VMware vSphere Reviews

One of the most valuable features of vCenter is the high availability feature so we can have basically one of the out warehouse to DIMS and all of our important VMs are still running.

One of the benefits is that you can just deploy a virtual machine and any environment you want in seconds.

I guess all the features I'd like to see of future releases are being announced for version 6.1. All my needs are satisfied right now.

We're using VMware vCenter based on ESX for virtualization. For our development teams, we're using VMware Player as well as Workstation.

In terms of stability, we didn't have any problems yet so it's basically rock solid.

Scalability, you can just add hosts to the vSphere solution for whatever you need.

We haven't had to use tech support yet because the solution just runs.

We knew that we needed to go for virtualization because there was this big messy server wreck with all those bare metal old servers in there. It was just crazy in terms of service. We switched to virtualization, now we're good to go.

The initial setup was pretty easy. I mean, I guess, we have a pretty small environment but we had a few problems with upgrading. But those were solved by our partners.

We didn't consider any other vendors because all the other vendors didn't have the great support and the great features that you can expect from VMware.

We didn't have any problems. If you're starting to use vSphere solutions, I guess the first thing you should do is check hardware compatibility list to make sure that all your hardware is going to be compatible with your software. After that, if you run into any problems, just check the VMware knowledge base. Basically all the information you'd need is in there.

• High Availability
• computability
• vMotion
• DR

Our DR count changed – we had quite a few power outtages that opened our eyes to DR and by leveraging vSphere we are able to get to our goal.

I know a lot of the stuff that we have issues with have been addressed in v6 like template management. Some of the add-ons are expensive without a specific large need.

Very stable – its great.

Easy – very easy, expecially with Nutanix. It takes longer to get the hardware than to deploy it.

I’d say 10/10 – we’ve never had a problem that wasn’t solved right away if we have to call.

It was straightforward.

We looked at a couple others and VMware was just better because of vMotion, its ease of management, and the interface.

Peer reviews are pretty important, more so than online resources.

It only breaks predictively.

• It's saved us costs for power and cooling.
• It's given us automation capabilities for server provisioning and management of configurations.

I'd like to see more trickle down features from vCloud/vRealize to the main feature suite.

Tentatively favorable – we haven’t had a lot of outages just wary about future upgrade ability.

I would go with unknown at this point – we're kind of small, at best were medium sized, so we're not sure what our scaling needs will be. It is not close to the maximum.

Good technical support – response time was good/ average.

Can be straightforward, but it can be complex, depending on the size and what you're trying to do.

It's easier to deploy if you have someone very knowledgeable. Use peer reviews; they're very important.

• Unified management
• UI

It simplifies the management of VMs of our 30 VMs. It's helped with disaster recovery, and we use EMC for disaster recovery, but it's managed with vCenter.

We moved the disaster recovery location from one state to another, and VMs helped us so that we didn’t have to move physical servers.

The alerting functions, right now based on performance, is not so clear now either by email or on the console.

No issues, it's rock solid.

We add one or two VMs every six months, and the only issue was with Sharepoint 2013 that required dedicated memory.

It's good, no issues with response time or knowledge.

Make sure you get training on use, and deployment because you won’t know what you’re getting into.

The virtualization is the valuable feature.

It's much easier to manage than a pile of hardware.

We are also able to roll out new ideas to the users quicker.

The web-based access is flaky. It needs to have a built in backup ability, and the update manager needs to be its own appliance.

I've been using it for four or five years.

It does not like working with the older Intel NICs nor the Realtek NICs, but I was able to work around that.

Customer Service:

The one customer service issue I have had is almost three months old and still unresolved (that sucks).

Technical Support:

I've never used tech support.

No previous solution used.

It's straightforward.

We did it in-house, and I would suggest you set up a couple of machines in a practice lab first though.

We can't quantify the ROI.

The pricing is reliable.

No as we've been using before any other virtualization software was popular.

• The out-of-box application works well even without customization.
• vCenter web UI is great.

I work on it daily and it's easy to build VM's and take snapshots. I can also test the VM's as much as I want.

• vCenter web UI has the occasional bug.
• Sometimes it takes a while until the VM responds to a mouse click.

I've used it for six months.

None.

No.

Haven't yet needed to scale.

Customer Service:

Haven't needed customer service.

Technical Support:

Haven't needed technical support.

No previous solution used.

Straightforward.

In-house.

We did not evaluate other options.

• VMware server is a free hosted virtualization server which runs on top of various operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, Windows and Netware • It separates single physical server into various virtual machines which can be deployed many times • The installation of the server no longer requires hardware configuration • It serves as a testing environment for experimental OS, patches and softwares but does not need installation or any configuration • It can automatically starts virtual machine at system boot • It can also take full control of virtual machines from remote computers • It provides a complete GUI VMX editor • It allows virtual machines to use two VSMP processors • VMware server 2.0 has Web Management Interface which is used to easily manage virtual machines

• VMware has lesser functionality than the proprietary VMware ESX • VMware server does not fully control the scheduling of hardware resources because the complete control falls into the underlying operating system • VMware Server Support ended on June 30, 2011

Most usable hypervisor in the industry. It's well documented, really simple and quick to setup.

You can not manage it from Linux.