VMware Software Defined Data Center Reviews

I think the best way to think of it is, all the reasons why virtualization is so important to compute, SDDC gives to things like network and storage.

Things that used to take a real long time to do with compute are much faster with virtualization. Now it's the same thing with storage and network because you don't have to worry about any physical hardware. You need additional load balancing or firewall or even a VLAN stretch somewhere, it's now all done with just a keyboard.

The biggest operational change I'd like to see them do with vSAN is to change the actual underlying way the storage is done, so that every node and every disc in the cluster equally participates in all reads and writes. It isn't set up that way right now. I know that's an insane thing to ask because it would require completely rewriting the application.

For NSX I don't know if there's anything that needs to come out right away, partially because we have not started using it yet. Also, because we're so far behind the times, by the time we start using it all the features we need will already be available.

SDDC is a mix of a range of products so it's tough to kind of answer that. But, I think that by the time it makes it to first customer-ship it's usually good enough that it can be used for most use cases.

Again, two different products. I think the scalability of vSAN is good enough if you consider that most people aren't going to put clusters together larger than 12 or 14 or 16 nodes anyway. NSX doesn't really have a scaling issue so I guess it scales really well.

I haven't used it for this solution. I do have the OEM contact. We're only in the discovery phase for software designed storage with vSAN, and we're not even really in discovery for NSX which is the networking side of it. So we haven't really had any production issues because it's not in production yet.

Regarding having used a different solution, that's a tough question to answer. Software defined data center means that there were things that were in the datacenter that weren't software defined and now they are. So I guess we were using other stuff before. But, it wasn't software defined.

The switch is a business conversation, usually around cost avoidance or, potentially, return on investment. It's typically cheaper to do things in software than in hardware and that's the direction we're going.

The main reason we chose VMware is it's very attractive for us, particularly for a VxRail solution from EMC, that every single piece of hardware and software is made by the same company. So there are no inner operability issues. There's no cat and mouse, there's no one trying to play catch-up. As soon as VMware comes out with a new whatever, EMC has it and it works and it's tested.

I was not involved in the setup at this company. But, I was at a previous one.

There's a lot to it. vSAN is not as straightforward as it could be. But, partnering with Dell EMC, they put together an appliance called VxRail which is extremely easy to use. They solved all the problems.

Anybody could do setup for VxRail. It asks you 15 minutes of questions and you walk away and it's done.

Definitely Nutanix for vSAN is on our shortlist. ACI and NSX, like everybody else. They're the only two players in this space.

The most important thing to look for in selecting a vendor is total cost of ownership.

As for advice, you probably are already, but if your aren't, you need to be looking at SDDC because it's just such an easier, faster, safer, cheaper way of deploying a datacenter.

We started the project using this solution about three years ago, and we are now in production.

We primarily use this solution for automation.

We have an on-premises deployment.

The most valuable feature of this solution is integration because everything is available on a single pane of glass.

This is not yet a mature product. Initially, it is simple to use, but after some time in production, you've got problems. These are particularly related to the main design.

The design phase is not easy. All of the stuff available on the website is not very carefully designed. We suffered for four months before obtaining the bug fix.

I would like to see the process of building and setting up homogeneous classes made easier.

We have some Intel machines and some AMD machines, are we cannot mix these within the same cluster. It is a big mess for us. As we want to scale, we do not always want to use the same kind of machine.

This solution is stable, but problems can be difficult to solve when something goes wrong.

I am very confident about the scalability. Compared to an ESXi environment, I'm not convinced that the same applies to NSX.

We have about ten people in our team who use this solution. We are working towards increasing the number of users. However, there are things that have to be fixed in production first. After that, we can scale more.

I cannot say very much about the post-sale support team because they normally speak with the customers directly, and we are not advised of the problem.

For the software-defined storage it is very easy because there is not very much to do. The product is quite automated.

For the NSM design, it takes a lot of time because you have to configure the integration for third-party products like Cisco ACI. 

During the design phase, we had VMware at our site. They carefully considered the aspects of our design.

You have to learn a lot before using this product, but once you learn it, there are a lot of advantages.

The main problem is design, not implementation.

When it comes to this type of solution, there are not very many people who are skilled in managing it. For example, I could say that in Italy we have four or five.

I definitely recommend this product for others but, again, in some cases, there is a lot of work to do.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Server virtualization is the primary use case.

There were a few reasons we went with VMware virtualization:

• There were exponential demands from the business for servers, databases, applications, and quick availability. 
• Lack of data center facilities. 
• Time to setup, configure, and install the servers. 
  

There have been many improvements in our virtualization strategy and roadmap. We started small and were able to satisfy our developers with quick infrastructure provisioning. It has allowed us to maintain uptime and availability. 

Motioning is also very easy. We used vROps to create alerts that notify us whenever there are virtual machines powered on or off.

VMware has many features: 

• It is easy to set up and configure. 
• Installing the virtual environment takes little effort. 
• Some of the great features that we found with VMware were availability, stability, uptime, and easy management. 
• With the CPU and Hot-Add RAM features, it was very easy to upgrade the system resources without any downtime. 
• Performance monitoring is easy. It is easy to troubleshoot and do a quick recovery of systems. 
• vMotion from one host to another is a great feature. 
• Converting physical servers to virtual servers is useful.
  

We would like to see more analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning capabilities in their products. 

Another good feature would be to have predictive analytics and remote monitoring to monitor the virtual infrastructure with integrations to social media apps, like WhatsApp and others.

10 years.

It is very easy to do technology refreshments, patching, and upgrades with almost zero downtime. Its easy to bring servers online within few minutes.

We started by virtualizing about 10 servers, and now, have more than 500 servers.

We started with version 3.x , then moved on from that older version to newer versions as per VMware recommendations and the hardware performance guide. Now, we are mostly running the latest version (6.5).

It took less time to understand the architecture.

Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix.

We tried Microsoft Hyper-V as a proof of concept. We found VMware to be more stable and adopted in the industry.

It is great product. In the end, we are happy to have a stable infrastructure for our team and DevOps.

I recommend going with VMware for all of your critical applications.

We are a system integrator and this is one of the solutions that we provide to our customers.

I have experience with using this solution in both cloud-based and on-premises deployments.

The most valuable feature of this solution is vSphere.

This solution is easy to use.

The virtualization has room for improvement.

The Site Recorder Manager needs to be improved. We would like to have active-active replication. 

This solution is not efficient for small customers.

Technical support could use some improvement.

This is a very stable product. It's stable because it is a Linux community solution. In four years we have had no downtime.

This is a very scalable solution.

The technical support for this solution used to be very good, but I found that it has been weakening. They have given up the practice of giving out Action Plans, which were ways of explaining the problem and finding a solution. They don't seem to want to go the extra mile anymore.

The knowledge base for this solution is easily accessible and you can solve many problems using it. If you have been using VMware for a long time and you come across an error then you can go to the knowledge base to search for a resolution.

Most of the time, customers rely on people who have been using VMware for a long time, and who have experience with different kinds of issues, to help solve their problems.

I have used other solutions in my time as a Sun engineer and as a Solaris engineer. For example, I have used Microsoft Azure, but I am more of a VMware kind of person.

The initial setup of this solution is very straightforward. It is easy to install.

VMware is the king among these types of solutions.

This is a very nice solution.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Our clients are using this solution for different types of workloads, VDI, DevOps, containers, etc. They are using its latest version.

The feature set and the maturity of the product are most valuable.

Its pricing could be better, and there could be more integration.

I have been working with this solution for five to six years.

It is stable.

It is scalable.

Their support is good. I would rate them a four out of five.

It really depends on the size of the project, but it is of moderate complexity. It is not that easy, and it is not that difficult.

The number of people needed for its implementation depends on the size of the project. Usually, very few people are needed. You just need one or two people.

Its pricing could be better.

I would advise others to do proper network designing and sizing prior to the deployment.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We primarily used the solution at first for business applications, then it as the port operator. We use it for the management of shipping containers, so we have a primary data center and secondary data center. 

The ease of deploying virtual machines is the solution's most valuable feature. Moving virtual machines from one post to another is easy. Within minutes you can easily deploy your virtual machines and deploy your applications as well.

The automation of the solution needs improvement. We should be able to automate some processes.

The solution is very, very stable. The only issue is related to VMware. It's an application issue and something specific to that particular application. For some VMs you have two subnets.

The solution is extremely scalable. Initially, we were using HPE MSA as a storage system. Last year we installed HPE 3PAR and we were able to integrate the two. We can use it to move VMs in between 3PAR and MSA easily. Right now, we have just over 100 users.

We've been in touch with technical support on a couple of occasions. It was excellent. They were able to provide solutions to every issue we had.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Initially, we used a consultant for the deployment when we installed version 5.0. This year, we upgraded to 6.0 of BIT3. We did that implementation by ourselves.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I would recommend the solution. It is one of the best in the market. It's very easy. They also offer knowledge right on their website, which is very helpful. If anyone has issues they can refer to the knowledge base for recommendations. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use this solution to help centralize our office.

We have two Data Centers. One of them is for our DR and the other is for production. This is an on-premises deployment.

We have a lot of VMware hosts and this solution is needed for them. If you have more than two VMware hosts then you definitely need this solution to connect and manage them.

Using this solution will provide you with a lot of features for working with multiple VMware hosts.

The most recent web-based interface has given us some problems. For example, if you delete a virtual machine or you delete storage then it takes a long time to refill it. In prior versions that were a client installed directly on the PC, the interface was more responsive. Things happened on time. I had a problem last week where one of my VMs was deleted, and it took perhaps thirty minutes to repair it.

This product is one hundred percent stable.

After we installed it, we have not had any issues with the core product.

Scalability depends on the hardware. If you have a server with low performance when you will have problems. On the other hand, if you use high-performance servers then you will have no trouble with scalability.

We have not needed to contact technical support regarding this solution.

We used another virtual environment prior to this solution, but it was not as stable. Stability is important because if you need to restart the server then it will restart all of the virtual machines inside it.

The initial setup of this solution is not a problem.

We handled the implementation and we do the support for this product ourselves.

It is hard to find things that this product needs. Whatever we have needed, we found it.

We are completely satisfied with this product.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are a system integration company and this is one of the solutions that we provide to our clients.

One of our clients in the Health Care field is in the process of modernizing their data center using this solution. It will be replacing a lot of different products from different vendors that all have different levels of support. Currently, a large team is required to maintain the data center because it contains legacy technology, and the management of everything is very tough.

This solution helps customers to utilize existing hardware and perform this type of migration in steps, replacing hardware devices one by one. It helps us to scale up and scale-out. We can decommission an old server and add a new one, but we don't have to decommission everything all at once. With some customization, we can utilize the existing resources.

There are different deployment models, including both public cloud and private cloud.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the SDDC Manager. It is the big difference between this product and its competitors.

the VMware SDDC solution gives the IT admin fully control on the level of HW and SW, you could manage, upgrade and update the VMware infrastructure and you could utilize vRealize suite for operation and automation of your project.

so, the most valuable thing in the SDDC solution are two products which make it different from the competitors:

1- VMware NSX for networking and security virtualization

2- VMware SDDC Manager 

The main problem that we are facing with this solution is vSAN stability. Sometimes, the storage becomes unstable. It is not an issue with integration; rather, it seems to be within vSAN. It could be the hardware that we are working with. VMware has confirmed the bugs, but have not told us to upgrade the hardware. It is compatible and everything is ok, so I don't know. VMware has done some upgrading and patching.

Not all of the storage systems from other vendors can be integrated into this solution.

The licensing for this solution should be improved. For example, you should be able to expand the SDDC with a compute-only node, rather than a hyper-converged node. Otherwise, you are buying a vSAN license for nothing. Their competitors, like Cisco, do not have this problem.

They have to add the fibre channel storage so that it can be integrated with the SDDC nodes. That was the customer can utilize their storage for file-sharing, which most of the customers have. EMC Unity and HP3PAR connect using FC connectivity, but for this solution, we have to change everything in order to mount this storage to the SDDC node.

Adding endpoint security to this solution would be a good improvement.

This is a stable solution, but the stability is not as good as some other products such as VxRail and Nutanix. While more recent releases may be more stable, I have had some issues in the past. VMware did solve a couple of bugs for us.

This solution is very scalable.

The technical support for this solution is perfect. They are very co-operative.

Prior to this solution, we worked manually. We would supply a hyper-converged infrastructure to our customers and then install a software-defined network. It is an SDDC, but there is no single management portal. This means that it is not fully integrated.

The initial setup of this solution is easy. All of the customers can go to VMware Hands-on Labs online and test this solution before buying it.

The time required for deployment depends on many things. It depends on whether they are migrating data, or if they are a disaster recovery site, and how many nodes there are. It also depends on the integration.

If we exclude the racking and stacking, physical network connectivity, and hardware configuration, and are only setting up SDDC for say ten nodes, then it can be done in three to five hours. It's up and running, albeit empty, without virtual machines or anything else.

All of the customers can go to VMware Hands-on Labs online and test this solution before buying it.

If you add virtualization to and HCI solution then VxRail is more stable than this solution. However, VxRail is more difficult to upgrade and patch because it is more complicated.

When you install a Nutanix system then you never have to touch it.

This solution is being sold more often than competing solutions by Dell and HP.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.