VMware NSX Reviews

I am in a presales role, selling the VMware solution. The typical use case is vague due to the wide range of institutions that make up our customer base.

VMware NSX has impacted overall operational costs by 80%.

I feel confident when I work with NSX since I have mastered the solution. It is good for all virtualization and networking.

If you had asked when it was NSX V, which was dedicated only for Hyper-V and VMware, I would have said they could open the door for all partners. At the moment, NSX T is complete. Migrating from V to T is very tricky, complicated, and there are a lot of parameters to account for. The pricing is also an issue; it's very expensive and changes all the time. VMware is not easy to negotiate with.

I have been working with VMware NSX since 2011.

I would say the stability of the solution is a nine out of ten.

The scalability is rated at eight out of ten.

I would rate technical support as ten as they have a lot of support and specialists who can meet with the customer.

Positive

Previously, some of the customers chose Nutanix and a few other solutions.

I think the initial setup is complex. You need knowledge of both networking and virtualization. It's complex for everyone, although I have experience with it.

The pricing is another discussion. The pricing is rated three because it's very expensive, changes often, and isn't easy to negotiate.

We did evaluate Nutanix.

The main challenge is upgrading from NSX V to NSX T. This upgrade requires considering many parameters that are not known by everyone.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Our primary focus is to create a layer that effectively connects to the remote site. This involves optimizing and accelerating the VXLend component, which is highly popular in our setup. We usually configure VXLend to enhance disaster recovery capabilities, specifically for applications that operate within the same subnet. This approach ensures that in the event of a disaster, such as a WAN failure or when external layers are inaccessible, there's no need to change IP addresses. It allows users to connect seamlessly from any location since the servers maintain the same subnet, and data replication occurs between the data centers. The result is minimal disruption and no requirement to modify configurations during these critical scenarios.

Traditional network management often involves dealing with individual components separately while VMware NSX offers a more streamlined approach. It operates on a logical level, providing a comprehensive and centralized way to manage your network resources. This not only simplifies management but also enhances scalability. It enables us to create and adjust policies dynamically, allowing for real-time updates and enforcement so we can effectively oversee our entire data center from a single point of control.

One aspect that needs improvement is the need for further automation. We are already operating in a software-defined data center environment, and while the product is mature, there's room for enhancing automation.

I have been using it for approximately three years.

It provides robust stability features. I would rate it nine out of ten.

It provides excellent scalability capabilities. When it comes to micro-segmentation, it allows you to scale naturally. You can distribute firewall and load-balancing functionalities efficiently as your network grows. It also offers seamless integration with the physical network infrastructure, making it easy to extend your virtualized network into the physical world.

The customer support from VMware is exceptional. Recently we encountered a critical issue where one of our virtual machines failed to start and was displaying a blue screen. Despite the urgency of the situation, we logged a support case, and within twenty minutes, we received a response. A support representative promptly called us, established a remote connection, conducted a thorough analysis, and successfully resolved the problem.

Positive

I have experience with Cisco, but I find VMware to be a superior solution. The primary reason is the seamless integration that VMware offers, especially within a data center environment. When working within a data center, VMware's virtualization capabilities are all that we need. We no longer require separate hardware, edge products, load-balancing solutions, or firewall products. Everything can be fully integrated into a unified system and it allows us to accomplish everything from one console and one central point of control, making it a highly efficient and streamlined solution.

When it comes to VMware, there are two primary options: NSX-V and NSX-T. NSX-V is known for its user-friendliness and effectiveness. Setting up SD-WAN connectivity with NSX-V is straightforward.

The price is significantly high and it can be a hurdle for many potential users.

I would highly recommend VMware for a wide range of users, spanning from large enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses. It's an ideal choice for those who require disaster recovery solutions or cloud extensions. Its versatility and capabilities make it a valuable choice for anyone looking to scale their infrastructure, whether it's within a data center or by extending into the cloud. I would rate it eight out of ten.

The solution is mainly used for rolling virtual environments and private clouds. I use the product for my company and for other customers.

It's important to have whenever I need to segment or control the traffic from virtual machine to virtual machine. This was not the case without the NSX.

NSX is good in managing security or controlling the security and the access control for each single VM. 

It is essential and it can be useful up to a certain level of access control. That said, if we need further detailed or further security features, we should use another product like Palo Alto or Fortinet or other competitors.

It integrates with certain vendors like Palo Alto seamlessly.

The product is stable. 

We can scale the solution. 

It's just access controlled. It should be leveraged by adding more detailed, deep security products to facilitate the NXS. The security needs improvement. 

It's not feature-rich. It's not doing many tasks like a Next Generation Firewall such as Palo Alto for VM or other vendors like Fortinet for virtualized environments. 

It has to have the features from next-generation firewalls, and it needs to complement other features, as in the unified security gateway, to be a good competitor against other solutions.

It does not integrate well with many platforms. 

I've been using the solution for a couple of years now. 

Stability is not an issue. It's not buggy. It doesn't crash or freeze. the performance is good. 

It is a scalable product. 

We have around 1000 or more people on the solution. Our customers use the solution. We do not use it internally. 

We didn't have experience with VMware technical support. Mainly, the issues we need are covered via assistance from Palo Alto. I've never directly communicated with VMware support. 

We didn't use any solution for the virtualized environment.

That said, for other solutions in the market that have the same feature, we have experience. This includes Juniper, Cisco, and Palo Alto. These all have next-generation firewall features, which have been standard for 20 years now.

It's intermediate in terms of ease of setup. It is not so straightforward, and it's not also complex.

 It integrates with certain vendors like Palo Alto very well. That said, other vendors, like Fortinet or others, do not have the same level of integration.

I'd rate the process a there out of five in terms of ease of setup. 

The deployment took three weeks the first time we did it. The strategy is mainly segmenting between operational virtual machines which have, for example, the database and the application front end on the same VLAN. If I need to segment this traffic, it wouldn't be possible without NSX.

We have two people that can handle deployment and maintenance tasks. We need someone who understands the schema of the solution itself, the software itself, the front end and the database, and so on. Then, we also need one person from the security team.

We had a consultation and fielded recommendations from a Palo Alto engineer.

From a security point of view, the ROI you would see would be based on making things secure. The risk is at the lowest possible levels. However, the level of security that would be improved using this solution alone isn't so good. I'd rate the ROI a two out of five as it doesn't do much on its own. 

I'm not sure about licensing, as this is out of my scope as a technical engineer.

We did look into other options before choosing this solution. 

We are a partner. I'm using the latest version of the solution. 

It has good features for tagging and auto-tagging and so on. That said, without another complementary solution like Palo Alto or other micro-segmentation firewall vendors, it would not be of that much use. It needs the support of other software.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten. It lacks standard security features, which is why I rate it so low. 

We use VMware NSX for application service deployments.

VMware NSX is a very good solution. It's also a scalable solution.

It could be more user-friendly, but it's manageable. When we add a specific node to this particular NSX and the configuration changes, it won't push through the errors where required, but it'll accept it. However, while using it, we will have issues. It can also be more stable. 

It could be more stable.

VMware NSX is a scalable solution. We have about 10,000 people using it at our company.

Technical support is good.

We are still in the process of completing the migration from the physical servers to NSX.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward, but it takes a long time to implement this solution. You need hundreds of people to deploy and maintain this solution.

VMware NSX isn't cheap. 

I would tell potential users that they need to do a high-level review of their entire data center architecture, and should not leave any specific configurations related to connectivity that would lead them to more challenges. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give VMware NSX a seven.

Have used this solution to implement PAS (PCF) and have also used it for Native Datacenter networking as part of DC refresh.

Have worked on multiple organizations with VMware NSX. It heavily depends on the use case of the solution and how well you are able to use all the features of the product. When using for K8s container platforms or a networking backed for on premises cloud using a CMP(VRA, VIO) then VMware NSX is the best SDN solution but If an organization is not able to use NSX to its full potential (Switching, Routing, Load-balancing, Firewall, IDS, IPS etc.) then its not worth it.

Logical routing, switching are  overall good feature of this SDN solution especially when using CMP's and distributed firewall is very attractive features for micro-segmentation.

In rare situation there are  mismatch in the control plane data and dataplane data i.e. the details and what you actually see on the transport note. This is rare but time consuming to troubleshoot . Additionally, there could be better integration between VMware Cloud Federation (VCF) and NSX-T. Currently, there are some limitations, for example, VCF allows just one overlay transport zone. Also there is not upgrade path from VCF 3(NSX-T 2.5.x) to VCF 4 (NSX-T 3.x)

I have been using the solution for approximately five years.

The stability is good and is getter better after each new release.

The solution is scalable. In the 2.4 version, the controller got merged to create the cluster manager, it now is even better.

The technical support was pretty good, but recently I have had quite a few bad experiences with the support. But that really depends on the account and geographic location and multiple other factors

We have using Cisco ACI  and it is a strong competitor. When you are not using NSX NCP then everything that you need from SDN prospective can be done in Cisco ACI except for the distributed firewall at the vnic level.

The initial installation feels at first a little complex because there are a lot of components, but when you get the understanding after a short time, it is fine.

I was not involved in the purchase of the solution but I hear it is on the expensive side. That is why quite a few companies are moving towards open source because there are multiple solutions such as NginX, that can do the load balancing, and Calico and Flannel can do your logical switching routing.

If there is already VMware environment then it makes sense to use NSX-V, NSX-T as it can be integrated with other VMware automation products. But if approach it towards opensource then other SDN solutions like flannel, Nginx etc. can be evaluated depending on the use case.

If you are wanting to implement this solution I would advise if your project supports it then definitely. You should have a solid use case, the solution is rich in feature sets and you should use all of them. Then only is it worth the money, if you are just buying it for your logical switching and routing, then it is not worth it.

I rate VMware NSX a seven out of ten.

This is a product for network security, and network management. 

We don't use it at the production level. I am conducting a PoC.

We are using this in our testing data center and not in our live data center. This infrastructure contains many security devices from other vendors such as Palo Alto.

We are also using vSAN and vCenter.

The most valuable features are stability and low cost.

There are always issues integrating with Cisco.

Switching is always a big problem for us because our switch is not supported.

If the integration was more open, then it would be good.

I have been using VMware NSX for three years.

We are using the latest version, and we already want to upgrade it.

It's a stable solution. We plan to continue using it.

There are three users in our organization who are using this solution.

VMware technical support is good but we find that the Cisco support is better for us.

This product is better for network security than Cisco ASA and Firepower.

The initial setup is straightforward but still takes time.

It takes longer to deploy than Cisco products. It takes between three and seven days to deploy,

We had a team of five for deployment. Two are from our company and three were from the vendor.

We have a license.

It is an expensive product, but cheaper than some competing solutions.

It's a good product.

This is a solution that I recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We were using VMware NSX for high availability. 

We recently used it to migrate a way to the public cloud.

The migration methods are the most valuable aspect of this solution. The rest is just overly complicated.

We had some issues with the cloud version.

It needs to be cheaper.

We are stopping its use. We won't need it because we'll be using cloud-native.

The company has been working with VMware NSX for six years.

I have hands-on experience with VMware NSX.

It was on-premise, but we just used it to do cloud migration to VMC, and it will be removed after that.

The on-premises version of VMware NSX was not stable, but it was for VMC migrations. 

The on-premises version of VMware NSX is not scalable.

The cloud version is most likely fine. I couldn't really say, but after the on-premise system was implemented, everyone was afraid of change. It was really flaky.

We don't have a large number of users. It is not used as such by people; it is a piece of infrastructure software.

There would have been less than half a dozen, not very many.

I personally have not had any contact with technical support.

The initial setup is complex.

TCS assisted us with the installation.

If five is a good price and one is a high price, I would rate the price a one out of five.

I would not recommend this solution to others.

As a technical solution, I would rate VMware NSX a five out of ten.

Primary use case is to implement network virtualization for L2/L3 traffic in customers environment and at a minimum implement baseline micro segmentation. each customer has a different business requirement depending on how their existing network is setup --what physical L3 devices are in place and how NSX will need to be configured to function properly.  Most customer using NSX V that we have worked with are running UCS servers or HP

with vsphere 6.7 /7  mid level transport node counts respectively etc.

It has allowed our customers to scale/extend their existing IP subnets and spin up new subnets on-demand for new app/web/DB tiers. Increasing overall VM-to-VM security and policy deployments. It has helped increase operational efficiency from a network management perspective. Many firms have multiple racks of equipment at different data centers that leveraging NSX definitely helps (extending the 'same' IP subnets to different racks in the same data center). For customers who use SRM, there are also great benefits (i.e., not having to manually re-IP DR-side VMs during a failover test).

• micro segmentation features
• VDS
• NSX Transport zone
• vxlan encapsulation
• edge services gateway 
• distributed logical router
• esxi Vtep

By utilizing NSX V solutions from VMware, customers have the tools needed to move their data regardless of the underlying physical network. They can do this in a way that enforces proper security policies and compliance regulations. Even with SDN solutions, customers must protect their business-critical data residing in their virtual infrastructure

NSX V has less security features than NSX T just so you are aware

• NSX Manager console: limit on number of NSX Controllers an architecture can have
• Support for ESXi, KVM, bare-metal servers, Kubernetes, OpenShift, AWS and Azure.
• Integrate NSX Controllers into NSX Manager as a single virtual appliance so controllers no longer need to be deployed independently.
• Directs to vCenter by registering Transport Nodes instead of registering NSX Manager inside of vCenter.
• Use a more modern overlay technology for encapsulation that performs better and is more flexible for the future over older, more traditional VXLAN overlay technology.

I have used it for 3+ years.

Stability factors stemmed from existing ESXi host setup/configuration/performance and compute capacity; did not identify any stability issues with VMware NSX solution itself.

No scalability issues encountered.

Customer Service:

Customer service is 10/10.

Technical Support:

Technical support is 10/10.

No previous solution in place.

Straightforward setup; best practices need to be adhered to.

Implemented in-house in PoC/prod; showed customer PoC demo, then implemented at customer site with positive results.

As a VMware Partner, our ROI is the same as our customers perhaps. NSX helps us leverage our existing infrastructure that is used for training/consulting purposes.

No other options evaluated. VMware is the leader in network virtualization.

Typically CCIE's are the ones tasked with implementing NSX due to their solid network background. Organizations for the most part do not have resources that know VMware as well as they know Cisco. The skills required to be well versed in deploying this technology is rare.