VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN Reviews

We use VMware SD-WAN on the cloud and we use our own cloud.

The solution is used by our customers for putting their IT infrastructure in the Cloud and bridge to connect for retail. We have a very big string of customers moving their workplaces into the Cloud. This calls for a new topology and this is where VMware SD-WAN is the best fit.

There is one feature that would set VMware SD-WAN apart from others solutions, and that is what I call inter-cloud connectivity. All the solutions regarding VMware are good because for example, If I go from my workplace to a retail office and I want to use my applications in the Cloud, that is possible. Perhaps we have customers who have their IT partial environments hosted in different cloud locations, such as Amazon and Azure, and the interconnection between the clouds, this is not possible. If it was possible it would be a market game-changer. Having the SD-WAN solution that is good at optimizing and facilitating traffic between different cloud providers would be great.

I have been using VMware SD-WAN for more than one year.

The stability of VMware SD-WAN is very good.

VMware SD-WAN is scalable.

The initial setup is very simple.

The licensing model of VMware SD-WAN could be improved, it is not always that competitive. The biggest concern is to be competitive against other solutions. However, the way that the licensing model is designed is not corresponding to the real use cases of my customers.

My advice to others would be to trust the solution and buy it.

I rate VMware SD-WAN an eight out of ten

VMware SD-WAN is a layer 7 firewall.

We're doing POCs and getting a lot of good feedback from customers about VMware. They see how simple it is to deploy and how it reduces the number of employees needed on the network team. 

I like VMware SD-WAN's automation and zero-touch provisioning. Its main advantage is simplicity. Anyone can use this gateway.

Security is a challenge. I would like to see VMware add things like IPS, IDS, and web filtering. These features are the future of security, and most competing firewalls have them. We already have layer 7, but that is not enough for a headquarters. Maybe it's okay for a branch office.

We have been a VMware partner for three years.

VMware SD-WAN is highly stable. We haven't had any complaints about lost connections or the need to restart devices. 

VMware's scalability is good so far. We have 100 devices. 

We opened many tickets with VMware support in the last month. It's good, and they usually respond in under 24 hours. I rate VMware support five out of five.

Setting up VMware SD-WAN is simple and smooth. I would rate it four out of five for ease of deployment. 

I rate VMware SD-WAN eight out of 10. If you are looking for automation and want to free up your IT to focus on other things, I recommend VMware SD-WAN.

Our only use cases are large multinational enterprise customers, as well as very large service providers. The solutions get deployed to the public cloud or to the private cloud depending on the user's requirements.

There are 400 functionalities of the system. Depending on the user's requirements, we may find one feature more important than the other.

Sometimes the room for improvement is designing it for a different customer base that they're not currently in. We match the right solution to the right user's requirements. Some users need a multitenant offering, whereas most large enterprises don't need that. But if you are talking to a service provider, some don't offer a multitenant solution. And so when the customer needs that, we would say use one with a multitenant, like VMware.

We have been using this solution for about two or three years.

The ones we work with are all very good.

The scalability of the solution is very good. We have plans to increase usage.

Some clients want to go very slowly and test out just one country first. If you're going into a lot of countries, you sometimes have regulatory problems with devices being imported and finding the right people to handle that.

I can't really comment because I haven't used it that much.

The initial setup is always pretty complex with what we're involved in.

The deployment time really depends on how conservative a customer is and how quickly they want it to go. Some of them are three months and some are a year.

The amount of staff we need for the deployment depends on whether you're deploying to 50 sites or 2,500 sites. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. In order for it to be a ten out of ten, there should be more automation and self-service features.

Our main use cases have been for customers who have been traditionally using MPLS lines and are now moving into a lot more SaaS-based applications to transform the WAN infrastructure. A lot of our customers have end-of-life, end-of-support devices on the WAN and they are always looking for doing RFPs on cutting edge technology. Some of them happen to use a lot of VMware and Cisco portfolios in their data centers and they are constantly trying to see what solution fits best for them.

VMware has been chosen by many of our customers who do not want to do a lot of complex routing in their environment and want a very easy-to-use solution. The most valuable features are simple troubleshooting, Dynamic Multipath Optimization (DMPO), and cybersecurity. 

DMPO is a technology that is similar to a proprietary technology that VMware has. Customers probably do not understand too much about it in detail but they know about the benefits of it in general. What it does is constantly monitors all different areas, such as latency, jitter bandwidth, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It makes sure that if there is a case where there is a networking jitter contained in the link, it figures out how to maneuver your traffic elsewhere. This is all done automatically without customers getting slowed down on those poor links. The customers do not want to spend too much time researching these complex technologies which VMware automatically takes care of them. It benefits many IT teams by taking a lot of the burden away who are constantly juggling a hundred different other things as well.

The cybersecurity component is very important. VMware also has a lot of security components embedded into the SD-WAN, especially with the traditionally SD-WAN, and now a lot more integration through secure access with partnerships companies, such as Zscaler and other SaaS-based solutions. VMware has a lot of portfolios within themselves that can support many security use cases and if they cannot they have partnerships with industry leaders who can. For example, the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions through the Zscaler partnerships can help customers who want to move from traditional VPN solutions towards ZTNA based ones.

Overall as an experience, I have found that customers like the UI/UX experience that they receive from VMware.

There are customers that have very large routing and segmentation operations who do a lot of segmentation within their network and have complex routing requirements. VMware does not provide the facilities in terms of doing a lot of operations with routing tables, such as complex routing policies. It is more about that out-of-pocket experience that customers get out of VMware. There are other technologies for this type of use case from solutions, such as Versa or other WANs. These are for customers who are wanting to maneuver or configure things themselves, similar to DIY solutions, for them going to technologies, for instance from Versa, makes much more sense because they can do a lot more with routing, complex segmentation, and complex configurations. For customers who have complex service provider requirements, VMware and other solutions cannot support a lot of those use cases.

In an upcoming release, they should allow customers the flexibility to use mobile applications where they can go and check on the information about their networks. A lot of vendors, such as Meraki, have a lot more integration with the use of portals to a mobile application. Having this feature as an alternative to logging into a laptop would be beneficial. If you are a SaaS-based company why not make a mobile application as well. You might not be able to do configurations but at least monitor while away or on vacation.

I have been using this solution for approximately four years.

The software itself is very stable which our customers really like. They do not want to have buggy software or problems. I see the customers choose VMware over others and over time because of positive experiences with use cases, it becomes a trusted vendor and they tend to trust in the name as a brand in the future.

IT vendors are getting much more stable with the code, but nowadays everybody has more attention towards SaaS technology. Networking will just become another bundle to a lot of those providing this type of solution. Many vendors are getting into SaaS solutions and in terms of documentation, code releases, and features, there are probably more advancements. In SD-WAN specifically, a lot more features are moving into SaaS-based solutions. These new solutions are going to get reviewed and push the industries even further towards SaaS solutions it is the future.

The technical support is good.

The solution is straightforward to install compared to other solutions, VMware makes setup simple. SD-WAN vendors have a kind of simplicity embedded into them, just because of the nature of the software-defined components into it. 

I have evaluated Zscaler and Versa.

The advice to others wanting to implement this solution is not to try and do everything yourself. A lot of customers choose this route and are negatively affected two years later. It is important to do a lot of proof of concepts and testing. Get the solution from a trusted service provider who can manage it for you because these technologies are really complex under the code. Having a trusted service provider who can work with you and can have a lot of benefits. If your company business is not running the WAN links, I would suggest just offload that burden to a trusted service provider because then you can focus on your business. Technologies are complex, and doing all of these operations through your own IP node is complex. A trusted service provider who knows what they are doing can offload a lot of that burden allowing for you to relax and actually focus on your main applications and business.

A lot of customers I have seen in the industry try to do all the operations themselves just because they think that it is good to insource everything. This is one of the areas that you should not be insourceed a hundred percent of your team because these technologies can be extremely difficult to do on a day-to-day basis. Service providers handle hundreds of customers and they know a lot more about what you are doing and can be very useful than if you did it by yourself.

I rate VMware SD-WAN an eight out of ten.

There is a cloud gateway feature that centrally locates every space, which you don't get with Cisco. The cloud gateway is a very good feature for scaling purposes, etc. It's a very simple feature. In fact, everything about VeloCloud is quite simple, including the concept of the circuits, and, from a  technical perspective, it's not as challenging as Cisco VPNs. They have VPN 0, VPN 1, VPN 2, VPN 3, but they're very simple in that approach — the concept of circuits. Overall, I think both products are good. 

Cisco has begun to push its SD-WAN code within all of its ISR routers. This has made deployment quite challenging. With VeloCloud, deployment is much easier because they include all of their own hardware.

Cloud-based, it's okay because they roll up the device and provide you with a link for access. In regards to in-house, when you want to deploy the orchestrator, it becomes very difficult. Currently, I don't see any such good documentation compared to their competitors, like Cisco, etc.

Also, If you look at Cisco, just Google it and you'll get every detail: what to do, what specific system, what server, how much RAM, how much storage, all the details — it's just much easier.

If a customer has an optimization solution within their network, then you have to be very careful when designing — optimization and all. This can make your design very complex. If the customer has an existing optimization solution, then you have to be very careful when designing any part of the SD-WAN solution — Cisco or Velo.

They should provide us with the flexibility to scale up.

I have been using this solution for two and a half to three years.

VeloCloud is very stable — it's a very good solution.

I have not done a scale with something like 6,000 to 7,000 sites; however, if you look at the pure design, phase-wise, then you have to be very particular about new designs. Velo is purely based on design. I don't think the SD-WAN is that new and scaling that amount of sites requires a simple design rather than a complex solution.

With Cisco, we were working on a huge scale — I think it was around 1700 sites for that customer. After 900 sites, it started having problems. The controller was not sending the new site updates to the hub and it was not reflecting in the routing table; however, in the end, it scaled, but there were some challenges that we had to overcome.

There are not enough people within their support team. I would give them a rating of three out of five.

They have to improve, they have to be quicker and understand the types of problems customers face. 

The initial setup is straightforward. The initial setup is very simple compared to Cisco. Cisco claims to be Zero Touch Provisioning, but I think they have a lot of complexity surrounding that Zero Touch. With VeloCloud, you can generate and send emails, and the receiver just has to connect to the device, open up the email and the configuration improves. In this way, I think Velo is good with Zero Touch Provisioning.

Deployment time really depends on what you deploy. If you want to roll out a small site on a single device, then the designing and the policies are all done — it's a really quick job. Your circuit and site will rollout quickly, everything will be up and running roughly within two to two and a half hours. If you're looking at a complex site, then of course, the complexity increases.

VeloCloud is a good solution. They are only lacking in regards to the in-house version. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give VeloCloud a rating of seven.

I work for a supply chain and we have a site where we want to offload the internet traffic and get to the application, etc. Some of the cloud applications go out directly and automatically through the SD-WAN device to the internet, so it is local and does not go to the MPLS. We can load balance those applications.

Their QOE, or Quality Of Experience, is the most valuable feature. Basically, VeloCloud measures the latency and the chatter and everything on a voice application, and it just routes the traffic or duplicates the packets according to that chatter. 

They have a lot of built-ins. There are so many applications defined inside the solution. It makes it so that we don't have to create some policies. Each and every application is already defined in it.

The solution doesn't offer failover between their own devices. If I want to, I should be able to put the two devices together, so there can be a failover. 

They need to come out with a new device, such as a 510 LTE which would have LTE capabilities.

On the 610 devices, they're saying they're going to have LTE in it. They don't have it. They don't even have a POE feature inside the VeloCloud devices. Therefore, if I want to set up a POE, just the one device with everything in it, I actually don't have a POE support on it.

I've been using the solution for about six months now.

Stability-wise the solution is quite good. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's not buggy at all.

The scalability is giving us problems at the moment. We want to put this as, for example, a primary MPLS, with internet secondary, and cellular tertiary. The LTE device doesn't even failover between them, however. Therefore, there is no scalability there.

We don't deal with technical support, due to the fact that we have AT&T. Since we deal with AT&T, we don't deal with them directly. Therefore, I can't speak to their level of knowledge or responsiveness.

Our company is actually many companies. At another subsidiary, they are doing a POC with Cisco. Cisco is providing them with better pricing. On top of that, they have good availability and failover capabilities on LTE. The Cisco router can do the secondary subnet on the same VLAN, which VeloCloud cannot do.

They have a lot of features we technically need to have but don't on VeloCloud.

The initial setup isn't too complex. It's pretty straightforward.

In terms of the deployment, we designed everything properly, and due to the fact that we took the time to design it correctly, it didn't take a long time. Strategy-wise, we have AT&T as our provider. That said, we have set up a reference architecture in such a way that it just copies every site, according to our site size and the requirements.

If you compare VeloCloud to, for example, Cisco, the pricing is almost the same. However, Cisco offers more features that are integral to the way we need the solution to operate. In that sense, it's better value for money. For example, now we need to have an extra LTE modem outside of VeloCloud, and it's going to add to the cost, which ultimately makes it more expensive.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We are not using the newest version of the solution. They already have a newer version, however, we have everything outsourced to AT&T, and they have not upgraded the new version on it yet. The version we have on the VeloCloud is 3.4.3, and the newest version, which, from my understanding, is four, and is already out there.

The greatest advice I have for potential new users is this: when you do deploy the VeloCloud, it's pretty straightforward. However, the only thing you have to remember is to make sure that you have the site requirements in terms of the primary and secondary circuits. For us, the last mile circuit is always a requirement, so we have a tertiary as a cellular. That way, even if the primary and secondary go down, you are okay. Also, you need to make sure to size your VeloCloud equipment or VeloCloud model according to the size of your needs.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at a nine.

One of the key use cases for VMware SD-WAN was assisting a customer in the industrial zone. They required virtualized servers and wanted to enable VMware SD-WAN to connect their sites in Japan or China. We assisted in building the system by integrating VMware servers and utilizing the Cisco suite.

VMware SD-WAN is harder than Cisco. It is complex, and we must take many steps to get the service. I think it would be beneficial if obtaining licenses could be simplified. Currently, numerous options and integrations are bundled together, which can make it quite complex.

The tool is stable. 

The product is scalable. We have three to four customers working with it. 

My assessment of the tech support for VMware is that it's generally accessible and valuable. However, there are some limitations. We typically contact them through a contracted third-party provider, often located outside of our region, such as in Singapore. While they are responsive, there are occasions when they may not immediately identify the issue and need to escalate it to a higher support tier, which can take some time.

We initiated the process by installing the software and configuring Windows on the VMware SD-WAN platform.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten. The advice I would give to others who are considering starting to use VMware SD-WAN is to assess their organization's technical expertise and requirements first. However, if they lack the knowledge or resources, it might be better to opt for a simpler solution or to seek external support.

The tool's value and impact are significant, particularly for larger enterprises. It allows for configuration. However, the benefits may not be as pronounced for smaller offices or enterprises.

The solution offers ISP support for customers.

I love the solution because of its many features like cluster and cloud VPN.

The solution needs improvement for the security features and should include two firewalls. Cloud VPN can’t support any link. The solution needs to also improve the availability of centralized internal management. 

It needs to have debug detection and Deep Packet Detection features as well. 

The documentation for VMware is also hard to find.

I have been working with the solution for three months.

I am using the solution in a virtual machine and cannot comment on its stability. However, I think that the solution is stable because, in Libya, ISP uses this technology and many customers use it.

The solution is scalable and very important for quality view.

I worked with the solution in virtual Azure and it is complex. However, I think in the real scenario, the deployment should be more flexible.

I have evaluated Cisco SD-WAN and Fortinet SD-WAN. There is a need for more features in these solutions.

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. The product is intuitive and easy to use. The solution is suitable for both medium companies and enterprise ones. I would recommend it for customers who have many branches.

VMware SD-WAN is used for security and virtualization.

The most valuable feature of VMware SD-WAN is security. Additionally, the integration and configuration are easier to do than with other solutions, such as Cisco.

I have been using VMware SD-WAN for approximately three years.

The solution is stable.

We have approximately 200 customers using this solution.

The support from VMware SD-WAN is knowledgeable.

I rate the support from VMware SD-WAN a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of VMware SD-WAN was simple. However, it took six days to complete.

We use a third party to deploy the solution.

The price of VMware SD-WAN is less expensive than some solutions, such as Cisco.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate VMware SD-WAN a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature of VMware SD-WAN is flexibility. It is more flexible than other vendors.

VMware SD-WAN could improve by having more partnerships with other vendors.

I have been using VMware SD-WAN for approximately two years.

VMware SD-WAN can be used for on-premise and cloud integrations. Many scenarios are supported in the solution. They are flexible for many services.

I rate VMware SD-WAN a ten out of ten.