VMware vSphere Reviews

We implement all the standard VMware data solutions. Typically, that's vSphere and sometimes DataCore, the other product we like. We use vSphere for the virtualization of data servers, and other common uses.

Our customers opt for virtualization because it's cheaper and better than non-virtualized solutions. VMware is probably the best on the market now. 

We're implementers and we started using vSphere when it was first released. We've been with VMware since the beginning. There was no ES6 at that time, only GS6 on Microsoft, so we started with Windows-based VMware. It's an old solution. We've been using it for a long time. 

We haven't encountered any limitations with vSphere's scalability. At the same time, we usually do not install huge server farms here in the Slovak Republic, so we only use VMware for small installations with a few host servers. I don't think we'll reach the limits of VMware's scalability since we only work with small organizations. 

We tried Hyper-V a few years back, but there was a problem with the 2012 version of Hyper-V, so we prefer VMware because we know it works. However, I'm not sure about the newer versions of Hyper-V. I can only speak to our experiences with the older one. We weren't satisfied with the features, and the Microsoft code had bugs that they didn't repair those errors. 

Overall, Hyper-V was a highly unstable solution at the time, so we decided to stick with VMware because it was much more reliable. Maybe Microsoft has improved Hyper-V since then. I can't say.

I rate VMware vSphere nine out of 10. It does what we need it to do, and works fine. There aren't any additional features that we need at this time.

Our primary use case is for integrating data feeds from multiple applications. 

The ability to redistribute loads, to re-spin failed processes, monitor resource utilization, and such are all valuable features in VMware. In industrial IoT, most elements end up being terrestrial. With VMware, especially when you're working with niche products, you can manage the integrated solution and multiple systems from a single pane of glass.

We're moving towards containerization and it was unclear what I'd have to do to support containerized environments alongside multiple systems of Linux and Windows. My aim was to get to a single hypervisor environment in which I could support a container environment as one of the array of other applications. Whether due to a lack of training or information, I was unable to get to that. Some people look at VMware as being an alternative to containerization, enabling them to dispense with solutions like Kubernetes and Docker in order to do away with VMware. That's not the reality and I'd like to have a transparent platform that can support all of them.

Aside from cost, I'd like to see some simplification in the solution. The main issue is manageability or scalability of skilled resources, the degree to which the product delivers a stable environment that can be managed by a less technical person. 

I've been using this solution for two and a half years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is very easy to scale, especially when you are trying to scale resource availability and the management of the solution. You need to have a degree of transparency across all those environments.

I haven't personally had any contact with technical support. 

I've deployed Docker as a standalone using Linux, multiple servers, etc. I'm currently learning Kubernetes so that I can create a new island in the chain and do a container, but I still have the other systems that continue to run in environments best suited to VMware.

The initial setup is straightforward for a computer savvy guy. I haven't experienced any bugs or glitches. Our customers are generally small to medium size organizations. 

For now, I would go with VMware for the Windows and Linux environment and do Kubernetes as a new island in the chain for containers. For most organizations, the ideal is the number of other users of a solution, because they're the ones that find the problems before you. Going off into some experimental environment may sound great and you might have a good initial experience, but if you're going to be the only person walking the minefield, it may not be a good ending.

I rate VMware nine out of 10. 

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.

We are just beginning on vSphere. In the next two and three years, I would like to explore the virtualized automation.

Virtualised automation is a useful feature.

The pipeline feature can be improved, as it doesn't allow for specific situations.

We have been using vSphere for about 2 years. 

Because vSphere is a minimal interface, it tends to be stable.

As you can set up various environments, vSphere is very scalable. In the future, we may consider switching from vSphere to Hyper-V.

We purchased the OEM, but not from VMware. We bought it from HPE. The first year of support provided by HPE is okay for now.

IBM Power. We switched to vSphere from IBM Power because the hardware is cheaper.

The setup of vSphere is straight forward. I have set up a few vSphere environments.

vSphere is very expensive.

I would give vSphere 9 out of 10, as it is easy to use, and there is good support available.

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. 

One of the best solutions has got to be the HA and DRS portion of the vCenter where it's kind of an auto-load balancing and auto-recovering of your cluster if one of your hosts happens to die. Luckily it's pretty solid and you don't really have to deal with a lot of the HA stuff, but DRS is definitely very handy.

One of the things that I really wanted to see was the catalog because it came from vCloud Director, and they are adding that in 6.0, so they have that catalog, and they are extending it to where you can really replicate those catalogs out and share them. That was one of the features I would have really liked to see, and fortunately it's there.

One of the other features that we had been wanting to see was the vMotion between clouds, which of course that was announced today, that it's one of the things that's coming. I think that's going to be a game changer really.

We have quite a lot of list of solutions that we use. Primarily we have a product called Server Virtualization, powered by VMware, and what it is, is it's a multi-tenant vCenter, but single-tenant hardware side of things. We have over 9,000 hosts in there and roughly 55,000 VMs worldwide, and six data centers globally. We also have other products called dedicated vCenter which is just that; customers get their dedicated vCenter. We also leverage vCloud Director; we have a dedicated vCloud Director product. We even have some other disaster recovery products that use SRM and vSphere replication.

In our environment -- it's pretty large -- we have roughly just less than 100 vCenters, and these things have to be up 24-7/365, and it's very rare that they actually go down. Out of all 9,000 hosts, I can count off maybe five that have crashed in that last year. That's a very stable VMware environment, in my opinion.

In a global environment with all six data centers, we have so many hosts and VMs, that we work very closely with VMware to help push their maximums, and really push the envelope of how many VMs we can fit in a vCenter, and how many hosts we can fit in a vCenter to really help drive those maximums even higher for VMware.

At Rackspace, we get mission critical support from VMware. If we have any issues, we call directly into VMware, and we usually get a response within four hours. Any major technical issues that we come across, they are very responsive; they work with us to help figure out what the problem is, and a lot of times we've found bugs in their software and helped them release patches to fix them.

Interoperability is one of the things I really like to look for: How well the VMware solution plays with other either hardware vendors, or other solutions, other service providers, other add-ons to make it even better. That's something we really look for. How well does it work in a service provider environment as well, because most service providers are different.

vCenter environment is super simple. Install ESXI; it's very straight forward. Then getting vCenter off the ground and going is extremely straightforward, especially if you use the vCenter server appliance: You can be up and running in a matter of a few hours.

We've set up a vROPS and we've found that it works really well in a service provider environment, that you can point it to multiple vCenters. We've worked with other vendors to do some deeper logging, deeper metrics gathering, and in doing so, we worked close with VMware and that other vendor and really built a full scale out worldwide global monitoring and alerting solution. That's one of the things we look for: Something that to fill a void that we don't have.

There is nothing else enterprise-ready, like they are. If you are considering similar solutions, make sure you take deep dives technically into how well they integrate with other vendors, or how well they integrate with your hardware. Like VSAN for instance, a lot of the storage vendors that are really going for it to be on the VSAN HCL, and unfortunately some of the RAID controllers are not on at that HCL, and a lot of times people don't know that. If you are looking at different solutions, make sure you check compatibility guides, not just for the whole VMware Stack, but including maybe subsets like VSAN, or other tools that you might be using.

We are looking at productizing that and making an offering for our customers, as well as using it internally. We've got it in several labs doing different things, and it's awesome. I really like it. It's resilient, in my opinion. A lot of people say if you only use the three-node minimum recommendation you might have data loss. I had a three-node cluster setup and my switch died, and when I replaced the switch and it came back online, everything was still running just fine, nothing had actually gone down; no data loss, nothing. It's actually really resilient. If you think about your data path, the data locality, it's a lot closer to the CPU, it's right there in that flash recache. It's a resilient storage solution that's cheaper than a dedicated SAN, or something of that sort.

Peer reviews are extremely important to me. I usually start Googling and looking to see, or on Twitter to find other vExperts, or other just subject matter experts that have talked about it: What benefits they've seen, or maybe pitfalls that they've seen. To me, that holds more water than a lot of the White Papers I've seen, because White Papers target maybe a specific use case, but I want to see more broadly: "How does it function? How does it integrate? How stable is it, of all things?" I really value the community involvement and opinion of others when I'm looking at solutions.

• HA - for restarting failed VMs on good hosts
• vMotion - ability to migrate between different hosts
• DRS balances data storage and workload of datacenters

Reporting. If I lose a host, I have to report what was on that host, what was affected, and for how long. We create our own power state report providing info on hosts, and I would like reporting for what VMs were affected and what was the fault, what hosts were affected and restarted by HA. You can get third-party reporting, but it would be great to have it built-in.

Extremely stable, only issue is the type of hardware that we run it on. When we get a vendor image (HP, Dell, Cisco), they inject their own drivers into hypervisors, and it is only time we see issues. It’s so resilient, that these problems aren’t even evident and they can go unnoticted.

Very, very good scalability. Four years ago, we had 300 VMs across 32 hosts, now we have 2000 VMs across 132 hosts.

From time to time, we have relied on them, mostly for troublshooeting specific VMs when a vendor wants to blame resources. Whenever we have bad memories or drivers injected by vendors, they’ve helped us remediate those issues.

I was involved in a redesign, which was very straightforward and easy. We just changed the hardware from rack style to blade, expanding all hosts and underlying virtualization layers. It was seemless and customers didn’t notice anything different.

Even with no reporting, it's near perfect, because reporting would just make things easier, and not having it doesn’t impede performance.

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.