VMware vSphere Reviews

We use vMotion a lot and use vCenter to manage the entire set-up.

Our entire banking operation is virtualized-- the application and data centers are all virtualized. It’s become easy for us to switch between servers if there's latency or slow responsive. We can switch to servers with more resources.

We’ve been using it for last six years.

We bought NetApp FAS storage and vSphere together, and it’s worked well. All our critical applications run on vSphere and FAS.

It goes hand in hand with growth of our business. We've used the enterprise edition and moved from 5.5 to 6.0 with no issues.

It’s a more stabilized product. Once configured properly, you don’t need support. In the last six years, we haven’t had to call them at all except for the initial setup.

It was complex because we experimented by keeping data and system volumes separate. We don’t replicate the system volumes frequently. We were able to do it though, and we used only 1/10 of the bandwidth with the combination of FAS and vSphere.

Microsoft Hyper-V is giving them a run for the money as vSphere is more expensive. I’m already on enterprise version of Hyper-V, running both it and vSphere.

VMware is not as proactive. They’re not willing to correct some problems I've faced. So VMware should be a bit more flexible in their engineering. I always tell them that with the architecture I've put in place, I can’t use SRM at all, but whatever SRM does, I can do manually, yet I can’t automate it.

Flexibility and inter-operability with other technologies are valuable features.

• Our ability to attain our 100% virtualization goal
• Being able to consolidate and distribute our infrastructure across multiple data centers

One of the biggest thing is support for non-Windows platforms, especially virtualized desktops which is big across Department of Education. It's only just been released so it's one of their most immature offerings and has room to improve and grow. A lot of the recent improvements have been leaning towards small businesses but in government we don’t have those challenges.

I’ve been a VMWare customer for over a decade and we’ve experience more uptime when we were dependent on physical infrastructure.

Scalability is great – it allows us to be more resilient and more disaster resay organization. We can move workloads across the organization and keep uptime high.

Technical support has always been good – extremely responsive especially in the DC area. They are used across government and we are able to even get onsite support when we need it.

Initial setup was easy and any change we make to the environment has been easy. We have made changes to VMWare based on our discoveries. Government usage can be very different than private sector so were able to communicate different feedback from private sector clients.

VMware has been the hypervisor of choice for a while, now we are seeing off-premise cloud technology like AWS, Azure and others. VMware is trying to allow you to move workloads on premise and off premise to those kind of technologies.

Everything is going in the right track so I would ultimately recommend the product. Peer reviews are 10/10 – extremely important.

We use vSphere for virtualization in the IT center. It's the solution we use for publishing our server which supports up to 1,000 users currently. With vSphere, stability comes easily; it's nothing like physical hardware.

In terms of overall features, vSphere's stability stands out on top. Not only is it highly stable, but we're also able to have a quick backup server on standby.

Without a lot of physical RAM on the hardware, it's not very effective. The stability could be improved in cases like this. In addition, I would like to see easier and more widely available integration options.

I've been using VMware vSphere for three years. 

It's a stable product and we have a backup server in case anything goes wrong with the virtual server we have running. 

For our business case, the scalability is good enough. 

The technical support is all right. 

Installation is very easy when it comes to virtualization of machines by the hypervisor. It only takes about 20 minutes.

We have three members that handle deployment and ongoing maintenance. These are two administrators plus a senior staff member.

In order to maintain stability, you should ensure that your physical machine is equipped with enough RAM, else it becomes ineffective. 

I can recommend vSphere without hesitation. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I use VMware solutions every day. We use VMware 6.7. We are unable to update because of hardware compatibility concerns.

Our day-to-day operation is building virtual machine applications. 

We are a small company. We are moving to the private cloud along with the VMware solution, starting with building computers, then storage virtualization, and then network virtualization. VMware vSphere has helped us create our infrastructures and provide services for our customers.

The UI could use some improvements, especially in dark mode. There are some features not enabled or do not function as expected.

I would like to see VMware try a new service like Blockchain.

I have been using VMware vSphere since 2009.

VMware has been stable. The performance is good.

All the features of VMware vSphere fit our organization and are compatible.

We had a problem one month ago. Technical support was really able to help us.

The initial setup of VMware was easy. I did not experience any problems or have any difficulty. It took two days to deploy.

We used a local partner to implement the solution.

The solution has standard licensing fees. Support is the only additional cost.

VMware vSphere are leaders in virtualization. The capital investment is high, but it is efficient.

I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

The primary use case for vSphere is that it can be used to deploy space applications to consolidate environments. You can be in production or in a data center, and you want each application to perform or to run only on a particular server. To create that consolidation and that separation of services, you could deploy vSphere.

Nowadays, servers are very robust. You can have a server of 18 cores and a server of 75 terabytes or 100 terabytes. That's a huge investment for a company, and you cannot just deploy a single application. So, with vSphere it will permit you to deploy the hypervessel on that server and later on add servers little by little that can meet your needs.

In terms of the usability, it's user-friendly; VMware vSphere is much simpler as compared to Oracle. Even a French-speaking citizen or foreigner can easily implement it.

It's much more stable than other products. It is scalable and easy to implement as well.

It would be good if VMware vSphere could permit hard partitioning. If a company wants to purchase very expensive applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle Fusion and they have vSphere technology implemented in their data center, it will cost them a lot because it has a very heavy, strong, or robust server that has strong processing capacity. The license will not cost the license of vSphere, the virtual server created by vSphere. The license will be the license for the whole server, so it creates a lot of challenges.

If it's possible for virtual hard partitioning to be implemented so that those who are using very sophisticated applications like E-Business Suite and other applications that require licensing on a processor, a virtual processor, could benefit from it, then it would be great. That is, integration with more expensive platforms is needed.

It would be nice to pay once for an unlimited license. If you decide to quit later on, you could pay the support charges.

I've been using VMware vSphere for about two years.

It's much more stable than other products.

It's very scalable because you can create a cluster. You can add a cluster and add another server in the nodes or in the cluster which you have created.

It's user-friendly, and it's really easy for a beginner to install. Now, there are appliances that you can deploy directly. So, I think it's very easy compared to that of others in the market. I have deployed it in large environments and even a test environment.

We implemented it ourselves.

I think the licensing cost depends on the number of users.

VMware vSphere is user-friendly and easy to implement, so I will recommend it. I would rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.

The solution is a hypervisor. 

If you're looking at virtualization, it's probably the most stable virtualization platform that I have worked on. 

VMware offers one of the most stable if not the most stable virtualization hypervisor.

The solution makes navigation very easy. 

It makes migration very simple. 

There is a lot of very impressive innovation happening within the product right now.

The integration capabilities are excellent. 

We've found the product to be quite scalable.

The installation is quite straightforward.

You can do so much out of the box with their product, with their built-in technology. In vSphere, you can manage the hardware itself using the same platform.

The licensing costs for the solution are quite high.

I've been using the solution for about seven years now. It's been a good amount of time.

The stability of the solution is excellent. There aren't any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability is very good. You can scale down or scale up provided you have the right licensing. 

There aren't users on the solution per se. Our IT team is mainly involved with it. That's it. We have three engineers that manage it.

I'm not sure if we will expand this product. It depends on what might happen next as one of the things that we will be embarking on is HCI technology. VMware came into HCI, however, there are multiple vendors such as Dell or HPE. It depends on how everything turns out in terms of the IT strategy. They're not that cheap.

I personally have never had to ask for support from VMware's technical team. In the last six to seven years, I have never had to directly ask VMware for anything. Therefore, I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are.

Previously, we were using mainly the normal Windows hypervisor, Hyper-V. At my previous employer, we used to also have Xen hypervisor.

The installation of the product is straightforward. It's really not too complex. All you do is install and click through. You put in your networking and you're done. Out of the box, it's great. However, if you do need to do some configurations, it can get a bit complex. 

I did not handle the installation process myself, and therefore can't speak to the actual amount of time it took to deploy.

One of the problems with the solution is the pricing. The licenses are not cheap.

We do pay a yearly licensing fee. Originally, it was a five-year package. Now we pay either every 12 or every 24 months.

If I have three hosts, just three hosts, a minimum of three hosts plus the vSphere and Center, I'm almost spending close to $250,000 a year. That's half a million in every two years inside just three hosts. In a serious medium enterprise where we would need at least 20 hosts, it means our annual fee or annual license cost could jump into the million-dollar range which means in three years you're spending three million alone on software.

We're just customers and end-users. 

I would recommend the solution to other organizations, so long as they've got the money. If you don't have the money you probably want to look at things that are open source. It's not a one size fits all kind of product. I say this because of the licenses. The amount of money you spend on licenses annually might be less somewhere else. For a medium enterprise, if you want a cross-platform sort of initial hypervisor I would say yes, VMware is a good option. Of course, there's always something better than VMware as well. For example, Nutanix is way ahead if you are a big enterprise.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. If it was less expensive, it would basically be perfect.

We are primarily using the solution as our virtualization platform.

We procure some licenses for vSphere Standard and we are using it to replicate to VM so that we can have at least that level of redundancy. On the upcoming project for VxRail, we'll be using it for a hyper-converged platform, where you can have high availability and failover capability in real-time.

The solution has been quite stable.

The solution can scale well.

We found the initial setup to be pretty straightforward.

The solution is quite expensive.

I haven't evaluated or looked at any other solutions for the most part and therefore can't speak to any aspect that is really lacking compared to what else is on the market.

I've used the solution for about five years at this point. It's been a while.

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

The solution is quite scalable. We ordered a solution where the initial number of nodes is just three, however, after the design, it can grow up to 64 nodes.

If it's deployed on a hyper-converged solution, yes, it will be scalable.

Only the system admins use the solution. There are around not more than 10.

We plan to continue to use the solution and to scale it up, as we build out our infrastructure.

We bought the solution through a Dell partner and we get support through them if we need it. We don't deal directly with VMware. I can't speak to how their technical support services are. Our Dell partner connection acts as a middle man between our company and VMware, therefore, they deal with VMware directly.

The solution is pretty simple to set up if it's a stand-alone.

We have two departments that have technical teams that can handle maintenance on the solution.

We used an integrator that was a VMware partner and they assisted us with the implementation process.

We are currently buying some more licenses to be able to move to version 7.

The solution is expensive, however, due to the criticality of the features on offer, for us, it's worth the cost.

I haven't really looked at too many other solutions, other than Hyper-V. VMware seems to be way better overall if you compare just those two.

We are currently in the process of moving to version 7 of the solution.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been mostly quite satisfied with the solution overall. I'd recommend it to other companies.

The virtualization is set by itself. vSphere is the best way to have a non-host based fixed solution. We always try to find an agnostic environment where we can restore agnostics or just say, "I need resources capacity." That's why VMware vSphere in particular, has been the best in the past but now also with the evolution of their product. Nowadays, you don't have to use any STEM infrastructure anymore because the bandwidth and the LAN speeds are getting steeper. 

If you look at the interconnection if you have a dark fiber connection, you can have data sent between locations. It's getting much cheaper.

If you use Zerto on top of that, then you are protected against any cyber threats or attacks. If you do it right, if you configure it from the hypervisor layer to external storage and then you have always a way back. It's blocked by the application of the journal. You can always go back to a point in time if you want to restore. If the point in time is as short as possible then you have the best solution. You can leave any additional solutions like CrowdStrike.

The only way for it to be a complete product is if you integrate all the functionalities. Then you don't need any backup solution anymore and you can do it by yourself. Integration needs improvement. They should improve a lot of the functionality because normally it's half of a product. You're only protecting yourself against technical failures but not against any cyber threats or any other stuff. It's not about prevention, it's about time to recovery because it's going to happen anyway. 

I have been using vSphere for twelve years. 

It was very easy to install. If you have the right piece of hardware or blade server in place, you can use it in a VM where you try XYZ and then install it. You go forward with that and it's ready to install, so it's not a big problem.

I would rate vSphere and 9.5 out of ten. 

I really like it because it's a storage restoration additional add-on but it's really expensive now.