With Broadcom abandoning customers of their software-defined storage, VMware vSAN, many people are exploring other software-defined storage options for virtual machine data storage. At the same time, many organizations are also considering their options for migrating away from the VMware suite to KVM-based or KubeVirt-based cloud infrastructure deployments.
The trend of organizations migrating their virtualization environments away from vSphere is a huge topic with multiple aspects and considerations. This post will only address the simpler subject of migration away from vSAN.
Regardless of the hypervisor you’re using, shared storage is the foundation upon which organizations build large-scale virtualization infrastructure. vSAN was explicitly designed and built as storage for vSphere clusters. It’s fully-integrated with vSphere and managed through VMware vCenter and, as such, is really a single use-case storage option.
For this post, we’ll compare two software-defined storage solutions – the StorPool Block Data Storage Platform to the VMware vSAN software-defined storage solution in each of the following areas:
- Use Cases
- Architecture
- Management
- Scalability
- Performance
- Data Protection
Use Cases
vSAN was specifically designed for use with VMware vSphere. It’s been positioned as a storage solution for different vSphere use cases like multi-purpose virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and for remote and branch offices (ROBO).
StorPool Storage was designed for any purpose that requires high-performance, scalable block storage. Customers can use it with virtualized environments, leveraging the hypervisor of their choice (Linux KVM, XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, vSphere, etc.) or Windows/Linux bare-metal deployments. In essence, StorPool can be used for any workload that requires high-performance block storage like large transactional databases, time series databases, VDI, or environments with thousands of general-purpose VMs accessing their data in parallel. The StorPool platform can be used with any combination of workloads simultaneously.
Conclusion: VMware vSAN has a single use case (vSphere) while StorPool has multiple use cases, making it a much more flexible option.
Architecture
VMware vSAN runs on a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) as part of a vSphere cluster. This means that its compute resources are split between the storage and the virtual machines. It also means it’s limited to vSphere cluster architectures.
StorPool can run on an HCI model, a disaggregated model (virtual machines running on compute hosts separate from the ones used for storage), or in a hybrid model using a mix of HCI and disaggregated hosts.
vSAN can only run on hardware on the vSAN-certified hardware list. StorPool, like any other software, does have minimum system requirements, but they’re not brand-specific, allowing customers to choose any hardware that meets the minimum requirements.
vSAN, VSphere, and all VMware products can only be installed on servers using x86 CPUs. StorPool, on the other hand, can be installed on both x86 and ARM CPU architectures. Using the ARM technology, customers are able to have the same amount of overall compute power in half the data center space, at significant power saving.
Conclusion: VMware vSAN has only one deployment model, a vSphere HCI configuration, white StorPool Storage has more flexible deployment options like HCI, disaggregated, hybrid, and allows a choice of CPU architecture.
Management
vSAN is managed through VMware vCenter, the same tool used for virtual machine management.
StorPool Storage is provided as a fully-managed service, meaning our customers don’t need to have storage expertise. They benefit from end-to-end automation with the open-source VM and cloud management tool of their choice (CloudStack, OpenNebula, OpenStack, or Proxmox). StorPool has native plugins for each of these cloud management platforms, allowing them to manage their cloud and its storage more holistically.
Conclusion: VMware vSAN can only be managed through vCenter and clouds built on it can only be managed through VMware vCloud Director, while StorPool Storage is fully-managed by experts and offers a choice of multiple cloud management platforms.
Scalability
For customers looking for large-scale storage, Broadcom offers “VMware vSAN Storage Clusters” formerly known as “vSAN Max”. This refers to vSAN in a disaggregated deployment model, rather than the HCI model used by “plain” vSAN. In Broadcom’s “Design and Operational Guidance for vSAN Storage Clusters” document, they note that a vSAN Storage Cluster supports up to 32 hosts but recommend not going over 24 (they further suggest 16 hosts as the ideal number to consider). vSAN Storage Clusters can scale up to 8.6 PB.
StorPool supports up to 63 hosts in a cluster, and allows for combining multiple clusters into a single large-scale storage system. StorPool storage systems can be scaled out to 60 PB.
Conclusion: A supported VMware vSAN Storage Cluster is limited to 24 hosts and can scale to a maximum of 8.6 PB, while a StorPool Storage cluster can scale to 63 hosts (a x2.6 difference) and StorPool systems can scale to at least 60 PB – 7 times the maximum vSAN provides.
Performance
Broadcom / VMware talk about IOPS for vSAN and vSAN Max, but they don’t mention anything about storage latency which is a critical factor in storage performance. vSAN Max can deliver up to 3.6 million IOPS in a single cluster.
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TOP 5 Modern SDS Block Storage Solutions for 2025!
At StorPool, we like to talk about storage latency, partly because it’s such a critical measure of storage performance, but also because it’s something we do really well. StorPool Storage can deliver up to 13.8 million IOPS in a single cluster while maintaining storage latency of 100 microseconds (µs) or less for 4k block size I/O operations.
Conclusion: VMware vSAN can reach 3.6 million IOPS but doesn’t mention storage latency, while a StorPool Storage system can reach 13.8 million IOPS and maintain a latency of 100 µs.
Data Protection
vSAN protects stored data through either mirroring or standard RAID.
StorPool Storage protects data through either triple-mirroring or enhanced erasure coding.
Conclusion: VMware vSAN uses legacy data protection allowing it to keep running in the event of a single hardware failure in the cluster, while StorPool Storage can keep running with multiple hardware failures.
Where Does This Leave Us?
VMware vSAN is a fine product for VMware environments without high-performance requirements. But, those wanting virtualization flexibility, high-performance, simplified management, and more deployment options would be well advised to take a good look at the StorPool Storage block storage offering. It’s also a great fit for those VMware customers who are considering a migration away from vSphere.
To learn more about StorPool Storage, check out our product page. To schedule a discussion with one of our storage experts to see how StorPool might fit your needs, fill out our contact form.