We performed a comparison between VMware vSAN and Zadara 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."With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed."
"User friendly interface and straight forward implementation."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The ease of reaching the support team and their promptness for support is great."
"The solution has high performance."
"The most valuable feature is fhe flexibility, the ability to move the machines around without hesitation."
"While we haven't made major changes to our disaster recovery and business continuity processes yet, moving towards stretch vSAN across sites will simplify and expedite our DR processes in the future."
"Stretched Cluster is one of the big features that we use across multiple data centers."
"The technical support is good. We are always thankful for the technical support from VMware. They are very supportive when we have a technical problem."
"vSAN is scalable for us. If any additional capacity needs to be included, we just add to the host and configure the vSAN cluster."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"VMware vSAN is a global solution, so we can manage all the storage solutions in one place. It's embedded in VCI solutions."
"Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important."
"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."
"The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed."
"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."
"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."
"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."
"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application."
"Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes."
"vSAN's free version does not have a graphical user interface."
"I would like additional documentation regarding possible networking configurations with 10GbE switching."
"A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one."
"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."
"There is a general lack of documentation, especially up-to-date documentation to get started."
"I would like to see replication as part of it. I would also like to see direct file access, being able to run SIF shares and NFS and the like. I think that would be critical to continuing the use of it going forward."
"Reporting currently depends on third party applications and that could be improved."
"I would love to see vSAN integrate Persistent Memory and NVDIMMs. I know they're supposed to be working on an elastic tier so that we don't have the issues with destaging from the cache to the capacity. Those are the things that I'm interested in."
"The biggest room for improvement I see in vSAN is the lack of SAN connectivity. I've kind of joked around that there is no "SAN" in vSAN. And it's something that we've worked to try and introduce some options for, and we're going to continue to work towards that."
"Ease of administration is one area where vSAN could be improved."
"It could be more robust. The latency is also an issue for us, and the reliability. I would like it to be faster and a little more flexible."
"Lacks sufficient storage terabytes."
"There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations."
"The initial setup of the solution is complex."
"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."
"The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve."
"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."
"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."
"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."
"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."
"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."
VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews while Zadara is ranked 22nd in All-Flash Storage with 9 reviews. VMware vSAN is rated 8.4, while Zadara is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zadara writes "We're able to scale up or down almost instantly, and changes are handled efficiently by their managed services team ". VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray, whereas Zadara is most compared with MinIO, Amazon S3, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Wasabi. See our VMware vSAN vs. Zadara report.
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