VMware vSAN Reviews

Our company works in a multi-cloud model, hybrid environment using both the hyperscalers AWS and Azure with a combination of public and private clouds. Our organization is an integrator so VMware vSAN is used for our end customer.

VMware vSAN is used for VM workloads. We show our customers that they do not need to keep everything on-premises and that they can move not critical data to minimize data compliance security. We move them to a public cloud with the two hyperscalers. For workloads that they are not comfortable keeping in a public cloud, we recommend using a hybrid model. My use cases deal with virtual workloads, retailing and manufacturing solutions.

VMware vSAN is easy to configure, with basic functionality and the customer can maintain the solution.

The only thing that can be improved is the cost.

I have been using VMware vSAN for more than two years.

VMware vSAN is stable. We would not recommend it to so many of our partners if it were not. It is foolproof; it's on multiple workloads.

The solution is scalable. Our customers have varying workloads, so we use the combination of on-premises and hybrid cloud, moving from private to public, and public to private so the scalability is always there. 

We have in-house support for normal operational transactions. We also have a contract with VMware vSAN. Even our end customers have direct support contracts for the solution. Normally escalations to VMware support have to do with product bugs, a defect, or an engineering issue. 

Our team deploys the solution in the customer's environment. We use VMware administrators to manage the storage. They have a combination of storage and VMware background. Our virtualization administrator is VMware certified and cross-trained with the storage administrator to increase productivity. 

VMware vSAN is less expensive than having a traditional three-tier solution or a full virtual VFX using a hyper-converged soluton. The cost is still too high and should be lower.

VMware vSAN is not right for all types of use cases. It is specific to an opportunity if the customer is looking at an interim solution and wants to keep the costs low. This environment is more to do with development testing.

VMware vSAN is a good fit if you are looking at security and scale. In an environment that is more productive and needs better performance, this solution may not be the right fit.

I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10.

We are using VMware vSAN for data center virtualization.

The solution has benefited our organization from all the consolidation features, such as disaster recovery and backups.

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.

Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support.

I have been using VMware vSAN for approximately seven years.

The solution is highly stable.

VMware vSAN is scalable.

We have approximately 20 to 30 customers using this solution.

The support is very good. However, there are times it could be quicker.

I have worked with other solutions, such as Hyper-V and Citrix. Our preference is always VMware.

The initial implementation is straightforward. The time of installation can vary, it depends. If you're looking at virtualizing a host only, it can be done in five minutes.

We use one engineer for the installation and maintenance of the solution.

There is a license required for this solution, it is a one-time payment. However, if they want support for the solution, it can be paid annually or for three years.

I rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.

We have a lab setup using VMware vSAN which is on Nutanix. We are using the vSAN for testing purposes and attempting to answer some questions. For example, how will the application be supported, how will the exit configuration be, and what would happen in terms of failures.

One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware.

Additionally, the dashboards and user interface provide a lot of details.

In a future release, they could add micro-segmentation or security level features integrated into vSAN.

I have been using this solution within the last 12 months.

We have never had any kind of hardware issues or problems. The solution is stable.

The technical was responsive and was helpful. There is a lot of documentation online if we need assistance.

The initial setup was complex.

We had assistance doing the implementation from the vSAN engineers.

This solution is expensive.

Nutanix provides us with Acropolis Operating System (AOS) along with its hardware, while VMware provides vSAN, vCenter, and vSphere which all have separate licenses and costs.

We have evaluated Nuranix and HPE.

If you have storage, separate servers, or any kind of traditional architecture you can convert it to FCI with vSAN. It is a very simple and easy-to-use solution.

I rate VMware vSAN an eight out of ten.

Basically, we wanted to do more automation. That was the primary reason for us to move to it. Specifically, with respect to the finance part, we wanted to ensure that more automation can happen there in order to give more control to the end-user. It's also used for managing some of the application stack as well as storage management.

The solution makes management very easy.

We've found the solution to be scalable.

The stability of the solution is very good.

The installation process is very simple and straightforward.

The solution could use more integration with respect to the DR solution. If there was more integration with respect to the backup solutions, that will definitely help us.

On the DevOps side, if there could be more automation it would be more helpful. Specifically, we would like to know how to integrate and extend it towards the cloud. Either it is JCP or GCP or AWS.

I've been using the solution for one and a half years.

We have found the solution to be stable and reliable. We haven't really had to deal with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze either.

The solution is very scalable. If a company wants to expand the solution it can. It's not a problem.

We have about 500 users on the solution currently. We do plan to continue to use it.

We've only really had two incidents that required support, and therefore my experience with technical support is rather limited. Dell EMC tends to handle the support, and we've never had issues getting any help. Overall, it's been fine, and in general, we are satisfied with the level of technical support we can get when we need it.

I didn't really use a different version of the solution. Most of the time I had been using ESX environment, and that was one of the reasons for going ahead with vSAN.

The initial setup is not difficult or complex. It's very simple, very straightforward. A company should find it very easy to set up.

We handled the implementation ourselves, in-house. We did not need the help of a consultant or implementor.

We are a customer and an end-user.

We are not on the latest version. We are using the latest version minus one. 

I'd recommend this solution to others.

I'd rate the product at an eight out of ten.

We are mainly using the solution for our Windows environment. 

We're largely happy with the solution overall. 

The performance has been good in general.

The initial setup is simple.

Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues.

The pricing is decent.

We are looking for more load balancing at an application level.

For the hardware level, we're looking at some other solutions. For example, we're checking out Nutanix and Sangfor. 

We've had issues with load balancing. Suppose, for example, if the physical ESXi host is down, the virtual machine you have handle manually. We need to have load balancing and RAM and processor balancing also.

Hardware load balancing is available on the enterprise version of the solution, however, it's extremely expensive and therefore out of our budget.

In general, we're looking for more features. This solution doesn't really offer us that much.

We've been using the solution for three to four years at this point.

We had some issues about a year ago with stability. We took the problem to support and they were able to resolve whatever the issue was. It's been stable since then, and we haven't had issues with bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.

My colleague and I are the IT people, and we are managing vSAN for the most part. We haven't necessarily attempted to scale the solution at all. Therefore, it would be hard to say how easy or difficult the process is or how scalable in general the product is.

We've used technical support in the past to resolve issues, and they have been very helpful and responsive They were able to fix any problems we've had. We're quite satisfied with them. They've been very good, very helpful.

The initial setup is not complex. It's very simple and very straightforward. 

While we handle the maintenance ourselves in-house, we have the option of calling our integration partner if we run into any issues.

We had an integration partner that came in and assisted us with the initial implementation. We did not handle it completely in-house. They were very helpful.

The pricing is mid-range. It's pretty good compared to other options. Everything is included. There are no additional or hidden costs.

The enterprise version, however, is very, very high. Currently, we are using the standard version. To move to the enterprise level, there is a big price jump.

We're currently evaluating Nutanix and Sangfor as options to replace VMware in our organization. We want more load balancing and therefore are looking for a solution that could potentially offer us that.

We are just a customer and an end-user.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations.

I would rate it at a seven out of ten. We've been happy with it for the most part, however, we are looking at other options that offer more features. The standard version just isn't giving us enough of what we need. That said, it;'s a good product.

It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable.

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.

My experience with it has been for about 12 months.

It has good stability. It is better than the non-hyper-converged one that we had previously.

Its scalability can be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes.

Their support is good. If you are a big enough user, you get enough support. 

This is the first one that we used.

For us, it was fairly straightforward. You need to have knowledge of vCenter. The deployment took about two to three days in total.

It is expensive, but you get what you pay for.

I would recommend this solution, but you have to be careful about the license cost. It can get quite expensive.

I would rate VMware vSAN a nine out of ten.

The primary use case is all of our VMware workloads. In terms of performance, it does alright with the general workloads. I've had some issues with the dupe clusters, but that's just the right-sizing overwriting the cache.

It has helped break down the silos, and we have not needed a separate storage team since the introduction of vSAN.

The most valuable feature is the simplification of storage. We no longer need to deal with Fibre Channel and the external storage arrays.

There are features that we could use that are coming out: File Services, data backup, and a better way to do Maintenance Mode with vSAN, which takes a while.

So far, except for a couple glitches in past revisions, the stability has been alright. We had some issues with dedupe and compression in 6.2, where we had to delete all the storage off of it and recreate the storage groups. But besides that, it's been working well.

It scales really well. However, we're going to be in need of some, not external storage, but ways to expand storage without adding additional nodes to the cluster.

We're an MCS customer with VMware so we get great support.

For HCI, we didn't have anything else in place. For servers, this was our introduction to HCI. We have other products for VDI, but not for server workloads.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

If you're going to run vSAN, make sure that you stick to the HCL and that your firmware and your drivers match what's on the HCL before you implement it or go live with it.

When selecting a vendor, for us, support is number one, the support that we can get from them. The other factor would be the forward-looking direction of the company.

We use it for storage and redundancy.

It has changed the way we design our infrastructure. We're looking at a new infrastructure.

Also, it allows us to put our infrastructure in remote locations and still get the same performance we get from our onsite SAN solutions.

I like the availability aspects of it.

The stability has been very good. I don't think we've had any real issues from what we have been setting up so far.

It's very scalable. That is a really good feature of the product.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

I rate it at 10 out of 10 because it is just a really good product. I've used other products like it and it seems to be the most stable and easiest to configure.