VMware vSphere Reviews

• Reliability
• HA
• DR
• Ease of deployment
• We had a lot of disparate hardware and now able to consolidate into one platform
• Easy to keep hardware up to date

So much easier to back things up now. We had Oracle, SQL, everything was just a one-off, but we now have just one process for all our VMs.

We have vCloud suite, Hyperion was a pain, but now they've just announced integration into vCenter, so everytime I have a complaint, they’ve already started to address it.

• Great stability, no complaints at all
• More we move to appliances
• Easy to keep up to date

• We had a lot of standalone boxes, and management wanted to go to VMs
• We were able to consolidate all hardware without purchasing anything extra
• Able to carry us through several years when unable to purchase hardware

They've always been excellent, but we rarely contact them maybe one or two times a year. When we’ve had issues, it’s resolved in hours. We have TAM (tech account manager) so helped things along.

We had vendor come out and it set up on 3.5, and once we got our feet wet, it's easy to maintain and upgrade.

Only purchase what you’re going to use, our management makes decisions, and buy lots of products we’re not using.

We chose vSphere because of it's ease of use, especially that it's easier than Hyper-V. Deployment would have been more labor intensive, and wouldn’t have saved any more money in the long run.

Storage vMotion and vMotion are the greatest of use in my current role; however, the most prevalent features would have to be Fault Tolerance, SRM and DRS.

In my current role, VMware has been used to reduce the overall physical footprint of the environment as well as ease the management aspect of all the virtual environments we used to house. In previous roles, it not only improved the aforementioned pieces but it also improved availability time lines in a significant fashion.

The room for improvement would be just like they did with the C# (thick) client back in 2.5.1 and 3.X, they need to work on the speed of the web client as they are moving towards a distributed management environment. The C# client had its issues back in its inception so they are going through the same growing pains again with the web client. Other than that, I would like to see a stripped down version of DRS brought into the Standard licensing model as the jump from a Standard license to an Enterprise (or Enterprise Plus) license is enormous.

I’ve been using VMware in an enterprise workspace since version 2.5.1 in 2005. I have since had experience with version 3.5, 4, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0. I'm also currently using vCenter Server 6.0.0A and B.

No issues were encountered in the latest migrations that have been performed but this is due to previous experience.

VMware has a great customer service department. If you use a trusted partner hardware (ie, HP in my experience) for your servers, they will also assist in diving into the hardware aspect of the issues you are faced with to hopefully resolve the problem. I’ve always found the VMware support has been there when I needed them. Their response times are very good and the knowledge each support engineer I’ve worked with has been more than satisfactory. I haven’t run into a “blame game” with support while using VMware.

At my current employer, they used to use Hyper-V 2008. We migrated to VMware due to a more robust feature set and the fact that, yes Hyper-V has a lot of the features that VMware does but, once deployment is complete, VMware is a clearly more stable product than Hyper-V in the long run. I’ve seen and been involved with a few Hyper-V migrations that go from VMware to Hyper-V and after six to 12 months, most of those installations wanted to migrate back to VMware.

The initial installation and setup of an ESXi server is very straightforward. When you start getting into the implementation of a vCenter Server you find all the “nooks and crannies” of the installation that are available. It is definitely more complex with a vCenter Server but that is mostly only if you are using all the features available to you. If you just use vCenter for managing multiple hosts at an Essentials license, it isn’t very complex at all.

We implemented using an in-house team (myself). The advice I have is: When you are building a virtualization environment, be it VMware, HyperV, Citrix, KVM, etc., you need to make sure you build the hosts that are going to run the environment properly. Along with that, you need to make sure the storage infrastructure and network are healthy prior to performing an upgrade. If you “cheap” out on any of those aspects, the deployment will suffer in some way.

Yes, we evaluated Hyper-V 2012. From previous experience as well as feedback from the community we decided to move forward with VMware.

We're using VMware vSphere for our server services. We're using it primarily for hosting services. As an example, our mail server: Zimbra Mail is hosted on that virtual environment. Our web server, our DNS server, and all our public servers are also hosted in that environment.

An area for improvement for VMware vSphere is the archiving tool, because sometimes we are using the VMware OVF Tool for backups, but archiving is not very fast when we are backing up the virtual machines. It needs improvement.

What we'd like to see in the next release is for the exporting process to be improved, because what we've observed is that when exporting VMware graphically, sometimes the process stops. We have to use the command-line utility: OVF Tool which is more reliable, so we'd like VMware vSphere to have a better and faster exporting process.

I've been using VMware vSphere for five years now.

VMware vSphere is a very stable solution.

VMware vSphere is scalable.

We have not contacted the technical support of VMware, because whenever we found difficulties, we either Google or check forums for solutions.

The initial setup for this solution is simple.

I deployed this solution myself.

Pricing can still be improved for this product.

I've been using the VMware Workstation for eight years, while the VMware vSphere, I've been using for five years.

This solution is deployed on-premises on a physical server for hosting services. Our public server is on a virtual environment.

I'm very satisfied with VMware vSphere.

Deployment of this solution took one day for the supervisor cluster and the virtual machine.

I can't say exactly how many users are using VMware vSphere in our organization, but it's more than 1,000. We have a virtual mail server with 1,000 accounts. We have a website with approximately 200 to 300 visits per day. We also have an internet proxy used regularly by all the internal users to access the internet. We have not measured usage for the DNS server. We have no statistics for it.

We have plans to use other tools from VMware like the vCenter. We have not yet explored it sufficiently, so we use it more. We have plans to use the vMotion to move virtual machines.

My advice to people who plan to use VMware vSphere is to first pay more attention to the materials, e.g. the physical server, because all the virtualization performance resides and depends on that physical server. This means it has to have a good dimension, a good amount of memory and disk space, and a good network controller card. You have to choose a server which is physically robust, strong, and powerful, so you can deploy with the best performance in your virtual environment.

I'm rating VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

The primary reason our customers use vSphere is to consolidate their workloads and realize the other benefits that virtualization provides. For example, they create HA or VM-level HA to facilitate DR.

Essentially, our clients use vSphere for all of the reasons that people use a virtualization layer.

I am a virtualization technician, doing software technology consulting for virtualization and VDI. 

This is a solution that is normally very straightforward. It doesn't give you many surprises. It's very stable. However, one should have good knowledge when it comes to it because sometimes, you have to use the command line for troubleshooting. For unseen problems, you sometimes need to dig deep to troubleshoot.

vSphere is a robust and feature-rich virtualization platform. It is the number one virtualization-layer platform available, and a lot of people trust it.

Many other platforms now provide similar features but VMware was the first to provide enhanced recorders, DRS, fault tolerance, vMotion, and others. They pioneered these features and they are very stable.

VMware also provides software-defined storage, vSAN, which is built into the kernel. This is a plus point.

Other good features include DRS, HA, fault tolerance, vSAN, and vCenter is a very good management interface.

This platform is easy to maintain. 

To manage it properly, you have to know this product really well. For the most part, it is very easy to use.

I began working with VMware vSphere in 2007 or 2008 when it was version 3.x. 

This is the most stable virtualization platform available.

In the three years that I have been running my consultancy, I've found that VMware is always part of a large project. Most of the time, I have had a good experience with it.

We have done multiple enterprise services projects using this solution. For example, we were working on a Horizon View PoC for a client.

vSphere is scalable; you just have to add to your cluster and it will increase. You can scale up or scale-out, like any other software. Basically, you can add to it as much as you want to.

I trust VMware products and I definitely want our installed base to increase. I want to enhance my own knowledge and skillset, as well. As we move forward and expand, I am equipping myself with more cloud knowledge and focusing on new technologies. One new product that I am looking at is Carbon Black. Throughout this, I will continue to promote VMware because they are a vendor that I trust.

The VMware support is very professional. Most of the time we've used them, they were very good.

As a technology consultant working for customers with varying requirements, I work with other virtualization platforms. Two of these are Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

The initial setup is very easy and there is nothing difficult about it. Initially, some people get stuck when they are setting up the supporting services, like DNS, but other than that, the setup is plain and simple.

The length of time required for deployment depends on whether your disk is an SSD. If so, then the copying will be fast. Also, if you have more memory then it will install quicker. 

Regardless of how it is set up, you have to build the basic infrastructure to put in most of your workloads. Sometimes, you manage an existing one but most of the time, we have to deploy a VMware infrastructure.

A single person can basically manage it, although this depends upon the deployment size. If it's a huge deployment, then it requires a good design and it requires proper planning. You need to know your capacity requirements, for example.

If you understand the environment and the design then maybe you can segregate the work into two or three people. Sometimes if it's a small project, a single person can do it. It all depends on the files and complexity of the solution you are providing to the customer.

We deploy this product ourselves.

The licensing model is not complex.

It is a perpetual licensing but there is also an annual maintenance cost. The price of the solution depends on the features that you want. You can have a very basic setup or you can choose a more advanced set of features. The more features that you want and the more extensive your requirement is, the more you have to pay.

In Pakistan, for the most part, organizations are still catching up in terms of the cloud. There are no large data centers because cloud providers do not exist locally. Neither AWS nor Azure has a presence.

The closest data centers to us are Singapore and Dubai. As such, the cloud is not very popular yet and most of our customers have on-premises deployments. We do expect this to change.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product, or any piece of software, is to have a reasonable level of knowledge in advance of the deployment. That is key in IT.

If you are a consultant, as opposed to an end-user, then you need to have a deep knowledge of the product because there are circumstances where you have to go beyond the normal configuration. Sometimes you have issues that can only be resolved if you are well-equipped with the knowledge.

I also recommend that people plan their deployment. VMware is a wonderful product and it will definitely provide you with the functionality to meet your technical requirements. You will be a very satisfied customer while using it, but the key is to know the product and plan things properly.

Overall, this is a good product and I do not feel that there is much missing. It is the best virtualization platform available.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the product as a server. Most of the work we do for our clients. 

The product works very well for us. Over the last decade, it's been extremely dependable. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The stability has been very good.

Technical support is quite good and very responsive. 

The solution can scale well.

The product meets our needs pretty well. I can't recall noticing any missing features. It's pretty complete. 

Our hopes are that it continuously keeps improving.

The cost could always be lower. 

I've been using the solution for about ten years or so. It's been about a decade. We've had it a while. 

The stability is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's extremely reliable and the performance has been good. 

The product is very, very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so without any issues. 

Our clients have users that vary anywhere from hundreds to thousands. Quite a few people are on it.

We've dealt with technical support in the past and I would rate them very highly. They are helpful and responsive. They get us answers. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we receive. 

We didn't previously use a different solution. We've basically used this product since day one. 

You can save quite a bit using this solution. 

We're just customers and end-users. We don't have any business relationship with VMware.

We use the latest version of the solution. I can't speak to the exact version number.

We're very happy with the solution overall. I'd rate it at a nine out of ten.

Using this product is a no-brainer. It's a really easy product to use. If you're looking at simply a VM or anything similar or anything cloud-based, it's pretty much exactly what you need. 

Using this solution, we have virtualized 90% of servers used by a tier-one automotive supplier.

We have reduced maintenance and power consumption, as well as the recovery time that is required for any failures.

The most valuable feature is the VDP Backup solution. It just works.

The Disaster Recovery solution is easy to implement.

I would like to see better fault and performance reporting in the GUI. I should not have to resort to using the command line to see what is going on.

I have been using VMware vSphere for five years.

The primary use case for us was to virtualize a small data center of about 30 guests. We use it for our Active Directory and Exchange servers. The solution has worked well.

We're not yet using VMware Cloud on AWS or vSphere's built-in security features.

Going from a purely physical environment before, we have seen a performance value boost. It also gives us greater flexibility and it allows us to adapt to our environment much more quickly than a standard hardware solution would.

The most valuable features are the simplicity and ease of use for, a small IT department like ours. It's simple and efficient to manage.

I would like to see continued support of the HTML5-based utilities.

It's been very stable for us.

We have a pretty static environment but, for our needs, it has been very good.

We have had to use technical support a couple of times. It has been very good, a very good experience.

We had outside help from a partner, but the initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We're a small, privately held company, so ROI is not something we concentrate a lot on. But just from the surface appearance, it has really helped us.

Make use of the resources that are there. That's something we failed on when we first started. We started out thinking, "We're going to go with this company for storage, we're going to use Vsphere, etc.," and we just went in with a partner. As I went further along, I learned that there were a lot of built-in resources that I really didn't know I had access to. That was a bit tough.

When selecting a vendor, the most important criterion for us, being a smaller IT department, is the support. Also, to a certain extent, the name is important, because when you're a small department you don't have the opportunity to evaluate as many companies as you'd like to. Sometimes you end up going with the main name brand. When you're a small shop, you need all the help you can get.

I rate vSphere a solid nine out of ten, especially since, with 6.5 and beyond, it has matured and it's full-fledged. It's tough to think of anything I'd want to add to it at this point. I would have rated vSphere 5.5  as an eight out of ten, so it feels like 6.5 is a progression towards ten. There's really no feature that I can explicitly name that would make it a ten. They just need to make more progress, have more stability, and continued simplicity.

We use it to manage our VM servers, everything we have. We're about 98 percent virtualized and we're using VMware vSphere and it works great. It performs great.

In terms of mission-critical apps, we mainly host a lot of our accountants, so we have a lot of accounting software. It's really mission-critical to where we have to have these apps running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With vSphere, we're able to use VMotion, HA, and Fault Tolerance to keep our apps up and running for them.

We don't use VM Encryption or support for TPM or VBS. We don't yet use VMware Cloud on AWS but we're looking forward to it.

Getting rid of our physical servers and going virtual is saving us some money in overall rack space.

Server consolidation.

It's extremely simple. Installing the ESXi is a piece of cake and then putting servers on there is really simple, as is having HA and building a cluster for our VM servers. It's very easy.

The UI is great with the new HTML.

In terms of stability, so far it's been really simple. We've been running it for a few years now and it has been flawless. We haven't looked back.

It's really simple to scale. Just add another server, add it to the cluster and, bingo bango, you're done.

Our experience with technical support has not been the greatest. We currently have a ticket open and it's been open for a few months now, for our VDI solution. I can't complain. In other situations, it has been fine.

A big thing for us, and the reason we went with VDI, was for security. We didn't want folks having laptops or taking them out of our environment, out of our building, and not having them secured, where somebody could just pick one up and take it. This way, we keep it all in-house and it's more secure. It's in our hands and not theirs.

We went with VMware because we were all more familiar with VMware and our vendors, our reps. We all have a great relationship with them, so we decided to go that route.

The setup was pretty straightforward.

I honestly don't know what our ROI is, but it's a lot.

We looked at Citrix and we looked at Azure.

Give it a shot, check it out how easy it is. It just works.

I rate it a ten out of ten. I'm a big advocate of VMware.