We performed a comparison between Sunlight 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.
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."
"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."
"vSAN is very integrated."
"We had very good access to technical support."
"It is more stable now than it was before. It's not like it was in the first year. Now it is stable, and we trust it more."
"VMware vSAN is a global solution, so we can manage all the storage solutions in one place. It's embedded in VCI solutions."
"The most valuable features of VMware vSAN are that it receives updates frequently, has good compression, optimized storage, and they provide webinars on what is new. Additionally, the integration with third-party products is good and it is easy to manage."
"The product's initial setup phase was very straightforward."
"The features of vSAN allow us to reduce our operational complexity to a large degree."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"For improvement, I would like to see how the software determines which networks to use for which purpose. It seems like the naming terminology changes a bit from here to there."
"It would help us if the vendor continues to release software updates for earlier versions of the Windows operating systems."
"I'd love to see native export of metrics (via Prometheus or something of that nature) to allow us to get more metrics available on our existing dashboard software."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"They require more media visibility."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"One point for improvement is to increase the performance capabilities of the Windows-based executable as compared to its Linux Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) equivalent."
"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."
"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."
"Better options would be clustered nodes, or even cloud configuration. There is room for improvement in cloud configuration, we typically do web browsing for management."
"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."
"Hardware load balancing is available on the enterprise version of the solution, however, it's extremely expensive and therefore out of our budget."
"Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes. The maximum number of nodes is okay, but our use cases could probably do with more nodes, probably up to 64. In terms of new features, it should probably have the basic support for high-speed networking spaces."
"The product's complex setup phase is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"In a future release, they could add micro-segmentation or security level features integrated into vSAN."
"The monitoring feature in VMware vSAN could be better."
"The vSan product uses a software system called Vsphere to monitor the system. It is sometimes difficult to manage the PCs within the systems."
Sunlight is ranked 27th in HCI with 2 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Sunlight is rated 8.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Sunlight writes "Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Sunlight is most compared with , whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Sunlight vs. VMware vSAN report.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
