VMware vSphere Reviews

We use this solution for production workloads.

This solution provides production uptime with its DRS and failover features.

The most valuable feature is vSAN, as it reduces the cost of SAN storage and maintenance. 

Reporting on vCenter needs to be improved.

It is a powerful solution which enables us to take a snapshot and clone any virtual machine. It is also a centralized platform for hypervisoring that speeds up the migration between the nodes. 

It has a very high speed, which is a nice feature. 

This solution should have a better backup policy. Furthermore, there should be an ability to expose the universal machine. In the current version, you need to shutdown and use an offline virtual machine to backup.

It is a very stable product.

We previously used Hyper-V, and we found a lot of problems with taking snapshots of our virtual machines. It also was not very stable. 

The setup was very easy. There were guidelines, and we simply followed the steps. The deployment took around three days. 

It is expensive. Other solutions on the market are free. We had to plan with VMware how many hosts that we needed in order to determine the price. 

We primarily use this solution for replication purposes we have, and to back up information in HR (High Resolution) mode.

I think they should consider lowering the pricing of entry-level products.

In addition, I think they should come up with a backup feature that is more product enrichment-based. It should be a full-fledged backup solution. It just is not there right now.

The stability of the solution is quite stable.

The scalability of the solution is good. You can scale up to maximum levels. We currently have 2000 users. This requires four engineers to run the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

It was complex, and not straightforward. The deployment took six hours initially to setup. Then, we migrated our virtual-physical servers to virtual machines and now coming projects were also built on virtual machines.

The pricing is justified. It may be a bit high, but the features are worth it.

I would advise others to go with this product if they want to scale their enterprise, definitely if there is no budget constraint.

I find that the Virtual Center Management, iSCSI support, and VMotion hot migration are very beneficial. 

With these features, we have faster server deployments, additional security for development projects, and easier backups.

The fact that we are having faster server deployments has improved our organization. We are also have better security for development projects and are seeing easier backups.

1. Native multi-platform management client (not WEB based) - Last improvements in this area are huge. However, some users prefer a native client. Please VMware, listen to your customers!
2. A fully **automatic** and lightweight Virtual Center. Another time this has a huge improvement in last releases. However, a more automatic and simple deployment is required.
3. Automatic on-demand Hypervisor setup for running some workloads on PC workstations at night. This function doesn't exist at time. We really like to see it!

We have used it for seven years.

We did have some issues, so I would suggest a full automatic host server setup using DHCP and PXE without configuration scripts.

No issues encountered. In fact, the system has been very stable.

No, not with dedicated servers. Yes with ephemeral servers- hundreds of PCs that we like to use as ESXi hosts at night for executing virtual machines focused on computing simulations.

No, we haven't used a previous solution.

The multi-path is very complex with iSCSI and non-existent with NFS.

We did it in-house.

Purchase only the cheaper solution with support. I don’t recommend high-end licenses.

• Hyper-V
• Oracle VM

Contract only experts or use an external consultant.

The most important feature is high availability (HA) which monitors the system and restarts virtual machines to a healthy host whenever the system senses an imminent hardware failure.

Another great feature is DRS which is VMWare’s load balancing software which keeps our virtual machines running on the server cluster in a balanced manner. This automated system keeps all our systems running with a high uptime.

We can bring up brand new servers with a couple of mouse clicks when it used to take a couple of days.

Cloning large servers will require just as much space on the virtual volume as the original server. It makes it difficult when your system has limited space.

We have been using the solution for one year.

We didn't have any real issues with stability, our system uptime is at 99.99 percent.

We didn't have any real issues with scalability. Anytime we need more storage or computing power it is relatively easy to just add another drive or physical server to the clusters.

Technical support for the product is top notch because the solution has been around for many years and most of the issues/bugs have been experienced by others and we have the benefit of those prior solutions.

Contacting support is relatively painless and there is a deep bench of experts.

We did not use a prior solution.

The initial setup was relatively easy, basically installing the VMWare operating system.

The difficult phase was doing the actual VMWare conversions because we were not sure whether the legacy servers would convert over properly.

Another difficult setup was the networking aspect because each VLAN needed to be specified and the network settings needed to be correct.

For pricing and licensing I would consider getting the Enterprise plus edition and the proper Windows datacenter licensing.

We did evaluate other hardware options such as a hyper-converged solution (Nutanix, Simplivity, HP) and better storage options (Nimble, Tegile, etc).

We also evaluated other software options such as Hyper-V.

Our current solution met the needs of our users and the price was very reasonable.

Do as much up-front planning as possible. Make sure you analyze the IOPs of your servers and plan for computing power, bandwidth and redundancy.

Take into consideration whether the DR and backup solution can support the new environment.

Check into whether the operating systems being used can be virtualized and whether the application will work in that space.

• Ease of upgrading
• Ease of backups
• Ease of deployment

We now have a quicker deployment of machines, as it’s been far more cost effective than our physical servers with a smaller footprint.

It’s pretty good the way it is, I can’t think of anything else I need.

It’s very stable.

We started with maybe 10, we’re up to 80, and it’s been very easy to add them all on.

I’d say they were very good, they’re very quick and responsive, I can’t think of them ever not being able to an issue.

We were running physical servers, the industry was headed that way, and we knew that we had to. Furthermore, 80 physical servers is too much to fit into one room.

I didn’t set it up, but I think they had a consultant come in.

Probably the availability of training is the most important thing to look at when choosing a vendor. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good, and VMware is great.

Peer reviews are pretty important, it’s an easy way to look at hands on market research that you don’t have to pay for, to be honest.

Thanks to vSphere we have improved our availability and scalability, and we are now able to dynamically move to a cloud paradigm. vSphere for us, is not a simple computer virtualization; it provides a complete infrastructure which combines computer storage, and networking elements in a single software layer, that we are calling SDDC.

Previously, we thought it was a simple server consolidation, where bulk and power consumption were drastically reduced. Now we are moving to a software-defined storage and software-defined networking to keep control of all IT environment, from service to a single infrastructure components.

We hope to keep all the physical datacenter elements under the same software layer, and we are hoping that that dream will comes true in the next years.

The introduction of a web console could be a great improvement for sysadmin, but the poor responsive interface has been solved in v6.0. The previous sysadmin/design experience with vSphere client could become a dangerous loop for its development.

At the moment, VMware admins say that the vSphere client will never die!

The vSphere installation, and operations are fully documented. I think that VMWare spent a lot of time writing documents which could be useful during the platforms lifecycle.

Before installing this product, try to design all the components, and don't be shy asking for comparisons or sharing your experience. Often design guidelines are the result of customer implementations, and different points of view. Before bringing it into production in your environment, execute hardening procedures.

If you are working for an ISP, where network admin rules an IT organization, try to get control of all networking devices connected to all services provided by your platform. Often, ISP network administrators are specialized in internet networking, and often they don't know data center networking issues and design impacts.

One of the worst savings to do when trying to consolidate, is to use less networking devices; for this reason I suggest you never play around with them when you need to use eight interfaces per host. If you need them there is no reason to have less than you have asked.

• Storage VMotion
• High Availability
• Distributed Resource Scheduler

We started moving to a virtual environment using VMWare very early on, and now more than 80% of our servers are virtual. We had a big server farm before, and our data center was filled with servers, now all our servers fit in one rack. Also, on physical machines increasing resources is a very difficult task, requiring downtime, but with VMs, we can do it on the fly.

They should have a good built-in backup feature. Although there is a built-in feature already, it is called VMWare Data Protection, but it is not at all user friendly.

I've used it for more than six years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It's very good.

It's very good.

No previous solution was used.

It was straightforward.

I did it myself.

It is very high.

Pricing is high as VMWare’s cost is always high.

No other options were evaluated.

It is a very good solution and it is stable.