VMware vSAN Reviews

We use this product for server virtualization.

We have found many of the features to be valuable.

There is always a challenge with their firmware. There is different hardware and they are always looking for different firmware that is compatible with vSAN. It is very difficult to find the compatibility matrix.

They need to do some kind of automation in terms of hardware, firmware, and compatibility with the vSAN. They need to do some sort of upgrade for the customer.

I would like to see the upgraded mechanism, and improvements on the hardware so that we can create a VPN.

I have been using VMware vSAN for more than two years.

It's a stable solution. So far we have not had any issues.

This is a scalable product. As it is only used for server virtualization, we do not consider usage on a per-user basis.

Technical support is good. They know what we need. We log a case and they come to us with suggestions to fix the issues.

The initial setup was manageable. It was not a problem.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for hosting all our business products on virtual machines.

It's cost-effective.

• Hyperconverged storage
• Computing

The only thing I care about is that the solution is stable, reliable. They need to improve on those factors. I don't want to have to wake up at night to deal with problems.

It's pretty stable now. We had some challenges when we deployed them. There were software bugs.

The scalability is pretty good. I'm pretty satisfied with it.

Technical support, at times, has not been very good, but we are okay with it now. The problem was that they were not taking care of our issues promptly. They would average a couple of days to get back to us. But if there was a tough question, it would take them days or weeks.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We probably reduced our hardware footprint by 50 percent, which is a lot.

We looked at other vendors but we chose VMware because it has a good reputation and because the underlying technology is pretty solid.

The solution is an eight out of ten. To get to a ten it would need to be more stable and easier to upgrade.

The primary use case is bringing redundancy into our plants for failover. It has been performing great.

The most valuable feature is the flexibility, the ability to move the machines around without hesitation.

The UI could certainly be better. The inside into what's actually going on with vSAN would be nice to know.

There have been a few issues, but VWware support has been tremendous in resolving them, so it's been good.

Scalability is easy to do. It's just drop-and-add and you're good.

The process with technical support is pretty good. Escalation up to the top-tier engineers is really good. We have a direct path there. There are no problems with tech support.

We probably already reached our ROI aftertwo and a half years.

Make sure your storage network is strong. But I would recommend vSAN.

It's a pretty solid product now that's it's at 6.5 Update 2. I know that it's going to get better, but right now I'm pretty happy with where we're at. I would rate it at seven out of ten. Nothing's perfect. There's always room for improvement.

We use it for our compute clusters, for running our virtual machines. We use it for our vROps clusters. Our customers use it for their compute workloads.

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.

I would like to see replication as part of it. I would also like to see direct file access, being able to run SIF shares and NFS and the like. I think that would be critical to continuing the use of it, going forward.

One of the things that we've had challenges with is when we place hosts into maintenance mode. Sometimes doing so triggers large re-sync processes which can be time-consuming and which have, at times, pushed the capacity to the threshold. I definitely think making some changes in that area would provide some big improvements.

Overall, it's stable. When it's designed properly for the proper workloads, it's a very stable product. We had some challenges, initially, with getting the workloads aligned to the proper storage policies and configurations, but since we worked through that it has been very stable.

Technical support is getting better. We've been using vSAN for a couple of years now. Initially, it was a little more challenging, but it seems like GSS is scaling up as well and, perhaps, learning the product along with us, at times. But overall, they do a great job in giving us support when we need it.

The initial setup is pretty easy. I would like to have some additional automation wrapped around it. In the earlier versions, PowerCLI was very limited, but as the versions have progressed the modules have progressed as well. It's getting better. I consider it to still be a fairly new product and, over time, it's continually getting better and better.

Properly align your workloads to the storage policies and make sure you know what your workloads are before you leverage vSAN. Have a good understanding of the size of your VMs, the amount of change that they have, and how you are going to be doing maintenance in your cluster. Understand the workload and what you're going to be doing with it before you jump in.

We use vSAN because it's a VMware product which integrates with all the other virtualization, and it simplifies hyper-converged environments.

• I would like more integration with the hardware when it comes to disc types and supporting the newer types of storage. 
• I would like compression and deduplication to be offered for offloading hardware, instead of doing it with software. That would be nice.

The latest version is very stable. It had a couple of hiccups in the earlier versions. The deployment and integration were simple, but we did have some bugs that we hit on, which have since been fixed.

Adding new nodes and expanding vSAN forward is simple and non-disruptive for a lot of our customers. It makes it simpler so we are not doing late night deployments, and we can answer the needs of the business immediately.

It is easy to find information out there, not only from searching the web, but even the times I have engaged VMware support. We were able to get an engineer within minutes of opening a case who understood vSAN, and they were able to help us out.

The initial setup for vSAN is simple. A couple clicks, we were up and running. 

It does takes more time to rack it than to actually configure it.

As far as a software-based, storage control product, it is great. They are staying ahead of a lot of the competition out there. vSan is what a lot of the competition is using.

Virtual Desktop.

Easy to use.

Horizon VDI

Raw disk and block disk.

VNF apps.

Storage policies are used to perform operations in the VMs. This feature allows you to create storage policies for VMs to get performance, high availability, I/O policies, etc.

Hardware supported by VMware vSAN: The list of hardware supported should be increased in the future. I would improve these areas by increasing the number of partners to support as many as possible.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is perfect. VMware provides some of the best support in the market.

We had no previous solution.

With a good hardware design, the setup is straightforward.

I have no advice about pricing.

We evaluated Cisco vSAN.

It is easy to design and deploy to react to a changing environment.

If you really want to squeeze all of the value out of this solution, it should deployed in an all-flash configuration. The all-flash vSAN solution allows customers to take advantage of newer features such as erasure coding, deduplication and compression, greater swap file efficiency and other enhanced management capabilities.

The erasure coding (aka RAID-5/6) feature increases storage capacity efficiency compared to the default RAID-1 fault tolerance method that consumes more space but provides the best performance. Some virtual workloads do not require all of the performance provided by RAID-1. An administrator simply defines a capacity-based storage policy configured for RAID-5/6, which is then quickly applied to the VMs that would require it.

vSAN is a very cost-effective solution for just about any data center. It is very easy to deploy, scale and manage. The entire solution is built on commodity hardware, so customers do not have to break the bank (or budget) to invest in this technology compared to a much more costly centralized storage array.

Snapshot management is something that continues to improve with each release of vSAN. Earlier versions experienced performance degradation, but each version gets more and more efficient with snapshots. The new snapshot format known as “vsanSparse” was introduced in vSAN 6.0, which replaced the traditional “VMFSsparse” formats which involved redo logs.

I have been working with VMware vSAN for quite some time now, dating back to the old vSphere Storage Appliance and then vSAN in vSphere 5.5. It has come a long way in a short period of time with many improvements.

Anytime I have encountered issues with stability, it usually was the result of a poor design or poor implementation. If you are looking to deploy VMware vSAN properly aligned to your business needs, you should consider a vSAN assessment before anything else. Properly sizing and spec’ing the solution will ensure stability.

Scalability is not a major issue with vSAN. The latest version can scale up to 64 nodes per vSAN-enabled cluster. The nodes can be configured to be very dense when it comes to CPU, memory and local disk configurations. A majority of the 2U servers out there contain up to 24 slots (SSD or HDD). All-flash configurations provide more disk capacity thus making the solution more dense. Scaling the solution is also very easy. Scale up or scale out; it all depends on how the solution was initially sized during the design phase.

The stability of the solution has limited the number of times that I have been on a support call for vSAN. The handful of times that I have had to call VMware for support on vSAN, the support experience was phenomenal. The support staff responded swiftly and were very knowledgeable.

I did not previously use a different solution but there are various solutions out there in the hyper-converged market that work very well.

The actual implementation of vSAN is very easy to do. Once the equipment is racked, stacked, powered on and installed with ESXi, the vSAN cluster can be up and running very quickly. To avoid any hiccups, it should be properly sized and designed.

Review all of the options available with each vSAN version (Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, ROBO) and look at the solution from a “long-term” perspective. One example would be a vSAN solution that will eventually span multiple sites. The primary site is ready now but the second and third sites are a year or so away from being production ready. In this case, I would recommend to my customer the Enterprise Edition, so they can take advantage of the stretched cluster feature. Once the other sites are ready, the stretched cluster vSAN can be quickly deployed because the proper licensing is already in place.

I would certainly consider other options, but I apply that logic to any solution. Always weigh the pros and cons of the solution that you are looking for. Does it satisfy your solution requirements? Does it fit with the long term goals? What type of workloads are being deployed? Cloud integration or some type of automation required? Many factors can and will come into play with choosing the proper hyper-converged solution. Look very closely at each one and do a comparison to determine which solution aligns with your needs the most. Once you have narrowed things down to two or three solutions you can then use the results of the assessment to assist with the final decision.

Invest the time and resources to properly design and size vSAN early on, long before hardware is purchased. It is very important to ensuring stability and its overall functionality. Contact a trusted solution provider or expert and evaluate the existing infrastructure or environment to determine the correct hardware and software configuration. Lastly, VMware is very consistent with releasing up-to-date ready node configurations that are certified and tested for vSAN functionality. Adhere to those guidelines and the solution will be successful.