Overview
What is VMware vSAN?
VMware vSAN is an enterprise-class storage virtualization software that provides a simple path to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and multi cloud. VMware vSAN is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud…
What to expect when deciding about vSAN
VMware vSAN!!
Details Vmware vSAN Review for eperts.
VMware vSAN review
VSAN
vSAN is by far the best hyper-converged storage solution
Journey with vSAN
VMware vSAN--one of the pillars of the HCI
VMware vSAN and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX
Some info about vSAN features
Attractive, yet expensive, solution for hyper-convergence.
VMware vSAN is powerful yet simple to use.
Fast, solid and easy to use vSAN solution!
VMware vSAN - hyper-convergence versus dedicated storage is a great alternative
Admins agree that vSAN is great!
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Product Demos
VMware vSAN 6.6 Nested Lab Deployment DEMO
vSAN 6.7 U1 Quickstart Demo
VMware vSAN 6.6 Demo
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is VMware vSAN?
VMware vSAN's additional features include:
- Developer-Ready Infrastructure - Enables developers to consume storage to create apps at scale, while providing the governance admins need to manage the infrastructure for VMs and containers.
- Integrated File Services - Provisions a file share with a single workflow, and vSAN can be used as a unified storage control plane for both block and file storage.
- Stateful Services - The vSAN Data Persistence platform framework can be used to integrate cloud-native applications into the underlying virtual infrastructure.
- Consistent Storage Policy-Based Management - Storage can be aligned with the application demands of VMs and container volumes. Define storage needs for a VM, volume or VMDK and let the software apply and enforce the requirements.
- Cloud-Connection for vSAN+ - Transforms on-premises infrastructure with cloud-connected services that centralize management and enhance efficiency.
VMware vSAN Technical Details
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Reviews and Ratings
(57)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
VMware vSAN is a versatile solution that users and customers have used to address various storage challenges. For instance, some users have migrated their SQL databases from all-flash storage vendors to vSAN, effectively solving issues related to SQL and storage licenses. Additionally, vSAN has been leveraged in production environments to run critical business services like ERP, VDI, HRM, EMAIL, Active Directory, DNS, and in-house applications. This demonstrates the product's ability to handle diverse workloads efficiently.
In terms of configuration flexibility, vSAN supports different kinds of raids such as 5, 6, and 10 for each VM service. Moreover, the vSAN configuration with 2xSSD and 4xSAS disks has proven to provide faster IOPS compared to iSCSI storage. This not only enhances performance but also helps reduce hardware and maintenance costs.
One highlight of vSAN is its ease of setup and integration with all VMware products. This seamless integration allows users to maximize their existing VMware infrastructure while benefiting from the unified storage pool created by vSAN. Furthermore, the compatibility with all-flash technology ensures that it can meet a wide range of workload requirements.
vSAN has been highly recommended for use cases such as testing performance on VMware clusters for Test/Dev departments and hyper-converged models used by SMB users. It also serves as the main hyper-converged infrastructure solution for housing production virtual servers and critical systems. Customers who prefer not to use external storage can leverage vSAN's ability to combine the storage of servers in a cluster, eliminating the need for a separate SAN and storage administrator.
Overall, vSAN provides a unified storage management solution for multiple storage devices from various vendors while delivering features like data deduplication and compression. Its usage spans across virtual desktops, cluster management, data warehouse support, VM, file, and backup storage across networks. With positive outcomes reported by users and a wide range of use cases, VMware vSAN proves to be a reliable, flexible, and cost-effective solution for storage challenges in various industries.
Cost Savings: Several users have mentioned that using VMware vSAN allowed them to save costs in terms of storage and managed services. They were able to manage all aspects of their workload in one interface, reducing the need for rack space and improving business agility.
Flexibility and Data Accessibility: Users appreciated the ability to write data anywhere and access it anytime, even in the event of hardware failure. This feature provided them with flexibility and uninterrupted access to their data, contributing to a seamless user experience.
Simplified Management: Many users highlighted the ease of managing VMware vSAN from a single management platform, specifically mentioning vCenter. They found it convenient that VMware runs VSAN certification programs to ensure OEMs sell validated nodes, making it easier for customers to select appropriate certified ready nodes. This unified approach simplified infrastructure management and reduced complexity for users.
Difficult Disk Management: Some users have found it challenging to manage disks in the vSAN cluster, citing issues with finding unused/unassigned hard drives and balancing disk usage. They suggest a more user-friendly interface and guided configuration to simplify the process.
Limited Datastore Choice: Several reviewers express dissatisfaction with vSAN's limitation of having a single datastore for the entire cluster, which restricts their ability to isolate or group virtual machines as desired. This has been seen as a drawback by some users.
Compatibility Concerns: Many users mention compatibility issues with older servers and find it difficult to meet all hardware requirements. They believe that an expanded Hardware Compatibility List - HCL would be helpful in ensuring more compatibility and avoiding any potential complications during implementation.
Users of VMware vSAN have made several recommendations based on their experiences with the product. First, they suggest considering building your own VSANS (Ready Nodes) instead of using VXRails. This recommendation comes from users who have found that building their own VSANS allows for more customization and flexibility in their vSAN deployments. Second, users advise finding an easy algorithm to reduce CPU overhead and improve disk read and write cache. Some users have suggested that optimizing the CPU overhead and improving disk performance could enhance the overall efficiency of vSAN. Lastly, users recommend talking to support to confirm compatibility with the operating system requirements. They advise reaching out to support to ensure that vSAN is compatible with the specific operating system requirements of their environment. These recommendations provide valuable insights for users looking to make the most of VMware vSAN, allowing them to explore alternative deployment options, optimize performance, and ensure compatibility with their existing infrastructure.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-14 of 14)What to expect when deciding about vSAN
- Save us costs regarding storage[.]
- Save costs regarding managed services[.]
- It [allows] us to manage in only one interface all aspects of our load[.]
- It reduces rack space[.]
- More granularity in statistics[.]
- More detailed graphs about usage[.]
- Easier way to find unused/unassigned hard drives[.]
VMware vSAN!!
- Combines hard drives of servers and creates a common storage pool
- Storage management
- Supports Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
- Management of disks is little tricky.
- Compatibility issues with traiditional servers
- Not a great use case for critical applications.
Scenarios where there is large amount of data that is being processed by the customer applications, additional storage box is recommended,
Details Vmware vSAN Review for eperts.
- Virtualizaion
- Better Through put
- Better perfomance
- Better reporting
- Better migration opportunity
- Scalable up and down
- They could tightly intergreate with all storage providers so that we do not need to use the storage providers for the initial configurations
- Can improve the compression ration when using the system for backup as they are now dell. EMC Avamar provides a details level of compression
- Can intergreate with softwares like avamar to provide excellent backup solutions out of the BOX.
VMware vSAN review
- upgrade easily
- provides failover options incase a host goes down.
- Runs in our virtual environment.
- The management is easy to use.
- Data anywhere, and anytime access also with hardware failure
- Disk Management
- Guidance for the configs
VSAN
- It allows us to run our virtual environment. The management is easy to use.
- It provides us with failover options incase a host goes down.
- It allows us to upgrade easily.
- I am not able to think of anything at this time. Having additional training information is always great.
vSAN is by far the best hyper-converged storage solution
- Consolidation of compute and storage through the same management layer
- single platform of storage for cloud native applications as well as traditional VMs
- policy based management of storage with granular controls
- encryption functions can be improved
- HCI Mesh feature can be improved to be more like nutanix
- the HCL can be updated more frequently with certified components to use with vSAN
Journey with vSAN
- Write data anywhere, and anytime access with hardware failure.
- Perform maintenance activity on any capacity node without interruption in the production environment.
- Cost saving
- Easy to manage from single management platform, that is vCenter.
- NFS share isn't easy thing to do.
- User friendly disk management.
- Walkthrough guidance for the configuration for the user, that will bring [a] lot of customers.
VMware vSAN--one of the pillars of the HCI
- Combined with vSphere, VMware vSAN enables us to manage computing and storage with a single, integrated platform
- It simplifies storage management and speeds up VM delivery speed from the infrastructure team to the application team
- The professional support from VMware is great
- Allows the hybrid mode of mixing the SSD and HDD, which is more attractive for low-cost projects
- A new feature of VMware vSAN 7 supports file-based persistent volumes for Kubernetes on VMware vSAN data stores. So for TKG , the application team can dynamically create file shares for their applications and have multiple pods share data more easily
Some info about vSAN features
- Provide management for computing and storage in one place.
- Improved business agility.
- Unify resources under policy based management
- Improve security for data.
- License politic from VMware.
- Hard to meet all hardware compatibility on old servers hardware.
- Balancing the disk usage in the vSAN cluster is sometimes hard.
Attractive, yet expensive, solution for hyper-convergence.
Our vSAN deployment is currently being used as the main infrastructure solution. We use vSAN for virtual desktops, cluster management, and data warehouse support. We use an SSD disk and HD per each ESXi, vSAN uses the SSD for the cache and the HD for data storage. What I especially appreciate is the data deduplication and compression and the raid 5 versus erasure coding, since it enables higher consolidation ratios, reducing costs. (Sadly this feature is only enabled starting at advanced licenses). It holds the majority of our production virtual servers, It really helps us to solve multiple problems such as data integrity, system stability, and has improved hyper-convergence for speeds and workloads.
- Very strong data integrity.
- The portability of the VMs.
- Dataflow is great without a lot of tweaking.
- The in-place encryption is a strong layer of security and it is great for establishing multi-tenancy trust.
- Ease of use from vCenter.
- Great data compression, lowering costs.
- Expensive, but it's worth it since it actually reduces costs (in addition, whichever vSphere licenses you need).
The only thing I disliked is that data deduplication and compression and the raid 5 erasure coding are only for licenses equal or higher than advanced.
VMware vSAN is powerful yet simple to use.
- It is built in vCenter so you don't need to run a virtual controller VM on each host.
- Very easy to implement, it is just a matter of purchasing licenses and turning it on.
- Simple to monitor within the vSphere console.
- I have not found anything about VSAN that needs improvement. It does what it is supposed to do, and is easy to work with.
Fast, solid and easy to use vSAN solution!
- Fastest SAN solution hands down.
- Easy to connect hosts to LUNS/Datastores.
- Great support staff and easy ticket system.
- More direct integration with backup systems.
- More user friendly interface.
- Lower tier options for budget users would be nice.
Admins agree that vSAN is great!
- I have had zero problems with vSAN storage and don't even think about it on a day-to-day basis.
- It allows me to throw a bunch of JBODs together and make an enterprise grade SAN out of it.
- Allows a single pane of glass for managing our virtual infrastructure.
- Original implementation was not bad, but we ran into some issues that could have been avoided.
- Calculating disk space is funky and can be misleading.
vSAN pairs great with branch and remote offices
- Creates a software-defined SAN in a hyper-converged form factor.
- It's simple to deploy and configure.
- It integrates into existing vSphere tools and consoles, decreasing the learning curve.
- It allows us external access to storage with iSCSI connectivity.
- An expanded HCL could assist with more compatibility, becoming less of a problem as new versions are released.