We performed a comparison between Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"The performance of the solution is accurate and concise."
"This solution has a very good user interface, with simple administration/management."
"For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"The initial setup is simple. We were able to deliver the hyper-convergence solution in a very good time."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's deployment phase is pretty easy."
"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series are the ease of use and simple configuration."
"The solution has high performance."
"The scalability has been quite good."
"Very easy to implement in any existing environment."
"VMware vSAN's most valuable features are the capability to consolidate standalone physical infrastructure into virtualization and the ease of management."
"The most valuable features are secure IOPs and LAN security."
"The most valuable features for us are the ability to scale out the nodes independently, and the flexibility of the nodes. We can put almost any type of server in there with our connectivity and everything works great."
"If we decide to expand, vSAN could offer us some flexibility. We are researching ways to set this up from a new data center, which is located somewhere different from the current location right now."
"vSAN can help customers save on storage system costs, and also save on the human cost."
"A great feature would be a wizard and to include a new disk in the SAN. At the moment, including a new disk requires several steps - some that must be done at the OS level and others in each node."
"While StarWind.com excels in numerous areas, there are a couple of notable functionalities that it currently lacks. One of these is duplication, which could be an invaluable feature for data redundancy and backup purposes. The ability to duplicate data across different storage locations can be crucial for safeguarding against data loss, and its absence is a minor limitation in an otherwise stellar offering."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"There is a delay in the availability of similar versions of firmware from both the products, which are VMware and Nutanix for Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, due to the delayed releases from both products, maybe by a quarter or so."
"Here in Nigeria, the only challenge that we have, which I think is also experienced globally is the delay in bringing in the spare parts. This is a challenge facing our country, such as the Forex market. However, this is beyond the control of Lenovo themselves."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series could improve by having better integration with the solutions from VMware and vCenter"
"It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins."
"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."
"The customer service is good but there is a cost for it. It does not come free."
"I see room for improvement with vSAN in particularly in the reporting realm. Now, with vSAN 6.7, they're starting to include vRealize Operations components in the vSphere Client, even if you're not a vRealize Operations customer. So, that's really good. It exposes some really low-level reporting. I would like to see more of that. However, you have to be a vRealize Operations customer to obtain that. I would like to see more include of this included in the vSAN licensing."
"On the DevOps side, if there could be more automation it would be more helpful."
"The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it."
"I would like to see a little bit more documentation on the initial setup, and a little bit more explanation on the expandability: How to extend out your vSAN much more simply through the console because, a lot of the time, you have to do it through the command line."
"We plan to switch products since the hardware nowadays is a little bit outdated and we need to scale up a bit."
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is ranked 18th in HCI with 3 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is rated 8.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series writes "With an easy deployment phase, the tool offers good scalability and stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is most compared with Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, VxRail and HPE Alletra dHCI, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs. VMware vSAN report.
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