vSAN · HCI

VMware vSAN Products

The complete VMware HCI storage portfolio — vSAN 8 ESA for converged HCI, vSAN Max for disaggregated petabyte-scale storage, and VMware Cloud Foundation for the complete private cloud SDDC.

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VMware vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture management dashboard in vCenter

VMware by Broadcom

VMware vSAN (ESA)

VMware vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA) — a ground-up redesign for NVMe TLC flash delivering up to 70% more usable capacity, 10× better mixed workload performance, and lower HCI TCO than the original architecture.

VMware vSAN Max

VMware vSAN Max disaggregates HCI storage from compute — dedicated NVMe storage clusters serve multiple vSphere compute clusters, scaling to 8.6 PB per storage cluster with over 3.6 million IOPS.

VMware Cloud Foundation

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 bundles vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and Aria in a single per-core subscription — delivering a fully integrated private cloud SDDC with consistent operations from on-premises to hybrid cloud.

Product Comparison

Feature	vSAN 8 ESA	vSAN Max	VMware Cloud Foundation
Architecture	Converged HCI	Disaggregated HCI	Full SDDC (compute+storage+net)
Storage	ESA — NVMe single-tier	ESA — dedicated nodes	vSAN ESA included
Max Capacity	8.5 PB per cluster	8.6 PB per cluster	8.5 PB per cluster (vSAN)
Licensing	Per core (VCF/VVF)	Per TiB add-on	Per core (incl. 1 TiB/core)
Networking	Standard vSphere	Standard vSphere	NSX full-stack SDN included
Management	vCenter integrated	vCenter integrated	vCenter + SDDC Manager + Aria
Best For	General HCI workloads	Storage-heavy scale-out	Enterprise private cloud
ROI (IDC 2024)	365% 3-year ROI	365% 3-year ROI	365% 3-year ROI

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