VMware vSphere Reviews

Software Define Data Center (SDDC), easily manage couple hundred servers within one console, deploy multiple servers within an hour, capable of monitoring server’s CPU, RAM, Disk, Network activities, High availability (HA) and Cluster (DRS), vMotion and DataStore vMotion, and more.

We condensed our whole Data Center into three 42U racks, one rack for switches and 32 blade servers, one rack for UPS, one rack for the SAN. It uses less power consumption, less space, less network switches, Less UPS battery.

IOPs monitoring. We now monitor IOPs from SAN array. But, SAN array IOPs monitoring is based on virtual volume (vLun) not the VM. If VMware can provide VMDK IOPS information, it can help us catch performance issues.

Over 5 years.

No, everything works fine during deployment.

We did experience purple of death in our esxi host (HP BL685c G7) twice in the past two years after we upgraded to ESXi5.0. We are not sure if its HP’s problem or VMware’s problem.

Yes, multiple VM within one vLUN sometime cause random IOslead to performance issue. Although it is fixable, but still, when you are using large vLUN, you need to understand if that vLUN can provide sufficient IOPs for VMs that use that vLUN.

Although, I do not call them frequently, from my three calls, I would say the customer service is great. They call back and even remote-in to assist with the issue.

1 to 5 scale, I rate their technical support 4.

No, we did not.

It is somewhat straightforward except for the vCenter server and SQL database ODBC. You need to use SQL ODMC client v10. Windows server 2008 R2 did not come with an older version. You need to download sqlncli driver v10.

We did the implementation by ourselves.

We did not assess the ROI. But, as a system engineer, it is huge.

• SAN array with 40TB FC and 40TB NL -450K
• 4x HP BL465c, 2x16, 256GB, 2x 10Gb FiberSwitch, 16x vSpere License, ESXi enterprise License - 200K
• Planning to hold 300 virtual servers
• This is based on an a quotation. I do not know the actual purchase price. The day to day cost is not much. There is no need to go to the data center unless we need to upgrade the hardware. I can power off and power on any server from my desk in case the server freezes.

No.

VMware is a great virtualization solution. But, if your servers are very performance-demanded, my suggestion is you must also study the shared vLUN, SAN VV and VM’s IOPs requirement. Don’t just create vLUN and dump any VM into the vLUN. Some programmers and DBAs do not have ideas of how much IOPs their applications or database servers are needed. You will experience performance issues. This is not a problem when you use physical server because physical server resources are not shared.

The use case is that we want to upgrade to the new features and functionality of version 6.7.

We run several SQL Servers on there, Active Directory Servers, file servers, web servers; multiple servers running on it.

The new HTML5 interface is much more robust; a lot fewer bugs in it, more features. It's an overall better experience for us.

It's hard to say there has been a performance boosts for these apps but I would say it is a boost because the servers are much more responsive, the end-users complain less about it. So it must be a good thing.

The main benefit of the solution is that it makes end-users able to use the interface much more effectively. They don't have to install a client on their machine, they can do it from their phone, their laptop, their tablet, any OS, anytime. It's a better experience for the end-user.

The HTML5 interface is much better, it's faster, faster than the old C# Client, which was very nice to have. But with the HTML5 interface, it's smooth, fast, responsive. I can do it from any device, from my Mac, my PC, even from my phone.

The solution is very simple to use and to manage. Updates are simple. The biggest feature that enables the ease of use is the fact that you can update via the web interface. With a couple of clicks, the update is done; no manual intervention, you just click Update and it automatically reboots the server for you and you're back up and going again.

As far as additional features go, they've already added the VMware Update Manager to this version, which has been great; it's been very nice to use.

It would be nice to see it a little more tightly integrated with the patching solution so you could do it in one pane of glass. Right now, you have to jump back and forth. It's still not difficult, but you have to jump back and forth to do your update definitions and then go back and actually do the updates themselves.

In terms of stability, so far the impressions of this solution have been very good. It's been very stable. We haven't had any downtime at all with this new solution.

So far, we haven't had any issues at all with scalability. We've got over 1,500 VMs, about 84 hosts right now, so it's been very scalable for us.

I have used technical support before, via the web interface. You ask questions there and they respond with email or a phone call back to help you solve your problems.

I was an initial installer and I was actually a beta customer as well. The setup was very straightforward. Compared to the previous versions, it's much easier. You can upgrade from a Mac or a PC or via a web interface.

The biggest ROI has been technical. Technically, it's much easier to deploy, much easier for the end-user to use, we have much happier end-users. As they manage their systems, they're much happier without having to install a client, which takes time, takes resources on their machine. They can do it from any device, anywhere, at any time, which is very nice for them.

Anybody who's looking to research this, to upgrade in the future, should go for it. It's a very easy upgrade. The features are very beneficial. It's very worth the time to update. It's a much easier solution for the future, and it's a better experience for all involved.

Regarding using VMware Cloud on AWS, we use AWS right now, but for our backup solutions, is all. Cold backup, long-term storage out to the cloud, is all we do right now.

For us, the biggest criteria for selecting a vendor, right now, are the pricing and the support. Because we are higher education, we have to find the best price, and support comes right behind that. We need the best support as well.

I would rate the solution as about a nine out of ten right now. It could be better but it's very close to perfect right now.

We use the solution for clusters with shared storage on-premises with recovery. We use Veeam to back up some replication of these installations.

It provides stability with performance and broad support for hardware solutions.

It is pricey for small business. There are bundles that make competitive for out-of-bundle solutions that smaller businesses can't afford. If they will be the end of the sale, a cost problem arises for them.

I have been using VMware vSphere for over ten years.

It is recommended for small and medium-sized businesses.

I have no directly needed VMware support. We always have resolved our troubles with documentation.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward because of good documentation. It depends on the installation. Optimizing deployment takes a few days for a cluster with shared storage. One person can deploy the smaller clusters. We are training the lab to deploy the different solutions.

It offers a good return on investment because its maintenance and subscription costs are very durable. So once you deploy the first installation, upgrading or the infrastructure is quite easy and straightforward in the future.

The small distribution price is very convenient because they are really affordable bundles for three or fewer nodes. For bigger installation, it starts to be pricey, but it's also scaled with the business side.

Maintenance is required as long as any other products to check for troubles and some security patching.

The version enables automatic maintenance, easy maintenance, and performance performance. A good performance use of the hardware allows for quick infrastructure maintenance and a quick structure upgrade so you can change hardware servers quickly and cheaply.

It's useful for critical workloads. When there are inevitable failures, it can keep up the business.

The server was particularly limiting performance-wise, while Hyper V lacked stability and flexibility in the setups.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We have been virtualizing our on-premises data center. We relied heavily on VMware vSphere to manage our servers; all our virtual server loads are hosted on it.

The tool comes with scale-out capabilities. Deploying new infrastructure became much quicker, saving significant time previously spent sourcing hardware for each installation. It also has the ability to downscale on rack spaces, reducing the number of rack units needed to accommodate our servers.

Its most valuable feature is remote replication which comes with high availability. 

I would suggest that the tool reconsider its pricing strategy. The recent price hikes could potentially pose a problem for VMware in the future. The recent price increases, especially since Broadcom acquired them, seem excessive. There are reports of businesses experiencing massive price hikes, sometimes as much as 10-30 times higher. This is causing smaller businesses to consider exiting the space altogether.

Overall, it's a functional system that works well. However, I believe that systems like Nutanix offer better integration and functionality. While both are solid hypervisors at level one, VMware vSphere's management, especially through the web-based interface, could use improvement.

I have been working with the product for 15 to 16 years. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

VMware vSphere is highly scalable, and I rate it a ten out of ten. My company has 400 users. 

I rate the tool's ease of deployment a six out of ten. It was quite complex due to various hardware restrictions and issues. We had to address several technical issues with VMware along the way.

I would rate the deployment process as typical regarding time and considerations. However, the migration from on-premises to the cloud was a bit cumbersome. It required a bit of work. 

The installation phase took about three months initially when we deployed on-premises. This duration was understandable as we had to virtualize numerous physical servers and handle various complexities. Transitioning to the cloud extended the project timeline to approximately six months.

I believe the biggest return on investment stemmed from significantly reduced deployment time frames. Commissioning and deploying systems and accommodating growth became much faster—measured in days rather than months. This efficiency and consolidation efforts resulted in a high long-term ROI.

I rate the solution's pricing a ten out of ten due to the recent price changes. 

My advice to those considering VMware vSphere would be to carefully assess your business's size and the product's value proposition. It may not be well-suited for smaller enterprises due to its prohibitive cost. It's important to consider alternative solutions. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

This solution has a very comfortable interface for snapshots for my virtual machines. That's very comfortable.

For example, if I want to make templates to create a certain type of virtual machine, I have it in vSphere. Moreover, it includes things like deployment, implementation of different templates, snapshot deleting snapshot, restoring a machine to snapshot or administrative administration things.

The web console is the most valuable feature for me.  Because no matter what happens with the server, I can still get to it with the web console.

There is room for improvement in Google Cloud. The reason thing there was, like, when I type something in the terminal and then immediately, I need to go to edit the certain like file for Node.js, for the server, or for Kubernetes. So I have to do it from the terminal to the editor.

And for some reason, each time I had to switch, I had to literally switch between the terminal and the editor. I wish I could have it on one screen to have the terminal and on the other to have the editor.  This would greatly improve my experience with this solution. 

I have been using it for a couple of years.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. It is very stable, and I have never had any major problems with it.

There are over a few hundred users using this solution in our organization. 

I would rate the scalability a solid eight out of ten.  It is scalable enough for my needs, but there is always room for improvement.

The initial setup was very easy and intuitive.

If I didn't understand something, this solution provides tons of information,e explanations,  courses, and instructions on their website. We also live in a reality of chatbots and AI, so everything is very easy to set up. 

I would advise you to check out the VMware website and watch some of the initial and fundamental courses. The web console is very intuitive, but it can be helpful to see how it works before you start using it. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is virtualization. All the clients who want to virtualize can use vSphere to do it.

I like stability and the organization of the different functions into the I#M feature which is also quite useful, quite stable. I would prefer the old solution because before, you had to install software on your client's desktop to administrate the environment. Since five or seven years, it's not needed. You can do everything through your web interface. And I prefer when it was more reactive, so when you have a client instead of using your desktop. But it's a good solution, quite stable and quite efficient.

In future releases, I would like to see less pricing. The license can be improved. 

I have used this solution for over 15 years. So it's one of the first products we've used with a client.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. Around 20 to 30 customers are using this solution. 

The customer service and support are good. However, it could be faster and more qualified. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It is intuitive-- Next. Next. Next. Next. Finish. Easy. Great.

For the deployment process involves materials, equipment, licenses, and the availability of the client team.

It took about one or two hours for one server; it's okay. The deployment was super quick. 

A team of engineers and admins is required to deploy and maintain the solution. We have a team of ten people. 

The licensing model is yearly-based. It is quite expensive.  Moreover, there are extra costs to the standard licensing fees. 

I would definitely recommend using the solution. I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

I would advise to be sure that the functionality brought by VMware aligns with the good functionality because there are other products in the market like ISPs, KV M, Oracle, Microsoft, and some other stuff. And VMware is a well-known product. But to be sure that the functionality provided by VMware is needed.

We use it to create ThinApps.

We do not need to deploy the software to each and every client machine. They just can access ThinApp, and they are good to go.

Overall, it is a pretty good solution. We do not have to worry about upgrading the versions that people use for our in-house software. We just create ThinApps, and as soon as they log in, they always get the upgraded version. This part really works well for us.

We've been using vSphere on Windows 7, and it had less fluff associated with ThinApp. Currently, with Windows 10 version that we have, it adds a lot of bulk to ThinApp. We have offices spanning across Canada from the east coast to the west coast. A ThinApp that is roughly around 400 MB in size would take minutes to open up. With Windows 7, the same ThinApp used to be close to 75 to 80 MB in size. So, I'm really not happy with the extra fluff that is bundled in Windows 10. It really messes things up for us at times.

It includes a lot of fluff from Windows 10, which is not at all needed. That's the worst part of it. Otherwise, it works fine.

We have to create an image before and after we deploy the software, and that part takes a while.

It is simple in terms of scalability. There are no issues.

The whole team uses vSphere to create ThinApps that are used by all of our employees. We have close to 5,000 users. So, we are using it quite extensively.

I haven't used their tech support.

Previously, we were deploying all of the in-house software to client machines, but we didn't find it practical enough. Considering that we have offices all across Canada, we needed a solution that allowed us to create a new version of the in-house software and then deploy it remotely. That's where vSphere came in. We do not need to deploy to individual clients. It is just a link that is shared on their desktop, and they can access it straight away.

It is very simple. You just need one person. It takes seconds.

It doesn't require maintenance. Every time we need to upgrade the software or we have a different or higher version, we just create a ThinApp. It takes seconds for the users to get it. It is a very simple process. They just need to close the existing software and reopen it, and they get the updated version.

We have definitely seen a return on investment. Previously, if a plant's PC goes down 4,000 kilometers away, we had to ship that machine to our head office to repair it and then send it back. We don't have to do that now because we are using vSphere. We just can upgrade all of our software with ThinApps.

Considering the number of users, it is pretty reasonable. I am not aware of any costs in addition to the licensing fees.

I do not prefer the newest version because of the bulk that it adds to ThinApp, especially with Windows 10 operating system. If they can find a way around that, it would be really good.

Considering the returns and the number of users for the ThinApps that we create using vSphere, I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of 10.

We mainly use this solution to create hosts and convert them to virtual machines. We convert our physical assets into virtualized assets. We need to convert ESXi hosts into VMs.

Our entire operating team has access to vSphere. They can log into vCenter — vSphere's dashboard. We have multiple IDs and roles created. In total, we have more than 600 users. Out of our 600 users, we have around 50 admin users who can administer the entire map. 

We definitely plan to continue using this solution.

All of the features are great. It affords us different views of the VMs created by vSphere so we can control them better. It provides us with a single view into VMs as an asset. We create thousands and thousands of VMs using vSphere.

We have created more than 6,000 VMs. With this solution, through a single pane, we can see inside the vCenter. We can see our VMs that are running on-premises, the data center, and the ones that are in the Cloud.

There is some room for improvement but if we're not satisfied converting all of our physical assets into virtualized ones, since we have a scope for other technologies, we can always go for containerization.

There are some challenges around ESXi hosts — converting them into VMs. Also, it could definitely be more secure, overall.

It would be nice if other users could see or accept the VMs that we create — this has to do with the cluster.

The cluster should be able to be viewed by multiple sets of users apart from the operating team. If a developer also wants to have access to the cluster, it's complicated. Role-based access should be available to make this easier.

I have been using VMware vSphere for more than 10 years.

It's quite stable. I haven't experienced any issues as such. We have support available from an extended team of VMware professionals. It's aligned to the GTI, global technology infrastructure. VMware is a big area in our organization.

It's quite scalable. You can keep scaling up the number of VMs you want to create. As I mentioned, we create thousands of VMs, so yes, we can scale easily. That's a capability I would look at from a business goal perspective. Any business leader will want to scale up their hypervisor. vSphere is pretty much the hypervisor. 

I am satisfied with the support. There's a separate team for maintenance and a separate team for support. Whatever upgrades need to be done, it is all taken care of by the maintenance teams.

There are two ways of installing it, depending on your deployment topology. Overall, it's quite fast and easy to install. It only takes a couple of days to install it.

An extended team of VMware professionals helped us with the installation, but we mostly did it ourselves. It was onboarded into our organization in 2009 — the very first version. You could say that we're one of the earliest adopters.

The licensing has become cheaper over time. As there are multiple offerings, it depends on how you are leveraging.

We evaluated Edge containerization a while back, but we didn't notice any tools that would help us grow, so we decided to stick with VMware vSphere.

I would absolutely recommend this solution. It's better than Microsoft Hyper-V. Hyper-V has some problems. VMware vSphere is the industry leader by far when it comes to the hypervisor sector.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.