VMware vSphere Reviews

We are a solution provider and VMware vSphere is one of the products that I have experience with. This product is used as a virtual IT environment. It hosts applications such as SQL databases.

The GUI is very simple to use.

The user experience is good.

Stability-wise, there are some minor issues.

I have been working with VMware vSphere for between 10 and 15 years.

There are some issues with stability, although I don't think that it is a big problem. In general, it is a good product.

Scalability has not been a problem. Israel is a small country, so the level of service is less.

As a system integrator, I have not had to contact technical support.

I have experience with KVM and it is also easy to use, but it is not as good as VMware.

It is easy to deploy this solution from nothing.

We deploy and maintain this solution with our in-house team.

This is an expensive product and the price needs to be reduced.

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it.

If you have a mixed environment that includes Windows, Linux, and other operating systems then this product is a good choice. However, if you have a purely Linux environment, such as Red Hat, then you can save money and have better performance by implementing KVM instead.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it to host our business-critical applications and servers on-premise.

I have found the Storage vMotion feature to be the most valuable.

It is a very user-friendly solution.

One problem that needs fixing is when we run the backup for the servers, the servers become inaccessible to everybody on-site while it is creating a snapshot. If your server size is large you will have to wait longer when the server is unavailable. 

In the future, it would be a benefit for VMware to improve on the Storage vMotion feature by making it become faster between host. It takes a lot of time to transfer files between hosts currently.

I have been using the solution for six years.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability in my experience is good.

I was not at the company when they did the deployment of vSphere version 5.5 but I did do the deployment of a host on version 6.7, which is quite straightforward.

The pricing is reasonable and you are able to purchases licencing for certain time frame intervals, monthly, yearly etc.

I would definitely recommend the solution to others working in IT.

I would give the solution a nine but the vMotion feature takes too long for transferring files between stored data sources.

I rate VMware vSphere an eight out of ten.

I'm always sort of working with the servers, therefore, whenever there is a requirement for a different kind of server, I deal with it. For example, one of my departments asked me to provide one server where they can store some files. Instead of getting a full physical server, we created some virtual machines on vSphere and gave it to the department so they could store their data there. That is one where we are using the server. Sometimes we buy software from outside, and there are specific requirements on hardware - for example, X amount much of RAM is required, Y amount of CPU is required, etc., so we try to use the vSphere to create the virtual machines for that.

It's not a particular feature, really, however, I can say that the solution is just easy to maintain, and makes it easy to backup all those VMs. We can easily save our data and we can deploy VM machines very fast and create the delivery of the server in a pretty simple, dynamic way.

Our company has very limited requirements. We just create VMs and deploy VMs on the machine and give the users access. It's solving our problems perfectly. I'm not using any advanced features right now, however, it is sufficient. 

It's very simple and I really like it overall. 

I can't think of any features that are missing. I'm not really using any advanced options and don't have complex requirements.

The solution could be a bit more user-friendly.

I've been using the solution for eight years now. It's been quite a while.

The solution is very stable. We've never had any issues. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The solution can scale. If a company needs to expand it out, they can do so with relative ease.

There are four or five users that work directly with the solution, however, we have it deployed to many departments, so it's used quite a bit in the company. We have about 10-20 servers that are running on the machines.

Right now, we're happy with it, however, we may move to a different product that is even more scalable in the future, That's yet to be decided.

I've dealt with technical support in the past. Whenever we've logged a ticket, it's resolved very well. Everyone is quite knowledgeable, and whenever there is a requirement to follow a query, their tech team resolves those queries very efficiently and our problems were always resolved. We're pretty satisfied with their level of service.

We didn't previously use a different product.

We're considering moving to a different product in the future that could potentially scale even better than this. The reason we haven't moved yet is the fact that it's not easy for us to deploy and migrate all the machines from VMware to any other product.

We didn't actually handle the installation, and therefore I can't really talk about the process, as I wasn't involved directly.

The company that we bought had installed the vSphere for us and that server is still running from last year. We haven't touched it.

The solution was actually installed by the company that we ended up buying, and therefore we didn't directly handle any aspect of the implementation.

We have the licensing for the solution and the perpetual license which we have allows us to choose whether we want a support license separate or not. It's not an overly expensive solution. The pricing is average.

We're currently in the process of evaluating other options on the market to see if there are open-source options that could work for us or products that scale even better than vSphere.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with vSphere.

We aren't using the latest version of the solution. The near version is sufficient for us and it's solving our requirements.

Overall, I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

While I would recommend it due to the fact that it's solving my problems, I am evaluating other products that may be better. There may be an open-source option that could also work for us.  That said, this product is great in that we are using it hassle-free.

vSphere has been deployed in many of our customers. It improves drastically DC consolidation and proper use of available resources. At present, virtualised customers are still far from fully leveraging the potential of vSphere in part due to lack of expertise and fully understanding the concepts of virtualisation from an architecture point of view. It also improved resiliency and ease of asset management as most customers were able to reduce role segregation and have seen an opportunity for having DevOps since human resources became more available due to some degree of automation.

Having the ability to deploy fault tolerant VM’s with up to 4 CPUs is fantastic as it goes one level up from a business continuity perspective. Previously, VMware was covering, with just vSphere, backups and DR, and now it also covers a properly functional fault tolerant offering.

Single Sign On is another feature that is enhanced and solves much of the older problems, either in deploying or managing it. Cross vendor integration is in my opinion one of the best features. Although all these features are welcome and a must, they come at a price in terms of licensing.

I’d like to see a better web console or rather, transform the web console in a real single pane of glass for the whole infrastructure instead of having to go for vRealize Ops Manager. Other vendors are providing this already and vSphere (vendor) has that capability. I’d also like to see solutions such as vSAN in vSphere, really take off. It has a lot of potential and since it has been jointly done with other hardware vendors it somehow lost track of what the real purpose was, offer a whole very simple and very effective solution. Support for Virtual Volumes will be the next big thing, and although it is already implemented, it will take a while to see its light in production in customers.

The web client is sometimes slow and sluggish, other than that customers have no complaints around stability if the product is used as intended.

This is one of the strongest points in vSphere. I've had no problems with scalability. Although it is dependant on the underlying hardware infrastructure and its scalability/growth/space/etc.

Customer Service:

It's very good.

Technical Support:

Very good once you’re passed the initial “script-reading-far-far-away” operators.

My customers have used all available solutions. Some move to vSphere, some move away. In the end it will be about costs unless very well justified by a business need for high resiliency and market name.

Customers who move to or implement VMware are already aware and skilled on the implementation level. It is usually very straightforward.

My company or a partner company does the implementation. With the amount of available documentation and training, the is no excuse for a poorly deployed platform on vSphere. Know how on platform usage is a different story.

Considering the consolidation and virtualisation portion of it, for a Greenfield, very good. For brownfield and considering license costs and removing the benefits of virtualisation, it is an ROI nightmare, but focusing on the product itself vSphere delivers a good ROI, lower than competitors but still OK.

Start with the lowest and upgrade if, and only if, absolutely necessary. Customers will find that the standard edition is more than sufficient for their needs until they are internally ready to move forward to a cloud operating model.

All in the market. Hyper-V, KVM, Oracle VM, PowerVM, etc.

Start with the least expensive Licensing model and upgrade as you need. Change your operating model to virtualisation and fully leverage its potential. vSphere has it all in one package and can really change the way IT operates. We’re 12 years into virtualisation on x86 and I still find most of the virtualised customers not happy with what it offers since they don’t know how to utilise it.

Its compatibility with LUNs and its vMotion, HA, FT and VDS. It works very smooth with LUNs. When we talk about its Cluster feature, then the HA, FT, and DRS features are just great in how they support large scale servers and VMs without any trouble in the production environment.

VMware offers VDS switches which are very efficient and useful regarding network configuration in your virtual environment. The configuration should be the same on your cluster-joined ESXis to improve performance and when running a production environment or VMs on any ESXi.

These features are very good for us.

While using its HA feature, we don’t need to worry about usage of servers. Our VM automatically shifts to another server which has resources using vMotion. VDS provides its NIC which is available on all ESXis. You have to configure it one time at Center level and after that you don't need to worry about any ESXi configuration or its failure. When DRS or HT transfers your VM to another host, then that VM will get the same NIC via VDS.

When we talked about its Vmotion feature so we see we are able to move our Vms in running state from one host to another host within cluster and shared storage but we are unable to move VMs accros cluster and storage in running state so here is vsphere 5.5 suffer little bit.

I guess in vMotion it should have the ability to move VMs across clusters of vCenters and different type of CUPS.

We have been using this solution for many years.

We did not have any issue so far in stability.

We have had scalability issues; we have backup plans if ESXi crashes.

I would rate technical support 5/10.

We didn’t use anything previously. We chose VMware ESXi 5.5 over Hyper V due to its features.

It was complex because you have to prepare for every situation.

Its pricing is affordable for a small company as well.

We evaluated vMotion, HA, FT, and VDS.

I advise you to review your needs and then look into the features. I am sure you will get solution of your needs.

Truthfully, I'm not using many of the available features. My needs have been small in that we just needed to virtualize our environment and manage it effectively. VMware vSphere has served that purpose greatly. I’m sure what I get out of vSphere, though, could potentially be gained just as easily via other virtualization platforms available today, but at the time I felt those were too immature to risk. VMware just worked with little to no issue, so I trust them going forward.

The largest benefit for my companies that have used this is the consolidation of our physical server footprint. Never would I thought I could run as many VMs on a single host as we do today.

Overall I’m very happy with what the product brings so I can’t suggest any major improvements. However, I’m very disappointed in VMware’s decision to push management to a web-based vCenter client and away from the standalone thick client. The web client is just terrible in so many ways, mainly on a performance basis. It is very slow. I also find the thick client much easier to navigate and work with my VMs. A large user population shares my sentiment as there are a number of posts in VMware’s forums regarding the issues with the web client. I hope VMware realizes this and either greatly enhances the web client or moves back to the thick client for management.

I have been using it since vSphere 4, so approximately five to six years.

I’m sure there were issues to contend with originally, but as the product matures it gets easier and easier.

I’m sure there were issues to contend with originally, but as the product matures it gets easier and easier.

I’m sure there were issues to contend with originally, but as the product matures it gets easier and easier.

It was pretty straightforward, from what I recall, but I did not do most of the initial setup. I assisted a colleague who took the reigns.

I've rarely had to enlist support, but when I have it’s been what I would expect.

It was pretty straightforward, from what I recall but I did not do most of the initial set-up. I assisted a colleague who took the reigns.

My first environment was set up by a single colleague with my assistance. The only advice I can really give is to really know your requirements for the systems and software you intend to virtualize and build a proper sized VM environment to host them. Oversubscribing resources is, in my opinion, the biggest concern and something that happens easily. Also factor in proper storage built to handle the I/O load of a virtual environment. Lastly, build your VM environment to factor in an N+1 design to ensure if a host fails, the remaining host(s) can handle the load of all VMs that were running on the failed host and always allow for a 15% overhead of free resources under full load.

I really did not handle the financial aspects of my VM environments, but I do know VMware is pricey. These days, from a price point, I would take a hard look at MS Hyper-V as they are catching up with VMware fairly quickly.

When I first looked into virtualization it was back when VMware released vSphere 4. At that time I was interested in Citrix Xen and MS Hyper-V. I felt at the time VMware was the industry leader and was more mature so I trusted them above all others. I’ve been happy with the choice since, though for cost purposes I am really interested in Microsoft’s Hyper-V solution.

Cost considerations aside, be sure to properly scale your VM environment above all else. This is true regardless of product.

• Virtualization
• Ability to vMotion and create servers on LAN
• HA
• DRS

The ability to build machines on the LAN as the business needs them, and the ability to have good DR and HA, with no hardware that can cause issues. If we go down, we have another host with very little downtime.

I would like them to keep the client-based system, even though they are going towards web client.

It's extremely stable rarely any issues.

It's very scalable. We currently have 10,000+ servers, and 80% virtualized, so scalability has to be there.

VMware tech support is excellent. It’s one of the best vendor tech support I’ve found.

It's extremely easy, very straightforward, and good documentation.

VMware vSphere allows you to run multiple virtual machines. For example, I can run up to 10 computers, virtual servers on one physical server. 

We have at least 10 people using this solution in our organization.

The most valuable feature of VMware vSphere is the ability to work in big system infrastructure. For example, you can move one bridge, one machine to another, or one virtual machine from one server to another. This is beneficial when you want to put a server under maintenance.

Also, the security features and implementation are very easy.

There is nothing from my perspective that the product needs to improve. It works for all my needs.

I recommend that VMware vSphere continue to release more features.

I have been using VMware vSphere for 7 years.

This solution is stable.

VMware vSphere is scalable.

Previously, I had used Hyper-v. VMware is a much better solution.

The initial setup of the solution is straightforward.

We use third party support for this product.

I would rate VMware vSphere a 10 out of 10.