VMware vSphere Reviews

We have co-located our servers in different data centers, and these co-located servers are in a cluster. For storage, we are using vSAN, and for compute, we are using vSphere 6.7. We will be upgrading to version 7 in due course.

It is very easy to use and very stable.

The cost can be better.

I have been using this solution for almost eight to nine years.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. You can use a cluster with 216 nodes. I believe it can be scaled much more.

We use vSphere to create virtual machines and give them to our customers. Most of the applications are on it, so we have around 8,000 to 10,000 users on five different clusters. In terms of our plans to use this product in the future, we are currently thinking about whether to continue using this solution or not.

Their support could definitely be better. They can put more experienced and more intelligent people on support. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

I won't say it is straightforward, but it is also not complex. If the hardware and net securities are there and you have the hardware configuration, then the installation takes 24 to 48 hours.

We have a team of infrastructure users who are experts in VMware. They do the installation. Two persons can do the deployment.

It is expensive. 

I would definitely recommend this solution to others. It is a very good product. It is very stable, so your infrastructure uptime can be better. The manual cost of your infrastructure can be less if you use vSphere.

I would rate VMware vSphere an eight out of ten.

• Cloud computing service (IaaS)
• Private/hybrid cloud
• Virtualization infrastructure
• Virtualization desktop infrastructure.

• High availability causes downtime service because it is needed to reboot VMs.
• Fault tolerance is limited by the four vCPUs.
• The service provider is not easy to integrate via API like OpenStack.

• vCloud Director, because we may use it as the dashboard for providing cloud services.
• vCenter 
• vSphere, because it helps us in the management of thousands of VMs in the coverage UI.

The SDK/API to help SPs (service providers) provide the pay-as-you-go business model in cloud service.

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. 

• Enterprise Infrastructure.
• We are distributed across the nation and are primarily all remote employees. I was able to build our private cloud with the tool.
  
  

We are distributed across the nation and are primarily all remote employees. I was able to build our private cloud with the tool.

Virtualization of our environment has made our carbon footprint, the real estate necessary and the ease of deployment in time savings significant.

The thick client had features that were removed from the HTML5 web console and it has caused a learning curve deficiency. Training could be more customer-centric.

I'm building a VDI center and a second-tier user. In terms of mission-critical apps, we use it for our executive pool of users to secure their everyday work. Sometimes we use it for distance education programs as well.

It has been performing pretty well.

We have seen a boost in performance in terms of delivery, but in everyday work, it's just like any other. Our delivery lift is probably more than 50 percent.

In terms of delivery, very often we would have requests for adding some new applications which were not previously there. And in previous deliveries, we would have to lose a day or so to prepare the application. Today it takes me about two hours at the most.

Its most valuable features are reliability, for sure, and quickness in getting the job done. I can spin off 100 or 200 machines in the matter of half an hour.

If I could talk to the engineers I would probably suggest a little bit different approach. There's a process that includes base-lining, then installing the program, and then doing the differentiation. That kind of approach for delivering applications, in my opinion, is way quicker. That approach would take me not more than half an hour to prepare any application. That's a feature I would like to see.

We haven't had any stability problems.

From my point of view, it scales really well; in terms of storage, I don't know.

Test it, give it a try, and see how it goes. Definitely try it.

For me, the most important criteria when looking for a vendor are

• reliability
• ease of use
• customer support.

I would rate it at eight out of 10 because there is still room for improvement. However, we are not using the full extent of the product so I might be wrong. There is some room for improvement in the ease of use.

Virtualization of servers: Use of the solution to reduce the space usage in the data center. Also, for hyper-convergence, you can virtualize the storage.

Less space is need. It reduces the space of the infrastructure in the data center. The easy of use with reduced space provides a better use of infrastructure.

• vMotion
• vCenter

All the features in the vSphere essentials are great in helping the administrators manage the virtual platform.

The only issue with vSphere might be with the cost of its tools and the software.

I think that the solution with vSphere is complete.

I value the support for this application.

If you compare the trend of each version, you can see that the practical features add to this product's value.

It would be very useful if they would configure the built-in backup application on this product.

I have used it for more than five years.

There were some stability issues. If you assign a non-dedicated resource to this product, you can see the issue in storage.

There were no scalability issues as such. However, it depends on the license that you buy.

Technical support was at a high level.

If you have a good understanding from the system how the solution works, it can be simple. Otherwise, it can be confusing.

If you compare it with the applicable features provided, the cost is reasonable.

We evaluated Microsoft Hyper-V.

You should at least try this product once.

The most valuable features for us are vCenter, vSphere, vROPS, vRO, NSX, SRM and vSphere replication. They're not only the most valuable features for us, but they're the features that we use the most right now.

From an organizational point of view, it allows us to give a lot of services to our customers. This is true of all VMware products that we purchase. We make sure that our business ultimately benefits from it.

We have many versions of vSphere, but when it comes to the vSphere appliance, we don't have failover or a recovery point.

I also would like some added features to vSphere, such as Fault Tolerance with more CPU support. That would be really helpful to everyone, I think.

From a features perspective, with vSphere 6.0 and PSC being introduced as the new authentication module - you cannot use a PSC for a fresh 5.5 Install. I think we should have this feature enabled as this could help us in multiple instances.

Also, every would probably like to see a easy/recommendable way to  migrate from Windows vCenter to a appliance. 

I've been using it for seven years now.

We haven't had issues with deploying it.

It's been consistently stable, and that has probably been the best feature -- its stability.

Probably VMware should consider of lifting the maximum number of VM's per vCenter which is 15000 now(10000 powered ON and 5k powered off). The number has been consistent from a long time. 

Also, VMware should raise the number when it comes to SRM/vREP.

We didn't really evaluate other solutions, but we're aware that Hyper-V is out there. But we went with VMware because they've been in the market a long time and we trust them.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and there's not really anything complex about it. I've been working on it for six years now, and it's easy for me.

My advice would be to go for it. VMware has a wide range of products. Try them :)