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 clients are moving from traditional to virtual infrastructure, so we sold them vSphere, vSAM, and NSX to manage all the workloads inside VMware. All the VMs work just like traditional infrastructure inside an appliance.

NSX has excellent security features like virtual firewalls. I also like the micro-segmentation features, which are useful for the virtual machines inside the servers.

I started working with Nutanix NSX last year. 

I rate NSX eight out of 10 for stability. 

NSX is easy to scale. 

We sell Nutanix, Dell EMC, HPE, and IBM. Right now, I'm working with IBM Storage and Power Servers. We have Pure Systems, too, but I'm still new. It's my first week at the company, so I'm still studying other vendors that I'm unfamiliar with.

I'm not implementing. I am selling the solution. You can use it on-prem or in the cloud. If you are using SRM, including NSX in your workloads makes things easier. You can easily move everything, including the network security and several layers inside the appliance, to the cloud or any other site.

VMware has a subscription and perpetual license. In the New Year, they're changing many things about the licensing model. Previously, NSX was licensed according to the number of sockets inside the appliance, so we bought VMware licenses based on that. However, that may have changed this year. We are still contacting the vendors to understand the new licensing strategy.

I rate VMware NSX nine out of 10. I recommend it.

NSX is used with vCloud Director to provide networking as a service or extend the capabilities of the load balancer, VPN, firewall, etc. There are two types of NSX. VMware's latest version is a product called NSX-T. It's a universal solution used across the VMware lineup and products like Hyper-V or the public cloud. You can use it on-prem or public cloud as well. NSX is used by the operations team, architects, and engineers. There are maybe 20 to 30 people using it.

NSX extends Layer-2 scalability on Layer 3, covering the vRO and extending the capability on Layer 3 by decapsulating using a new mechanism. NSX-V was designed to use with VMware products and Success 360, providing more flexibility toward different levels of cloud, containers, and components. NSX-T gives you the ability to stretch your network across different view locations. If you have multiple sites, you can connect them using NSX-T.

In the next release, they should enhance the visual interface. With NSX-T, it's difficult to communicate between the public cloud and the container. 

I have been using NSX for three or four years. 

NSX is stable.

NSX is scalable. You can deploy it on one node or a three-node cluster.

I rate VMware support six out of 10 for NSX-V and seven out of 10 for NSX-T.

Deploying NSX is difficult. VMware NSX has three components: management, controller, and database. You have to understand each of them and where to deploy them. There are lots of logs as well. The deployment varies whether you are deploying on a VM, public cloud, or standalone hardware. Each has its own prerequisites.

First, you have to enable features on your physical equipment, enabling you to install NSX. You have to deploy the dependencies and fix the board. The deployment time depends on the equipment, whether it's from Cisco, Jupiter, or another vendor. They have different approaches to enabling NSX.

The licensing is based on the CPU or the physical unit.

I rate NSX nine out of10. 

We primarily use the solution in order to build a private cloud.

I'm not using it directly. Basically, for me, this is just another tool in the portfolio. I'm not the engineering staff that are next to the console and doing configurations.

Overall, I would say the solution has been quite stable.

The solution is likely scalable.

I haven't heard of any problems with the solution.

Any technical product has its own limitations in one place or another.

Our technical team is always looking for the solutions that they work with to offer more convenient integrations.

I've been using the solution for around a year or so. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

There are some limitations in terms of scaling. It depends on how you would like to scale. Our engineers are using it and they don't see any problems with the scaling, however, it doesn't mean the same will work for any other organization.

Currently, we have more than 10,000 end-users. Our technical team isn't really that big. However, I can't say the exact number.

We do plan to continue to use the solution, however, we don't have plans for any big expansion.

I do not have any personal experience with technical support. I can't speak to how helpful, knowledgeable, or responsive they are.

I cannot say if there was a different solution used in our organization. It had been implemented before I arrived.

I didn't handle the initial installation. I can't speak to how easy or difficult it was to implement, or how long it took to deploy. I wasn't a part of the process.

I'm not involved in the licensing process at all. I have no knowledge of how long our licenses last or how much it costs the company.

We are just a customer and end-user. We don't have a business relationship with VMware.

We use a few different VMware products, not just NSX.

We aren't necessarily using the latest version of the solution. We usually use the latest minus one or two versions.

In general, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been mostly quite please with it.

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 host citizen-centric portals. They are web portals where citizens can enter and fetch data. For example, we have tax-related portals, health-related portals, and education-related portals. These are social welfare portals, and for that, we use AWS services.

NSX helps us by making IT management and operations more efficient. When VMs spin off from the DC to the DR site, all required settings on the network level are handled automatically.

The most valuable feature of NSX is the ease of configuration. It handles automatic configuration of IP addresses and network settings during VM migrations between data centers.

The ticket support response time from VMware could be improved. Often, callbacks are delayed, which can be problematic if the servers are in production.

We have been using NSX for almost one year.

NSX is stable and reliable. I would rate its stability between eight or nine out of ten.

NSX is quite scalable. I would rate its scalability as eight out of ten.

The customer support from VMware could be more responsive, as sometimes callbacks are delayed, causing delays in addressing critical issues.

Positive

We did not switch from another solution to NSX. We have been using VMware products, including vSphere, for many years.

The initial setup of NSX was complex, but with the help of an experienced vendor and support from VMware, we managed to configure it successfully in a short time.

We had an experienced vendor help with the implementation and received good support from VMware during the setup.

VMware has moved to a bundled pricing model, which means we are sometimes forced to pay for features we don’t use. This has increased our overall costs.

We evaluated Azure and other solutions, but we preferred AWS.

I recommend NSX because it simplifies IT operations and management, especially for data center network configurations.

We use it for microsegmentation. We're still in the middle of the project. We have 70 or 80 apps to microsegment and have only done about ten so far. We have a long way to go.

It makes our life easier as far as PCI and auditing are concerned. We have been audited over the last few years, which has brought up concerns and issues. The easiest resolution for this was to put NSX into place and use microsegmentation. So, that's what we did.

The microsegmentation is great, and the security team thinks it is great.

The solution is quite complex. You need to keep your thinking cap on and know what you are doing: Go to the training and listen to the solution architects when they come in because they have a lot of knowledge. 

There is a concern and some confusion around who owns NSX in the end, whether it's the network team or the VMware team. There is not much confusion about this anymore, but there was at the start. Would it be owned by the network team, who might never even have seen VMware before, but would understand firewall rules? Or would it be owned by your average VMware person? As far as someone else putting it in, make sure you know who is going to own it, and they have the staff and the capabilities to cover it.

The solution is robust as it covers everything we want to do and is stable, so we're happy enough with it. We have had no problems so far. Everything is great.

We have not seen any problems, but we are only at 10 applications though. There is still a long way to go.

We haven't had any problems to contact tech support about yet.

We didn't have anything before. The solution was highlighted by audits, which is why we decided to put it in.

The initial setup was simple. We started probably in December of last year and did a lot of prep: A lot of VMware upgrades, licensing upgrades, etc. All this was done in advance with VMware's help. The project came in for install in June and it took about two weeks. It was great, and we did not have problems.

VMware came on site and did the install with us, then handed it over, not transferred. They did the first two apps, then we have done the next eight. So, we haven't had to contact them for support yet. 

We deal directly with Dell EMC and VMware via Dell. This solution was the only thing on our radar. We didn't even look at anything else.

If a colleague was to ask me if it was a good idea to go ahead and put it this solution in, I would say, "Straightaway." I wouldn't have any doubts.

Usually, when we are deployed for a period of two months, we have to program VMware NSX from the beginning and set up all the security measures.

VMware NSX has helped by saving time. A task that would typically take a man several days can now be done in one or two days.

The most powerful feature of VMware NSX is the micro-segmentation that allows us to separate the different protocols our application works with. We also benefit from automation capabilities using Python scripts.

I cannot think of something specific that needs improvement since our needs are currently covered by VMware NSX. I have no complaints regarding the user interface or any technical issues.

I have been working with VMware NSX for two years. That said, it is not part of my everyday work.

No stability issues were mentioned.

No scalability issues were mentioned.

Our technicians have a good support experience from the company. I would rate customer service eight out of ten.

Positive

We have to follow specific rules and use accredited tools like VMware and have not used anything else.

We underwent training first, which made the deployment process not very difficult.

The primary benefit is time-saving for my organization.

VMware NSX is a little higher in price compared to the competition. I haven't gone through the internal analysis.

There are other solutions available, however, we are required to go with specific vendors due to accreditation and our organizational requirements.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.