If they could reduce the cost, it would be better. Licensing costs are something that they could take care of. If you are a smaller and strong IT team, then VMware vSAN is a very good product. If you want to expand in the service provider space, then you will have to go for an open-source solution like OpenStack.

We are now looking at OpenStack because we sell licensing costs. We are a service provider, so the IT component data is a substantial component in our overall costing. We feel that OpenStack might help us to cut down the licensing cost. Therefore, we are looking at SAS storage instead of vSAN. SAS is open source, but it is not wise to have open source without having the backend support. We are using RedHat SAS, and it is an open-source solution. You can also have a free version, but we are using it with support from RedHat so that we have somebody to back us up in case we have a problem. 

If you do normal business, then IT expense is 1% or 2% of the total turnover. The higher licensing costs sometimes don't make difference to the big companies who are not service providers and are using it only for their internal use. For them, the IT cost is 1% or 2%, but for an IT service provider, the IT costs will go up to 15% to 16% of the total cost of the operations. This is where the licensing costs become irrelevant. For example, the licensing cost of using VMware, VC, and vSAN is 8% of my monthly revenue. Every month, I pay about $35,000, and, with the revised plan, it will be something like $50,000 or revenue of $600K per month, which means almost 8% of the revenue is going into VMware licensing. In a very competitive world, 8% as a cost element is huge. So, if I can bring it down to 2%, I save 6% in revenue expenditure. In terms of profit, 6% of 30% is something like another 25% increase in my profit. My profit can be almost 25%. It would be 20% to 25% in case I am able to handle the licensing costs and bring them to a very low level. Because these IT costs are substantial for us, that is why we are going with OpenStack. 

OpenStack has a limitation that it requires more hardware. There will be some increase in the hardware cost, but overall, we will save 5% to 6% of our licensing cost by using OpenStack.

The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers.

The product's pricing model is not competitive anymore, specifically considering the situation involving VMware and Broadcom in the market. The product's price has been increasing lately. My company's customers started to switch from VMware vSAN to other products because of the increase in its prices. Compared to the products offered by its competitors, VMware vSAN is expensive.

The hardware price is expensive cause of new vSan 8 Hardware compatibility list. I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap. 

The product’s pricing is a bit higher than other solutions. The OpEx and subscription models are expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten.

From a cost perspective, it is expensive. From a usability perspective, it reduces the overhead costs attached to its users' servers.

It's quite expensive, even too expensive.

There are some extra costs, which can be quite pricey. But overall, not too many additional expenses.

The pricing policy varies as below:

• vSAN Standard is still priced at $2,495/CPU or $50/desktop.
• The Advanced Edition license is priced around $3,995/CPU or $100/desktop where as the Enterprise license is priced at $5,495/CPU or $120/desktop.

Users can use the free version of the product. Users may also start off with the demo version of the tool. After you learn to use the solution, you can buy it if it is beneficial.

Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective.

The product's price is not high. The tool is available at a normal price.

With the new pricing model, it's expensive for the customer. The old cost model was X, and the new model might be 50% more.

We've encountered challenges, particularly with the recent policy changes after Broadcom acquired VMware. The current pricing needs to meet the customers' expectations, posing significant issues. It is difficult to explain the cost implications of upgrades to the customers.

I rate the pricing a three out of ten.

If you're willing to have good infrastructure, you need to invest first. Ensuring a stable network and meeting computing requirements ensures proper workload distribution to end users. VMware vSAN offers peace of mind by utilizing applications despite its higher price compared to free or cheaper alternatives. It is expensive but its reliability and technological advancements justify the investment.

We are using the VMware vSAN ROBO which allows us to have a maximum of 25 virtual machines. The approximate cost is €10,000 for a perpetual license.

The product is quite expensive, regarding the open-source solution.

The cost of the solution is a mixture of monthly user and licenses purchasing. So for the internal user, we use licenses purchasing. For an external customer, we use the Pay-Per-View model.

VMware vSAN is an expensive platform. We purchase its yearly license.

I do think that VMware vSAN's cost could be lower.

We pay for the license every year.

The cost depends on your contract. The pricing for the government is not the best, but for each licensing, because its arrays are in your servers, it can cost $4,000 for each of the servers for a simple solution and up to $20,000 per server for vSAN solutions. It's very, very expensive.

The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it.

The solution's licensing pricing could be improved. The level of discounts available on the solution's licensing price varies from customer to customer. Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten.

Setup cost, pricing, and licensing should be secondary factors. We talk about primary system storage, which if not performing well or if the storing is reliable, can have a massive business impact.

We have a deal with them so we don't pay for individual licenses, it's a complete solution with an overall license. 

It is not a subscription model. It is a purchase model, but it is very important that you also buy technical support from VMware. This is probably the only disadvantage of vSAN. It depends on the use case, but it can be very expensive.

This is a cost-effective product. It's a bit cheaper than the other solutions.

Price-wise, I would rate vSAN a four out of five.

It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig.

The solution requires a license. The payment is on a yearly basis and It is not overly expensive. 

For a classical node plus storage solution, the price is higher.

You have to pay to expand this solution, which is comparable with other similar solutions.

It is not a good price for small and medium-sized businesses.

Making a server solution that includes the license for smaller businesses would be a fantastic idea. Three servers, for example, would be an ideal start-up for a small or medium-sized business.

It's a service that sells nodes. The nodes, hardware, software, and vSAN are all interconnected. It's the brick for the wall, for example, and should be a little less expensive for smaller businesses.

We offer options to our customers. We offer our customers the option of a loan where they can make monthly payments, or they can purchase the solution.

After one year, customers pay for the support.

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

The price is expensive. This solution is not an option for SBM customers because of the price.

There are limitations because of nodes. There is a minimum purchase requirement of three or four nodes along with two processors, which also increases the price.

The price will go from a small storage box to a higher storage box.

The only problem I see with VMware is the price tag. This may start causing problems because there are other solutions out there, like AWS, that are open source and free. So, there is no license fee. VMware is very good, but expensive, in comparison.

I don't deal with the licensing. I can't speak to the costs involved.

The cost of VMware vSAN is reasonable.

The price of the product is very high. We want to rescale it, however, it's expensive to do so.

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

Cost-wise, the Nutanix licenses were cheaper, but in terms of the hardware, there was some contention around it. So, in terms of implementation, the way Nutanix was projecting the implementation on their end was that there were a lot of open-source admin platforms. vSAN is a licensed product in VMware, and Nutanix was proposing a KVM solution, which is open source. That's why their pricing was a bit cheaper, but when we were trying to compare it with an enterprise version of their management platform, it boiled down to the VMware vSAN being most effective in the long run.

Its price could be improved. 

The solution can be expensive. However, if you are a big company, such as a telco, likely you can get a good deal on pricing. That said, being so big, likely the cost won't be a deterrent. 

It is not that expensive, and it is not even cheap. If it is designed in a proper way, it has good pricing, but if you do oversizing, the price will be high. There are different licensing models.

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.

My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive.

The pricing model is sometimes a challenge for us because their licenses are very costly.

It could be cheaper.

VMware vSAN is a little bit expensive and we pay annually. We have an educational institute where we receive discount prices from VMware. We do receive a reasonable discount but it's still expensive.

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.

There is a license to use this solution and we pay approximately $30,000 annually. There were not any additional fees required other than the license. The solution is expensive.

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

Licensing costs are more or less on par with other similar products. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you're looking at a traditional SAN you're already looking at a lot of money anyway. So, VSAN is a contender in a lot of cases.

It is slightly expensive. They can be more competitive in terms of pricing.

The price of VMware vSAN is expensive and there is an annual license required.

We do not currently pay a license fee. I cannot speak to any costs related to having this product in the company.

We purchased a VMware Enterprise agreement so vSAN was already included with what we had. It was just a smart choice, given where we were heading eventually, to go with vSAN. That was one of the deciding factors.

The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy.

We have used VMware for different kinds of customers. Our target customers are SMB or SME, they normally choose VMware and their first package. We do have customers who use our own data center services, in this case, we use the VMware manage service license.

We pay a yearly licensing fee. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees because they are standardized and negotiated by the Ministry of Education.

We provided the sizing and after that, the Ministry arranged for the correct licensing.

We do have to pay a yearly licensing fee. It's a subscription for the hardware.

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.

Verify, and again verify, the hardware compatibility list before you place an order for the hardware.

The license price is too expensive compared to other market actors.

Make sure that you verify and again verify the HCL, before you place an order for the hardware.

In some of our environments, introducing vSAN helped reduce our datacentre hosting costs. In one case, we were able to completely remove a cabinet that had a legacy blade chassis and a legacy SAN. We only had two cabinets in this environment; by consolidating storage and compute in a few servers, we reduced the hosting costs by half. As for pricing and licensing, I think this is something which needs to be discussed on a case-by-case basis; I do not think it’s a “one size fits all”.

From a cost-benefit perspective, especially in regards to TCO, total cost of ownership, CFOs, CEOs that are looking to really cut down the cost of their storage systems because that's becoming a larger part of their overall IT budget. This uncontrolled cost is running along the same lines with the uncontrolled growth and data. So, you know, when more and more of that IT budget is going to storage, you have CFOs, CEOs looking to try to control those costs. What VSAN allows us to do is give them an enterprise-class array, enterprise-class solution at usually half the cost of the traditional arrays.

VMware vSAN is not expensive. We compare it with Nutanix and the discounts from VMware are really good for vSAN.

VMware is quite expensive compared to Microsoft's Hyper-V. However, when you factor in flexibility and comparability of use, it's reasonable enough. For the high price of VMware, you get seamless operation and manageability. At the same time, I think VMware is lowering the price for its cloud-based solutions. And it's stable enough that some organizations might want to put part of their setup on the cloud and the other part on-premises. VMware's advantage is that they were already preparing for cloud solutions many years ago. 

The pricing is competitive with other vendors. It's mid-range in terms of pricing. It's not cheap and it's not overly expensive.

I can't speak to the licensing arrangements or specific costs of the product.

The price could be lower. vSAN has many versions with standard and advanced including Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Regarding the Enterprise and the Advanced, it could be lower.

The price is quite expensive for us. 

It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components.

I was not directly involved from a pricing perspective. I suppose it was competitive and that's why the company went ahead and with vSAN, therefore I assume the pricing is okay.

You get better value for your money with a vSAN solution than with a traditional SAN with lower TCO.

I feel the pricing to be reasonable. We pay monthly. 

The pricing vSAN is very expensive. Enterprise customers can customize their licenses according to their own needs and budget.

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.

VMware licensing is per socket for VSAN, like everything else. The platform is very flexible, so be sure to look at all your options.

Their licensing gets a bit confusing, it’s hard to get the hang of that.

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It is too expensive.

It is an expensive solution. There should be more flexible with licensing to allow small businesses the essentials of the solution's features. They should have a reduced license fee for a certain amount of memory and nodes, or some kind of restriction like this, that would allow smaller businesses a reduced price. We have had a hard time to afford the solution.

There are a lot of other companies that offer similar solutions and they are becoming more and more competitive with VMware at a fraction of the price. For example, Red Hat. 

Factor in operational costs.

In terms of pricing and licensing, we need to understand the requirements of the project and the cost model as well, because that has a very important effect on our project delivery.

As VMware products are licensed per number of sockets, you need to think this fully through. However, don’t go cheap on the number of hosts. You’ll thank me later.

Changes have been made in version 6.5.

Licensing is pretty straightforward. Have a look at the features you need and choose the license that fits. For ROBO scenarios, there is a special ROBO license that could save you some money.

dvSwitch functionality is included in every vSAN license. You don’t have to have vSphere Enterprise Plus to use dvSwitches. You only need vSAN licenses. And despite that, vSAN comes with all flash functionality within every license.

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 use it in a cloud-provider model based on usage. The end user pricing is not known.

We adjusted the pricing and licensing costs based primarily on the physical processors per server. We chose each node of the cluster with one physical processor since vSAN is licensed per processor. We calculated the performance requirements of our entire virtual platform to decide if one processor solution was a good decision.

Licenses are expensive wherever you go. Many people don't appreciate the long-term savings with a technology like vSphere and VSAN, and therefore complain about the up-front costs.

I would prefer if VSAN were free with the Enterprise edition. It would make its adoption more palatable.

If you compare the price of VMware vSAN with other players like Nutanix and Cisco, its price is good, but could still have some improvement.

Basically, vSAN is a license in addition to that of the classic VMware Vsphere, which is also mandatory.

The easiest way is to get closer to VMware directly; it's much simpler and easier.

We actually, just by incrementally increasing the cost of our servers, plus the licensing, we were able to linearly scale our environment as opposed to doing forklift upgrades.

Clients have to pay for VMware vSAN licensing based on the number of CPUs. Whether it'll be a yearly or a monthly subscription, you have to check with the vendor, because you can buy it for one year, two years, or three years. The purchases would be lifetime or perpetual, but you need to have support, e.g. the support is negotiated from one, two, three, or four years.

The price of the solution package depends on the nodes and other factors. The cost some of our customers paid was $500,000. The licensing cost for the components is very good.

We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually.

Hopefully, over the next few years the pricing will be dramatically lower.

SDS is going to be popular and common. If vSAN wants to remain #1 in the market, offering more discounts or something to attract customers is inevitable.

This solution requires the purchase of a license.

I have no advice about pricing.

Review all of the options available with each vSAN version (Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, ROBO) and look at the solution from a “long-term” perspective. One example would be a vSAN solution that will eventually span multiple sites. The primary site is ready now but the second and third sites are a year or so away from being production ready. In this case, I would recommend to my customer the Enterprise Edition, so they can take advantage of the stretched cluster feature. Once the other sites are ready, the stretched cluster vSAN can be quickly deployed because the proper licensing is already in place.

It's a bit pricey. Indeed, there is hardly any price difference with a traditional setting, but it makes that up with the management and ease of use.

When it comes to the renewal of the license, it's a very expensive solution.

We require price protection. VMware doesn't provide price protection. Many other products provide that, however, it's not something that VMware does.

The license for vSAN is a yearly subscription. 

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.

As an architect, I am not involved in the negotiating process and don't have many details about the cost and licensing.

I would like to use more advanced models of the solution but the price needs to be reduced. There are some extra costs for this solution including a license.

It is expensive. It should be cheaper.

It has a perpetual license as well as a subscription-based license, but they are moving towards subscription-based licenses.

Licensing is fairly straightforward.

VMware is not a cost effective solution, especially if you have a Microsoft shop. In this case, you would have to purchase the VMware license when there are already Hyper-V solutions that could do it for much cheaper.

The pricing is something of a concern.

The price of vSAN could be lower.

The licensing fees are paid quarterly.

Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors

In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey.

We are part of the VMware vCAN program, so our licensing is different from the retail model and it’s comfortable for us.

For Latin America, the costs are very higher; even if you go deep on functionalities, but still it is sellable.

VMware vSAN is licensed per CPU and the cost is to the other VMware (and Microsoft) products. VMware vSAN is reasonably priced, but with the addition of more nodes to the cluster, the needed CPU licenses (for VMware/Microsoft/etc.) are increasing rapidly, which makes it an expensive solution.

The pricing and licensing models are quite simple. Be careful with the sizing of the SSDs.

The license is perpetual and there is an additional payment for technical support which is an annual subscription fee. I think it could be cheaper, especially for smaller companies. It's okay for big deployments with a lot of servers and high level of input-output IOPS.

We went with it because of the cost. It's definitely cheaper than buying a storage array.

The price is okay.

I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall.