VMware vSAN Reviews

We are using VMware vSAN for a SCADA industrial automation system.

VMware vSAN has benefited our company mainly from the flexibility and redundancy. We have a two-node cluster, if one of the servers goes down, we will still be in operation. It provides high availability.

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.

If we have some complicated issues, you have to use the command lines interface. Not everything is possible to be fixed in the GUI. This is a drawback, that some things have to be fixed via command-line interface and should be able to be done in the GUI.

I have been using VMware vSAN for approximately one year.

The stability of VMware vSAN is excellent. We have been running for one year, and there's there has not been any downtime. The speed is not the fastest, but it's sufficient.

The scalability is excellent because we can expand with more disks if we choose. The expansion is part of the license model which is simple to adjust.

We have approximately 60 people using this solution in my organization. The solution is always running in the background, it is always being used.

I have not contacted the technical support from VMware vSAN. We have not had a need to contact them.

The initial setup of VMware vSAN is of a medium level of difficulty. Since we have a two-node cluster, they have done some very smart innovations. You first have to understand the smart solution before you can fully understand the deployment.

The time of the deployment took approximately one week, this included some experimentation and test.

I did the full implementation myself.

The maintenance of VMware vSAN can be done quarterly, and one person is only needed. It's very easy to manage, the staff required for maintenance is very limited.

We are using the VMware vSAN ROBO which allows us to have a maximum of 25 virtual machines. The approximate cost is €10,000 for a perpetual license.

We evaluated StorMagic before choosing VMware vSAN which was a better git for our use case.

I would highly recommend VMware vSAN to others.

If others want to implement VMware vSAN I have experience with the Remote Office Branch Office(ROBO) solution. It's possible to deploy a virtual center during the installation of VMware vSAN. I recommend doing some studying before deploying it because there are some very good tips on YouTube on how to deploy it. It's a special method of how to deploy it, it's important to understand this method.

I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.

The majority of our customers already vSphere in their infrastructure, so we usually upgrade the infrastructure by adding new hardware, or we migrate to a hyperconverged solution with vSAN ReadyNode and VxRail in some cases.

The vSAN storage cluster is the most interesting feature.

Many VMware products are specialized, where one solution does one thing and another does something else. It would be better if VMware consolidated these products and offered modules or add-ons instead of selling 10 different solutions.

Also, a vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array. Deduplication and compression work better with an all-flash array, so I think that VMware should give customers the option to activate and support this feature for hybrid arrays. Other products like Nutanix support this.

We first implemented vSAN about three or four years ago.

We had some complaints about the recent firmware update. 

I think vSAN is more scalable than some solutions we've tried. We don't have the same issues as we do with VxRail. It's less of a concern because the software is more independent of the hardware.

I've never had to contact support. 

Our engineers have a lot of experience with vSAN, so we think it's easy to implement. One person is usually enough to set up the solution and apply updates. 

I rate VMware vSAN eight out of 10. In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent. It causes fewer disruptions from changing the administration. You need about the same amount of knowledge and expertise as vSphere.

This solution has improved our organization by allowing us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance. However, it doesn't change the internal organization much.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the simplicity to implement and to maintain.

One area that could be improved is the management feature. The link between the virtualization layer and the application layer can be improved as well.

An additional feature I would like to see in the next release is integration between virtualization with vSAN and network virtualization.

I've been using the solution for the last three years.

My impression of the stability is that it's a very good solution for our usage.

For the product cloud, scalability is okay. However, when we try to use a larger cloud, we can add more new nodes into the same vSAN configuration.

Every year, our number of users increases.

The customer support is very good, depending on the contract support that you supply. We are using a premium support and the quality is quite good.

The complexity of the initial setup is not really on the VMware, but only the hyper-layer because we need to check if the hyper-layer, underlying VMware are strictly compatible.

For the first implementation, it took more or less one year, but now it takes much less time to add new material and new configuration.

In the beginning, we saw a huge return on investment from VMware, from 10 years ago to five years ago, but now we are used to the product. So the ROI doesn't make much enough for us because we only use vSAN. Now VMware is the baseline.

The product is quite expensive, regarding the open-source solution.

The cost of the solution is a mixture of monthly user and licenses purchasing. So for the internal user, we use licenses purchasing. For an external customer, we use the Pay-Per-View model.

Before choosing VMware, we evaluated Microsoft Nutanix and Cisco HyperFlex. VMware design is more mature than the other solutions, generally.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I think performance and cost are the most valuable features of VMware Virtual SAN. We're stringing up an entire virtualization environment for VDI and RDSH through Horizon View. When we compared the cost of a traditional SAN versus VSAN, that’s what actually made it all possible for us. We're actually able to deploy Virtual SAN for a fraction, like 1/5th, of the cost, of what we're paying for our SAN. It was crazy. The reduced cost made it very palatable and then the actual performance of it made it even that much more functional.

I'm from the cloud virtualization side of things, so consolidating the data allowed us to set up the VSAN instead of a traditional SAN, and allowed us to do faster deployments without having to interact with as many teams. It's simplified our deployment methodology a fair amount, and it gave us the better performance we're looking for from a SAN perspective.

Beyond that, it didn't change a lot how we function, necessarily, but it gave us a better tool, or a tool specific for our use case, or something that opens up the door for more. I think that the product itself is going to be paramount in other expansions and other aspects of the corporation. We'll likely keep expanding it into general computing and servers across the globe. It might help with some of the other deployments, cache centers and data centers, so that we don't necessarily have to buy SAN. It gives us the performance for the cost that really makes it attractive overall. Beyond that, I don't know.

I know it's coming, but I'm really excited for the encryption. I know it's on the all-flash, which is fine, because we're migrating to that anyways. Nonetheless, the encryption would be great for at-rest data, because I don't want to rely on a third party. I don't want to get some self-encrypting drives or anything like that; drives me nuts. That would be very good to get.

I'm looking forward to being able to do VSAN shares with other clusters; sharing the VSAN storage outside of its existing cluster so that we can actually move data a little bit easier between them, or allocate VMs across the entire frame and all the different VSAN storage. I want to try to make more use of the VSAN storage and do some better vMotions across hosts and clusters. That, I think, would be the best.

I like its stability. I think we probably need to get an additional node in there. Right now, we're running some 4-node VSANs. We probably should be at a 5 with a 2-RAID parity on that. Four is okay; it's stable, it's efficient. I haven't really run into any issues with it.

Some of the earlier versions were a little rough; we saw some weird, crooked behavior. Beyond that, it's been solid, and it just works. No issues yet.

Our early deployments of VSAN ran into a few issues with performance. Some of the nodes we installed initially had very high IO utilization when nothing was occurring on the disks; likely related to some replication tasks. Additionally, our fault tolerance was low using just a four-node VSAN (giving an N+1 configuration). We really should be a N+2 (which apparently takes six nodes, not five…).

Performance since then has been outstanding.

We're actually scaling out right now from several 4-node VSAN clusters to - I think we're going to go to - some 8-, and then eventually 12-, node VSANs. That's one of the really nice parts about it; we'll just be able to scale out. The only downside I think I have with it from a scale perspective is, we've got some hybrid VSAN right now. That's what we all started out with. We really liked the all-flash VSAN arrays that you can get, so we're doing that. However, we can't merge the two, so we have to create whole new clusters for the all-flash VSAN. That makes scaling a little bit rough there, but I don't think that will be much of an issue going forward, because flash is pretty inexpensive now and that's probably going to be the standard from here on out.

I think we used technical support earlier on. I didn't personally, but I know our engineers had to work with technical support on some issues with a couple of our VSAN nodes kind of going crazy when they were doing some initial configuration setup. They were just sitting there idle, and one of them would spike up; I don't know if it was trying to replicate data or do something odd. They worked with the support team, got it resolved and addressed it, upgraded to a new version and haven't seen any problems since.

I think there could always be improvement. Whenever we interact with the VMware technical support, it's usually because we have issues that aren't easily solved. We've got our own set of engineers that are really intelligent guys, very capable individuals. Whenever we call in, we always get the initial first line of defense, "Hey, give us your logs." Okay, here's our logs. And then they ask us silly questions and basic troubleshooting and, "Did you do this?" Of course we did. I guess the initial support services guys are just that basic line of defense. They don't always really understand the people that they're dealing with nor have that knowledge of the customer base. That knowledge set they're working with makes it difficult to interact with them a lot of times and getting issues escalated. It's always been kind of a tricky thing for us.

We've been using traditional SAN for a long time. Our engineers had to do test with an initial project to do some developer builds, and they wanted some persistent VMs, and they wanted humongous amounts of storage in them, because they're crazy people. The goal was to give them some virtual machines to replace all these physical machines that they had, because whenever they mess up a machine and they want to rebuild, it takes a long time. You have to rebuild the whole machine, give it back to them, and then they have to build it out all over again.

Using the VDI solution, Horizon View, and VSAN made it actually cost-effective, because if we were try to do the amount of storage that they were looking for on the VMs with traditional SAN, it would have cost us a lot more than anybody's willing to spend or to endure. The VSAN made it very possible and gave us the performance needed to actually facilitate and even perform better on the VMs than they do on the physical boxes that they were using, which is good. It all helped.

At the time, we did not look into other solutions. It was either SAN or VSAN. From a SAN perspective, we have a partnership with HP for some 3PAR storage, and we have some EMC storage as well. When it comes to VSAN, it was included in our ELA that we agreed with from VMware's perspective. We figured, if we're paying for it, we might as well try using it. It worked out really well.

When selecting a vendor like VMware, a lot of the decision comes down to functionality. Functionality, performance, and cost, those are the usually big factors. A lot of times, my company's really focused on cost, which is a pain in the butt. We're a very big VMware shop to start with, so whenever we can use a product that can simplify deployments, simplify management, and integrate with everything that we already have, that makes it really desirable. That's I think what VSAN did; it really simplified the way for us to get our storage for virtual machines and give us that performance and at a lower cost. That satisfied all the different aspects we look for in products.

I gave VSAN a perfect rating because it's been great. We really haven't had any problems with it; it's been solid. I haven't had to deal with the SAN guys, so that makes my life much better. We get much better performance out of it than I would have ever thought. We get all the IOPS we need from it; we get dedupe on the all-flash array. It's my own little SAN and nobody else gets to mess with. I think it's fantastic. I just love it, I really do.

If you have the budget or it's available to you, definitely go for it, because it's going to save money over the traditional SAN.

The only caveat I ever give to anybody about it is that the initial investments are a little rough. You can't just build a 1-node VSAN; you can do a 2-node VSAN, but, boy, no one ever wants to do it. To really get to a point where you get the data redundancy and the high availability, you need a 4-node VSAN, which can cost a fair amount for that initial investment.

If you're trying to do something small, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but if you're in a larger organisation like we are and you have to do a lot, this is a fantastic tool.

The product’s most valuable features are performance and expandability.

The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it.

We have been using VMware vSAN for seven out of years.

The product is stable.

It is a scalable product. It is suitable for enterprises.

Since we are an advanced partner, we receive on-time and adequate support services. However, their response time needs improvement for critical cases.

Neutral

It is an easy-to-install and maintain product. It requires one or two executives, depending on the environment, to conduct implementation.

VMware vSAN is an expensive platform. We purchase its yearly license.

I recommend VMware vSAN and rate it an eight out of ten. The product’s support team’s response time and pricing could be better.

I use the solution in my company for the security patches. I just use it to upgrade the security patches and be secure.

The product's complex setup phase is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I want the solution to be made available at a lower price since it is currently expensive.

I have been using VMware vSAN for two years. I use the solution's latest version.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

You can say that everything about VMware vSAN is that it is very scalable, making it more than a perfect solution.

Around 500 people in my company use the product. My company manages 90,00,000 endpoints of our clients who use the product.

The product is extensively and regularly used in our company.

The product's initial setup phase was very complex.

During the deployment process, my company ensures that the product is deployed on an on-premises model, which takes about a day to complete and has 13 to 14 steps to be followed.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a day because it was implemented with Dell VxRail. All the solutions from Dell VxRail, including the virtual machine and VMware, were implemented in one day. My company implemented the solution with the help of a third party for the implementation of all the solutions, including Dell VxRail, VMware, and VMware vSAN.

One person is required to take care of the implementation process.

My company had implemented the solution with the help of a third party.

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

The tool does not make much of a difference in improving data center storage efficiency as it only shows some changes in appearance and offers a few additional features.

When it comes to the projects managed by my company, I think VMware vSAN is very good for our organization's infrastructure, as it can add big value for us because in the past, we had used some traditional solutions, like Hyper-V from Microsoft. At the present time, I can't even compare Hyper-V and VMware since VMware vSAN is the black horse of virtualization.

The specific feature of the product that has had the largest impact on our company's operations stems from the use of its virtualization capabilities. I don't need the tool for anything more than the virtualization part it offers.

The product's scalability has been good and supportive of my organization's growth.

I don't have any issues with the setup phase since I don't deploy it on the systems but I know that it is a complex process.

The management of the product is very straightforward. I haven't had to handle any issues related to product management.

VMware vSAN is a very good solution which is also very handy. I think the implementation isn't easy enough for someone to figure it out. You have to seek help from professionals to take care of the implementation because one mistake can cost you a lot.

My company had no budget plans, so the implementation did not affect our company's overall IT budget and cost efficiency.

The product has had a very good impact on our business since it has improved our overall speed and response time.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

VMware vSAN is a highly scalable solution. We can start with as few nodes as possible and scale up according to our needs. Another advantage is deploying a stretched solution across two sites, with data synchronization between the two data centers. Setting up a stretch cluster is made easy with vSAN.

VMware vSAN provides seamless integration within the hypervisor core, providing stability and eliminating the need for additional VM gateways per node, as required by solutions like Nutanix. This integration simplifies the ecosystem, making it easier to adopt and manage.

The main improvement in VMware vSAN is its licensing mode. Its acquisition prioritizes doubling the EBITA rather than focusing on technological advancement. This is a common issue in the IT market, where companies may be acquired by financial entities, potentially leading to stagnation in technological innovation. The technology is mature and stable, with no significant improvements currently evident.
The new feature allows for the use of only two nodes in an active-active setup.

I have been using VMware vSAN for eight years.

The performance is up to our expectations. The initial performance is high solution because we use flash storage. The complete solution is good.

The solution’s scalability is good. 200 users are using this solution. We have a private cloud with many intelligent users who can connect to the cloud.

We can manage the solution ourselves. 

There may be an opportunity for vSAN to explore new avenues for open-cycle solutions with the recent reorganization of Broadcom impacting VMware.

We use VMware vSAN with 50 instances, but we must change the licensing. Broadcom buys VMware.

We had been using the Dell VxRail solution. Due to Dell's cessation of collaboration with VMware and Broadcom's decision to overhaul the licensing model, our future with VxRail is uncertain. We can purchase VxRail with vSAN, which is integrated into Dell's portfolio. We lack assurance now that Dell and Broadcom are separate entities.
Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

VMware vSAN is used for virtualization and general-purpose computing. Instead of going for the SAN (storage area network) storage, customers go for VSAN (virtual storage area network). The solution is used for general-purpose computing, production computing, and storage.

Instead of going for SAN storage, customers can use the scale-up and scale-out features of VMware vSAN.

Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers. Maintenance-wise, when the capacity is utilized beyond 60% to 70%, then the time of the upgrade is a little higher compared to the standard SAN storage.

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

VMware vSAN is a pretty stable solution. We haven't seen any issues with the solution's stability in five to seven years. The customers would face issues if they ignore some key points.

I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten for stability.

In terms of scalability, we have to just add the nodes. If you require more computing or storage, you have to add the nodes to the existing cluster. Our clients for VMware vSAN are medium and enterprise businesses.

I rate the solution nine and a half out of ten for scalability.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight or eight and a half out of ten.

The solution's deployment time totally depends on the customer or the deployment guide. However, we can deploy VMware vSAN in a day.

The solution's licensing pricing could be improved. The level of discounts available on the solution's licensing price varies from customer to customer. Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten.

Our clients are government and private customers working with VMware vSAN in the manufacturing, defense, oil and gas, and ITIS industries. The solution is generally built on top of the virtualization layer with VMware. It's a part of virtualization. The solution's performance and management are pretty easy.

VMware vSAN is tightly integrated with other VMware products because it's a part of vSphere. It is tightly integrated with the virtualization layer. We can integrate and utilize VMware vSAN for other VMware products very easily.

Using VMware vSAN is totally dependent on the customer's use case. A standard three-tier architecture is recommended for customers who want to use a tier-one application for ERP protection. VMware vSAN is recommended to customers with a use case for VDI, general-purpose computing, and test development environments.

Overall, I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.