VMware vSphere Reviews

We primarily use the solution for everything Microsoft-related for the most part. I would say our visualization platform is about 99.5% of all our workload from a Microsoft point of view

The solution has high availability. 

The on the fly changing of the resources on a VM is very helpful. 

You've got the underlying capacity, that's greater than what the actual server has, and therefore you have the ability to do on the fly add capacity. I would say that's by far the thing we use the most. 

The VRS, to a lesser degree, is also quite useful to us. It does work in the environment. 

The solution is very good from a recoverability point of view. Everything can be stored much easier on a virtual server than on a physical box. 

The biggest pain point is probably the firmware management of the underlying hardware. It could be a lot better.

We use HP hardware. The biggest thing is the firmware upgrades and other items at the backend. You have to take down the system. It's an in-memory database and that can sometimes cause issues. If you have to do firmware upgrades, it's organizing downtime and all sorts of things, which normally in a VMS space isn't an issue. They have embedded some of this in 7.1, however, I haven't tested it or seen it in action as yet. 

That said, one of the problems is that when we're sort of behind big memory servers and the databases in them if you migrate it, it potentially breaks the system off. That's a big pain point that the firmware management of the underlying hardware should handle. VMware doesn't really cater to it, however, Nutanix to some degree does cater for. It gets pretty expensive, however.

We are always sort of one or two versions behind. We never test the latest version. I would say for me personally, the management aspect with large memory and in-memory databases for the motions and stuff like that is what it needs. That's one of the key things that I need really, from a support perspective. That's caused a number of issues already. 

You do get something called host profiles, which they've also improved slightly, however, I still think it's a bit clunky in terms of the way you can manage it. They can produce something to improve that aspect slightly.

I've been using the solution for more than 12 years. It's been over a decade at this point.

The solution is mostly stable.

We've had issues, however, if you think about it, it's quite complex if you look at stuff like a three-tier architecture with different stories, subsystems, and things like that. It's not really VMware if it's unstable perhaps. 

VMware itself isn't necessarily unstable, however, they might present as a VM-ware issue due to the fact of the storage latency or a driver issue. We did a firmware update and VMware itself I think is quite stable. Every now and again, there's an issue that creeps in, however, it's because we use different vendors for storage and a different vendor for computing. Overall, by and large, VMware is very stable.

From the way we set it up, it is relatively easy to scale as long as you've got the planning in place for where you're going to. We use something called blade technology, and that is relatively easy to scale.

There's a total of ten people that are actually on the solution at any given time.

I've used technical support a couple of times. I'm quite happy with it. We've got an agreement with HP. We offer our support via HP or via Data Centrix with HP. Durin the couple of times I've used it has been quite fast and thorough.

I've never used a different solution. I started using VMware or VMware server, about 20 years ago. vSphere ESX is probably the first visualization tool I've used. Subsequently, yes, we've tested one or two other options, for example, Hyper-V and what used to be called Acropolis. We've also used Oracle VM. However, for production and for everything else we've done, we pretty much speak to VMware. It's tried and tested and we're quite happy with the stability. Therefore, we stick with it.

If all your hardware requirements are met, it is a relatively simple implementation. However, you have to have the boxes ticked in terms of connectivity, capacity, and all that sort of stuff. The actual VMware part of it is not the biggest complication of everything now.

We handle maintenance ourselves. My team consists of five people, and of those, only one of them really works on the maintenance of the hardware and the software. It doesn't take a lot of personnel.

Initially, we did use a vendor for the initial setup. That's even before I started at this company. The company uses their local vendors to output the hardware deployment and with the software deployment, however, it's my understanding that it's been done in-house mostly.

It's not a cheap solution. The maintenance specifically is quite expensive. I also find that it's more expensive than the higher tier products. 

We've looked at buying into something like a vROPS or whatever they call it today. However, when you look at the cost and the benefits, although there is great benefit in the product, it's just never been a cost discussion that we've been able to entertain with management. 

Similar to vSAN, we looked at that a couple of times. It's a great product and it has proven itself. It's brilliant. It's stable. However, as soon as you look at any peripheral products, it becomes quite expensive, as it's licensed per socket or per blade or per server or whatever. 

We're just customers.

We are a little behind the latest version, which I believe is 7.1. We're using 6.5 for the most part. We still have a little bit of a legacy in 5.5, however, that is just hardware related. It doesn't support the newer version. We trying to rectify that as soon as possible.

I would recommend the solution to other companies.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

I am currently working on creating infrastructure for VMware, implementing new infrastructure, and addressing troubleshooting and error problems. 

Additionally, I have completed a project on VxRail, specifically focusing on configuration and operational knowledge.

VMware vCenter is extremely useful as we can manage between 100 and 1,000 hosts using just one management tool. It provides high availability and DRS. 

VMware also offers a free version of the vSphere application, which is vital. For larger deployments, a paid version is available that offers additional site-related features. VMware's scalability is based on standard metrics conducted through load testing. 

The most supportive features of VMware vSphere include high availability and DRS. The vSphere application is free and very useful, ensuring effective management and improvement in operations. With vCenter, we efficiently manage a vast number of hosts with just one management tool.

One area for improvement is the documentation, especially after VMware was transferred to Broadcom. Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.

I have five years of experience in the IT field and have worked for three years with vSphere.

In India, many organizations are using VMware for distribution and management purposes, which indicates its capability to scale efficiently within a company.

VMware provides good support. Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours. However, for priority two issues, it often takes one to two days, which can be improved to a single day.

Positive

Alternatives involve using Nutanix and VxRail alongside VMware.

The setup depends on the scale and configuration. For a simple setup with ten host servers, deployment takes about one to two days. With sufficient manpower, v ESXi and vCenter installations can be completed in a day.

The implementation depends on manpower. With the involvement of two to four people, the deployment tasks can be seamlessly completed.

VMware vSphere is rated at ten on a scale of one to ten. It is a perfect solution.

I use VMware vSphere primarily to provide a layer of virtualization between our Cisco hardware and existing software. It ensures high availability and redundancy for our applications, minimizing downtime in case of OS or application failures. Additionally, vSphere simplifies migration when updating hardware and makes it faster to reinstall virtual machines along with applications.

I appreciate VMware vSphere for its versatility and usability across various use cases. The solution's flexibility allows us to implement it widely. We use it extensively, and I believe soon all our servers will run through virtualization for better efficiency using vSphere. It performs as advertised and meets our needs effectively.

In terms of improvement, the license fee could be more affordable, but overall, I'm satisfied with VMware vSphere.

I have been using VMware vSphere for almost 20 years.

vSphere is very stable. I would rate the stability as a ten out of ten.

Setting up VMware vSphere is very straightforward; no issues there. Purchasing involves acquiring licenses and the licenses often come bundled with hardware from vendors like HP or Dell. The deployment process is smooth, and support hasn't been necessary as the software is stable. For deployment and maintenance, we currently have about four or five active staff members involved. However, considering buying expertise and engineers, the team can range from nine to ten individuals.

The solution is not cheap.

Overall, I would rate vSphere as a perfect ten out of ten.

Our primary use case is virtualization. All the clients who want to virtualize can use vSphere to do it.

I like stability and the organization of the different functions into the I#M feature which is also quite useful, quite stable. I would prefer the old solution because before, you had to install software on your client's desktop to administrate the environment. Since five or seven years, it's not needed. You can do everything through your web interface. And I prefer when it was more reactive, so when you have a client instead of using your desktop. But it's a good solution, quite stable and quite efficient.

In future releases, I would like to see less pricing. The license can be improved. 

I have used this solution for over 15 years. So it's one of the first products we've used with a client.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. Around 20 to 30 customers are using this solution. 

The customer service and support are good. However, it could be faster and more qualified. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It is intuitive-- Next. Next. Next. Next. Finish. Easy. Great.

For the deployment process involves materials, equipment, licenses, and the availability of the client team.

It took about one or two hours for one server; it's okay. The deployment was super quick. 

A team of engineers and admins is required to deploy and maintain the solution. We have a team of ten people. 

The licensing model is yearly-based. It is quite expensive.  Moreover, there are extra costs to the standard licensing fees. 

I would definitely recommend using the solution. I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

I would advise to be sure that the functionality brought by VMware aligns with the good functionality because there are other products in the market like ISPs, KV M, Oracle, Microsoft, and some other stuff. And VMware is a well-known product. But to be sure that the functionality provided by VMware is needed.

We mainly use this solution to create hosts and convert them to virtual machines. We convert our physical assets into virtualized assets. We need to convert ESXi hosts into VMs.

Our entire operating team has access to vSphere. They can log into vCenter — vSphere's dashboard. We have multiple IDs and roles created. In total, we have more than 600 users. Out of our 600 users, we have around 50 admin users who can administer the entire map. 

We definitely plan to continue using this solution.

All of the features are great. It affords us different views of the VMs created by vSphere so we can control them better. It provides us with a single view into VMs as an asset. We create thousands and thousands of VMs using vSphere.

We have created more than 6,000 VMs. With this solution, through a single pane, we can see inside the vCenter. We can see our VMs that are running on-premises, the data center, and the ones that are in the Cloud.

There is some room for improvement but if we're not satisfied converting all of our physical assets into virtualized ones, since we have a scope for other technologies, we can always go for containerization.

There are some challenges around ESXi hosts — converting them into VMs. Also, it could definitely be more secure, overall.

It would be nice if other users could see or accept the VMs that we create — this has to do with the cluster.

The cluster should be able to be viewed by multiple sets of users apart from the operating team. If a developer also wants to have access to the cluster, it's complicated. Role-based access should be available to make this easier.

I have been using VMware vSphere for more than 10 years.

It's quite stable. I haven't experienced any issues as such. We have support available from an extended team of VMware professionals. It's aligned to the GTI, global technology infrastructure. VMware is a big area in our organization.

It's quite scalable. You can keep scaling up the number of VMs you want to create. As I mentioned, we create thousands of VMs, so yes, we can scale easily. That's a capability I would look at from a business goal perspective. Any business leader will want to scale up their hypervisor. vSphere is pretty much the hypervisor. 

I am satisfied with the support. There's a separate team for maintenance and a separate team for support. Whatever upgrades need to be done, it is all taken care of by the maintenance teams.

There are two ways of installing it, depending on your deployment topology. Overall, it's quite fast and easy to install. It only takes a couple of days to install it.

An extended team of VMware professionals helped us with the installation, but we mostly did it ourselves. It was onboarded into our organization in 2009 — the very first version. You could say that we're one of the earliest adopters.

The licensing has become cheaper over time. As there are multiple offerings, it depends on how you are leveraging.

We evaluated Edge containerization a while back, but we didn't notice any tools that would help us grow, so we decided to stick with VMware vSphere.

I would absolutely recommend this solution. It's better than Microsoft Hyper-V. Hyper-V has some problems. VMware vSphere is the industry leader by far when it comes to the hypervisor sector.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

The primary use case is for virtualization of the Windows environment for our organization. 

It has performed wonderfully. Over the course of the last 10 years, we have implemented vSphere Hypervisor and moved from five percent virtualization up to a current rate of about 85 percent, for our Windows environment.

The mission-critical apps we use it for are for production facilities, as well as optimizers for the machine equipment that is at those production facilities. There are ancillary systems in our corporate data centers that are used for the internal customer-facing apps, to work with the business intelligence piece, which can monitor metrics as well as capacity planning, ordering, and business warehousing. All of these business-critical functions run on vSphere Hypervisor.

We are able to increase the density of the virtualized servers and, with the increased density we have a lot of page sharing as well as memory sharing. We see performance increases from Server 2012 and forward; 2003 is debatable. There were negligible differences in 2012 but we did see benchmark performance improvement from utilizing Hypervisor and the increased density that comes with it.

The most valuable feature is its stability. There are a lot of product enhancements that come out regularly but, generally, the stability the solution provides is the most important to me, as I like to go home and sleep at night.

It is absolutely simple and efficient to manage. We can bring in people who have never been exposed to vSphere or virtualized environments and they're still able to support it from a server standpoint. The training time as well as the adoption rate, for a junior technician or somebody coming right out of college, is very good.

Sometimes, the talent pool is hard to fill so having that stability and ease of use is very important to us.

VMware has expanded, from a corporate standpoint, to where they have gotten very large. I have noticed, in the last couple of years, the breaking apart of specific added benefits and charging license upcharges for them. That would be the only negative thing that I have to say: As a large consumer of the Hypervisor, we have a hard time justifying the cost of utilizing the extra products, especially when it's a couple of grand here and there, a couple of hundred dollars here and there. It's hard for an IT administrator or an architect to sell to upper management. When they're seeing so much ROI from the Hypervisor, it's hard to show them that there is extra value in the additional products that can be tied on top.

I would really like to see an assessment of which products are actually going to be beneficial to charge for, and that they then continue to keep some of the products bundled in with the initial Hypervisor.

There are some competitive vendors out there who are sticking to the original model that VMware seemed to have, which includes a lot of additional features and functionality in the initial pricing, and I think they are gaining a lot of market share based on the fact that they are keeping their licensing simple. The only argument I have with VMware is that, when I ask our VMware team about a new solution, I hear comments like, "For a nominal fee we can upgrade your license and you can have that." For the large number of Hypervisors and the scale we have, it's frustrating to hear that I have to go ask for additional money for very small, additional features that I think should be included.

I respect that VMware has to grow and there are some features that they should not bundle in and that they should ask more money for. So I would like to see an analysis of sales and what's included and what the consumption rate is. I think they could dial it in a little bit better to where they have more bundled solutions. 

Unfortunately, I think the type of model that VMware is moving toward is having an a la carte type of fee list. There are so many products that start with a "v" that I tend to get drowned with all the capabilities and I have to pick the particular thing I want to go after. Whereas, if there were more bundled services, or a package that included more bundled services, I might be able to swing that more easily than asking for money here and there. 

We're able to scale with density. I think that's the most important part. The clusters are allowed to go to so many nodes. We don't even touch the number of nodes per cluster. We traditionally have multiple fault zones in the data center, really for a comfort level, not because of a technological level. I know we could push the equipment a little bit harder but we generally like to keep things in a comfort zone that is constantly moving northward. So scalability is limitless and we have not really touched the capabilities yet, but we know the capabilities are there when we are ready to use them.

The environment has changed hands several times over the years. Currently, I work to architect any new deployments but I was not involved in the initial bringing in of GSX, when the company first adopted virtualization, roughly 10 years ago. I have turned the environment over two or three times since I've been here. Now we have new staff in my group who are constantly evolving and changing with the adoption of new architecture and business cases for the Hypevisor and other products in the suite that complement it.

It's hard to calculate the ROI but I know that in our main, corporate data center we have gone from 700-plus Hewlett Packard servers down to fewer than 50 physical servers for the Hypervisor. We still have some legacy physicals that have not been virtualized yet but, over the course of this current refresh and into next year, those should go away.

In addition, in our paper mills and pulp mills we have heavily adopted virtualization, and in our box plants, where we make container boxes for shipments, we have seen a ratio of five servers down to one, and that's over a couple of hundred sites.

While an actual ROI number is hard to calculate, if you think about the yearly maintenance on all of those systems, it's very vast and deep. It also allows us the portability to expand rapidly and add virtual machines with virtually no overhead, once the initial architecture has been built.

If you are not already virtualizing, existing-wise, you are doing yourself a severe disservice. Anybody who is continuing down the road of physical servers, any justifications that they think they have, should be challenged. If you have an environment that is all physical servers, a very easy win would be to present virtualization and denser workloads to your management. That would definitely make you look good in your career. I really don't see any negatives to moving to virtualization, even at a 100-percent adoption rate. We have yet to find a workload that is unable to run successfully in a virtualized manner, with the proper configurations and tuning.

We have not quite adopted vSphere 6.5 or 6.7. We do have some locations that have 6.5. On the radar will be utilizing the encryption capabilities, but as of yet, we have not really implemented that. We have a large organization so we move at a little bit of a slower pace. But implementing that is on the very near horizon, at least for our external-facing systems, as well as some internal.

We are also investigating the VMware Cloud on AWS initiative. That will probably be in the 2019 forum for dabbling or moving a percentage. With our being a manufacturing company, we move a little bit slower in adopting newer technologies and we have not really built the framework for a cloud initiative yet, but that will be something we investigate shortly.

I would definitely rate vSphere a 10. If you rate the Hypervisor alone, it's a 10. It has been one of the staples of technology for the last 15 years, and the key player for virtualization, for the whole industry during that time - or since Dell spun VMware off, or created the organization. It has been the premium, platinum product for Hypervisor. There are a few other players in the industry, but they are nipping at the heels, and that's about it. I do think that VMware is going to continue to lead, as far as Hypervisor goes, for the foreseeable future.

The company I work for is a global company and has many data inflection issues. Quality control decisions are not actually made at the local level. It is made at the headquarter level in Europe. 

We have our cloud site solution, our production environment, and our data recovery environment. We use VMware solutions integrated with HP solutions for hardware replication and storage-to-replication facilities. We use vSphere with ESXi 6.0, primarily for VM migration. We have an HP storage replication system in place for our first storage requirements with the VMs. Every other one is managed by VMware vMotion. vSphere and ESXi 6.0 are used to host our application servers, operational applications, and additional HR applications.

For extensions, we have vMotion to manage the virtual machines so that we can watch the network. For all of our backup requirements currently, we use the HP Data Protector. 

We have some downtime, but we can quickly recover from a disaster depending on the magnitude or the extent of the disaster using vSphere. The software will recover from any disaster that happens. We have also reduced our cost of production as well. vSphere has also improved our operational productivity. We have isolated servers that we couldn't integrate together, but now we can with vSphere, despite the fact that they are different models. Where they're different physical models, different memory models, you can integrate all of them. It makes our resources more available and our services more reliable to our users.

The features in vSphere data recovery are excellent. Sometimes I've deleted an entire server before and was able to recover the deleted VM. I didn't have to use the backup to restore the VM. I just used some command line tools and I was able to restore the deleted VM. I find that fascinating. 

For VM migration, I can migrate my virtual machines from one place to the other. vSphere has easy integration. I have some older server models. They are HP products. I have both old and new server models. I was able to integrate all these servers despite that fact that the date of manufacture is a five-year gap between the units.

I was using the same version of vSphere and I was able to integrate all the servers together. They are working well through it.

We want to see improvement from VMware with security. We want minimal downtime. We want automation. We want to deploy more efficiently.

If there is a disaster of any kind we want to respond quickly and recover from it. With vSphere, you get to provision server resources with ease. While we like vSphere, one problem we have is saturation. For example, if I want to deploy 10 virtual machines, I will have to install the operating system one by one. I will have to install the patches one by one, also to every kind of script. I will have to learn more, but automated deployment is not easy to implement. 

It makes you spend a lot of time on deployment. You can't have time for doing other things.

On login incidents and other events, I would prefer to have some notification in the logs.

These are the main areas of improvement that we would like to see.

The stability is good. Previously, our whole infrastructure couldn't support our operations. We are always having downtime, we are always having system instabilities. 

Since we implemented a new solution with vSphere, we have a greater capacity of infrastructure relative to our virtualization that almost doubled what we used to have before the implementation. 

It makes our services more reliable. We have also had more uptime of our operational applications.

VMware vSphere is a very scalable solution. The only thing is if you are to upgrade, i.e. from ESXi 6.0 to 6.7, you might not be able to use your older servers. I believe VMware will not support these after ESXi 7.0.

For newer servers, VMware is scalable. We can always use it at least. The only issue I may have is we may not be able to use our older servers with the newer versions of VMware ESXi. 

In-house users number about 110 to 115. We have customers that login into our servers. We have web applications that customers log into from outside.

Around 2000 to 5000 customers use our vSphere installation per day.

We have billing people that are working there with our customers. We have operation people that are in the field that are using various equipment that is connected via wifi to our systems. Then we use the VMware network to carry our own operations and activities. 

We have customer service people that attend to customer inquiries, to try to resolve customer issues, but are still logged into the same application. There are various roles from read-only customers that want to pick one information or the other about their product on our sites. They don't actually update anything except they want to transact business with us. 

We use vSphere to help the users as well as to manage users that need information regarding a particular product or report. Users generate various reports from our SaaS/PaaS applications.

The staff we currently have are about five in IT. We have the manager, we have infrastructure persons that consist of system and network. We also have a database specialist that manages our applications. Our database specialists also serve as the developers for the application support. We have user support teams. The various support people that we have dedicated for the maintenance of the VMware vSphere deployment is about five in total.

We should still be able to support our users, at least, for the next five years. After five years, we may now be thinking of upgrading the infrastructure. This solution is being used every day, i.e. 24/7/365 days a year.

We believe that there's been increased usage, but we just implemented it last year. From our plan, we know that at least for the next five years we may not upgrade.

We also have a maintenance contract with HP. Any event that we could not handle locally, we escalate to HP to be aware of and also to the application vendors. 

For technical support, we have people that maintain the solution. We have a network of experts and specialists. We have a cloud computing specialist as well. We have a database specialist that does VMware integration and so does our software application developer. 

Even with all these people, we still also have a customer service contract with VMware and another with HP, the hardware vendor. We don't actually have any contract with Cisco, but we use Cisco devices. The main vendors that we have a contract with are the application vendors Dell and HP. We have a maintenance contract with VMware in case there are any issues beyond local resources. VMware will escalate them quickly when they respond to our queries.

We didn't use anyone before we procured VMware. Before we procured the product, we didn't use any other advisor. We were using HP hardware and servers. 

For the implementation period prior to 2015, we first implemented on-premise attached solutions. Prior to that time, all our applications were stand-alone IDS servers.

Our initial setup was outsourced, possibly it wasn't that complicated. Because it was outsourced, the consultant made it easy for us. 

After the initial setup, the subsequent ones were relatively easy for us. We trained in the VMware settings for the hardware. Depending on the part of the initial setup, we had older models of servers than we had new models. For the initial setup for the older models, we employed a consultant that did it for us. We implemented the newer models ourselves last year. 

We consulted with HP to do the initial setup for us which was relatively cheap. We did the integration of the old and the new servers. Running the new server models with our VMware vSpehere license, we used our own local resources to do that work.

Implementation actually took longer than planned because of some issues that we did not envisage at the start. When we called HP for price assessment, they came and discovered that our power solutions were not good for their product. We had to spend extra buying new UPS units and installing them. That made the implementation take an extra month. 

For everything together, both the implementations, it was four or five months or so for us to install the new server models and the integration as well. We used the VMware ESXi as the VMware vSphere hypervisor, prepared the servers, and installed the hardware from an HP reseller. 'The installation, especially the setting up of partial integration, was actually done by HP Nigeria. Everything went great because we didn't have any issues. 

Some of the administrative tasks we were supposed to carry out by ourselves. HP gave us direction on how to go about it and it went pretty well.

This is really a niche area, but we have an enterprise license for our business. We have many users on our cloud applications, so we went with a costly enterprise license.

VMware does provide organizations with discounts. The customer service license fee we got discounts on from the supplier in order for us to get the best out of the license fees. That's our experience. We possibly paid less than our partner company. The partner is only local and not global like our firm.

Even if I decide to use a product, I cannot deploy it because my superiors have to determine the policy. Those superiors are not here locally. They are in Europe. 

We don't use Veeam here, though I've used it at some point. Right now we don't use it in our production environment. We currently use HP Data Protector. 

We evaluated other options like Salesforce and Microsoft Active Directory, which we only tested for production. The policies were on central management, so we only tested these solutions with our time. The applications we used were effective only when activated.

The advice I would give is that there should be proper planning for implementing VMware solutions. With us, the content management suppliers and the various vendors provided this. 

If VMware vSphere is the particular product you are choosing, consider where the sellers were located and if they have a knowledge of the product.

• Do the suppliers have the right models for your business?
• Do the suppliers have different VMware licenses available?
• Will you be able to enjoy the VMware license discount with the manufacturer?
• Does the integrator company have good partners in the supply chain?

If you just launch a VMware deployment without planning, it is not advised. Engage with all management and staff, then do proper planning before going into vSphere implementation.

No product is perfect but VMware vSphere is absolutely excellent. It has issues, i.e. the result of insufficient speeds, but no product is 100% perfect. That is why I would give it a nine out of ten rating.

We have been virtualizing our on-premises data center. We relied heavily on VMware vSphere to manage our servers; all our virtual server loads are hosted on it.

The tool comes with scale-out capabilities. Deploying new infrastructure became much quicker, saving significant time previously spent sourcing hardware for each installation. It also has the ability to downscale on rack spaces, reducing the number of rack units needed to accommodate our servers.

Its most valuable feature is remote replication which comes with high availability. 

I would suggest that the tool reconsider its pricing strategy. The recent price hikes could potentially pose a problem for VMware in the future. The recent price increases, especially since Broadcom acquired them, seem excessive. There are reports of businesses experiencing massive price hikes, sometimes as much as 10-30 times higher. This is causing smaller businesses to consider exiting the space altogether.

Overall, it's a functional system that works well. However, I believe that systems like Nutanix offer better integration and functionality. While both are solid hypervisors at level one, VMware vSphere's management, especially through the web-based interface, could use improvement.

I have been working with the product for 15 to 16 years. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

VMware vSphere is highly scalable, and I rate it a ten out of ten. My company has 400 users. 

I rate the tool's ease of deployment a six out of ten. It was quite complex due to various hardware restrictions and issues. We had to address several technical issues with VMware along the way.

I would rate the deployment process as typical regarding time and considerations. However, the migration from on-premises to the cloud was a bit cumbersome. It required a bit of work. 

The installation phase took about three months initially when we deployed on-premises. This duration was understandable as we had to virtualize numerous physical servers and handle various complexities. Transitioning to the cloud extended the project timeline to approximately six months.

I believe the biggest return on investment stemmed from significantly reduced deployment time frames. Commissioning and deploying systems and accommodating growth became much faster—measured in days rather than months. This efficiency and consolidation efforts resulted in a high long-term ROI.

I rate the solution's pricing a ten out of ten due to the recent price changes. 

My advice to those considering VMware vSphere would be to carefully assess your business's size and the product's value proposition. It may not be well-suited for smaller enterprises due to its prohibitive cost. It's important to consider alternative solutions. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.