VMware vSphere Reviews

The best part of ESXi for us is the flexibility it gives us, we can spin up a new server in minutes, we can increase VM drive space live, we can perform maintenance on our infrastructure with minimal down time – we have a blade solution, and have the capacity to move VM’s to allow us to perform updates/upgrades to individual hosts during work hours with zero disruption to the business.

Its allowed us to reduce the time needed to bring onboard new services. For example, we migrated from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, the flexibility of running a virtualised environment allowed us to quickly build new servers to test, this is something that would have taken considerably longer using physical hardware, with VMware, we were able to tailor the system spec without having to scramble around for memory, drives CPU’s etc. This ultimately reduced the time to complete the migration.

I’m keenly awaiting multi core Fault Tolerance, so I can have all our VM’s covered by FT – currently it’s only available for single core VM’s.

Fault Tolerance is now available for multicore VM's, but, you;ll need to factor in how many cores the host has before rolling this out to the more powerfully specced VM's.

5 years

None, we found VMware support really good.

None, we had a few teething issues which were mainly due to our lack of knowledge of the product when we first installed it.

None at all, we can add hosts on the fly, we’ve expanded our SAN array from 1 to 3 shelfs without issue.

We use VM and also a 3rd party for support – no problems have been encountered which were not resolvable.

1st class – no complaints at all.

We had the implantation done via a reseller, what we did find was that the initial knowledge transfer of skills from the vendor to us was questionable (in that they came in and set it up, then really left us to it. This gave us a very steep learning curve at the outset.) If we did the project again, this is an area that I would focus on as part of the project, so that we were more comfortable with what we put in place. This doesn’t mean we had a negative experience, rather we were a little green to start with.

I’d say, understand what it is you wish to achieve from the outset. Take into account growth, be aware of VM sprawl and the associated license costs – we were all happy to add servers left right and centre, we’ve now been through a server rationalisation process to bring our VM server count down a little. Make sure that your engineers are suitably trained and make sure that you have a good support contract in place – it gives you peace of mind!

We have the ability to run within our block environment with a private cloud capability, enabling us to realize our automation roadmap.

We’ve consolidated over $10 million for licenses, $12.2 million in maintenance, and $10.3 million in labor costs – it's a tremendous cost-saving.

I would like to see non-cloud native apps to be able to run on infrastructure and not be dependent on the underlying VMs for stability.

It improves our stability.

We can dynamically scale within hours to meet our business demand, which use to take months.

We include a mission-critical support model, which gives us a very rapid response. So the response time is very good.

Very complex, as there are a lot of moving parts to get into service. We simplify it for the end users but it is complex.

I would say that the total cost of benefits are not just across virtualization but across general business categories. Don’t cut yourself short from using the solution to drive cost-benefits in multiple financial categories.

As a manager, it’s easier for management, as I don’t have a lot of physical servers with them possibly failing. I’ve been slowly getting all the servers virtualized by adding more hosts.

The disaster recovery solution is so much better to use, to bring systems back up. I’m one person, so I’m managing 22 servers on one set of hosts, and it’s so much easier when I can do it on just one.

I don’t think we're large enough to use it like some other firms do, so v5 is perfectly fine for me. We’re running v6 now, but we really don’t even need that.

I’ve been running it for more than a year now.

We have to get another host because of growth, and I had some issues with my backup software in the beginning, and since then, it’s been running great.

We’re growing only because we’re realizing that we need to switch from physical to virtuals, plus we are launching a few new products causing for new products. Now we’re going from two to three hosts. They’ve been great so far.

I would’ve said it was excellent until the last case. vSphere was running a bit slow, and the last case it took the guys weeks to get back to me. It was a minor issue. and perhaps that was why. The diagnostic logs were sent, and it took weeks before they got back to me.

I had help, but I would say it was fairly straightforward. At that time, I hadn’t even been to a class, so it was very new to me.

We had two vendors come in, and one was quoting a SAN that was ridiculously expensive (I don’t remember who), but the other vendor, which was BPI information systems, came in with a cheaper SAN solution, because that’s where your cost is. We ran it and we’ve had no problems. My environment’s probably smaller than an enterprise, however.

The cost of hardware and maintenance is something we always look at. I was am one person, and it was getting too complicated to keep the physical servers running for, so we needed to switch to virtualization.

I reviewed Hyper-V, but everybody uses VMware. We really only looked at VMware though as consultants recommended it. I knew I wanted to go there.

The support could be a bit better. I would do the same thing that I do.

I don’t have a very big network because I’m so busy, but I count on my consultants and information system networks a lot. After, I’ll research a lot on the internet to back up what we’re doing.

vSphere has many great features. It is very hard choose just one because most of them work together. But, based on the way how vSphere manages all resources provided by the physical system, I believe that the high availability system is the greatest feature of the solution. It works with a series of sub-features that ensure customer resources are online during critical changes.

We are constantly updating and migrating systems here in my current company. With this product, we can run parallel systems with a low cost and without impacting our customers. With this solution, we can provide more resources, cheaper, quickly, and still keep the integrity and quality of our services.

This product already does this very well, but all improvements are related to how physical resources, as well as memory and CPU, are managed . These are the main problems of the virtualization, it uses more memory than CPU. We still have problems with memory in virtualization environments, and some cases can present problems of throughput with virtual disks, too.

I have been working directly with vSphere solution for about four years, but I work with virtualization about six years.

This solution is very stable. Hardly ever do critical issues appear in the environment, and most analyses that are done in the system are about performance improvements.

No, this solution is prepared to expand or decrease as necessary.

It is great. They really have a good service.

The support service is very efficient. They are fast and usually they have a great technical knowledge beyond an effort to solve your problem.

I work with more than one virtualization technology. The solution implemented varies according to client requests.

The implementation of the solution is relatively simple. Of course, you need to have some knowledge about infrastructure to be able to create an environment without performance issues. But in general, the deployment of the vSphere system is easy. Just some feature configurations need to be really studied to improve if they really have to be implemented. VMWare provides all the documentation necessary to implement and manage vSphere throughout your environment.

The most common problem in implementing this solution is the incompatibility with some physical hardware, but it was more frequent in the past. All current physical hardware can support virtualization technology.

The implementation was done in-house.

This solution is recommended for environments considered medium and above (in the number of servers and hosts). If you are intending deploy this solution to small environments, the cost-benefit is not worth it. VMware provides a free license to be put in small environments, but all the good features of the systems will be disabled. For smaller businesses, I would recommend another solution.

As prices vary, the ideal would be to contact a direct sales team, and report the company's needs so they can point out the best license to use.

As I said, I work with more than one virtualization technologies. Beyond VMWare vSphere, I've worked with Microsoft Hyper-V, which is a great virtualization solution too.

It is necessary to be sure about the systems that will be migrated to a virtualized environment. Although nowadays virtualization is at an advanced stage, some systems still present problems when they are migrated from a physical server to a virtualized one. Systems that require too much performance need to have a different configuration, then it's a necessary study on how to implement them.

My primary use case is to consolidate the number of physical servers required. We created our motion machines out of it, and it acts as very easy management for backup and security.

VMWare vSphere has really helped us grow as a business, and going for a virtual backup solution has made my life so much easier.

The most valuable features are High Availability (HA), which reduces downtime, and Fault Tolerance (FT), a mirror solution that ensures no data loss. Its vMotion feature is also valuable, as it allows me to move all my virtual emissions to an available host before performing maintenance. I also value a feature called Distributed Virtual Switch, which allows me to create a private VLAN and do L2 management and switch management.

An area for improvement would be integration with different platforms. In a future release, I would like to see a feature that alerts the user if they make a mistake with configuration or if there is a vulnerability.

I've been using this solution for seven years.

This solution is scalable - it can go up to 64 nodes on the cluster in terms of storage.

VMWare's support is great - they respond immediately to requests for help.

Previously I also worked with Hyper-V, but some of my Linux machines were having problems with it.

The ease of installation depends on your organization's infrastructure - it can be very simple or complicated depending on what you want it to do.

If you want to reduce your costs, I would recommend going forward with virtualization. I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

The primary use case for vSphere depends on the center. This solution can be implemented both on-premises and on the cloud. 

The most valuable feature of vSphere is its modularity. I also like the maturity updates. It's available everywhere and almost all the data centers are using it. 

vSphere could perhaps be improved by more integration or better security. If there is ever something that could be improved, I am open to looking into it and proposing the improvement. 

I'm a Solution Designer, not a user, but I have been working with vSphere products for over ten years. 

This solution is stable. 

This solution is scalable. 

I don't have experience with VMware support. 

I didn't personally install this solution. 

My customers pay for a license to use vSphere. In Egypt, the license is yearly, and we buy three years. 

I rate vSphere a nine out of ten. I have a lot of customers using vSphere. I recommend this product for those who are looking into implementing it, but it depends on their needs. There are other similar products I can propose too.