VMware NSX Reviews

I primarily use the product as network virtualization software.

VMware NSX is a great product for network virtualization. No other vendor can offer this kind of solution up until now, and it's great for enhancing security at the virtual machine level. There is micro-segmentation, and a distributed firewall, and all network and network security components can be virtualized with the help of this NSX-T stack. It is a pioneer software solution for network security in a virtualized environment.

This solution comes with an API that can easily integrate with other solutions. 

NSX features include micro-segmentation, distributed IPS, IDS functionality, URL analysis, gateway firewall, logical routing, and all the staple networking solutions like DNS, DSCP, and routing. All these features are very interesting.

The solution is stable.

We can scale it if we need to.

It should support Hyper-V also. Nowadays, NSX supports the KVM and ESXi hypervisors only. It should also support Hyper-V and Citrix hypervisors.

There have already been lots of improvements. For example, they edited the intelligent plans and added an advanced load balancer. The latest version, 4.0, really has all the features you need.

It's a bit complex to set up the product.

I have a total of around three years of experience using the NSX-T solution. 

The stability is good architecture-wise. We haven't had any issues. 

The solution can scale well. 

It is not a user-based solution. We deploy it to about 20 servers. 

We did not previously use a different solution before this product.

It is a little bit complex to set up. It depends upon deployment. Either it is greenfield or brownfield deployment. If it is greenfield, it is very easy. If it is a brownfield deployment, so you need to take care of multiple scenarios of your network, and you need to understand the network architecture, then the deployment of services. 

While deployment requires a complete team, maintenance only requires on VMware administrator. 

We handled the initial setup with the help of a third-party SI team.

This product provides end-to-end visibility and security to your virtual environment. So it's a very huge return on investment in terms of security enhancement and maintaining cybersecurity posture.

The cost of the solution is moderate. I'd rate it three out of five in terms of affordability.

There is no other option available for this kind of product.

The product should be implemented in any IT infrastructure virtual environment. It is a must-have.

I'd rate it a ten out of ten.

The solution is used for network virtualization. Normally, in my cases, I was billing it for the government clouds, for NIC, the National Informatics Computer of India. For them, I was making a cloud where a different government, a smaller government entity, wanted to buy a cloud from the government clouds.

Apart from the normal functionality, a few things are quite useful, including multi-cloud networking. They have container networking and load balancing. Those are quite useful in terms of when we are designing a solution.

It's a pretty mature platform right now. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

We found the solution to be stable. 

It's scalable. 

I haven't found any shortcomings. 

It might be nice to have more AI in the future. It would help keep us from redesigning every time. 

I've worked with the solution for four years now. 

The solution is stable and perfectly fine. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution can scale well. 

We had a user base of around 1200 people.

I dealt with tech support during pre-deployment, and they were fine. They were helpful when we were dealing with staging cases. I wasn't an active part of the actual deployment and can't speak of how helpful they were in that part of the process. 

I was the previous architect for the NSX, not the implementer.

My understanding is the setup process is quite straightforward. 

Our deployment was quite big. Including the staging and all the stuff, we were able to deploy in a four-month timeframe. That is not only NSX, that is the complete deployment of the cloud. We had a few issues here and there, however, overall, it was fine. 

It's easy to maintain for the most part. The orchestration layer for it was a bit hectic work for us. That needed a dedicated VMware team. Apart from that, everything was quite smooth for NSX or vSphere, et cetera, and it is quite simple to manage it.

The finance team handles the licensing agreements. I can't speak to the exact cost.

When going for multiple OEM solutions, like Juniper, Cisco, HPE, et cetera, NSX will be quite useful. Don't go for the ACSIs and all Juniper proprietary options since future upgrades will be a bit tough if something needs to be added. Therefore, if it is a multiple OEM architecture, go for NSX, it'll be more helpful.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the load balancing and routing of firewall rules. Many of the features are beneficial.

I have been using VMware NSX for approximately four years.

VMware NSX can be stable. However, before you start, you need a very thorough sturdy design. Once this is complete you can go on building your VMware NSX in your environment. 

I went to VMware to look at their best practice designs, but they didn't apply to our environment. I had to take some parts of different designs and build my own that was exactly what was right for us.

Get the designs first, study them very thoroughly and after that, you can implement what will work for you.

The scalability of VMware NSX is very good. However, you have to take into consideration that you have to study their documentation.

The amount of users or devices VMware NSX  can handle depends on the resource that you allocate to the Edges and to the management cluster. They are small, medium, and large. A large allocation can handle thousands of virtual machines. We mostly deploy medium to large-scale systems.

The support from VMware NSX could improve. We are a large company and when we have an issue we do not need to waste everyone's time with level one and two support. I try and explain to them I need level three support but they say they have to follow protocol and pass me through the different levels.   

I have used previously Cisco 1000V. It was much more expensive than VMware NSX. We cannot compare them because the Cisco 1000V is obsolete and I don't know if they have a newer version or something similar. They are not the same technology, Cisco 1000V is from 2015, and NSX-T is from 2021. There is a big difference between time and technology.

If you have experience with the setup of VMware NSX it is simple, but if you do not it could be difficult. I would advise new users to contact professional support from VMware.

The price of VMware NSX is reasonable.

I rate VMware NSX a nine out of ten.

I was part of the NSX troubleshooting team from VMware, where we worked with different customers to troubleshoot their NSX operational issues. Also, I was part of the design and deployment team. We do PSO projects and migration for customers.

The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the DFW (distributed firewall). The distributed firewall is much better and more powerful than the physical firewall because it's applied at the beginning level.

The software-defined version of VMware NSX contains all the security features like IPS and IDS. In the physical space, you have to get separate IDS, security, or load balancer products. VMware NSX provides several features like VPN, load balancers, DFW, and gateway firewall.

Since most people are very much used to physical networking, they find it difficult to use VMware NSX in the initial stage.

I have been using VMware NSX for the past six years.

The solution's stability is very good compared to its older versions. It is advisable not to go in a production environment with the latest version because it might sometimes have new features that can break.

I rate VMware NSX a nine out of ten for stability.

We can easily scale the solution with the current product version if we have more users.

I rate VMware NSX a nine out of ten for scalability

The solution's implementation is easy.

The initial phase of deployment involves deploying three NSX Managers. Then, you have to plan to do a lot of things like configurations and routing. If you have everything ready for configuration, you should be able to complete the VMware NSX installation in a month.

In the case of daily deployment, it depends on how much we are deploying and how many configurations we are doing. Two weeks should be more than sufficient to complete the configurations if we do it daily.

VMware NSX is a cheaper product compared to its competitor, Cisco.

Since most people are very much used to physical networking, they find it difficult to use VMware NSX in the initial stage. However, once you start using it, you'll be very much fond of the particular product. VMware NSX is very easy to manage.

You can deploy the solution on the cloud or on-prem, depending on the customer's requirement.

When changing from the physical to the virtual space, you have to plan the routing part. You'll have a hardening of networks in the physical space. However, when you bring it to NSX, everything is at the hypervisor level in the virtual space. That's one thing you will have to plan because a few critical applications might require a VLAN-backed network.

They have a restriction that they can't move it to the overlay networks and must remain in the physical VLAN. We have to plan properly for migrations because improper planning can break the current network or operations.

It would be good if users use all the features in the solution to have everything in one place. Users can access the web UI to manage security, load balancer, and VPN protection.

Overall, I rate VMware NSX an eight out of ten.

The solution's most valuable feature is ease of use. Its filtering features work best for our business requirements.

It could be helpful if the solution's licensing model is based on the number of VMs rather than hypervisors.

We have been using the solution for seven years.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability as an eight.

The solution's scalability depends on the licensing model.

The solution's customer service is good.

The solution is reasonable at the local level. But it is expensive to deploy it globally.

I advise others to understand their business requirements. They should know if they want the solution to block some protocols or to make accurate filtering. I rate the solution as an eight.

VMware NSX is used for server virtual machines.

The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the ease of use and its user friendly. For example, it is simple to change the subnet masks.

The solution could improve by having a more streamlined setup.

I rate VMware NSX for approximately one year.

The solution is highly stable.

We have approximately 2,000 users using this solution.

VMware NSX scales well.

I have rarely used the support of the solution.

I rate the support from VMware NSX an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have not used a similar solution to VMware NSX.

The installation process for VMware NSX can be intricate. We obtained the executable file for the specific server we intended to install VMware NSX and then proceeded to configure it. This involved ensuring that the IP and ID matched the installation, as well as completing other necessary details such as setting up the gateways.

We are using the free version of the solution.

We have 10 analysts and administrators that do the maintenance of the solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate VMware NSX a nine out of ten.

NSX is under the platform. NSX is used on a cloud-only platform for clients.

The solution works well overall and we are happy with it.

We enjoy the micro-segmentation and the ability to extend the network on Layer Two.

It is stable. 

The solution can scale well. 

We have found the UI to be very good. The interface is intuitive enough.

It offers good documentation. 

I'm not sure where the solution can be improved. 

We did recently need a patch to deal with an outage on NSX.

The price is rather high.

We've been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. We have just had an issue that caused an outage of some of our NSX. However, now it's okay. VMware gave us a patch to correct it.

It is a scalable product. It's not a problem.

There are about 3,000 VMs on our data center. There are a lot of customers.

When we had an issue recently, VMware asked to upgrade to a high level of support to correct the problem.

The initial setup offers an average level of complexity. It's neither too difficult or too hard. 

I'm a system engineer, so I don't know exactly what the price is. However, I am aware that it's high. It's better suited to larger enterprises.

We are service providers and partners.

I'd rate the product eight out of ten.

The primary use case is the microsegmentation of all our infrastructure, which is a huge bonus. It's performed well.

The microsegmentation allows me to sleep at night. My job is reducing risk, plugging security holes, and working with the automated layer security. Even if somebody spins up a new server, it has to have a tag in NSX. Therefore, all the security rules are already applied across the infrastructure or automatically applied to new machines. It doesn't generate any new security holes if people have new products. It gives peace of mind that project managers are not screwing up my entire security posture.

Automation, because we're constantly onboarding massive customers. We have our own management system, which integrates nicely with NSX. Therefore, we've built an automation layer so we can deploy and completely secure new customers in a hosted environment within a couple of minutes.

Microsegmentation is incredible. It's the only way to go for managing networks long-term.

The security benefit has been huge.

I would like to have automating reporting built into common service management platforms, such as JIRA, Serviceaide, and ServiceNow. 

The stability has been great. I have had no problems with it. It is a robust solution.

We manage a huge infrastructure, and it has not been a problem for us. It has caused no issues.

We generally load balance with separate hardware. With the normal traffic that we see between virtual machines, they never leave the host. So, there are no real issues there. We will use separate, dedicated hardware, because we are at such a scale that our customers prefer to have separate load balances in the hardware.

We jumped onboard with NSX right when it started. VMware worked with us when we had issues or made suggestions to the point that we were invited as a partner to 2016 VM World, because we contributed so heavily into NSX. It has been nice to see the things our potential pain points that we were having with NSX at the time be implemented into the product. Now, it's just seamless, which is great.

We just bought it off the shelf and implement it ourselves.

We have saved man-hours and decreased our security exposure.

We haven't had to hire a dedicated network engineer because NSX handles 90 percent of it. The reduced overhead in terms of managing networks has been the biggest plus. 

We haven't had to buy additional switching capacity.

Get it in your environment as soon as possible.

Network segmentation is hard. A lot of businesses still use the traditional three-tier system, because it has been proven, but it isn't particularly robust or secure. Realistically, it's a natural step in terms of network management to move to micro-segmentation. It just makes sense.

If someone is worried that the solution is too complex, they should hire people with experience.