We performed a comparison between Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"We went from "no way DB applications would have good performance" to "Wow! We can now actually have a DB running and have some VMs running at the same time.""
"It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"Before VSAN, hypervisor configuration changes and updates resulted in VM outages. Now, downtime is dramatically reduced."
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"Active-active HA provides top performance and redundancy."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series' deployment is easy. We are a tier-one platinum partner who is into multiple implementations."
"Installation is straightforward because it's a vSAN. It only took one or two days."
"The VX machines are scalable."
"We find the setup quite straightforward and very easy."
"I think vSAN's stability is good. It's an underlying solution for both on-prem and in the cloud, especially the VMC on AWS stuff too. VMware has been around for a long time, so it's pretty stable."
"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 infrastruction (HCI) to give our clients a better understanding and help optimize data and the end-users' experience."
"It is easy to find information out there, not only from searching the web, but even the times I have engaged VMware support."
"The solution's unified administration is its most valuable aspect."
"VMware vSAN is compatible with the legacy hypervisor solutions and most of the features are good."
"Being able to deploy multiple applications with virtual servers is the most valuable for us. The capacity of the system is quite constant so it's got some of the good features."
"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable features are its performance, simplicity, and synchronicity with vSphere."
"There is a general lack of documentation, especially up-to-date documentation to get started."
"While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."
"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"The user management could be a bit better. It's something they could improve upon in future releases."
"Support could be better."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series needs to improve its stability. Its resolution should be faster."
"With the VX machines, the clients often confuse the hardware itself with the services and resources. VMs are configured according to resources - memory, hard disk capacity, and network. These resources, including memory and processor, are actually shared on the VX Series. So, if the server's processor is underpowered or unreliable for the VMs, many of the VMs will encounter issues. Ideally, the physical server configuration should align more closely with the needs of the virtual servers."
"The product can be improved in a couple of ways. One of those would be that they have a lot of hidden features, that are through the CLI, that would be great to have in the GUI, or just be more open about those features. It's something called RVC. It's a tool in the back end. It's a really great tool, but I had to find it through Reddit. So more information on stuff like that would be great. Also, in the user interface, giving us more features and more reporting that we can do from vSphere itself would be helpful."
"As a software-based product, it requires a lot of system resources."
"The stability needs to be improved."
"Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support."
"Integration could be better."
"They can package it in a way that is specific to the hardware infrastructure and the hardware platform. It should stay fairly up to date with the drivers and the manufacturer issues. The problem with uncoupling the proprietary technology and component capabilities is that by uncoupling them, you run into some concerns or challenges over the poor performance model. These concerns really come when you start talking about high performance, high bandwidth, and high availability types of environments. While vSAN is a leader, in a critical view, it is not about being cost-effective. It is more about the immediate impact of money loss to the business in critical applications where we want to maintain a continuous operational 59 model. It is, however, good for QA/QC tasks. I don't necessarily know how it works in regards to VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure."
"We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases."
"It is a memory intensive app."
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is ranked 19th in HCI with 4 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is rated 8.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series writes "simplifies management for clients familiar with VMware, and offers a user-friendly management and configuration experience". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is most compared with VxRail, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, HPE Alletra dHCI and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs. VMware vSAN report.
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