- High Availability
- Distributed resource scheduling & vMotion
- Robust management toolset for automating routine tasks
System Engineer with 10,001+ employees
By centralizing the customization process while removing common hardware problems, it makes the provisioning and deployment of virtual servers and clients quick and predictable.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
vSphere provides the infrastructure framework to manage server and client systems in a multitude of user environments, from dedicated virtual workstations to short-term use systems. vSphere makes the provisioning and deployment of virtual servers and clients quick and predictable, centralizing the customization process while removing common hardware problems.
What needs improvement?
Fault Tolerance, which was introduced in version 5.5 and improved in 6.0, is a promising feature that has potential to ensure highly critical system availability in the enterprise environment. It presently has vCPU limitations which makes its deployment scenarios limited, but VMware has made great strides between the two versions, indicating that its usefulness will continue to improve.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for four years.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
ESXi has some specific hardware requirements that administrators should make sure they are able to meet before deploying. While the platform can run on a considerable range of hardware, various features make use of specialized virtualization instruction sets in the hardware CPU that make the hypervisor suited to only a fraction of the common server hardware on the market. This is not a bad thing, as the benefits from these advanced features are well worth the cost of more advanced hardware. This is the only circumstance in which I have encountered obstacles to deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No. The vSphere hypervisor is exceptionally stable, and the higher-level vSphere environment is quite adaptable to a fluctuating datacenter environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No. The ability to expand the capacity of the vSphere environment is one of the core capabilities of the product.
How are customer service and support?
Customer Service:
Efficient and knowledgeable.
Technical Support:Good value, particularly considering a support contract is required with the purchase of vSphere licenses.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No previous solution was used.
How was the initial setup?
It's straightforward, as vSphere is a mature product with well-rounded documentation, and an easy-to-understand interface.
What about the implementation team?
Our system was installed by a vendor team, but was configured in-house. Our vendor team provided a solid architecture solution, but it was insufficient for our requirements.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing is not a major obstacle to adopting this product in an enterprise environment. VMware does offer some specialized vSphere editions for small business environments in which cost may be a considerable factor. There is a wide range of options provided by VMware with suitable price points for each license.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other options.
What other advice do I have?
Have a plan for system virtualization before pursuing vSphere. Often, the actual needs of an organization, particularly small and medium sized, are overestimated which leads to spending more for a product or product license than is necessary.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Rock solid, great support, large vision, overall stands alone.
What is most valuable?
Of course there are several valuable features that have grown in time since the product came out, but the most basic and critical features of this product that I find valuable is the High Availability (HA) and the vmotion technology. vMotion has expanded to the Storage vMotion as well. This is very beneficial for uptime of servers and still maintaining updates on the hardware.
How has it helped my organization?
With the ability to create multiple server guests on one physical host platform, we were able to create servers in a faster response time, at a cheaper cost, less operational time and the ability to automate tasks to name a few. Also, this infrastructure gave us the capability to expand into a separate self provisioning development environment by utilizing the vCloud technology.
What needs improvement?
VMware has a good sight for what businesses are looking for. They have been ahead of the curve since the beginning. They have good support and quick response. I don't see too many improvements with vSphere itself.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this product for 9 years. I have tested the old GSX and ESX version 2 years prior to this.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
When I first tested vSphere against other competitors 9 years ago, there was no question on which product our company would use. It was easy to deploy and is easier today than it was back then. With a small OS footprint, the install was quick and configuration was straight to the point.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have only ran into 2 issues where stability was an issue. One is more of a performance that affected the NUMA nodes and how ESXi handled guests in each NUMA node. (this was isolated to the CPU make/model). The other stability issue was due to a patch that affected some physical hosts causing them to "purple screen" or to not respond.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Again, VMware has been very good with staying ahead of the curve. As the demand grew for virtualization from businesses , VMware increased functionality to cope with growth at the hardware level. The ability to "scale out" or "scale up" physically on the host with zero downtime is very easy or scaling up on the guest is very easy with minimal downtime.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service: When I first used VMware, I had to use customer service often. They were very quick to resolve the issues. They have a team that knew the "Ins and Outs" of the product. I would give them 4 out of 5 stars. I didn't give 5 due to the fact that VMware grew faster than they were able to keep the support engineers trained to handle the large growth over the years. So the times for resolution went down just a little. But still very good compared to other customer support.Technical Support: I would give them a 4 out of 5 here as well. They have teams for each operational architect and at times a problem may need to have the collaboration of multiple teams to resolve an issue.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not use any other product prior to VMware.
How was the initial setup?
The install was quick and the configuration was straight to the point. I was up and running with a working platform in 25 minutes from start to finish once I rack mounted and cabled the server. It would be even faster with a converged infrastructure or blade system.
What about the implementation team?
This was done all in-house.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
As an engineer, I don't have those numbers and wasn't part of sharing those numbers to other management and higher.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
When I decided to test the virtualization architectures, I ran tests with several architectures to determine important factors that would affect our business and operations in a positive aspect for growth while still maintaining low ROI. Microsoft and Citrix were the other competitors.
What other advice do I have?
Definitely have a plan before implementing. Don't rush. It is crucial to think years out so you don't have to redo any architecture because you didn't plan for growth, DR/BC or working out of the cloud. If resources are tight to gather, it would be beneficial to reach out to your favorite consulting team to gather advice.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
February 2025

Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Manager of Infrastructure at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
vSphere Review
Valuable Features:
- Enterprise class solution
- Live Migration (both server and storage)
- High Availability and Load Balancing
- Disaster Recovery
- Lots of 3rd party vendor support
- Excellent technical support
Room for Improvement:
- Cost
- Lack of support for virtualization (all hypervisors)
- Licensing- Started with VMware ESX ver 2.1 in 2004. Currently
using vSphere 4.1i and working on upgrade to 5.1
- Chose VMware for several reasons
(1) Had experience with Desktop and GSX products
(2) Ran on bare metal
(3) No other real competitors at the time
Other Advice:
Advice:
- VMware is not the only game in town anymore
- Look at your requirements:
- If you are a small to medium shop other server virtualization products may provide what you need
- If you are a large shop I would recommendVMware
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user6186Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com
Top 20Consultant
When you say a con is lack of virtualization (all hypervisors), can you elaborate?
I have multiple hypervisors running nested on my VMware vSphere environment (works better with 5.5).
Otoh, if you are referring to being able to manage other hypervisors with native vSphere (e.g. client), then fair point as you would have to add the multi hypervisor manager download part of vCenter to be able to do that.
However as you say, many options, Hyper-V is often overlooked or perceived to be expensive as from Microsoft which is not always the case. Likewise there is Xen and KVM among others. From a management perspective you can also do things such as layer OpenStack compute over different hypervisors (e.g. Hyper-V, vSphere/ESXi, KVM, etc). Hence explore your options.
IT Support Officer at a non-profit with 501-1,000 employees
Secure and stable platform for managing virtual environments; has a support team that provides diligent assistance
Pros and Cons
- "Stable and secure management console for virtual environments, with a diligent technical support team."
- "The VMware vSphere app is faster, compared to its web-based client. The web-based client is very slow, freezes, and is challenging to use."
What is our primary use case?
We are using VMware vSphere to manage the virtual environment. We use it for visibility and for managing the host.
What is most valuable?
What I want to see, I can get easily from VMware vSphere, because I know how to navigate it, as I've been using it for years. I also don't have issues with its operation, stability, and security. I also find the VMware support team diligent when they assisted me with the issues I raised.
What needs improvement?
Before the latest versions of this software, we used to work with versions 5.5 and below. We used VMware vSphere as a client, as an application, e.g. it was not web-based. Now that has changed, because they've moved it from the application to the web-based version. It's the only change I've seen which I found very difficult because it was challenging to connect to the web, particularly because it can be very slow. It freezes, unlike the app version which was absolutely perfect.
The performance was better with VMware vSphere as an app, but not with the web-based client. The web-based client could be improved, in terms of its speed. It could be faster, but I also just learned that since everything is moving to cloud, there's a reason why there's a web-based client now.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using VMware vSphere for almost 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I don't have any problems with the stability and security of VMware vSphere.
How are customer service and support?
I had to engage with the VMware technical support team once or twice last year because we had a disaster, and they were able to assist me diligently.
How was the initial setup?
The installation for VMware vSphere was a one-time installation. You do it once, and that's it.
What about the implementation team?
I had a consultant do the VMware vSphere installation for me.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay for the license of VMware vSphere yearly.
What other advice do I have?
We are using VMware solutions. We are running the VMware standard edition. We also have VMware vSphere and VMware ESXi.
We are running the latest version of VMware vSphere: 7.0. We started with version four of this software.
I wouldn't say that there are features that I like the most about VMware vSphere, because it's just a normal management console. It's a default client management software for the virtual environment. It's just a console that we use.
We have been using the software since we enrolled into the virtual CRR, so we are used to it. I can't say whether it's easy to use or not, because I've been using it forever. I can't do any comparison. To say it's easy to use or it's not easy to use would not suffice, because I've been using it for years, so I know how to navigate the platform. What I want to see, I can get easily from VMware vSphere.
I don't recall the last time we installed the software, and even if it was a difficult process, I wouldn't know, because that would best be answered by the technical team, who keeps installing it for different lines. For me it was something that was done once.
We only have one engineer who takes care of the deployment and maintenance of VMware vSphere. The software is only used by fewer than five people, e.g. just the administrators. We're not increasing the number of users, because there are only just a few people needed to man the environment.
I would recommend VMware vSphere to others, particularly because when I contacted them about some issues, they assisted me diligently.
From one to ten, I'm rating VMware vSphere an eight.
When you talk about performance improvement of VMware vSphere, you have to look at other factors. You look at the whole infrastructure. You can't look at the software alone, because when it comes to performance, you also have to look at your hardware. You have to look at your storage. It isn't just the software, e.g. VMware vSphere, that you are using. For example, the last time we had an issue, it wasn't only because of the VMware side. It was also because of our storage, e.g. Our storage capacity was full, so we had to engage VMware. To improve performance, the VMware infrastructure as a whole should be improved, which means changing the storage, storage accessories, etc. VMware vSphere is only connected, and it's only a software that is running on the hardware, so to improve performance, we also need to talk about and look into the hardware aspects of the solution.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
System Advisor IT at CRIF India
Reliable, user-friendly interface, easy to install, configure, and manage
Pros and Cons
- "There is the simplicity of management, accessibility, and availability."
- "The only concern that I have with VMware is the support. It is very limited and can be better."
What is our primary use case?
In the organization where I have worked for the past nine years, there are multiple virtualization platforms. Virtualization software includes Microsoft Hypervisor, Red Hat KVM, Oracle virtual machine, and Oracle virtual cloud.
vSphere is optimized for a specific type of virtualization.
What is most valuable?
There is the simplicity of management, accessibility, and availability.
The interface is really user-friendly.
What needs improvement?
The only concern that I have with VMware is the support. It is very limited and can be better.
When you get support from the VMware global team or support locations, customer complaints are not entertained or taken seriously by the VMware global team or support centers. Other OEMs, such as Microsoft and Oracle, would make you a priority.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using VMware vSphere for three years.
We recently upgraded to the latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's a very stable solution. In fact, when it comes to virtualization, you can tell anyone to use the system.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In our organization, we have 600 users.
My previous organization had a population of approximately 35,000 people.
How are customer service and support?
The support is the only negative feedback, they need improvements.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I'm familiar with all of the virtualization platforms that are now available on the market.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup and installation are straightforward. It is something that can be done by anyone.
In one hour, we can complete the installation and configuration.
Admins are only required to look after the VM portion of the new VM creation as well as the configuration or modification. Aside from that, we have a team of two or three admins to deploy and maintain this solution during their shift time, such as in the morning and afternoon shifts.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The organization pays the licensing fees.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at a few alternatives and compared them to vSphere.
What other advice do I have?
The freelance experience for the platform is excellent.
I would recommend this solution to other users.
I would rate VMware vSphere a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Software and Systems Engineer at SAMU.IT
Reliable, scalable, with good support and high availability
Pros and Cons
- "This solution's most valuable feature is its High Availability."
- "The support is good, but it's slow."
What is our primary use case?
We are an IT company and VMware partners.
VMware vSphere is used for virtualization in all situations and for all businesses.
What is most valuable?
This solution's most valuable feature is its High Availability.
What needs improvement?
The only concern I have with VMware vSphere is that the level of support is inadequate. It's not very fast. The support is good, but it's slow.
When we need help, we require someone to answer the phone quickly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been selling VMware vSphere since it was launched.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have no issues with the stability of VMware vSphere. It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
VMware vSphere is a scalable product.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is good but not very fast.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have customers who use Sangfor, as well as customers with VMware.
vSphere is used by all VMware customers.
How was the initial setup?
A small infrastructure installation can take up to eight hours.
The teams are always the same. We have five technicians, three of whom specialize in networking and virtualization, and one who is a management engineer.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Our customers have the option of paying the licensing fee when they purchase the solution or renting it from us.
If a customer chooses to rent the solution, the customer pays us and we purchase the solution.
What other advice do I have?
The vSphere serves as the system's control center for managing virtual machines (VMs). VMware vSphere is present in all installations.
Our solutions are all deployed on-premises.
As a company, we advise, supply, and install products for our clients. We provide two solutions, one of which is Sangfor and the other is VMware.
As a reseller of vSphere, I would recommend this solution to anyone who is interested in using it.
I would rate VMware vSphere an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Senior Information Technology Consultant at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Stable, scalable, with good customer support and an easy initial setup
Pros and Cons
- "I definitely like the stability, performance and ease-of-use."
- "NSX is a product of VMware vSphere and it would be nice to see the solution have full integration capabilities with it."
What is our primary use case?
The solution acts as the basis for doing virtualization.
What is most valuable?
I definitely like the stability, performance and ease-of-use.
I have no issues with the solution's scalability or user-friendliness. I consider these to be perfect. We have had a fantastic, problem-free solution for the past 14 years when it comes to fault tolerance and disaster recovery. It has everything one needs.
What needs improvement?
VMware vSphere has a limited scope and necessitates the adding of additional products. This involves further complexity and expense. NSX is a product of VMware vSphere and it would be nice to see the solution have full integration capabilities with it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using VMware vSphere since 2007.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is certainly scalable.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is nice. We are talking about a great organization, which offers much staff, support and white paper.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward, perfect.
This process for the initial server lasts ten minutes. There is also the console, which involves two parts, one being the server itself. This is where the CD-ROM goes, something which is now on a USB key and does not involve the undertaking of any activity.
Deployment lasts half a day, at which point everything is up and running.
The real question is whether the person wishes to have one server or a hundred. The use of 200 machines will take longer. What I am talking about is small, basic installations.
What about the implementation team?
If a person is trained, then he will be able handle the deployment and maintenance on his own. This is not complex.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Our customers incur a yearly licensing fee, one of three or five years, in fact.
What other advice do I have?
We consider the solution to be obligatory.
The solution's use can range from ten users to thousands.
I would definitely recommend the solution to others. I am a big fan of it.
I rate VMware vSphere as a twenty out of ten. I give it a perfect ten rating.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Manager at SSMS
Easy to use and straightforward to implement with a nice dashboard
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is very straightforward to implement."
- "Technical support could be faster in terms of response times."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is primarily used for management. It offers easier control at multiple branches.
What is most valuable?
The product is stable.
The flexibility of the solution is very good.
The product is very easy to use.
The product offers a very nice single dashboard for complete management.
The solution is very straightforward to implement.
We found the scalability to be very good.
What needs improvement?
The solution doesn't seem to be missing any features currently.
It would be ideal if the integration capabilities were a bit more robust.
Technical support could be faster in terms of response times.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for about five or six years. It's been a while at this point.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable in terms of performance.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is very good. We haven't seen any issues with expanding it if we need to.
There are about 15 to 20 users on the solution at this time.
While we don't have current plans to increase usage, if the business grows, we likely will.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is quite good. They are helpful and knowledgeable. That said, their response times need to be better. We would like them to respond faster to queries.
Other than that, we are satisfied with their level of service.
How was the initial setup?
The product is not overly complex to set up. It's very simple and straightforward. A company shouldn't have any issues with the implementation.
We have an admin team that can handle any maintenance required.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are looking for opportunities with Nutanix. We are looking at it now.
That said, we did not evaluate any other products before choosing this solution. However, many years back, we did look into Citrix.
What other advice do I have?
We are using the latest version of the solution at this point. I cannot speak to the exact version number off-hand.
We are not integrating the solution at this time.
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I would recommend the solution to other companies.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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vSphere Fault Tolerance was introduced from vSphere 4.x. And in vSphere 6.0, it is still called vSphere FT but in abbreviation for vSphere Symmetric Multiprocessor Fault Tolerance.