Leading vendors like Nutanix and Arcfra — both are Gartner-recognized sample HCI vendors for VMware replacement — are well-known for their “scale-out” design, which allows users to expand clusters by adding new nodes while the system automatically rebalances data and resources.

Here’s a detailed comparison between AECP 6.2 and VMware vSAN in scalability.

Notably, although the versions after vSAN 7 introduce the support for a new storage architecture — ESA (Express Storage Architecture) — which replaces Disk Group with Storage Pool to improve the overall performance, this design also requires higher configuration for hardware devices; to enable ESA, each host in the cluster must use at least four high‑performance, durable TLC NVMe storage drives. This reduces hardware configuration flexibility and significantly increases procurement and scaling costs.

On the other hand, Arcfra AECP supports all-flash or SSD + HDD hybrid configurations. In an all-flash configuration, AECP supports tiered or non-tiered modes. This design makes hardware configuration and scaling more flexible while ensuring high performance and stability.

For more information on AECP as a VMware alternative:

Arcfra Operation Center vs. VMware vCenter for Centralized VM and Cluster Management

Arcfra Virtualization Engine vs. VMware vSphere: Higher Availability with Optimized Performance

Arcfra Kubernetes Engine vs. vSphere with Tanzu: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Arcfra Network Service vs. VMware NSX: Comparable Capabilities, Streamlined Management

Download your go-to guide for navigating the post-VMware era for free: https://www.arcfra.com/resources/document/vmware-alternatives-ebook/