VMware vSAN Reviews

We do reference architectures using our SSDs so we're all about All-Flash vSAN. It's part of our portfolio.

• Performance
• Simplicity
• Synchronicity with vSphere

I would love to see vSAN integrate Persistent Memory and NVDIMMs. I know they're supposed to be working on an elastic tier so that we don't have the issues with destaging from the cache to the capacity. Those are the things that I'm interested in.

I'm not an end-user, I'm a partner, we put together proofs of concept for end-users. So my biggest desire is for the VMware/vSAN team to perfect the single tier or what they're calling the elastic tier so that you can pool SSDs as well as NVDIMMs.

The stability is fine, it's as stable as the vSphere, and vSphere has been around for a long time.

We've documented that it scales out per node. The more disk groups, the more nodes, the better the performance.

We have a team of engineers who do the performance evaluation so we don't normally use technical support. We only occasionally use it.

We published the first All-Flash vSAN in 2015. It wasn't straightforward but we got it done.

We use it to provide and sell infrastructure as a service.

The performance for us is very good. Our infrastructure now is only solid-state disks, with two different levels. There is one for write-intensive and one for read-intensive. Our decision was to change traditional storage to vSAN.

One of the valuable features for us is the ability to restrict the performance capacity per client. Other solutions don't have this feature.

I would like to be able to limit IOPS.

When we began with this product, we made some mistakes. But through collaboration with the vendor we were able to find a solution to the problems and, today, it is a stable solution.

We have about 2,000 machines under this solution with about 100 hosts. It can scale beyond what our needs are. We have no problems with scalability.

We have used technical support a lot for this product and for other VMware products. For vSAN, in the beginning, we used tech support intensively. The support is very good for us because we get technical support in Spanish, in Panama.

We are using the different levels of support for different kinds of problems. We are online with them and the response time is very good.

We previously used traditional storage solutions such as HPE, Dell Compellent, Hitachi, and others. We did not use a software storage solution before vSAN.

It depends on the project, but vSAN, in particular, is an easy setup.

Our model is different. Our interest is in how we provide a solution for our clients. vSAN results in indirect benefits for our clients because it helps us reduce costs. But the client does not necessarily know that vSAN is the product behind the solution.

When we began the program with vSAN, it was more expensive than it is now. The price is improving over time. In addition, it includes more features in the same bundle. That is really good for us.

We compared it with Nutanix but Nutanix was so expensive for us because our infrastructure is not as high-end as in America. In Chile, it's lower-end. Also, because we are a service provider, the price of vSAN is not expensive for us. Other products, like Nutanix, don't have a program for service providers and the price is prohibitive for us.

For me, vSAN is a nine out of 10. I don't know what could make it a 10 because I have not really compared it with other products in the last three years. Maybe today there are other products that are better. When we started using it three years ago, vSAN was, perhaps, a seven out of 10 but they have improved the features.

The vSAN technology is clearly the big game changer here. VMware's software-defined storage finally enables us to build a private cloud solution that scales much easier than we are used to.

We wanted to be able to grow much more dynamically than what we have been able to until now. Instead of big investments and complex storage installations, we now have an infrastructure where expansion is a lot easier because we can just buy four more new servers, plug them in and add them to the pool of resources.

We are moving faster every day and are developing new systems and services all the time. We expect the amount of projects this year to be 4-5 times as many as last year and we will be able to support that growth with this solution.

We did plan on using deduplication in our original specification, but during the planning of the configuration, we were advised against it by VMware.

It was a brand new feature, so it was, at the time, perhaps, too early to use it. I am expecting that we will use it in the future when it has matured.

I have used vSphere for seven months for the latest installation, but we have been running VMware for the last 10 years.

We haven't had stability issues that have affected our running servers. However, that is partly because we pay attention to new releases and what they contain, and we don't update just because a new version is available.

Some updates that we chose not to install had bugs that could have caused instability. Also, because we run such a wide range of products from VMware, one has to look at the support matrix before updating/upgrading software, as it may take some time before all products support each other.

We have had a few alarms and alerts in the system, but they have been resolved without any downtime.

Scalability is one of the major advantages of this new installation.

Technical support is no better or worse than what we have seen from other vendors. Usually it works well, but once in a while there are cases that seem to run in circles where you need to get in touch with your account manager and have them escalate the case to get progress.

We have used VMware for virtualization and NetApp for storage for about 10 years.

We stayed with VMware and decided to switch to vSAN because they have had a good track record here with stable products and we could save money (and grow more gradually) by running vSAN instead of a traditional storage system.

I would say initial setup is complex. But we decided to go with best practices and we had consultants from VMware designing and planning the configuration for us, so it wasn't an issue.

Make sure your designs are complete so you can buy all the licenses and products you need as one purchase to get the best deal.

We did not look into alternative solutions for the virtualization part. But for storage, we looked at other vendors. For example: NetApp, Tintri, and Nimble.

Start from scratch. Reject all your old dogmas about how things should be and what is right and embrace the functionality that is available.

We designed our system so we can use NSX and all the other features VMware has to offer, even though we didn't plan on using it in the beginning.

If you are putting constraints on your design because of ties to old legacy systems and designs, then you will never get the full benefits.

We use it to virtualize SAN so that you don't have to have a separate storage area network and can have your computer and storage on the same box or computer.

It's stable and scalable. 

Also, you can virtualize SAN so that you don't have to have a separate storage area network and can have your computer and storage on the same box or computer.

Because of virtual storage, the system reaches reserve storage for its functions. It also consumes a certain amount of storage, which then results in the creation of a fault tolerance for the system. All of this adds to a lot of capacity being consumed in terms of storage for each drive for vSan. I find this to be one drawback of using vSan.

The pricing for licensing could be cheaper.

I've been using this solution for about three years.

I find it to be a stable solution.

I think VMware vSAN is a scalable solution.

I was satisfied with the customer service and technical support I received.

The initial setup was straightforward and took less than two weeks.

We used a consultant for the installation project.

The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account.

You need to pay attention to the calculation metrics in terms of sizing. Depending on your design, you need to be sure that you actually factor in enough storage capacity to be able to achieve whatever you want to achieve in terms of looking at your growth rate.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would rate this product at eight.

We deliver the only end-to-end enterprise technology platform exclusively designed for quick service and food service communities. Our primary use case for this solution is for customer use in our internal labs. As partners with the vendor VMware vSAN, we leverage their tech to build customer-specific simulated environments, to provide unique, controlled individual environments to gain insightful perspectives and capture helpful data.

As a function of our core business, it's a sought after tool that helps us provide analytical support across a wide spectrum of client needs. It's allowed us to test out in our connected restaurant - "TheWorks" - a fully-functional restaurant experience center that allows our clients to discover the value of our connected solutions firsthand. We deploy vSAN in this customer-like environment within a hyperconvergent infrastructure (HCI) to give our clients a better understanding and help optimize data and the end-users' experience.

The feature I've been most pleased with is the import management functionality. 

I would like to see the availability of more template based VMware systems. Combined with the ability to check and measure multiple and converging data segments. Another issue I've seen is that the tool seems to be slow when first starting up. 

Stability is and was always good with VMware. I've never had any issues.

I've only contacted technical support once. My experience with them from what I can remember was good. I was on the call for something like five minutes.

The initial setup was straightforward, not complex at all.

I would suggest that anyone looking to deploy this solution do their due diligence and try out other competitive products first, like Nutanix. I've used Nutanix in the past. I found it to be a more agile tool compared to VMware. VMware has only just recently started offering this HCI solution.

If I was to rate vSAN from one to ten, 10 being best, I would give it an 8. Not a ten primarily because I haven't tested some aspects of the arrays at this point.

We are using vSAN as a product in vSphere. Recently, we signed up for the 6.7 version of vSAN. We use it on all-flash and VME. All the discs that we use are NVMe disks.

We provide and manufacture our own local storage. With our own storage, we can path that with the host. So, it's beneficial for us to have a local storage attached to a host which vSAN is awesome for that.

With vSAN coming in, we have stability within the cluster of resources which has been grouped together in a local storage. This is a wonderful feature in vSAN.

We are finding vSAN is going down the right path, but vSAN has specific profiles which supports vSAN disk. However, our company has our own storage. So, we have different profiles of configuration. Some of those profiles and motherboards, vSAN doesn't support. We have challenges and work with VMware to work with other providers to get into the VMware list and drivers. Since it's customizable, we are looking for drivers from other vendors as well from VMware for compatibility. There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors, like Intel and AMD, on their motherboards and driver configurations.

It is stable for me. We are getting good amount of IOS (the expected amount). The configuration of vSAN is pretty simple. It's just on a cluster level which is pretty simple.

The stability is very much required. vSAN provides default HA configurations, where if any host goes down, the VM moves around within the host. Even though the disks are local, the VMs moves around with the vSAN disk and vSAN provides a high availability on its own.

vSAN is scalable for us. If any additional capacity needs to be included, we just add to the host and configure the vSAN cluster.

Currently, we are working with one tech support as a partner with VMware. We are receiving a good amount of support with troubleshooting. It's on email, as well on tickets. However, it's going well.

We had out-of-the-box solutions. When vSAN came in, all the local storage became attached. The solution has improved a lot considering the local storage for vSAN configuration.

We are involved in the beta phase of the vSphere product, as well vSAN and newer product versions of VMware.

One of the best features of the configuration is vSAN at the cluster level is pretty simple. People have a lot of issues in configuration of different storages, but vSAN brings in a flexibility. Where as a vSphere admin, people can go and just configure the storage. So, VI admins don't want to have a storage knowledge when they are working with a vSAN. It is simple for us to use.

With vSAN, we didn't find the market that competitive. VMware is doing well with the local storage piling up in cluster configuration. vSAN is doing great with it.

As a vSAN, we didn't find that competitive market. VMware is doing good with the local storage piling up with the cluster configuration. vSAN is doing great on that.

We give it nine out of ten. They are going down the right path. When they started, we saw a lot of improvements with a lot of focus on the product, even in VM World. There were announcements in the features for improvement with vSAN. We continue to see VMware keeping up-to-date with vSAN, not putting the product aside.

Simplified datacenter failover in the VMware environment is the most valuable feature of this product.

Previously, when using SRM (VMware Site Recovery Manager) we’d have to configure VMware objects (VMs) for failover. With vSAN, all objects in the datastore are replicated and can be failed over using the built-in high availability feature.

vSAN significantly reduced the complexity of our data center failover along with the data center design requirements.

vSAN health reporting needs some work. There were a few instances where the vSAN would report health issues with disks, even though it was functioning correctly. I believe VMware stated this would be corrected in future versions.

We also had some issues with reinstalling hosts that had vSAN enabled. JBOD disks would retain the vSAN configuration information and would need to be manually cleared to allow for the new vSAN instance to be enabled.

I tested it over a period of five months.

We didn’t have any stability problems. Once configured, vSAN operated without issue.

We didn’t have any scalability problems. vSAN scaled quite well.

Technical support is excellent. VMware provides top notch support.

This was our first time moving to a HCI storage solution.

Setup was straightforward. With ESXi as the base, it was quite easy to then enable vSAN. We used the just a bunch of disks (JBOD) configuration and vSAN consumes those disks easily through the vCenter web GUI.

vSAN is not cheap. Weigh the benefits of a reduction in complexity against the cost.

We did not evaluate any other options.

Use the GUI scripting vSAN implementation, at least for ESXi 6.0. We found that it was much quicker (and still fairly simple) to implement via the GUI. I’ve heard this may have gotten better in ESXi 6.5.

It's not a storage array which is a very valuable feature of it and it's maintenance structure isn't paid like a traditional storage array. For me, that's the biggest leap with it is there's a compelling cost with reason to step in to it. You don't have to make a snap decision and get away from where I am. I can keep what I have and dip my toe in VSAN without risking an all-or-nothing decision.

VSAN is really simple to manage. Its GUI is part of the eco-system so it looks and feels like the rest of VMware. So a VMware engineer or a VMware operations guy's is going to be able to manage the provision storage without having to touch an array, which is generally higher profile so there's a cost reduction through headcount.

VSAN manageability is much easier because it's in and part of the vSphere world, so it looks and feels like any other object that people are used to seeing metrics on and there have been great improvement in management. In 655, there's a little bit of lack information. In the newer system, there's a lot more data about what's going on in that system, in the GUI, easily consumable.

The features I'd like to see in future releases of VSAN are around back-up and recovery. There is a great way to replicate data now, but I'd like to see them focus on making recovery from snap shots, off-site, part of the core product.

It's very stable. Once you get it built and you take the time to build the system correctly, do your research, once it's in place it's been very stable and it performs as it says.

I'm looking at two different ways of scaling that system. One is for speed and one is for mass. It scales into mass based on what size of disc you choose and it scales in to speed based on solid-state drive size. Both of those are two different avenues that work well for us.

I haven't had a technical support case open but we do look at the forums and try to avoid issues and problems based on what's in a publicly available space which has always been something that VMware has done really well, which is making issues public so we can avoid them.

We chose it from a cost perspective. In media we are always looking to save money. It's a publicly traded company so the money I give back is smiled on. We saw a way not to pay maintenance for expensive systems and to run it in a system that performs on parallel with what we already own.

So with a traditional storage array you pay maintenance based on the purchase price for the array plus any software you bought with it so that residual number is high, so if you paid a million dollars for the machine, you may have to pay $200,000 for maintenance at some point in time. With VSAN I'm paying server-based maintenance and that's a much lower number.

The top criteria we looked at when considering VSAN was performance and cost. We were going to make sure that we could deliver the performance that people are used to and used the system that costs less than a traditional array model. We did not look at other vendors because there really isn't another vendor that's doing this. There are people that are close but with a traditional hyper-converged box, there's a bunch of things I don't need. With VSAN I have the technical backing from VMware to back-stop the product and is doing what I need and no more so there is a cost-savings for not buying features-compute that I don't need.

I would certainly give it an 8 and I would split in to two parts. The initial configuration of VSAN, once the systems in place, it manages and runs without much attention and that's where it's really shining at the moment, is once it's in production, it doesn't require a lot of care and feeding.

My recommendation is make sure you've got a hardware vendor who's promising you that this equipment that you get is on the HCL, so the compatibility list of what VMware supports and VSAN is important to having a successful deployment. Taking the time to do that and install and build the system correctly first will give you years of good results. Not doing that is a headache.

When looking at any new technology, having peer review and having information available about what it's doing, how many people have adopted it and whether or not it's a good technology is critically important. It's good to be on the edge but you don't want to be the first guy to take the blind leap so having that out and having the forms available has been very important.