VMware vSphere Reviews

There are several features we've found valuable, including:

• DRS
• SDRS
• vDS
• Resource pool sharing

By engaging virtualization and vSphere's advanced features, we've started to effectively manage workload and resources, resulting in better performance with fine grained tuning.

One of the features I would like to see is less constraints on the fault tolerance feature. Version 6 may have this, but we don't have it yet.

I've used it for four years.

We haven't had issues with deployment.

It's been stable for us.

It's scaled sufficiently for us.

Customer Service:

We haven’t have many interactions with customer support. For the ones we had, it was satisfactory.

Technical Support:

We haven’t have many interactions with technical support. For the ones we had, it was satisfactory.

We already had knowledge of the product on the team, so it was easy for us.

We're working with a Hardware-as-a-Service model where we're responsible for the software and VMware is responsible for the hardware. We implemented vSphere together with the vendor.

We considered using Xen/KVM, but we didn’t want to spend much time on the configuration and wanted to start working on the product out of the box.

I would recommend analysis of different options and pricing, including public/private-cloud models. Depending on your application and needs, you may not need such an advanced product as vSphere Enterprise.

vMotion, which lets us migrate from one server to another, is a really beneficial feature.

We are using

• less hardware and
• less power

as a result of this solution.

Improvements need to be made in the performance manager.

I have used it for over 10 years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

5/10.

Technical Support:

5/10.

I didn't use any other solution.

Setup was very easy.

We used a vendor team who were 5/10.

I advise that you take your time and get the most you can for the money.

This was the only solution we looked at.

Spend time learning the product before going into production. Buy the vCenter software. That is a must.

• Bare metal Hypervisor
• Management
• Mobility of VMs
• Distributed resource services - HA, DRS; Network and Storage

Hypervisor & Management in the new vCenter Server 6 with Platform Services Controller gives us a huge opportunity for scalability. It's also helped improve our SSO functionality with one click.

It would be nice if they could have offer a straight/forward deployment of vCenter from an OVA, not from an ISO.

I've used vSphere for about 15 years, and vCOPS for two years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

I have not needed to contact them yet.

Technical Support:

I have not needed to contact them yet.

I hadn't used a previous solution.

It was straightforward.

An in-house implementation was done. All the pre-production implementation tests were made on VMware Workstation 11. Regarding vCenter 6, it is a must to install the VMware OVF tool in order to find, and make, the needed settings in the appliance *.vmx , before starting it. Having in mind the vCenter appliance is intended for ESXi deployment, in the production environment it was straightforward.

The ROI is much better with the VSOM.

From the position of an enterprise partner of VMware, it is not really easy to convince the end-customers of the VSOM benefits, having in mind the price tag.

No other options were evaluated.

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.

Customer Service:

It is great. They really have a good service.

Technical Support:

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.

Robust, functional, reliable, ease of use, good value.

Exponentially easier to manage servers.

Since 2009.

None

None

None

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

No - prior was physical one up servers.

Straightforward.

In-house plus one consultant.

Considered Hyper V.

Plan for more storage than you think, use flash, use 10gbE SFP+ to SANs - well worth it.

VMware Server is a free, easy-to-use Windows and Linux application that provides a superior introductory experience to server virtualization for businesses to optimize utilization of their technology assets. Below mentioned standout features explains why VMware is so popular among all virtualization software's: •You don’t need to configure your hardware: VMware installs on top of existing OS, you don't really have to worry about configuring hardware to work with it. • Simple and basic Installation: VMware has done a great job making it easy to install. • Web-based management interface: Manage your VMWare installation via Web browser. • Large support for guest operating systems: Every version of Windows and many Linux distributions are supported.

1. In January 2010, VMware announced the End of Support for VMware Server with support ending on June 30, 2011. Users are free to continue using VMware Server but are recommended to migrate to another VMware offering to gain the benefits of newer technologies. 2. Additional Layer affect performance: Machine's own operating system sits between the hardware and virtualization software- meaning it isn't one of those bare‐metal virtualization products that you install directly on the server. The result is that a portion of machines capability isn't available to your VMware server because it’s devoted to running the underlying operating system.VMware is also known for the below given features : • Supports two-processor SMP systems and enables single virtual machine to span multiple processors: Allows you to take advantage of multiprocessing. • Virtual state capture : Capture your virtual machine’s state so if a problem arises you can roll back to a previous state. • Easy migration path to other VMWare products : upgrading to a different product is easy.

All these features mean that VMware Server is a great platform for personal experimentation or light business use. I've personally had a VMware Server host with a couple guest machines running continuously since 2009.

vSphere is for virtualizing some real computers, and then they can be used as hot spares. Sometimes you need to complement some functions or perform some work on them.

The connectivity is fantastic, and many functions can run together in one server. If you need to scale, we can continue to add components or modules. It's a beautiful virtual solution that has many advantages over physical hardware, where you have to use devices and wiring to connect all your projects.

I'm using vSphere at a high level. Sometimes, I find it challenging to integrate different networks, but I think it's just my lack of knowledge. For example, some companies have private internal networks, so we must connect to external networks, routers, or switches. 

And the backups are something we have to integrate with one of them because they are just running with what they have. And I don't know why it wasn't considered from the beginning because they believe that they can back up the whole computer, but it's not a good solution. I have taken measures like exporting critical databases that I normally modify and figure out, but I would prefer a centralized system.

I haven't had any problems with stability.

I'm usually able to find solutions for my issues by logging into the blogs and searching for answers. 

When I first got involved with vSphere, I thought it was fantastic to use the default. Once it was deployed, I could check on the rail systems, and everything worked very well. The best thing is that the tests I run to understand the situation can also run parallel. So I found it all straightforward. However, primarily I'm working on a platform already built by the companies that provide them. I do some maintenance and modifications of the customer's applications. Setting up this solution isn't generally part of my job. 

I rate vSphere 10 out of 10. It's perfect. I know some people are very conservative and don't want to even mess with them, but I would argue that it's a way to avoid risking physical installations or making mistakes in real life. You can do all your testing virtually.

We use the solution for the virtualization of the environment. We've converted more than 90% of our environment from physical to virtual.

The higher availability and the vMotion, I would say, are what makes it very interesting as you avoid systems being down. It provides, if you cluster, high availability, and your services can move from system to system to avoid downtime.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is helpful and always available. 

There are certain issues that can be improved. No solution is perfect, even though it's working for most of us most of the time. There are certain issues that crop up and some of them are not due to VMware. It could be due to the hardware it is running on. Therefore, it would be ideal if they could provide more knowledge on the fault tolerance and the high availability as some things are just assumed and then users find later that the use cases are different. Sometimes you may assume something applies to a use case only to find that it doesn't. If they improve on the knowledge base and documentation, it would be extremely helpful.

I've been using the solution since 2012. It's been a while. 

The stability of the product is good. I haven't dealt with bugs or glitches. It's reliable. 

The product is scalable. You can increase the number of servers. You can increase the number of computer resources, storage, CPU, memory. It's up to you how huge you want your clusters to be.

This is an enterprise solution. It is not used by users. It is an enterprise technology solution. Therefore, we won't be adding more users. 

Almost all the engineers in the organization are using the solution. I would say maybe 15 engineers are actively using it. 

The technical support is always there. They're always available. When you have an issue, you just log a call with them and set up a service request. They assist you directly. An engineer will be assigned to assist.

We have other tools, such as Oracle VM, which we are using in other areas, however, VMware is used more than the Oracle VM.

For the initial setup, you need to do design work with someone who understands VMware, who is actually certified by VMware. You need someone certified to do it.

Deployment is not a problem. As long as you take time doing your design, the deployment will not take long. You can do it within a week.

If you have one certified engineer, the implementation will go fine. 

In terms of the management of the solution, we have about four engineers who are looking after it.

You cannot do it by yourself. You need a certified engineer. That's a requirement from VMware and it's so that the environment is stable to avoid unnecessary scraping.

You do need a license. Most of these vendors also offer what they call the free version of the software. If you want more support, more features, you have to go for the paid versions. That said, you can still get the free or community version of it.

I'd recommend the solution to other users. It's a good technology. They're pioneers in the industry.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

On-premises