NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Software Defined Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Its functionality and technical support are adequate to help prevent failure due to errors.""Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup.""The ability to do a straight SnapMirror from our on-prem to the cloud with no other data transitions is excellent.""We're using snapshots as well and it's a pretty useful feature. That is one of the main NetApp benefits. Knowing how to use snapshots in the on-prem environment, using snapshots on the cloud solution was natural for us.""If anything happens, their technical support will come onsite and fix it.""If you have a larger amount of data than normal in cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise.""There is unified storage, which provides flexibility. It is set up perfectly for performance and provisioning. We are able to monitor everything using a separate application. It provides error and critical warnings that allow us to take immediate action through ONTAP. We are able to manage everything, log a case, and follow up with the support team, who can fix it. That is how it is unified.""One of the most valuable features is its similarity to the physical app, which makes it familiar. It's almost identical to a real NetApp, which means you can run all of the associated NetApp processes and services with it. Otherwise, we would definitely have to deploy some hardware on a site somewhere, which could be a challenge in terms of CapEx."

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"It allows us to put our infrastructure in remote locations and still get the same performance we get from our onsite SAN solutions.""It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it.""All orchestration and monitoring are routed to the cloud.""The most valuable feature is the fast performance.""To me, VMware is a leader of the visualizations. I think everyone just follow VMware.""All the features are working great.""It is very easy to set up and very easy to use. It is very useful.""The most important feature to me, in my role, is cost. In the renewal cycle for storage, it was about a 40 percent saving compared to going to an all-flash array, which is what we first looked at doing. Secondly, performance: we need clinical data access in five seconds and need to do everything we can to retain that metric. Thirdly, I was really pleasantly surprised during the data migration across to vSAN, that it happened almost instantly whereas, in the past, migrating from array to array was an arduous and fraught process."

More VMware vSAN Pros →

Cons
"When Azure does their maintenance, they do maintenance on one node at a time. With the two nodes of the CVO, it can automatically fail over from one node to the node that is staying up. And when the first node comes back online, it will fail back to the first node. We have had issues with everything failing back 100 percent correctly.""I think the challenge now is more in terms of keeping an air gap. The notion that it is in the cloud, easy to break, etc. The challenge now is mostly about the air gap and how we can protect that in the cloud.""NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs to have customizable pricing options such as 10 TB increments. They seem to have only two options: 10 TB or 250 TB.""The integration wizard requires a bit of streamlining. There are small things that misconfigure or repeat the deployment that will create errors, specifically in Azure.""Some of the licensing is a little kludgy. We just created an HA environment in Azure and their licensing for SVMs per node is a little kludgy. They're working on it right now.""I would like some more performance matrices to know what it is doing. It has some matrices inherent to the Cloud Volumes ONTAP. But inside Cloud Manager, it would also be nice to see. You can have a little Snapshot, then drill down if you go a little deeper.""The product is more restricted with underlying cloud.""The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."

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"I'd like to see better integration with the Update Manager, with respect to firmware updates for hardware.""VMware vSAN could improve by adding NAS and object storage.""VMware vSAN could improve by having faster reload time and a single point of failure. Resynchronization of many hardware could be better. If you have an outage of a disc or a full system, the replication time is too slow. This has room for improvement.""On the DevOps side, if there could be more automation it would be more helpful.""Its price could be improved. It is too expensive for our clients.""When we talk about improvements for vSAN, there is some way to go from a at least stability perspective. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level that most of the features you need in production are there.""We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases.""There's already a concern with VMware with ransomware and security issues. VMware could focus on improving security."

More VMware vSAN Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."
  • "We purchased the product directly from NetApp."
  • "The deal with the seller was acceptable; the pricing is reasonable."
  • "The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."
  • "Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."
  • "They allow a special price if you are working closely with them. Since we have a lot of NetApp systems, we got some kind of discount. That's something they do for other customers, not just for us. The price was fair. In addition to the licensing fees, you're paying Amazon for your usage..."
  • "The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."
  • "In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."
  • More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The first 1-2 years of purchasing vSAN will be expensive. Thereafter, the longer you are running it, the more cost savings you will have."
  • "Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"
  • "Basically, vSAN is a license in addition to that of the classic VMware Vsphere, which is also mandatory."
  • "​I would like to see this technology be made available to smaller businesses, who might benefit from high availability but struggle with the entry fee.​"
  • "Perhaps a bundle, like Essentials, would allow more businesses to make the leap to the product."
  • "We have increased our user productivity."
  • "What made us go with this solution was price point. When you can utilize existing storage infrastructure, and not have to continually purchase new SAN products out there that are going up in price as time goes by, then it's a wonderful thing."
  • "We did consider other hyperconverged solutions. It usually came down to price. vSan was the most cost effective thing."
  • More VMware vSAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing of CVO is fair across the board. It's exactly where it should be for the data we're getting. The price-performance ratio is right where we need it to be. I've seen solutions that cost more… more »
    Top Answer:I would want more visibility and data analytics where we can see anomalies within the shares within the GUI.
    Top Answer:While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We found… more »
    Top Answer:HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us HPE SimpliVity has… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    872
    Comparisons
    515
    Reviews
    15
    Average Words per Review
    689
    Rating
    8.8
    3rd
    out of 39 in HCI
    Views
    25,743
    Comparisons
    19,117
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    556
    Rating
    8.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
    vSAN
    Learn More
    Overview

    NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

    VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

    VMware vSAN Features

    VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.
    • Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.
    • Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.
    • High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.
    • Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.
    • HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.
    • Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

    VMware vSAN Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution. 
    • Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance. 
    • Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.
    • Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly. 
    • Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

    PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

    A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

    Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

    Offer
    Take Control with Unified Cloud Storage

    Sign up for a 30-day trial to see how Cloud Volumes ONTAP can help you optimize cloud storage costs and performance, while enhancing data enterprise-grade protection, security, and compliance - wherever your data lives.

    Learn more about VMware vSAN
    Sample Customers
    1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
    Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Healthcare Company18%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    University8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization45%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Healthcare Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization45%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise75%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise51%
    Large Enterprise40%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise53%
    Large Enterprise34%
    Buyer's Guide
    NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked 1st in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 17 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 13 reviews. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is rated 8.8, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP writes "Easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with a single solution". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Google Cloud Storage and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). See our NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. VMware vSAN report.

    See our list of best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors.

    We monitor all Cloud Software Defined Storage 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.