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it_user414402 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Director at ADMI France
Real User
​The more visible example is the performance seen by the user in my DaaS product.

What is most valuable?

  • High performance for data access
  • Scalability
  • Simplicity

How has it helped my organization?

The more visible example is the performance seen by the user in my DaaS product.

What needs improvement?

A more graphical reporting of the health of vSAN.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for six months to manage two clusters of four servers. One with vSphere ESX 5.5 with 30 ISCSi network storage, and one with vSphere ESX 6.0 with 40 vSAN six storage.

Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We had no issues during deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For the moment, I have only one issue. One disk of a server is not seen by the system. I have opened this issue with Dell, but it’s not a hardware problem. I have to reboot the server but the problem persist.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have had no issues scaling is to our needs.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, I used a traditional ISCSi network with SAN.

How was the initial setup?

It's simple because I followed their procedures. It only took me a week to see results.

What about the implementation team?

I implemented it myself.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I pay for my consumption with VMware vCan Program.

What other advice do I have?

Double check the hardware compatibility lists with the builder.


Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: I’m using my own vCloud Air Network Program because I’m resseller of a Daas Solution.
PeerSpot user
it_user321048 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. IT Technical Engineer & Solutions Architect at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
When we release our new applications, we just scale out without investing in new infrastructure. It's missing centralized management, however, which limits our troubleshooting ability.

Valuable Features

The level of consolidation that you can implement from a hardware reduction element – it is so valuable to us in our industry. Ease of use and simplicity.

Improvements to My Organization

The cost savings in itself from having to buy 15 servers in each hotel. Now we have one server for each hotel. When we release our new applications, we don’t have to invest in new infrastructure, we just scale because its already in place. We're on a five-year lifecycle so we can scale for five years with no further investments.

Room for Improvement

Centralized management could be better. A server can only be managed by one vCenter. This limits our visibility to remediate, troubleshoot and fix problems efficiently.

Stability Issues

It's very reliable. They're is not another product similar, and we've had no major outages for seven to eight years. We have hotels where you can barely reach and because of the stability of the product they can trust the reliability.

Scalability Issues

It grows beyond belief. In my situation, because Im always dealing with corporate, I have shown that virtual machines can scale to whatever we have asked it to do. If we need to scale we can, and the hardware just needs to be ordered, and setup.

Customer Service and Technical Support

I love them, they are the best in the world. We only call in emergencies, and they are the best in the world. We are changing to v6 and the support model is changing so we to procure the enterprise support even for the basic offices. In the earlier versions, I had it but now we're trying to persuade VMware for that additional 24/7 service.

Initial Setup

It's straightforward, and couldn't be any easier. I did training around the world for IT resources, even teams who have never seen it can adopt it, both in terms of administrative and installation.

Implementation Team

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user320124 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
It performs reliably and performs VM snapshot consolidation well without unnecessary tweaking by me.

Valuable Features

VM snapshot consolidation. It does that extremely well.

Improvements to My Organization

Reliability, it just runs without you worrying about it all the time. I don’t have to tweak it, don’t have to really do anything. It’s easy to use as well.

Room for Improvement

I really don’t have much to complain about as we don’t need very much, so we really are happy where we are right now. However, they could do with bringing back the regular GUI.

Stability Issues

Fairly stable, doesn't crash, and does what it needs to do. It’s great.

Scalability Issues

We’ve only scaled a little bit. We’re not super large, but it definitenly is somewhat easy to scale up. The hardest part is the physical connectivity to disparate networks, which VMware can’t really control.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Excellent, it’s very smooth. You call with your problem, you get to the right person quickly, and they dive in and resolve the issue quickly. If it’s not a VMware issue, they’re very good at letting you know where the issue resides at.

Initial Setup

It’s fairly easy to set up. There’s always a little bit of a question of what comes first, the host of the virtualization of the vCenter server, but it’s not too hard to figure out.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

I’d highly likely to recommend VSphere, but the only thing that’s prohibiting the switching is cost, as it definitely is expensive.

Other Advice

We always look at responsiveness, availability, and willingness to work on a partnership when choosing a provider. I believe we continuously still look at updates, and sadly we still have some Hyper-V. It’s hard to cost justify switching over for vSphere, as Windows Data Center is just so cheap. But vSphere is definitely better if you ignore costs.

If I’ve never worked with a product, and I’m comparing apples to apples across the board, I definitely have to look at what peers are saying in helping me reach my decision.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user321261 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Server Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Its ability to perform consolidations has improved our company, though its stability on Dell servers needs work.

Valuable Features

  • vMotion
  • DRS
  • HA

Improvements to My Organization

The ability to perform consolidation and it's portability, flexibility, and DR capability.

Room for Improvement

None that I can think of. It's a nicely-evolved product.

Stability Issues

Overall, it’s very stable. I'm very impressed, except when running on Dell, but it works on Cisco blades.

Scalability Issues

It's very scalable, and you can add more as needs dictate. It depends on the ratio and goals for consolidation, so you can scale as you need.

Customer Service and Technical Support

The quality is not quite what it used to be since it was outsourced.

Initial Setup

It’s now very easy, was harder but now more deployment options, scripts, auto-deploy, can have full automation or manual, smaller footprint.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Systems Engineer at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
It's given us faster provisioning after consolidating all our physical machines onto it, especially with VMotion.

What is most valuable?

vSphere provides a lots of great features. In my opinion, VMotion is a feature that helps save time, cost, and effort.

You can arrange for system maintenance at any time you want without required downtime.

How has it helped my organization?

We've used it to implement a virtual datacenter server for in-house applications and services and have achieved a green and efficient virtual datacenter.

After consolidating all the physical machines in our datacenter onto vSphere, we have also achieved faster server provisioning. With the help of templates, we have reduced the time from weeks to several minutes and, therefore, we can provide services for other departments nearly instantaneously.

What needs improvement?

I think that all the improvements VMware could make would be related to monitoring. vSphere should be equipped with a better monitoring solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using VMware products for 8 years.

Starting with testing software on a VMware Workstation box, and then virtualizing all IP services such as routing, DHCP, DNS, etc with an ESXi 4.1 host. And lately transformed almost services to VMware vSphere 5.0.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

As with any software, ESXi and vSphere have their own requirements, but if you meet the requirements for hardware, network, storage, etc., then deploying a vSphere system is just easy as pie.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's efficient and very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

VMware helps scaling with VMware vSphere is just easy by adding more ESXi hosts to an existing cluster, and then vSphere DRS will does the work for you like monitoring resources and spreading VMs to balance workloads on all the hosts between that cluster.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not made any calls during the time we have been running vSphere.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used KVM and Microsoft Virtual Server before switching completely to VMware vSphere. With VMware vSphere, we have a good management tool, with easy provisioning, and easy troubleshooting.

How was the initial setup?

It is a quite straightforward setup. It’s just a easy-to-follow wizard installer, and I don’t think that there is an easier way to do it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing and licensing models vary, and are dependent upon your organization requirements and operations. Always start with the minimal licensing model then, later, upgrade to meet your needs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Due to the simplicity of vSphere deployment, the ease of management, and the small footprint of its hypervisor, we decided to use it without wasting time on other products.

What other advice do I have?

We were seeking a green and an efficient solution for our datacenter. We found vSphere to be a great product and decided to become their customer.

When working with vSphere, I think you always have to take three things into consideration:

  • Know your system requirements - are there any compatibility issues, or performance impacts etc.
  • Monitor the current physical infrastructure so you have a specific resource consumption, and can then develop the best investment plan
  • Make a transformation plan from the physical infrastructure to the virtualized one
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Thang Le Toan (Victory Lee) - PeerSpot reviewer
Thang Le Toan (Victory Lee)CIO at Robusta Technology & Training
Real User

Thanks Hieu,
I agreed with your opinion, but it is your own experience, the world very many enterprise organizations are using vSphere. They have many ideas coincide with your opinion. Let me emphasize more vMotion, EVC is also very important in moving automatic model format support early incident handling, due to the speed and processing time ns, ms of CPU and RAM isoforms.

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Consultant, ASEAN at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
vSphere vs. Hyper-V

Recently I got some questions about this one. Who is better? Or who is cheaper?

I was worked in VMware and Microsoft, both covered virtualization products. Now, I’m working in one of Cloud Datacenter with many platform like Sun Solaris (Oracle), IBM AS400, IBM iSeries, IBM pSeries, Microsoft Hyper-V (the first Partner Hosted Productivity Cloud – PHPC in Asia), and VMware technologies (vSphere, vCloud and vCAC).

Based on that, don’t think too much about the platform. The most important is the SLA. All platforms is good as long as we manage the SLA. And use the most suitable platform for your applications. If you want to use Microsoft, then Windows Hyper-V 2012R2 is the right one. Don’t use any version below Windows 2012R2.

Anyway, back to the questions. Let’s make a simple requirement. This is roughly calculation.

Customer requirements:

They need to virtual all their infrastructure. 100 Physical Server with each servers have the specification: 2CPU, 8GB RAM, 100GB Disk. All Microsoft licenses are OEM.

Total Requirements:

  • 100 x 2CPU = 200 pCPU
  • 100 x 8GB RAM = 800GB RAM
  • 100 x 100GB Disk = 10TB Disk
  • 100 Windows Server 2012R2 Licenses
  • Monitoring Tools required
  • High Availability supported

Assumption:

CPU based (Option 1):

  • Low CPU utilization, 10% average. 200 pCPU x 20% = 40 pCPU.
  • Server configures with 2×6 Cores/CPU = 12 pCPU.
  • Total server required based on CPU = 40 pCPU / 12 pCPU = 4 (Round Up).
  • With N+1 roles (HA), then total servers: 4 + 1 = 5 Servers

RAM based (Option 2):

  • RAM Utilized 80%. 800GB RAM x 80% = 640GB RAM
  • Server configured with 128GB RAM. Maximum RAM utilized 80% then 128GB x 80% = 103GB (Round up)
  • Total server required: 640GB RAM / 103GB RAM = 7 Servers (Round Up)
  • With N+1 roles (HA), then total servers: 7 + 1 = 8 Servers
  • For Microsoft Hyper-V, assumption required 2GB RAM for hypervisor. 128GB RAM – 2GB RAM = 126GB RAM x 80% = 101GB (Round Up). 640GB RAM/101GB RAM = 7 Servers. Total Server (N+1): 7+1 = 8 Servers

Because the application is highly memory consumption then we choice Option 2 (based on assumption and roughly calculation). I recommended to use the sizing calculator such as VMware Capacity Planning.

Licenses Required:

With Microsoft:

  1. 8 x Windows Server Datacenter 2012R2
  2. 8 x System Center 2012R2
  3. 1 x Microsoft SQL Server 2012 STD Edition -> For DB

TOTAL: $78,994*

*Web Price (Y2014), excluded support and CALs for MSFT products

With VMware:

  1. 16 x vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus 5.5
  2. 1 x vCenter Server Standard 5.5
  3. 8 x Windows Server Datacenter 2012R2 -> For Guest OS
  4. 1 x Microsoft SQL Server 2012 STD Edition -> For DB

TOTAL: $123,053*

*Pricelist (Y2014), excluded SnS and CALs for MSFT products

In the end, all is your choices. Enjoy.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
VMware's vSphere is THE industry leading virtualization platform - today

Valuable Features:

- Increase the flexibility and agility of the infrastructure to move at the speed of business by decoupling the server from the hardware - Server consolidation has driven the virtualization industry shift, and vSphere leads the charge. - Virtualization overhead is the smallest of any hypervisor on the planet. - Supports over 90 operating systems, whereas other vendors cannot even come close - Centralized management and built-in performance statistics collection make management easy - Complementing tools, such as Site Recovery Manager, vCenter Operations Manager, vShield, and vCloud Director just increase the power of the stack. - Add in the licensing for the operating systems and the applications running virtualized, plus the cost of management tools. The competition costs the same.

Room for Improvement:

- The entry point for small business is fairly high. They are working on this currently. - Capacity management for top-tier business critical servers - Currently VMware has a tremendous amount of products that complement the vSphere suite. Some of the products are complementary, and some compete with each other. This product list is sometimes hard to navigate. - Security access granularity for end users can be complex.

Other Advice:

VMware's vSphere is currently THE industry leading virtualization platform. I have been using VMware vSphere and its predecessors for almost ten years now. The core hypervisor continues to lead the industry. At the present time, you cannot go wrong with VMware's vSphere suite. However, competitors are rapidly closing the gap, so watch the market closely over the next few years. I implement business-critical applications on vSphere for all sizes of business almost daily, and am proud to be a virtualization enthusiast. At the moment, VMware vSphere is my hypervisor of choice - without reservation.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user4401 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor

Does anyone know what is the correct number of JVMs per virtual machine? Thank you.

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it_user9315 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Analyst at a government with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Excellent Customer Service & Technical Support but make sure your hardware is compatible

For how long have you used this product?
- 4 Years

Which features of this product are most valuable to you?
- Fault Tolerance (FT)
- vSphere Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS)

Can you give an example of how this product has improved the way your organization functions?
- Making your infrastructure simpler and more efficient. Applications get deployed faster, performance and availability increase and operations become automated,

What areas of this product have room for improvement?
- Networking

Did you encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability?
- We haven't had any issues during deployment.

Did you previously use a different solution and if so, why did you switch?
- Yes. Citrix Xenserver. We switched it to VMware ESXI because its easier to convert P2V through ESXI than XenServer without any issues and Live migration is more thru ESXI than doing it in Xenserver.

Before choosing this product, did you evaluate other options? If so, which ones?
- Yes. Hyper V and Citrix Xenserver

How would you rate the level of customer service and technical support?
- Excellent.

Was the initial setup straightforward or complex? In what ways?
- Was a straightforward setup.

Did you implement through a vendor team or an in-house one? If through a vendor team, how would you rate their level of expertise?
- It was through a vendor team and they were extremely excellent.

What is your ROI on this product?
- Save energy
- Reduce hardware
- Improve disaster recovery
- Isolate applications
- Help move things to the cloud

What was your original setup cost for this product and what is your day-to-day cost of using this product?
- The cost was around $2500 - 3000 \ N/A

What advice would you give to others looking into implementing this product?
- Make sure your hardware the storage and servers are compatible with ESXI. I would recommend EMC storage.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1068 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Real User

Hello
What are some of the hardware systems that are compatible with VMware ESXi?

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Buyer's Guide
Download our free VMware vSphere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free VMware vSphere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.