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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Elastic Storage Server

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/AIBM Elastic Storage Server (IBM ESS) is a software-defined storage option.N/A

    VMware vSAN

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AVMware 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 Foundation.N/A
    Pricing
    IBM Elastic Storage ServerVMware vSAN
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Elastic Storage ServerVMware vSAN
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Elastic Storage ServerVMware vSAN
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    14 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Elastic Storage ServerVMware vSAN
    Small Businesses
    StarWind Virtual SAN
    Score9.5 out of 10
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    StarWind Virtual SAN
    Score9.5 out of 10
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Storage Scale
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Elastic Storage ServerVMware vSAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (4 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Elastic Storage ServerVMware vSAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    Reliable data storage and access is a big challenge in AI applications and IBM ESS is a service you need to solve the problem. If you are building an AI service and you already use the IBM ecosystem for AI compute requirements, ESS can serve as an excellent software based storage solution. Integration with other platforms such as EMR/Databricks is still a challenge and should be improved.
    Incentivized
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    VMware by Broadcom
    The product is a must for enterprise & SMB segments as this gives a good value for money and the licensing policy is very well defined and cost effective for the feature set it provides. This is very well suited for organization which have multiple brand storage systems and would like to consolidate them all together, thus providing a huge storage capacity for the organizations data growth. The product becomes less appropriate in organization where they have single storage platform as the service provider would have the ability to consilidate all the storage systems. Hence this products may be under utilized.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    IBM
    • Powerful processing power, literally support unlimited scale out storage capabilities
    • well integrated and supported with multi flavor environment and file systems.
    • Huge capacity with in a very reduced form factor of disks/enclosures
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMware runs VSAN certification programs to make sure the OEM sells validated nodes. It helps customers to select appropriate certified ready nodes like Lenovo ThinkAgile VX which comes factory configured and easy to set up.
    • Hyperconverged solutions reduce real estate space and networking costs when compare with shared storage. The host overhead also less.
    • Supports All-Flash (SATA and NVMe SSDs) and Hybrid vSAN with HDD and SSD. So customers can choose cost-effective solutions appropriate to their workloads.
    • Supports different storage policies, RAID and duplication, and compression features and it makes a complete storage solution.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    IBM
    • Integration and configuration need a bit more technical expertise which is I guess expected.
    • There can be some improvement in integration with Legacy applications.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • We were a fairly early adopter of VMware vSAN and as such experienced several growing pains.
    • We experienced a few bugs that took a few software versions upgrades to go mostly away.
    • The biggest issue we had overall was with host drivers. Even with vSAN ready node compatible hosts, you have to be very careful that the drivers for NIC and RAID controllers are right.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Deploying and configuring VSAN is a relatively simple process for people that are already used to working in virtual environments, primarily for those that are familiar with vSphere. The compatibility of those two products is amazing. You shouldn't really encounter any issues and if you do, you surely did something wrong.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Support is (as always forVMware) top notch and easy to work with. The majority of computer companies are outsourcing their tech staff, and it seems they do as well. But their guys know the product well and are quick to respond to your ticket (if the severity is right!).
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    IBM ESS is optimized for AI and Big Data usecases while S3 is a general purpose storage solutions. EMR and Databricks have lakehouse/data warehousing solutions for distributed computing but are more optimized for just the big data pipelining solutions and not essentially for AI usecases, especially for inference, when you need to load model artifacts really quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    Our VMware solution is built in-house for the organization's private application, we don't want to put our data on cloud premises. Also, vSAN is a cost-effective solution for our environment. We have done the POC with both products to understand the Flexibility, Management, and cost. After the successful POC, we have chosen the VMware vSAN.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • When the cost and price dynamics comes into account, we have replaced age old traditional arrays with almost negligible cost with ESS
    • able to extend the capabilities of global teams to work and share their experiences and knowledge with other teams.
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • we have realized savings in the licensing compared to traditional storage (over $500,000 over the last 5 years)
    • we have realized ROI through efficiencies in our staff of approx $1MM (over the last 5 years)
    • also, positive impact on the time to value/speed of implementation allowed us to realize business objectives (Over $1MM of ROI)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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