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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    NetApp AFF A-Series

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ANetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays are the company's flagship flash storage solutions.N/A

    VMware vSAN

    Score8.5 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
    NetApp AFF A-SeriesVMware vSAN
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    NetApp AFF A-SeriesVMware 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
    NetApp AFF A-SeriesVMware vSAN
    Considered Both Products
    NetApp
    No answer on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Chose VMware vSAN
    vSAN is far more integrated than any other SDS solution running on vSphere. It is also a simpler deployment and management model.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    14 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Features
    NetApp AFF A-SeriesVMware vSAN
    Enterprise Flash Array Storage
    Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of NetApp AFF A-Series and VMware vSAN
    Feature
    NetApp AFF A-Series
    8.3
    8 Ratings
    7% below category average
    VMware vSAN
    -
    Ratings
    Flash Array Performance9.18 Ratings00 Ratings
    Flash Array Integration9.17 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Compression6.37 Ratings00 Ratings
    Non-Intrusive Upgrades8.17 Ratings00 Ratings
    Simplicity8.98 Ratings00 Ratings
    Power Savings8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    NetApp AFF A-SeriesVMware vSAN
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Dell Compellent (discontinued)
    Score8 out of 10
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Everpure FlashArray
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    NetApp AFF A-SeriesVMware vSAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (9 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.2
    (4 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    NetApp AFF A-SeriesVMware vSAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    NetApp
    Easy interface and the accessibility of the features are effective and this solution functionalities on data migration and processing of different from other packages is amazing. NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays is the most secure platform for easy management of all the business and project data and the capacity planning tools and even the configuration options are the best and easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Pros
    NetApp
    • Protective multiple project and business data is excellent.
    • Solutions for data storage and data migration.
    • Providing useful and quality data reports is effective.
    Incentivized
    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
    Read full review
    Cons
    NetApp
    • Cost is still prohibitive for performance.
    • Performance tuning at the Fabric Interconnect level.
    • Automation and scripting improvements in the PowerShell module.
    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
    NetApp
    Our organizations primary storage platform is NetApp AFF-A900 nodes. All our storage requirements, be it storage visible to our compute either using FC or NFS is through these nodes. The shares or CIFS too are setup on these nodes. We also use the fabric pool to write the data to NetApps Storage Grid
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    NetApp
    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
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    NetApp
    I have been an IBM and EMC storage customer. I used EMC CX and VMX series SANs. I have used IBM Shark SANs before that. Much has changed over the years. It is my experience that Netapp has shown a great deal more innovation with large leaps in technology, ease of use and an aggressive progress while the two other vendors that I have experience with are more tied to their legacy technologies.
    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
    NetApp
    • ROI has been tremendous as it has come in handy in all the scenarios we were looking at
    • Users and admins both happy with the overall performance and management is happy that they got a good deal from reseller.
    Incentivized
    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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