VMware vSphere Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Jun 17, 2014

VMware ESXi is better than its predessor, ESX 3 & 4.

What is most valuable?

Its high availability, hot memory and CPU enabled features. Not forgetting the Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS), vMotion, Storage vMotion and Dynamic Power Management (DPM).

How has it helped my organization?

We are beginning to experience less downtimes and if there is going to be any downtime, it is extremely minimised. Continously consolidating servers and utilising resources to save power and water.

What needs improvement?

We have noticed the great need for more power and memory requirements especially when the vmware servers (guests) start to request for more processing and memory.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since 2011.

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Our deployment of VMware went smoothly.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The Vmware environment was available and stable when we first deployed it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We had plenty of room to increase our environment so there is no problem with it.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service: We did it ourselves and did not include VMware.Technical Support: No support from VMware.

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

No, we went straight to VMware.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straight-forward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented this solution with the support from IBM, and their support was pretty good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No, we never evaluated any other options.

What other advice do I have?

Since I don't have experience with other solutions, except Vmware, I like it and recommend others who are looking for such a solution to consider talking to VMware.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user86190

Infrastructure Expert at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Feb 2, 2014

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Pros are that it is easy to use but it is hard to have certified resources for it

Valuable Features:

HA, DRS, VMotion, Storage VMotion

Use of Solution:

2 years

Initial Setup:

Every thing was straight forward and can easily/readily be found on Internet

Implementation Team:

In-house small deployment

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user82776Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Feb 2, 2014

Certified resources, as in web apps or computer resources online, several challenges in that area were foremost related to recent upgrades and modifications to the certified makers. In economical terms if resources were certified to it, you would rather see a drop in revenue for those manufactures putting resources into one single component.

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VMware vSphere

January 2025

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Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.

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it_user8223

IT Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 30, 2013

Best virtualization product available

I have worked with VMware products for just over 5 years at this point, and during that time frame have compared with competing virtualization products. I believe that VMware Esxi is the BEST hypervisor available. If you have a virtualization project then this is the route to go, although I will concede that MS Hyper-V may be appropriate for some small businesses with just a couple of servers to virtualize.
Deploying Esxi is very simple, install the package on the host, open the vSphere client, and you are ready to go. The setup can be very simple if you are using local storage, or in-depth if using network storage and wanting to customize the virtual network configuration. regardless, the tasks are simple and easy to understand. If you run into an issue, VMware documentation is very helpful and their support team glad to assist.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Aug 25, 2013

The user friendly nature of server virtualization software makes it easy to install, configure and use it.

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it_user7743

IT Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 12, 2013

Excellent product as compared to other Hypervisors

Pros:
a reliable hyper-visor with a thin architecture, requires minimal configuration and can be up and running in minutes. Management is simple.

Cons:
None, we have a very good experience in its deployment and usage.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user2652Project Manager at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees

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Sep 8, 2013

Have you used vpshere software to connect ESX host or is there any other software available too?

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it_user5022

Student at a university with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 12, 2013

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The best product of VMware.

Valuable Features:

Easy to use and manage.

Room for Improvement:

Valuable Features:

Disclosure: My company is a VMware reseller. Ease of use, functionality, established product, works very will with almost any prime time OS, very thought-out application, works with the developer community to improve, has deep pocket organization like EMC to help propel them into the future

Room for Improvement:

Moved away from local/domain end-user authentication to a single-sign on authentication mechanism, introduced a single-point of failure, added additional complexity that came be overcome with proper training

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user4524Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Oct 21, 2013

I keep up with VMware certifications. The entry point on their certifications, the VCA, does not require an official VMware class as a pre-req before you take the exam. The VCP, however, does require an official VMware class before you can take the exam. They are trying to keep the quality of the certification recipients at a premium.

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it_user3264

IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2012

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Used to be a very good product but now is being replaced by some other of its types.

Valuable Features:

Easy to use and provides centralized management. With that, it is free and provides a very simple and easy web and also remote interface to interact with the product.

Room for Improvement:

The only problem with it is that it is now in the category of obsolete products. Though its still very good, but its support and updates won't be available.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user7665Network Engineer at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Jul 11, 2013

I've been managing various virtual machines based off of Oracle Virtualbox and I found it to be much better performing and better supported. VMWare products are not at par with Virtualbox applications which are also open source.

it_user3264

IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2012

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Despite its minor issues, it's still the choice of most of the System Admins.

Valuable Features:

It is os-independent having a very thin architecture with which it can offer unparalleled security and reliability. Unlike most other hypervisors in the market, this don't need a general purpose operating system clearing the hazards of processor overhead, Antivirus and other OS processor consumption. Its this feature makes it prominent in the market of hypervisors.

Room for Improvement:

Well, not much drawbacks actually. It serves the purpose it is designed for but still a very few little things that i have notices that can be called its drawbacks can be 1. Fault tolerance limits features available to virtual machines. 2. Automatic fallback of VMs currently not supported. This can be crucial in some environments.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.