VMware vSAN Reviews

We use the platform for virtualization and data capacity management.

VMware vSAN's most valuable features are the capability to consolidate standalone physical infrastructure into virtualization and the ease of management.

The platform's cost affects the business. This particular area needs improvement.

We have been using VMware vSAN for six years.

It is a stable platform. I rate the stability as ten out of ten.

We have seven to eight VMware vSAN users in our organization. It is a highly scalable product. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

The technical support services are far better than other vendors.

Positive

It has a user-friendly configuration process. The deployment typically takes approximately one to two hours. For instance, if we consider deploying a three-node vSphere operating system, it usually takes about two to three minutes to deploy. However, when factoring in the configuration of logical networking aspects, the overall deployment time extends to one to two hours. Once completed, the product is ready for usage.

We have a team of 12 engineers in our technical team working on the implementation.

We've encountered challenges, particularly with the recent policy changes after Broadcom acquired VMware. The current pricing needs to meet the customers' expectations, posing significant issues. It is difficult to explain the cost implications of upgrades to the customers.

I rate the pricing a three out of ten.

We are exploring other vendors. One consideration is Microsoft Hyper-V clusters, and we are also looking into Microsoft Azure Stack HCI. Additionally, we are evaluating Red Hat solutions as potential alternatives. The decision-making process involves assessing the pricing factor.

We've been utilizing VMware vSAN internally within our organization for the past three years and offering it as a solution to our customers. It helps eliminate the need for external storage and leverage the latest technology provided by VMware.

It significantly improved our storage efficiency by supporting disk groups. However, there were limitations as it only allowed for five disks. To enhance efficiency further, we needed the capacity to increase to at least seven disks per group. Additionally, for better tiering capabilities, it would be advantageous if it could support 12 disks per tier.

The recent integration with VMware's ecosystem has improved our operations by simplifying deployment and management tasks. With internal integration, deploying and managing the repository from a single dashboard has become easier.

The scalability has supported our business growth effectively. As an organization, we utilize it in various customer roles, which proves advantageous for our organization and clients.

I recommend the product to customers looking for better and more efficient storage capacity. It is a good solution. I rate it a ten out of ten.

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.

Our primary use case is to host our hyperconverged solutions. I'm a project manager and team leader and we are implementers of this solution. We carry out everything from implementation to rollout. We are customers of VMware vSAN.

The VCG notification feature is key for me. 

We faced some latency issues but it's been a little better lately. I'd like to see a single dashboard product and an improvement in reporting which currently depends on third party applications. 

I've been using this solution for almost seven years. 

It's relatively stable now although we had some issues in the past. 

The solution is scalable, we have around 5,000 users. I think there are about 15 people in the company who deal with monitoring, management, and implementation.

We had a very good team early on so we were not dependent on Microsoft or VMware to help mitigate issues.

We previously used Nutanix and I was very happy using Prism. We ended up with vSAN following a bidding process.

The initial setup took around 15 months. It was reasonably simple but there were some issues. We migrated around 150 VMs with applications on them.

We have a deal with them so we don't pay for individual licenses, it's a complete solution with an overall license. 

There are many similar solutions on the market. With VMware you get ease of integration because any new product they bring to the market has VMware. 

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We have vSAN, and have built-in storage capabilities. We have many hosts, and we use the host through our providers with vSAN, with the storage. This improves everything because it is all internally between the servers. We use an NSX protocol. And what NSX does, it uses an internal network between hosts, so there is no use of an external switch. We create an internal connection between the host and the VMware product. So traffic is all internal and you can create all the firewalls and switches, everything. It becomes virtual. But, it is sometimes complicated when you try to deploy new systems or when you have to scale a system very quickly.

I think the vSAN product uses vSphere to monitor the system. It is sometimes difficult to manage the PCs within the system. VMware is currently working towards moving things to the cloud network. This is a great new addition to the VMware product.

To me, it is very stable. I never have problems. I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability. Like any normal system, you may sometimes have problems with one little platform, or with a host that is not working. But, there are no major issues.

We have 130,000 people connected to the platform and to the servers. Eventually, we want to use the cloud, which will help with the volume.

You can speak with VMware and they will provide you service that you need.

I can set up a platform of VMware in a week, easily. It took me about a week to deploy our platform and we basically set up all he servers, all the network and everything else. Then, it took about two or three days to work and patch everything, and cable in everything.

The older versions were a little more complicated. Nowadays, there are more documentations, videos, and tutorials. So, it is less complicated. There are still some issues, until you have to look at everything. But, I think that because there is more documentation now, and more information, you can speak with VMware and they can provide you service.

The only problem I see with VMware is the price tag. This may start causing problems because there are other solutions out there, like AWS, that are open source and free. So, there is no license fee. VMware is very good, but expensive, in comparison.

I compared VMware to Oracle. They're very good, but Oracle is expensive, so people buy it and then start using open-source. Oasis is another option because it's cheaper and it's a similar process. So that is the problem I think VMware is going to have to compete with them in the future, and it is only going to get worse.

To me, VMware is a leader of virtualization. I think everyone just follows VMware. 

The reason why we use VMware is because all of the areas that VMware can provide. They fill a need for our platforms. There are other platforms now that provide similar solutions. In the old days, it was a simple Microsoft platform, and they had no management costs. Now they use VMN to create a cross-test and to link all of the servers they want. So they can provide restoration of servers. Furthermore, now they are integrating the movement towards cloud solutions. The only issues concerning the future of vSAN is the price. If someone builds a platform that is free, and only has to pay a license fee for a server, that may cause a problem for VMware.

The most valuable features are scalability and speed.

The ability to throw in extra disks on the fly and extend storage with no limits is very useful. I already had to do this twice.

I think performance of my vSAN is better than that of a SAN, even though I am only working with 10 VMs per site. I don’t know how many performance hits we would get if I had more VMs.

Typically when you get a SAN, there’s a size limit or cap, adding more storage means buying an extra shelf.

In our environment we use Dell 530’s (8 bays), the original setup was only 4TB of usable storage from a pair, but later just added 2 extra disks per esx to make a 12TB volume, I still have 4 open bays and could easily add 8TB drives there if I needed to and on-the-fly.

In terms of performance, it beats going through the wire, since the disks are on the bus and with caching, iops are a plenty.

Furthermore, we have a power limitation at our communities, and adding one more box (SAN) would require an extra 8amps of juice.

No single point of failure, although SANs are very reliable these days, there’s connections and switches to content, with vSAN you can now connect 2 ESX servers directly not needing a 10GB switch

Refresh cycles: my storage follows my ESX servers, so no more extra new hardware to purchase.

vSAN Robo’s are inexpensive to own and maintain, the enterprise version is a tad more.

I am able to utilize ESX HW at my robo sites without needing to add a SAN or NAS.

I would like to see the following:

• Fixing the resync function. This needs to be addressed ASAP.
• A better UI showing actual space used and disk space available. The current output is very deceiving. It shows a total that should actually be divided in half, minus the headroom.

When disks are getting full or near 70%, there’s a potential for receiving out-of-sync nodes. One node may have more content than the other, and the re-sync button starts a process that never ends. This is a known issue.

When looking at space details, the available free space depicts the sum of the two nodes. In reality, that should only show half and even more. I would like to see a gauge that marks a safe zone, or under 70%.

The reality is that once you go over 70%, the sync issue comes into play, performance hits are unavoidable, and the rebuild could take a long time.

We have used this solution for over a year.

When dealing with seasoned vSAN experts, the experience was outstanding. Getting them to respond quickly is always an issue. I sometimes had to go ahead and perform a rebuild, as it was quicker than waiting for a callback.

The installation was easy.

I deployed it myself with trial and error support from VMware.

The ROI is negative, the capex is OK, but the opex is outrageous. They need to drop the opex to 20%.

See if you can really afford it and make sure you have the expertise on hand to deal with initial deployment issues.

I found that buying a new SAN by Tegile is less expensive, less complex, and very inexpensive to maintain. In addition, support is the best in the business.

Robosites, data center, and Hyper Converged solutions are examples of universal Hyper Converged solutions.

A one-stack solution from one vendor is the main benefit here. 

Additionally, improvements to the organization are not available at this time.

Maybe incorporation of automation to build clusters in a more automated way would be beneficial.

I have been using it for less than one year.

I have no experience with vSAN in production. So, I am not able to provide an answer. I would say it has good reliability.

At the moment, there are zero users. It is only a pilot and lab solution, so no users are onboarded.

I am not satisfied with VMware support, particularly with the reaction times, SLAs, and those kinds of issues.

vSAN and Nutanix convert in hyper-converged solutions.

The setup is straightforward.

The initial setup is managed internally only.

It operates in parallel with others. It is not a replacement.

My overall rating is eight out of ten.

Our clients primarily use vSAN for general-purpose workloads, such as web servers and application servers, though not as much for databases.

We have a customer who is successfully running VDI on vSAN.

Our customers also use vSAN for storage consolidation. 

We have customers who previously relied on separate servers and storage solutions but wanted to transition to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI). 

We proposed vSAN for this purpose and utilized its standard features to migrate their existing infrastructure to vSAN.

vSAN Health is a good feature. It is a vCentre portal. 

vSAN Health is a feature designed to monitor the health and performance of the vSAN environment. It's crucial for us and our customers to frequently check on this to ensure everything is operating smoothly.

A more user-friendly GUI for troubleshooting and resolving issues would be beneficial. 

Now, addressing problems often requires opening support tickets and command-line interventions, which can be cumbersome for customers and partners alike.

For example, a server might disconnect from vSAN because we didn't realize we needed the command line to check certain things. Ideally, they should develop a web portal that allows users to diagnose and fix errors on their own.

So, I would like to see a tool in the web portal to address vSAN issues. A tool to fix recent issues.

There are some additional features I would like to see but it's not directly related to vSAN, but I'd like to touch on the vCLS feature. In the past, there was no such feature, but they're planning to develop this feature and integrate it. 

This creates challenges for our sales team and sometimes even difficulties in maintaining service on other servers. Ideally, they could develop something that allows authorized users to check out a server, essentially take it offline for maintenance, before doing so and notifying others.

The VCLS feature is confusing for your customers. It would be better to develop a feature that helps authorized users check out and disable this feature before taking a server offline for maintenance.

I have been using it for five years now.

I would rate the stability a six out of ten because sometimes everything looks all green, and healthy. 

But the next day, vSAN shows something red, and the host just disconnects from the cluster with a recent issue. We have to open a ticket to resolve it.

So the stability can be inconsistent.

Scaling vSAN is manageable; however, upgrading the entire cluster to a new version can take a lot of time and challenging for our customers.

It is easy, but it takes time to upgrade the cluster.

I would rate the scalability capabilities a seven out of ten. It should be improved.

We have small and medium-sized businesses as our customers. 

The quality of the customer service and support depends on the vSAN case. For example, if I open ten cases, maybe two or three get resolved quickly. But the other cases have a slow response. 

Maybe they end their shift and don't transfer it to the next, and no one picks it up. I have to wait until the original owner comes back to work.

Neutral

For successful business continuity, we have to use Site Recovery Manager. However, customers are pushing for more options. They'd like to see other solutions that might be a better fit for their specific needs. So, they use different third-party tools for disaster recovery.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being very easy.

Deployment can be done within three hours if we prepare all the information beforehand. We can set it up in two to three hours.

With the new pricing model, it's expensive for the customer. The old cost model was X, and the new model might be 50% more.

Comparing vSAN to traditional infrastructure solutions like those from VMware or SolarWinds, I don't see a distinct advantage.

For now, I wouldn't recommend it because of the price. There are other products on the market that work well like Nutanix. 

In your opinion, these are better options. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten. 

We are using it for a redundant, local front-end environment for our WiFi portal. We're also using it for critical backend services, our DCP instances, and our internal monitoring environments. We have instances inside that system right now.

I believe we are using its latest update.

The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it. 

It is pretty straightforward. We're able to manage multiple platforms with ease. In terms of the overhead of understanding how the entire platform is being administered, it was fairly quick for our team to get the hang of it.

It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins.

We were trying to explore a solution for a hybrid setup, and VMware had proposed something, but we wanted to understand a deeper setup where our existing vSAN and our HCI environment can interact better with our platforms on the cloud in AWS. So, there should be those types of interactions wherein we can better explore cost-saving opportunities from some platforms in the cloud versus the one that we have on-prem.

I have been using this solution for more than two years.

It has been a pretty stable system so far.

We had a long discussion with our vendor partner about a plan to scale up the system. They gave us several options, but we ended up with the most cost-effective one where we had to trim down some of the node requirements that we were planning to buy initially.

We had an experience with them recently, and the correspondence with the technical support from VMware was fairly quick. It was aligned with the expected SLA. There were no major issues with the support people who assisted us during that time.

It was fairly straightforward. We were surprised at how fast it was implemented. The entire implementation took about two weeks. After that, it was turned over to us, and then we planned on the migration of the platforms from our old converged environment into this new environment.

In terms of the maintenance, apart from the normal operational maintenance that we're doing, we always ensure that there is a back-to-back maintenance agreement with VMware and the vendor partner who sold us the solution. So far, there has been very low admin maintenance on the platform. There have been no major issues except the last one where one node got affected by a power problem in the data center. That's just about it.

We worked with a vendor partner for its implementation. Right now, in our team, we have around five admins who work with this solution.

Cost-wise, the Nutanix licenses were cheaper, but in terms of the hardware, there was some contention around it. So, in terms of implementation, the way Nutanix was projecting the implementation on their end was that there were a lot of open-source admin platforms. vSAN is a licensed product in VMware, and Nutanix was proposing a KVM solution, which is open source. That's why their pricing was a bit cheaper, but when we were trying to compare it with an enterprise version of their management platform, it boiled down to the VMware vSAN being most effective in the long run.

When we were exploring an HCI solution, we zoned in on the VMware vSAN, HPE solution, and Nutanix solution. 

I would recommend this solution to others. It is easy to implement, scale, and maintain. The operational work required to maintain the platform is not that difficult.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.