virtual machines, etc,

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

The easiest way is to get closer to VMware directly; it's much simpler and easier.

Yes, at the time, like everyone else, we looked at the classic option, storage bay with SSD caches, but the prices were not necessarily interesting.

Moreover, it requires knowing all the management consoles and specificities related to particular types of storage, network, and infrastructure.

With the use of VMware vSAN, we have not had this worry, since by mastering the VMware vSphere Web Client, I manage all from a single interface, and it is very simple.

Today, I am looking at Nutanix products, and other VxRAIL, and the goal is to identify a concurrent product which can interest us.

Test the product before implementation to see if it fits your needs. Above all, be careful with technical prerequisites and other technical constraints.

To be accompanied by the pre-sales of editor would be the simplest.

Most importantly, the interface is simple, but it is clear that bad handling can have unfortunate consequences.

A simple example: I lose a node in a cluster vSAN, which is also used as a cluster HA. I lose not only the storage part, which is not necessarily serious (depending on the configuration of the vSAN cluster), but on the other hand, I lose also a node of Compute, which can make things complicated quickly.

The most valuable features of VSAN are consistent and increased performance with a linear cost which helped us in our data center.

Using VSAN Observer, we were able to see exactly what the VSAN environment is doing on a day to day basis, so we've gotten to really enjoy that interface.

The benefits that we're seeing are directly related to our customers. They have better experiences using their EMR and practice management systems.

The manageability is better, it's definitely fully integrated into the VMware stack so it's very easy to use from the web client.

The features I am most looking forward to are the performance monitoring capabilities of VSAN Observer being transitioned into the web client. That's what I'm really looking forward to.

UPDATE: Capacity and performance monitoring is now available in the web client and works well in 6.2. I am looking forward to DARE(data at rest encryption) in the next version.

We have used vSAN for approximately a two years.

We had one issue with deployment, which was related to using the legacy vsphere client to place the hosts into maintenance mode. Which is easily resolved by using the web client for maintenance.

The stability exceeds what we're currently on from a standard SAN platform.

The scalability is much greater than the current SAN that we're on because we're technically locked in to a certain number of discs and a certain number of performance and so the scalability is drastically improved. We currently have a four node cluster and we're going to be just incrementally moving off of our legacy SAN.

UPDATE: We expanded our cluster to five vsan nodes however we are now in process of retrofitting four legacy hosts for a total of nine vsan nodes.

Technical support was very responsive, the technical support staff was. Specifically patching hosts, we inadvertently caused VSANdata evacuations during the middle of the day. Whereas, if you were to do a maintenance mode with non-evacuation, that wouldn't happen but they were able to get to the root cause and provide us an answer on why that happened.

We made the jump to VSAN primarily due to cost renewals going up year over year on traditional platforms. The software and hardware costs that we see now is just linear, we know what it's going to be.

We actually have been with VMware for quite a while so we made the choice to use VSAN because of that partnership that we have had over the years. We're fully focused in VMware and we love the product. That's why we chose VSAN.

I wasn't familiar at all with VSAN at the time, so there was a little learning curve there but outside of that it would be comparable to setting up a legacy SAN environment.

We actually, just by incrementally increasing the cost of our servers, plus the licensing, we were able to linearly scale our environment as opposed to doing forklift upgrades.

We evaluated other all-flash arrays and hyper converged infrastructure.

Everybody wants to say 10 and I would say it's going to be a 10. I love VSAN and I would say it's probably an 8 and there's room for improvement. It's constantly being worked on and I think it's going to be the storage platform going forward.

Colleagues looking into VSAN, I would recommend looking into the VSAN Ready Nodes, they're pre-configured and you can customize your build to whatever you want really, without having to build your own necessarily.

We aren't currently using the Ready Nodes, but I could see where a Ready Node would be beneficial for deployment. The time to deploy would be improved using a Ready Node.

Peer reviews and peer contents are amazing things to be doing. That's part of the reason why we come here. We want to maintain our relevance, industry wide, and so we always constantly bounce ideas off of other peers in the industry.

• Performance
• High Availability

It's relatively low-cost for a high-performance solution. By using VSAN, we've been able to simplify our infrastructure considerably.

VSAN currently has no data deduplication, and having such a feature would both be an improvement and provide a feature that Nutanix has.

N/A

The stability is very good.

Having now deployed it, it's actually difficult to have any downtime or to even lose data.

Considering I've only done one VSAN cluster, I'd say that the scalability is good. We haven't yet tried to add more clusters.

Our company currently has 20,000 users and we expect further growth, so we'll likely have to scale down the road. That said, I don't anticipate really any issues with scalability at that point.

N/A

Tech support is very good as they're responsive.

We have the Technical Account Manager service, which is very helpful.

N/A

Setup was not complex at all, was very straightforward, and was easily implemented by everyone on the team.

We implemented it with out in-house team.

We chose VSAN based on a POC. We looked at Nutanix, but VSAN was more robust for our needs and less expensive.

We normally use Gartner as a source, as well as some testing and a POC. The POC was the most important criteria, so my advice would be to do that before committing the resources.

VMware vSAN is a storage virtualization software.

What I found most valuable in this software is its storage management feature.

I don't recall an area for improvement in VMware vSAN, because it's a concept, a brand, and a product. If the concept doesn't change, we can't improve this software that much, but VMware can probably make the monitoring feature much better.

I've been dealing with VMware vSAN for eight years now.

VMware vSAN is a stable software.

VMware vSAN is a scalable software.

Clients have to pay for VMware vSAN licensing based on the number of CPUs. Whether it'll be a yearly or a monthly subscription, you have to check with the vendor, because you can buy it for one year, two years, or three years. The purchases would be lifetime or perpetual, but you need to have support, e.g. the support is negotiated from one, two, three, or four years.

VMware vSAN is my main product, and I'm an integrator for it.

The current version we're using is the VMware vSAN 6.2 version.

The setup of VMware vSAN is the same setup as the ReadyNodes, because the ReadyNodes are built on top of vSAN technology. As for how long it takes to deploy, it depends on the number of hosts you're deploying.

We have six clients currently using this software.

For deployment and maintenance of VMware vSAN, we have two technical staff who are in charge: one for setting up the network, and the other one for setting up the physical environment.

I'm recommending this software to others who want to start using it. You can install it on any kind of ReadyNodes.

I'm rating VMware vSAN nine out of ten.

our primary use case is storage; hyper-converged solutions for our customers. We develop and design higher availability infrastructure for customers with the vSAN as its base. I'm a consultant and an architect for solutions with the software. My company is a partner with VMware.

High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution.

An integrated backup solution within the vSAN platform would improve the product. Competitors like SimpliVity, UCS, and Cisco Hyperconverged all have a backup feature in their hyper converged infrastructure, it's something that a lot of people use now.

I've been using this solution for four years. 

This solution is super stable. 

This solution is very scalable. However, we've seen some limits within the platform although I believe the latest version may have solved those problems. 

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. If the setup also involves hardware deployment, the process can take a day or so, but if it's just the vSAN deployment, it can be done in several minutes. I generally carry out the implementation. 

It's important to use someone who is familiar with the solution to carry out the implementation. It's fairly straightforward but if you set it up incorrectly then you'll have issues with your underlying storage. It's worth having a professional service to manage things. 

I rate this solution 10 out of 10.