VMware vSphere and Proxmox VE compete in the virtualization software category. VMware vSphere holds the upper hand due to its advanced feature set and integration capabilities.
Features: VMware vSphere features centralized management, high availability, and VMotion for real-time virtual machine movement. It provides robust enterprise-class virtualization with strong integration across VMware products. Proxmox VE offers open-source flexibility, low overhead, and scalability in mixed environments, supporting free commercial use.
Room for Improvement: VMware vSphere could improve on licensing costs and simplify management layers by reducing additional purchases. Users also point to performance issues and the need for better-integrated monitoring. Proxmox VE would benefit from improvements in its user interface and virtualization capabilities, especially in console management and network integration. Its backup solutions could also be more efficient.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSphere deployment can be intricate due to its layered architecture, but it is supported by comprehensive documentation and generally positive customer service, though some delays are reported. Proxmox VE is straightforward to deploy thanks to its open-source design. It relies on community forums for support, which might not fully meet enterprise needs.
Pricing and ROI: VMware vSphere's high costs are balanced by extensive features and strong ROI through efficiency and scalability. It appeals to organizations justifying expenses for comprehensive services. Proxmox VE, being free and open-source, delivers exceptional value, especially for budget-conscious users, and offers potential savings on hardware and licensing, though traditional support services are absent without a subscription.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
My team solves most tickets, needing support only about once or twice a year.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
VMware vCenter is extremely useful as we can manage between 100 and 1,000 hosts using just one management tool.
The high availability feature is significant.
Proxmox VE is a complete virtualization management solution for servers. It is a powerful open-source platform and supports two virtualization technologies - KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) for virtual machines and LXC for containers. Proxmox VE has a central user interface that allows you to manage not only VMs and containers, but also storage resources, network configuration, and high availability for clusters. It is enterprise-ready and is valued for its scalability and maximum flexibility, enabling you to virtualize very demanding workloads. Proxmox VE makes it possible for you to easily install, manage, and monitor hyper-converged (HCI) data centers.
Proxmox VE Key Features
The Proxmox VE platform has many powerful features, including:
pen-source software, high-available clusters, command line, fencing, a web-based management interface, flexible storage options, REST API, live/online migration, storage replication stack, software defined storage, virtualized networking, backup and restore, two-factor authentication, role-based administration, and VM templates and clones.
Proxmox VE Benefits
Some of the biggest benefits of Proxmox VE are:
Reviews From Real Users
Here is some feedback from some of our users who are currently using the solution:
A PeerSpot user who is a director at a tech services company says, “The most valuable features of Proxmox VE are the ease of containerization. Overall the solution is generic, feature-rich, and has compatibility.”
Another PeerSpot user who is a head of IT operations at a tech services company mentions that "In addition to the virtualization, the firewall and the routing functions that it provides are valuable."
Deepen D., director and CTO at TechnoInfotech, expresses that "The feature that I have found most valuable is that its storage container, LVM, and everything else work out of the box."
VMware vSphere is a powerful and complete server virtualization platform that allows its users to create and manage virtual data centers and machines. VMware vSphere is designed to help IT departments set up and run applications using the most cost-effective computer resources. By using vSphere, organizations save the time and energy necessary for purchasing infrastructure and software and reduce ongoing maintenance and operational burdens on IT teams.
Infrastructure administrators and network operators can access and manage the vSphere server by using a web-based cross-platform client application or via the vSphere client tool provided with vSphere.
VMware vSphere provides visibility into VMs and enables its users to carry out operations to manage VMs. This includes tasks such as:
VMware vSphere Benefits
Some of the benefits of using VMware vSphere include:
VMware vSphere Features
Below is a list of some of VMware vSphere’s key features:
Reviews from Real Users
VMware vSphere stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. A few major ones are its virtualization abilities, its flexibility and availability, and its user-friendly interface.
Felix D., an Automation project administrator, DCS, I&E at Centennial Cayman Corp, writes, “The connectivity is fantastic, and many functions can run together in one server. If you need to scale, we can continue to add components or modules. It's a beautiful virtual solution that has many advantages over physical hardware, where you have to use devices and wiring to connect all your projects.”
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