VMware vSphere Reviews

We deploy this solution for our clients, from small to large enterprise. We are resellers and I'm the company's principal engineer. 

A valuable feature is the provisioning setup of VMs. It's the most common feature used by our clients. 

I'd like to see a simplified integration with services automation. At the moment it requires a lot of network from partners and solution providers to do this - there are a lot of third party components that require integration. If they could improve this it would mean less integration for some key products and services.

I've been using this solution for five years. 

This is a stable solution. 

We have no complaints about the technical support. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Licensing costs aren't too expensive, although you pay extra for additional features. 

It's important to understand your requirements before choosing a solution. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

We have a variety of customers with different use cases. Many can't go to a public cloud, and so we give the option of a private cloud. If they can go to a public cloud, may use a hyperscaler such as AWS or Azure on their applications. 

vSphere is easy to integrate with multiple third-party tools. We're using Carbonite, for example, for migration. We are also using vSphere and vCenter for integrating with a CA product. 

The solution allows for very good virtualization.

It makes migration processes easy.

The product offers a lot of functionality. It helps use manage everything for the client.

The solution can be integrated with multiple other technologies. If you have Cisco CSA solution, for example, it integrates well. 

If you want to use third-party tools, you are able to do so. 

With respect to the Windows environment, it's very, very easy to use.

Commercially, you see other products, like Nutanix, which offers a free hypervisor. It would be ideal if this solution was the same in that regard.

There are certain tools the can't run in parallel and occasionally, in those instances, we have trouble migrating customers from one source to our data center.

If I'm replicating workload from the data center and, I have to migrate some of the workload to my location, I have to stop that application. Only then I can run vSphere. That is the biggest challenge. If both the tools cannot run in parallel, it becomes a problem. There should be some sort of way to run these two products in parallel.

We've been using the solution for a number of years. It may be about eight at this point.

The stability has been very good. We haven't had any issues thus far with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The scalability is quite good. You can scale it horizontally and vertically if you need to. It's quite flexible in that sense. A company that needs to expand it shouldn't run into any issues.

The solution can have ten to 15 nodes. 

Currently, we use the solution quite extensively in our organization. We do plan to continue to increase the usage of the product in the future.

Technical support is okay. We're pretty satisfied with the level of service we are provided. They seem to be pretty knowledgeable and responsive. 

We also use Nutanix, however, we don't use that solution quite as extensively.

VMware has much better functionalities. They have integrated IDs and some functionalities. as well as load-balancing which Nutanix doesn't have right now. 

The initial setup is not complex. It's rather straightforward.

We can deploy the solution in three to four days, typically. We deploy multiple clusters and we take three to four days in terms of grid installing. 

In terms of pricing, a little bit of improvement is required. There is a lot of competition in the market. If you talk about Nutanix, Nutanix is much cheaper than this product. Very recently, we lost out on a contract due to the pricing.

We're a partner with VMware.

We are a data center service provider. We sell these services to customers. We are not using it for ourselves only. We are also selling the solution to our customers. In that sense, there's always a plan to increase vSphere.

Overall, we're pretty satisfied with the solution. I'd rate it a seven out of ten.

• Implemented private cloud.
• Created different OS VMs
• Implemented backup policies.  
• Implemented network solutions.

Due to clustering, if any VM or server goes down, then within a moment it can be back. Even if a node goes down, then automatically all the VMs shift to another node. That is thr beauty of the product. It supports different platforms: Windows, Linux, Unix, Ubuntu, and many more. 

It is very beneficial with low space and easy manageability. Due to this product, we have saved space, energy, and durability. We have a lot of VLANs for different floors and services. This requires different VMs all implemented in one place. 

Users get tremendous speed. As an admin, I found it's usable to manage all services from a single location or point. We have already implemented private cloud, so in an emergency users can work from home. It's suitable for all users. 

SimpliVity backup and restoration is more suitable and its best feature. If any file or folder is missing and needs to be restored, then within a moment you can recover it. Simplivity has its own backup system, so there is no need to purchase separate backup software. 

All data has security. 

Multiple OSs can be created on a single platform. 

Its DR facility is good. Within a moment, data can be retrieve from another physical location over the Internet. The speed to recover data is good.

HPE uses flash drive, so its working speed is also better. Its node has 2U rack space, so it saves space.

OS templates should be readily available, so there is no need to get an OS separately. Only the activation part should be different, which is not presently available due to the need to get the OS from a different location, then create VMs. If it connect with Internet, it should ask this during VM creation with the help of selection. It should auto download the OS so it will be beneficial only at time of activation by entering a valid key. If a key is not valid, then it should start with a trial version. 

More than three years.

It requires proper maintenance and attention to work smoothly.

The product is expandable, as per requirements.

My experience is really good.

No, we only selected this solution at the start.

The concept is new. We found it a little complex at the start but the operational part was normal.

Our vendor supported the implementation. After that, we did it in-house.

As per our requirements and usability, the product is good.

After getting a headache, you will find the cost is reasonably cheaper.

We compared with Nutanix, IBM, and HPE. We got all the technical details, benefits, and functionality.   

Before selection of any product, first determine your own requirements, study them, and then present solutions.

We use this solution for hardware consolidation and improved infrastructure resiliency.

It has allowed us to be more resilient to infrastructure and hardware failure, reduced hardware costs, and decreased recovery time from failures.

The most valuable features are cloning, snapshots, vMotion, and replication. All of these have increased our ability to recover from failure and balance workloads.

Reducing the cost of vSphere would be an improvement.

We have been using VMware vSphere for five years.

Our primary use case is controlling our virtual machines, as well as our host machines.

We are able to create virtual machines and move them from one host to another, controlling the resources.

I love all of the features in this solution, but moving VMs between host machines is one that stands out.

The solution should be more user-friendly for upgrading host ESXi units, bringing them into the control unit of vSphere.

Generally, the user interface needs to be improved for non-technical people. A technical person can hover around and find the right tool or task that needs to be done. But, for people who are new, they require guidance because it is not intuitive. They have to ask for help from here and there to get it right.

The solution has been very stable up to now, and we are very happy with that.

I cannot make a prediction about the scalability, but I can tell you that we have close to five hundred users at this time. We must keep up with technology so we do plan on expanding the use of this solution.

Until now, I have not used their technical support.

The deployment of this solution was completed before I joined the company, although I don't think that it was complex.

In terms of maintenance, it depends on the task that you are doing. Normally, it doesn't take too much time. There are two of us that handle the maintenance.

There were consultants who assisted with the deployment.

It took quite a long time, but in the end, I think that it benefits us in terms of ROI.

The licensing fees are on a yearly basis.

When I hear that somebody is willing to deploy a similar solution, I suggest this product to them and even help with the deployment. I love this product.

Once this solution is deployed, only fine tuning needs to be done. Once complete and everything is in place, you don't have to do much. From the technical end, the product is great.

I would rate this product a ten out of ten.

My primary use case for this solution is the DRS feature of the solution.

When checking the utilization reports, the operational reporting and matrixes are a little weak.  In terms of what has been the starting growth or trend analysis is something which, currently they have an add-on which we have not used  because it's an add-on product, which we have not bought. As of now, they have this capability but I've not seen these features to be more integrated on the base product itself rather than having as a special add-on.

I really value the DRS feature of the solution. Apart from that, there is a high availability in the feature called VMotion. In addition, the centralized management throughout the V-Center software is useful.

When checking the utilization reports, the operational reporting and matrixes are a little weak.  In terms of what has been the starting growth or trend analysis is something which, currently they have an add-on which we have not used  because it's an add-on product, which we have not bought. As of now, they have this capability but I've not seen these features to be more integrated on the base product itself rather than having as a special add-on.

As I mentioned, the necessary improvement would be to add additional features that would integrate reporting and management in terms of automation. Those are the two things I would say it's a lot of, or the third item could be of some service important to integration. Right now everybody is talking about private clubs, but these are the base foundation so, the effect it has had on embedded software attack, running on the hypervisor for self-provisioning, it definitely has an edge.

Its highly scalable, we have never had to make radical changes to the design to make it more, or to put in more capacity. So, as we are growing we have been adding the servers into the existing pool without even worrying about a need for redesign. As we grow, we find that our company is more dependent upon this product. 

Technical support usually we have online support, where we can log a call if there is any trouble. But so far in the last three years that I have been here, we rarely, or I cannot collect any one instance where we had necessity to log a case with the support team, the forums and the community are, have enough knowledge based articles to make us pass through any technical challenges that we have faced.

We have prior use knowledge of Hyper-V. First, it did not have this automatic scalable capability which are scored to move across from one specific hardware to another without impacting any downtime. And secondly, it did not have a lot of automatic configuration capabilities, based on the utilization of the specific hardware it could re-balance what goes around on top of it. So these two are they key features that I feel were lacking at that point in time and it's hard to use another feature that I feared was lacking. In addition, it relied a lot upon the physical machine.

It was very straightforward setup. 

The way we had done it is it came pre-installed with as part of the hardware stack that we purchased so the new servers that we purchased we bundled that ESXi software on top of it from the hardware vendor itself. So from that perspective, the implementation strategy was to have it as an OEM100 by the hardware vendor itself and then the way we designed it from our side is we designed it into two different data centers. One for production, one for test and development. So just have a logical separation there in terms of the hardware that was used for production and what was used for distribution.

Overall timelines are approximately two to three weeks time-frame. After the hardware was developed, they came in and installed the base software and considered it based on our requirements.

Deployment was done by the hardware vendor itself. The hardware came from HP and there was a HP reseller who shipped us the hardware. The resellers team only came and did all the installation and confirmation after the design was agreed with us.

Pricing is competitive I would say, because usually we buy the software, along with the hardware stock so it's usually a bundle thing that we try to squeeze the hardware windows in to get us proper discounts. So, it is regularly higher than what a Microsoft overall solution turns out to be. But, the capabilities are worth it. The price is justified.

Licensing is pretty standard.

In my previous organization, we used Hyper-V for over eight years.

From my side, the advice would be to design it properly the first time. Have proper capacity planned out, and don't just create over-provision in the production environment. Best you can do with provisioning with production, you definitely need to have some capacity sizing done properly. And, that goes in not for just this product but any virtualization product that a company implements. You do not want to overload the hardware. You have to think about the capabilities of the end-user.

We use it to virtualize our server infrastructure.

Virtualization has made it easier for us to manage our environment. We can manage it from location, the vSphere web client.

We find the solution simple and efficient to manage. 

It provides us cost savings. We are able to virtualize instead of buying many physical servers. Therefore, we can buy one server and add VMs on top of it.

The SQL Servers are our mission critical apps.

• Keep innovating.
• Make it more efficient and stable.

It's very stable. We've had no issues with it.

It's very scalable. You can add different components to it. Moving into the future, as we do different things, we'll be able to stay with VMware.

The technical support is very helpful. VMware's technical support seems to be very knowledgeable.

We did not have a previous solution that we were using.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

It's huge. It has been a big return on investment for us. It saves us money because we don't have to buy as many physical servers. VMware seems to be the future of computing.

It is cost effective. 

We did not look at anything else. We just looked at VMware.

We are just learning about VM Encryption, TPS, and VBS right now. We just moved to VMware ESX 6.7. While I don't have a lot of experience in it yet, but we're looking to implement them.

Since we have had VMware, we've had no problems with it. It's easy to manage. It works very well. Other competitors may not offer as much. You can do a lot with VMware. You get different plugins, so it's a great product. Just go with it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Cost
• Stability.

Use case is to manage virtuals; spin them up, bring them down, create them, and a little maintenance on them. It performs okay for me.

We do DRS for load-balancing. We're looking at doing Microsoft SQL virtual on it, probably without clustering; replacing physical clusters with it; and job scheduling; all probably in Q1.

The most valuable feature is that it's not a Windows license. It's also good that it finally has the patch manager included in it. And it's simple and efficient to use.

It will be nice when it's all HTML 5.

It would be nice if it had auto-scaling, no need to select CPU or select database size. Let it auto-scale, let it use the features that VMware has, instead of having to preselect.

It's solid. Other than a host crashing, we haven't really had any downtime.

For us, the scalability is good. We haven't hit any limitations.

Technical support is a little slow to get back to you. We haven't had any mission-critical outages but we play some phone-tag. It could be better.

The initial setup could be a little convoluted. You've got the PSC or you've got something else, plus you've got to the vSphere, and then you want to do Server Linked Mode. You have different environments, you have different storages. Some support the plugin, some don't. That's a pain.

Hyper-V sucks, some of the other stuff isn't good. Cloud solutions are too expensive, if you're actually going to use them. We did a side-by-side comparison of Hyper-V and VMware and VMware was substantially better for performance and usability.

Do a side-by-side comparison. Try it, stay away from Microsoft. The Microsoft solution of being everything to everybody does not fit. Never fits.

Everything that we do is strictly within our own company. So we don't do encryption, although we might look at that. We don't really have a need for TPM. It's a pretty controlled environment.

I would rate vSphere an eight out of 10. To make it a 10 they need to get rid of Flash and then apologize for having used Flash, have it auto-scale, and no Java.