VMware vSAN Alternative for Edge Sites
VMware vSAN is the software-defined storage (SDS) layer behind the Broadcom VMware hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) stack, and it’s done a good job of replacing expensive hardware arrays with scale-out commodity servers for years. However, edge sites typically run better, more efficiently, and more flexibly on smaller clusters, with little or no on-site IT staff. This creates different requirements: smaller footprints, remote manageability, and cost structures that don’t scale against you as site counts grow.
That’s exactly where organizations start looking for a VMware vSAN alternative for edge sites, and it’s exactly where StorMagic was built to help.
Why Choose a VMware vSAN Alternative?
Broadcom’s shift to subscription-only VMware licensing has changed the economics for everyone, but the impact lands hardest on distributed IT environments. When licensing is priced and audited per site, costs compound fast across dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations. Changing vendor pricing, and being at the mercy of it, can lead to much bigger numbers than you originally anticipated when you multiply it by every edge site you operate.
We’ve covered the details of Broadcom’s VMware licensing changes elsewhere, but the short version for edge teams is this. Broadcom’s own core-minimum proposals have been explicitly described as targeting larger enterprise deployments. Combined with a three-year renewal commitment and a partner program that’s moved toward invite-only agreements, the overall direction has been toward larger, more centralized customers. If your infrastructure looks like small clusters spread across many locations, it’s worth evaluating whether you’re paying for a platform optimized for someone else’s use case.
Ultimately, are you truly deciding how your IT infrastructure is built? Or are your vendors?
Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in 2023, lots of challenging questions have been raised for VMware’s 500,000+ customers and partners, and they continue to this day.
If you’re one of them, we understand your concerns back then, and how they’ve changed until today. Now is the time to have a solid plan B, to chart your own course rather than be left in the lurch. It’s no secret that being acquired is a risky business. So why risk your business?
What Edge Sites Actually Need
Edge environments have a different set of requirements than the data center, and it’s worth naming them plainly. StorMagic builds virtualization software around these exact conditions, so you’re not adapting a data center platform to fit the edge. It’s the other way around:
Small-footprint Clusters
Many edge sites run two-node or three-node configurations, not racks of servers.
Remote Operation
Sites are often unstaffed, occasionally disconnected, and can’t rely on a large local IT team.
High Availability (HA) without Complexity
Applications still need to stay online, even without enterprise-scale infrastructure behind them.
Predictable Costs
Per-site licensing that scales unpredictably makes budgeting difficult.
Virtual SANs Compared
|
Capabilities |
StorMagic SvSAN |
VMware vSAN |
| Licensing model |
|
|
| Hypervisor support |
|
|
| Minimum cluster size |
|
|
| Witness / Quorum service | Yes | Yes |
| Clusters serviced per witness | 1000 | 64 |
| Minimum witness bandwidth | 9Kb/s | 2Mb/s |
| Maximum witness latency | 3000ms RTT (WAN or LAN) | 500ms RTT, or 100-200ms RTT for stretched clusters (high bandwidth WAN) |
| System requirements | Small | Medium – High |
| Processing | 1x vCPU, 2GHz | 2x CPUs or 1x dual core CPU |
| Memory | 1GB | 32GB per ESXi host |
| Storage | Any disk combination | SSD required |
| Networking | 1x 1GbE NIC | 10GbE preferably |
VMware vSAN vs StorMagic SvSAN
The latest Competitive Intelligence Report from analysts DCIG examines the differences between VMware vSAN and StorMagic SvSAN, offering a comparison of the two solutions and an assessment on their capability for SMB and edge computing use cases.
This independent analyst report explores the capabilities of both solutions, and draws attention to the following aspects:
- Software options and associated licensing costs
- Minimum server hardware requirements
- Two-node HA cluster configuration
- Management
Book a Demo of StorMagic SvSAN
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What VMware vSAN customers say after switching to
StorMagic SvSAN:
First Enterprise Bank
USA, Banking/Finance
- FEB conducted server upgrades and added virtualization with VMware initially, but needed to address disaster recovery (DR) objectives. FEB needed an affordable, hyperconverged solution that could run all of the bank’s back- office applications, ensure high availability and simplify the DR plan.
Lisbon Airport
Portugal, Travel
- VMware’s virtual storage solution proved too expensive
- SvSAN came in considerably below the cost of competitor solutions without compromising on any of the features necessary to ensure the airport’s guiding system remained online and functioning.
