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SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds Virtualization M...
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (6th)
VMware vSphere
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
459
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is designed for Virtualization Management Tools and holds a mindshare of 10.5%, up 9.2% compared to last year.
VMware vSphere, on the other hand, focuses on Server Virtualization Software, holds 19.2% mindshare, up 16.5% since last year.
Virtualization Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager10.5%
VMware Aria Operations24.7%
IBM Turbonomic16.6%
Other48.199999999999996%
Virtualization Management Tools
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSphere19.2%
Hyper-V19.5%
Proxmox VE10.9%
Other50.4%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Techsa Services
Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.
IA
IT Director at Def Industry
Has improved infrastructure monitoring and resource management but requires better support and cost efficiency
The high availability feature's resilience is not bad, but it could be better. For example, whenever you lose any hardware, you will have interruptions on the services, and it reboots again on the other hardware host which is available at the crash time. That's good, but we would prefer to have zero downtime instead of the rebooting on the other server. We would prefer to have a zero downtime always-on configuration. VMware vSphere has a built-in feature called Fault Tolerance, but it's very limited for very limited VMs or very limited core count or CPU count, so it's not so useful for all the environment because of the limitations. The Fault Tolerance (FT) feature is very limited to very little core counts or very little VM counts, so you can't run the Fault Tolerance for all the servers or all the VMs, and that's very bad. If VMware vSphere could have any kind of built-in patch management environment with a repository, offline repository option, with test, non-production, and production environment separated, this would be perfect. Management of patch management with operating systems and including third-party applications which are running on the servers would enhance the VMware vSphere environment. VMware vSphere is very expensive. The worst aspect of VMware vSphere is the price. I can't tell you the exact cost at this time because the other team members in my teams are working on it, but I remember that the prices are very high. VMware vSphere is easy to scale, but it could be better, similar to a Kubernetes environment. It should have an automatic scale-out feature when the load gets high; if it gets some scale out automatically, it would be better than this, similar to Kubernetes or OpenShift.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"If you’re looking to get a lot more insight into your virtualization environment and more than just basic information, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is the choice you should make."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"Alerting expands, and makes, our monitoring and management much more efficient."
"Virtualization manager’s cost analysis comparison report identified areas in which specific customers were being grossly undercharged for their resource consumption levels, as compared to rates available through AWS."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"This product is so helpful out-of-the-box."
"It is highly scalable. We can add new hardware and expand the infrastructure easily."
"The most valuable feature of VMware vSphere is the ability to work in big system infrastructure, where you can move one virtual machine from one server to another, which is beneficial when you want to put a server under maintenance, and the security features and implementation are very easy."
"We use it for virtual machines, and it is a platform which can be used to provide infrastructure for virtualization."
"VMware Tanzu (container) is the most valuable addition because you get an efficient solution to manage the VM and container in a single pane of glass."
"Instead of having one application for every physical host, we can run 30-40 on the same physical host."
"The out-of-box application works well even without customization."
"VMware vSphere is my preferred hypervisor."
"Valuable features really depend on different projects. We are using the traditional infrastructure based on VMware vSphere. We are also using the high availability (HA) and Distributed Switch features to extend our network and switch between different hosts. The VMotion and SVMotion features are very essential for us to relocate the storage of virtual machines to different storage or vSANs. We are using VMotion and SVMotion features several times of the day. We are also using another VMware product to replicate a lot of solutions to a second replication site."
 

Cons

"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."
"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"Adhoc reporting takes time to get used to – due mainly to the fact that the team I am on are all admins, and not necessarily accustomed to query reporting in the manner utilized by Solarwinds Virtualization Manager."
"Out of the box support for a wider array of hardware vendor/device-specific SNMP mibs could be improved upon."
"The UI is a little cumbersome at first, but the more you use it and get accustomed to it, the simpler it becomes."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The biggest pain point is probably the firmware management of the underlying hardware. It could be a lot better."
"The integration with containers should be addressed. While they have started to integrate with Tanzu, the integration is not that good at the moment."
"Not the best choice if you want to start learning virtualization."
"The pricing of VMware vSphere needs significant improvement. Although the product is very strong and includes all necessary features, the high pricing drives many customers to avoid using it."
"We'd always like to see the price drop, but I realize that may not be realistic."
"The major disadvantage that i can think off is that we have to pay for all the features to be available."
"Sometimes you can't find items and you need to log onto different physical servers to do technical tasks. I don't fully understand why this is the case."
"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."
"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."
"As the vSphere platform allows for a variety of additions, it is quite good."
"Our licensing fees on paid on a yearly basis and the pricing is fine."
"vSphere has improved our organization by allowing us to deliver rock solid stability to our clients in a cost competitive fashion."
"This is quite an expensive product, although everything is included in the standard licensing fee."
"We are on a perpetual license for VMware vSphere and the price can be expensive compared to other solutions, such as Hyper-V. They should lower their price."
"The licensing price is fair compared to other similar solutions."
"We are spending less on buying bigger machines, which are overprovisioned. Thus, the ROI is found in consolidation and cost savings."
"In the past six months, we have saved around 110TBs of storage, which is almost equivalent to $200,000 USD. That is a huge savings."
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Consultant, ASEAN at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business177
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise259
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at o...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
Proxmox vs ESXi/vSphere: What is your experience?
For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds VMAN
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elliot Health System
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Nutanix, IBM and others in Virtualization Management Tools. Updated: April 2026.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.