VMware vSphere Reviews

The most valuable feature for us is the portability of the VM itself. I've dealt with enough physical servers to see the benefit of having a layer of abstraction between Windows or Linux or whatever software is running on top of the hypervisor. It provides flexibility and manageability by abstracting the physical dependencies from the physical hardware.

It's allowed us to consolidate 150 physical servers down to six servers with 150 VM's running on top. That's the biggest impact to our environment.

The web client needs a lot of work. Unless they replace the C# client with something better, they're going to have issues. Without a better management interface, they're going from a great system to a very poor one.

I've been using it since version 3.5, which was 2009, so about seven years now.

We haven't had issues with deploying it.

It's definitely stable as I've seen ESXI servers up for 1000 days before a reboot. You can go with management services without attached the VM's.

I started in a very small environment with two hosts with 20 VM's and now we have 25 hosts spread across data centers and branch offices and much bigger clusters. The scalability is definitely there.

I've had some issues with support recently. I was lucky enough to get accepted into the vSphere Beta program so I got more direct contact about my issues, but their tech support has not been as good as it used to be.

That depends on your definition of complex. It takes some time to wrap your head around the concept of virtualization. But it gets simpler, especially as you set up from scratch.

Make sure you're using the right licenses because VMware licensing is a little bit complex. In my previous job, I ran into an issue where I wanted to expand our cluster from three hosts to four hosts, but we couldn't do it because my boss had bought a vCenter Foundation license and it only permitted three hosts. It's one of those little surprises that you can find yourself in. Just pay attention and make sure you are buying the right system that's going to scale to what you need as far as licensing goes.

It was already in place when I came into my position. I believe it was chosen because it's the best on the market. Hyper-V isn't at feature-parity with vSphere.

It's just made my life so much better as far as being able to move servers around and perform firmware updates during the middle of the day. I love that.

From the admin perspective, the centralized management/administration of the environment. Additionally, a much smaller data center footprint, streamlined machine deployments and flexible resource sharing rank right up there.

It is hugely more efficient for daily monitoring, patching and upgrades and deploying new machines. With more than 100 servers we would have a couple of full time folks just for patching! Server reboots during business hours are far less disruptive to the end users. We are also in the midst of a large e-commerce project and vSphere has allowed us a ton of flexibility with development and test environments that we wouldn’t have in a physical environment. A lab environment that very closely mirrors production was far easier to design and build than the physical lab we had been struggling with for years.

We are a small shop but still pay the big bucks for licensing vSphere products in order to gain the features that fit our goals.

I'm looking forward to a review of VMTools updates in vSphere 6, which have hopefully been revamped. We currently have a somewhat dated change process so tools updates are hampered by a process that doesn't quite fit and requires more after hours work that is necessary.

We implemented vSphere 4.1 in October 2010 and upgraded to 5.1 in June 2013, then to 5.5 in June 2014. We are beginning to review vSphere 6. Alongside vSphere, we also use ESXi 5.5.0.2718055, and vCenter 5.5.0.2646482.

No – the original deployment went very smoothly with vendor assistance. Upgrades since have been smooth as well. We did a lot of homework before embarking on any upgrades.

No. The virtual environment has remained incredibly stable over the five years since the original deployment.

No. The original deployment consisted of virtualizing 32 machines. We now have over 100 VM’s.

We periodically have regional reps reach out but they don’t seem to know much about our environment. When we call in, for whatever reason, the folks answering phones are very polite, respectful and efficient at directing our calls.

Periodically we have an issue where we have to call in to tech support, but many times are able to Google the issue and find an answer on VMware’s site. When we do have to call though, tech support has been great to us. They definitely stick with an issue until we say it’s resolved.

No, we moved from a completely physical environment.

A little of both. It was complex because we didn’t know a lot about it but being involved in the setup with a vendor proved itself to be pretty straightforward.

We implemented with a CDW team since we hadn’t done any virtualization. They were extremely knowledgeable regarding not only VMware but Cisco, Microsoft and Linux which helped us design an infrastructure that suited our needs well at the time.

We had one Citrix server at the time and I believe we did a very high level evaluation of Xenserver, but VMware was more in line with our virtualization goals.

Do your homework so you learn as much as you can about virtualization concepts as there are many nuances that are quite different from the physical counterparts. It’s easy to get an ESXi host stood up and install a vCenter management server – then you decide to stand up a “few” VM’s and when you figure out how easy that is, you are off and running. But what about your network configuration and HA or DRS to name a few. It’s way easier to learn the concepts ahead of time than to have to research a bunch of little issues after the fact. Google VMware and/or vSphere and have at it!

The command line power CLI module is a great feature, but the PowerShell module is my preferred management tool.

The automation that it provides is the best. Also cost savings, because you don’t have to go with third-party solutions as long as you have people with the ability to script within your enterprise. Then, you can create your own tools and access APIs very easily.

That’s a difficult question because there’s so many features that have been developed but not released yet. I would like to see more workshops with training opportunities at no cost to the customer. That would be very helpful.

Very stable.

We kind of just started off large, and kept getting larger.

It’s decent. Fairly responsive, not super great but adequate.

We were on Hyper-V, and it sucked. The manageability of vSphere far outperforms Windows Hyper-V, at least the 2008 version. VMWare is more stable, it clusters better, and is just better in general.

For me, it’s manageability. VMware offers so many different ways to manage their solution. You can use UNIX-like command-line interface to access the host, can use Pearl, you have a lot of different options at your disposal.

I don’t know.

We hired a consulting firm to come in and actually develop the environment when we moved from Hyper-V.

There’s no better alternative. I would absolutely recommend vSphere. I do think that they’re the most expensive, but well worth the money.

I also think peer reviews would be an interesting way to research, as I haven’t ever encountered a site like IT Central Station before, but I can definitely see the value of moving forward with it.

We use this solution for Datacenter consolidation and it is the infrastructure of our servers.

The interface is good.

It is easy to configure.

I would like to see VDP and other features included to back up the VMs in a native manner.

I have been using VMware vSphere for ten years.

We are working with VMware vSphere 6.5.

VMware vSphere is stable enough, but we have some issues with the storage vendor.

It's a scalable solution. We don't have any issues with the scalability of VMware vSphere.

We have 5,000 users in our organization.

Before we consider increasing the usage, we have to consolidate Windows Datacenter by applying an HCI infrastructure.

Technical support is good.

I am a customer of Dell Technologies as well as VMware.

Other products we work with are VDI, VMware Horizon Server, and vSphere with Operations Management.

I have been using Horizon for eight years. We are using version 7.

It has 100 user licenses, that are deployed on-premises.

I feel that Horizon is more flexible in increasing the number of desktop and network profiles.

I would rate Horizon a seven out of ten.

There are ways to implement VDI in the organization other than the VMware Horizon.

In most cases, the initial setup is simple.

It took two months to deploy this solution.

We have a team of two or three to deploy this solution.

We had help from resellers.

We don't have an active subscription. We have a prepaid or permanent license.

We have been researching vSAN and hyper-converged features.

I would rate VMware vSphere an eight out of ten.

I consider all the features to be of interest. 

Improvements should be made to the controller. 

I have been using VMware vSphere for between three and five years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

The technical support is not too bad, but not the best.

The initial setup is easy but could be moderately improved. 

The licensing could be lower.

I am a consultant and reseller.

My advice to others who are considering implementing the solution is they have a good partner.

I rate VMware vSphere as a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for our virtual environment.

The VM features are all very good.

We've been very happy with the reporting aspects of the solution.

The documentation of the product is excellent. It's very helpful.

The product has been very stable. It's quite reliable.

The solution is very scalable.

We've found the technical support to be very helpful and responsive.

The initial setup is quite complex.

We would like the pricing to be lower. It's very expensive right now.

There could be more security features added to the product.

I've been using the solution for about five years or so. It's been a while at this point. I have a good amount of experience on it.

The stability is very good. It's reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The scalability is very good. If a company would like to expand, it can do so.

In our organization, ten to 15 people are using the solution.

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. They've always been responsive. They are helpful and effective at solving issues. We're quite satisfied with the level of support our organization receives.

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

The licensing is on a subscription basis.

The solution, in general, is quite expensive. They should work to make it less costly for their customer base.

We are customers and end-users of the product.

We are using the latest version of the solution at this time.

We've just deployed it ourselves, and it is very small. We haven't had any difficulties with it at all so far and it's been five years.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been largely very satisfied with the capabilities.

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.

It's virtualization software. We are using it to virtualize virtual machines.

It cuts down on hardware costs by being able to virtualize multiple hardware and multiple machines on a single piece of hardware.

The primary use is the most valuable feature. Being able to virtualize virtual machines on one set of hardware is essentially what it does.

The user interface could use some improvement.

I have been using VMware vSphere for approximately five years.

This product has been very stable.

The version that I have is not very scalable, although overall, the product is. I bought a limited version. We do not plan to increase our usage within the next year. There may be, later on.

I really haven't had much need for technical support.

Prior to using vSphere, I was working strictly with individual machines.

I thought that the initial setup was very straightforward.

We deployed with our in-house team.

I and another person are in charge of administration and maintenance. There is routine maintenance needed for virtual machines. This includes maintaining existing virtual machines, as well as creating new ones when required.

Considering that this solution has cut down on the number of real machines that I have, I would expect there to have been cost savings.

My advice for anybody who is looking into using vSphere is that there are a lot more options out there now, but this product has worked well for me.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is that it's too easy to create new machines.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.