VMware ESXi vs. VMware vSAN

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
VMware ESXi
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.N/A
VMware vSAN
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
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 Foundation.N/A
Pricing
VMware ESXiVMware vSAN
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
VMware ESXiVMware vSAN
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
VMware ESXiVMware vSAN
Considered Both Products
VMware ESXi

No answer on this topic

VMware vSAN
Chose VMware vSAN
VMware vSAN is the only hyper-convergence product we have used, but it replaced multiple dedicated Nimble storage arrays. Nimble had a vCenter plugin which made it much easier to use, but VMware vSAN is baked right into the vCenter. vSAN also really doesn't require much if …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
VMware ESXiVMware vSAN
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
VMware ESXi
8.7
127 Ratings
4% above category average
VMware vSAN
-
Ratings
Virtual machine automated provisioning8.5115 Ratings00 Ratings
Management console8.8127 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup8.4111 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration9.3115 Ratings00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security8.3116 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
VMware ESXiVMware vSAN
Small Businesses
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE
Score 9.3 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
VMware ESXiVMware vSAN
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(128 ratings)
8.8
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(55 ratings)
7.5
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
5.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
VMware ESXiVMware vSAN
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware by Broadcom
If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
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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.
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Pros
VMware by Broadcom
  • Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
  • Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
  • VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
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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.
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Cons
VMware by Broadcom
  • VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
  • VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
  • I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
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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.
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Likelihood to Renew
VMware by Broadcom
It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Usability
VMware by Broadcom
The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
VMware by Broadcom
Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Performance
VMware by Broadcom
We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
VMware by Broadcom
I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
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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!).
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Implementation Rating
VMware by Broadcom
Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
VMware by Broadcom
As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
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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.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
VMware by Broadcom
it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Scalability
VMware by Broadcom
We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
VMware by Broadcom
  • VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
  • VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
  • As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
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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)
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ScreenShots