VMware vSphere Reviews

We're using VMware vSphere for our server services. We're using it primarily for hosting services. As an example, our mail server: Zimbra Mail is hosted on that virtual environment. Our web server, our DNS server, and all our public servers are also hosted in that environment.

An area for improvement for VMware vSphere is the archiving tool, because sometimes we are using the VMware OVF Tool for backups, but archiving is not very fast when we are backing up the virtual machines. It needs improvement.

What we'd like to see in the next release is for the exporting process to be improved, because what we've observed is that when exporting VMware graphically, sometimes the process stops. We have to use the command-line utility: OVF Tool which is more reliable, so we'd like VMware vSphere to have a better and faster exporting process.

I've been using VMware vSphere for five years now.

VMware vSphere is a very stable solution.

VMware vSphere is scalable.

We have not contacted the technical support of VMware, because whenever we found difficulties, we either Google or check forums for solutions.

The initial setup for this solution is simple.

I deployed this solution myself.

Pricing can still be improved for this product.

I've been using the VMware Workstation for eight years, while the VMware vSphere, I've been using for five years.

This solution is deployed on-premises on a physical server for hosting services. Our public server is on a virtual environment.

I'm very satisfied with VMware vSphere.

Deployment of this solution took one day for the supervisor cluster and the virtual machine.

I can't say exactly how many users are using VMware vSphere in our organization, but it's more than 1,000. We have a virtual mail server with 1,000 accounts. We have a website with approximately 200 to 300 visits per day. We also have an internet proxy used regularly by all the internal users to access the internet. We have not measured usage for the DNS server. We have no statistics for it.

We have plans to use other tools from VMware like the vCenter. We have not yet explored it sufficiently, so we use it more. We have plans to use the vMotion to move virtual machines.

My advice to people who plan to use VMware vSphere is to first pay more attention to the materials, e.g. the physical server, because all the virtualization performance resides and depends on that physical server. This means it has to have a good dimension, a good amount of memory and disk space, and a good network controller card. You have to choose a server which is physically robust, strong, and powerful, so you can deploy with the best performance in your virtual environment.

I'm rating VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

The solution is server virtualization software. VMware is totally for virtualization.

We only use it for a few of its features, such as DRS, vMotion, and fault tolerance. We aren't using the NSX, cloud-based, or any other features. 

The solution is 100% stable.

The scalability is very good.

We find the user interface to be very nice.

The initial implementation process is simple.

It's easy to use and very user-friendly.

Technical support has been very good. They are helpful and responsive. 

The solution could be cheaper and less expensive.

I've been using the solution for five to seven years. 

We have found the solution to be extremely stable. The performance and reliability are great. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is thoroughly a scalable solution. It's easy to expand it if you need to.

There isn't a specific number of users. We are using it for hosting services.

Technical support is excellent. We have no complaints at all.

The installation process is quite simple, quite straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. I'm certified and find the process very easy.

We did not need the assistance of outside help. I can easily handle the implementation myself. 

You do have to purchase a license in order to use the solution.

The solution should base its prices on what the market can handle. Right now, it's a bit expensive.

The price is a little bit higher when you go for the enterprise edition. The Standard edition is quite low and the enterprise edition is quite high.

I have two clusters, version 7 and version 6.7. Both are there.

I'm not using the cloud-based version and other stuff, so I couldn't comment on it. On the on-premises version, however, it's a very good solution. It has a nice interface and nice everything and is a very stable product. We have never faced any issues yet.

I'd recommend the solution to others 100%.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

VMware vSphere is used for server virtualization. We are using Microsoft Active Directory, file, and Linux servers

The built-in backup and hyper-converged systems have helped our organization.

The most valuable features of VMware vSphere are backup and recovery.

I have been using VMware vSphere for approximately 10 years.

The solution is stable. However, sometimes it goes down, which can be time-consuming because it requires some complex scripts only the support team know.

I am the only person doing the maintenance of this solution.

VMware vSphere is scalable.

We have approximately 500 users using the solution.

The support has been good.

We have used Microsoft previously and we have found VMware to be more mature.

The setup is easy. However, the configuration expansion can be difficult. The full implementation took three to four days. This included the move from physical servers to virtual ones.

We used a reseller for the implementation and had a good experience.

When you spend on this solution you will get it back.

We pay for the solution on an annual basis. There are no additional fees other than the standard license.

It's quite stable, has good support available, and is a mature product.

I rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

We need virtualization for our company, or sometimes our customers leverage virtualization solutions instead of using physical machines.

The fact that vSphere is an on-premise solution is beneficial for the user. It's easier to manage the infrastructure. It's more straightforward to scale and configure virtual machines. 

VMware vSphere is perfect for the on-premise solution, but we are in the cloud era, so I think maybe VMware needs to invest more in the cloud and the microservice chain. It would be better if VMware offered more cloud solutions and continuous applications.

In terms of scalability and stability, vSphere is excellent. We lack volume when we need to bundle a considerable number of physical machines to facilitate virtualization. There are a lot of competitors like Nutanix or others, but VMware is the number one solution for me.

We don't contact VMware support often, but I sometimes have trouble understanding their manuals, so I ask them for help.

It's easier for the user to deploy vSphere or the vCenter, but it's complex when setting up network virtualization.

I think VMware is a good investment. We use VMware to maintain our internal system. 

I rate VMware vSphere seven out of 10. 

The primary reason our customers use vSphere is to consolidate their workloads and realize the other benefits that virtualization provides. For example, they create HA or VM-level HA to facilitate DR.

Essentially, our clients use vSphere for all of the reasons that people use a virtualization layer.

I am a virtualization technician, doing software technology consulting for virtualization and VDI. 

This is a solution that is normally very straightforward. It doesn't give you many surprises. It's very stable. However, one should have good knowledge when it comes to it because sometimes, you have to use the command line for troubleshooting. For unseen problems, you sometimes need to dig deep to troubleshoot.

vSphere is a robust and feature-rich virtualization platform. It is the number one virtualization-layer platform available, and a lot of people trust it.

Many other platforms now provide similar features but VMware was the first to provide enhanced recorders, DRS, fault tolerance, vMotion, and others. They pioneered these features and they are very stable.

VMware also provides software-defined storage, vSAN, which is built into the kernel. This is a plus point.

Other good features include DRS, HA, fault tolerance, vSAN, and vCenter is a very good management interface.

This platform is easy to maintain. 

To manage it properly, you have to know this product really well. For the most part, it is very easy to use.

I began working with VMware vSphere in 2007 or 2008 when it was version 3.x. 

This is the most stable virtualization platform available.

In the three years that I have been running my consultancy, I've found that VMware is always part of a large project. Most of the time, I have had a good experience with it.

We have done multiple enterprise services projects using this solution. For example, we were working on a Horizon View PoC for a client.

vSphere is scalable; you just have to add to your cluster and it will increase. You can scale up or scale-out, like any other software. Basically, you can add to it as much as you want to.

I trust VMware products and I definitely want our installed base to increase. I want to enhance my own knowledge and skillset, as well. As we move forward and expand, I am equipping myself with more cloud knowledge and focusing on new technologies. One new product that I am looking at is Carbon Black. Throughout this, I will continue to promote VMware because they are a vendor that I trust.

The VMware support is very professional. Most of the time we've used them, they were very good.

As a technology consultant working for customers with varying requirements, I work with other virtualization platforms. Two of these are Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

The initial setup is very easy and there is nothing difficult about it. Initially, some people get stuck when they are setting up the supporting services, like DNS, but other than that, the setup is plain and simple.

The length of time required for deployment depends on whether your disk is an SSD. If so, then the copying will be fast. Also, if you have more memory then it will install quicker. 

Regardless of how it is set up, you have to build the basic infrastructure to put in most of your workloads. Sometimes, you manage an existing one but most of the time, we have to deploy a VMware infrastructure.

A single person can basically manage it, although this depends upon the deployment size. If it's a huge deployment, then it requires a good design and it requires proper planning. You need to know your capacity requirements, for example.

If you understand the environment and the design then maybe you can segregate the work into two or three people. Sometimes if it's a small project, a single person can do it. It all depends on the files and complexity of the solution you are providing to the customer.

We deploy this product ourselves.

The licensing model is not complex.

It is a perpetual licensing but there is also an annual maintenance cost. The price of the solution depends on the features that you want. You can have a very basic setup or you can choose a more advanced set of features. The more features that you want and the more extensive your requirement is, the more you have to pay.

In Pakistan, for the most part, organizations are still catching up in terms of the cloud. There are no large data centers because cloud providers do not exist locally. Neither AWS nor Azure has a presence.

The closest data centers to us are Singapore and Dubai. As such, the cloud is not very popular yet and most of our customers have on-premises deployments. We do expect this to change.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product, or any piece of software, is to have a reasonable level of knowledge in advance of the deployment. That is key in IT.

If you are a consultant, as opposed to an end-user, then you need to have a deep knowledge of the product because there are circumstances where you have to go beyond the normal configuration. Sometimes you have issues that can only be resolved if you are well-equipped with the knowledge.

I also recommend that people plan their deployment. VMware is a wonderful product and it will definitely provide you with the functionality to meet your technical requirements. You will be a very satisfied customer while using it, but the key is to know the product and plan things properly.

Overall, this is a good product and I do not feel that there is much missing. It is the best virtualization platform available.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for the virtualization of the environment. We've converted more than 90% of our environment from physical to virtual.

The higher availability and the vMotion, I would say, are what makes it very interesting as you avoid systems being down. It provides, if you cluster, high availability, and your services can move from system to system to avoid downtime.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is helpful and always available. 

There are certain issues that can be improved. No solution is perfect, even though it's working for most of us most of the time. There are certain issues that crop up and some of them are not due to VMware. It could be due to the hardware it is running on. Therefore, it would be ideal if they could provide more knowledge on the fault tolerance and the high availability as some things are just assumed and then users find later that the use cases are different. Sometimes you may assume something applies to a use case only to find that it doesn't. If they improve on the knowledge base and documentation, it would be extremely helpful.

I've been using the solution since 2012. It's been a while. 

The stability of the product is good. I haven't dealt with bugs or glitches. It's reliable. 

The product is scalable. You can increase the number of servers. You can increase the number of computer resources, storage, CPU, memory. It's up to you how huge you want your clusters to be.

This is an enterprise solution. It is not used by users. It is an enterprise technology solution. Therefore, we won't be adding more users. 

Almost all the engineers in the organization are using the solution. I would say maybe 15 engineers are actively using it. 

The technical support is always there. They're always available. When you have an issue, you just log a call with them and set up a service request. They assist you directly. An engineer will be assigned to assist.

We have other tools, such as Oracle VM, which we are using in other areas, however, VMware is used more than the Oracle VM.

For the initial setup, you need to do design work with someone who understands VMware, who is actually certified by VMware. You need someone certified to do it.

Deployment is not a problem. As long as you take time doing your design, the deployment will not take long. You can do it within a week.

If you have one certified engineer, the implementation will go fine. 

In terms of the management of the solution, we have about four engineers who are looking after it.

You cannot do it by yourself. You need a certified engineer. That's a requirement from VMware and it's so that the environment is stable to avoid unnecessary scraping.

You do need a license. Most of these vendors also offer what they call the free version of the software. If you want more support, more features, you have to go for the paid versions. That said, you can still get the free or community version of it.

I'd recommend the solution to other users. It's a good technology. They're pioneers in the industry.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

A typical use case for vSphere would be general virtualization, primarily, where we're deploying either Linux or Windows-based workloads. We do have a lot of design-ready nodes we use for some of our clients. We also use Tanzu, from an application development container, microservices type of solution as well. 

VMware vSphere is replete with about a gazillion different features. In the context of vCenter, everything has been amalgamated into a single appliance. It's much more simplified at deployment. Because of that, immediately I would say the most useful feature is the Lifecycle Manager, VLCM, that is now available. So, what used to be the VMware of Data Manager has now changed to the Lifecycle Manager. Those changes are really, really useful.

I'm a big fan of vSphere; I have used it since the days of 3.5, all the way up to now. When you deploy it as a complete stack, from vSphere to vCenter to the vRealize Operations, Orchestrator, all the way up, you're into your NSX login site, the entire cloud stack. By the time you're done, you begin to feel, "do you really need so many different pieces that you need to connect? Could it not just be a single, unified product?" I'm not saying the integration is difficult. It is seamless. But it gets to you at a point. There are times where you really begin to think, "I got this." Not, " it should be much easier than this."

I can't think of anybody on the planet who would actually have issues with vSphere. vSphere is as stable as the word stable gets. When you do the entire stack scenario unless you're doing something like VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail, wherein it becomes a much more seamless solution where you are using discrete hardware, you're creating the entire cloud platform. It gets a little tedious doing all those workflows at times.

From a management center, particularly referring to the private cloud stack, I would prefer for it to be a lot more seamless. There are competitors, Cloud Management Platform or Morpheus, for example. It's a product you deploy and you're good to go. With this, there are so many different pieces to connect. It grows on you.

I've been using VMware for a long time. As as a DC architect, I use it day in and day out.

If you're looking for any hypervisor, vSphere is not a gold standard, vSphere is the gold standard. There's no single other option. When it comes down to it, if I can afford it, vSphere is the only one that I'm going with.

There have been cases with vSphere itself, but the fact is that VMware support is great. 

I have had clients who have faced issues in the context of hyperconverged infrastructure. A problem in the networks assumes a lot more significance in the context of HCI, and VMware support is awesome.

I have no complaints about the setup. The integration is seamless. When you put together all the various pieces, you build an entire private cloud stack. At that stage, once you have everything configured, it is relatively straightforward. But it is not a single homogenous unit.

The licensing is perpetual licensing that you pay for once.

As far as the price of the license, I can't think of anyone who will say, "I'm happy with the pricing." There's always room for improvement. But, you get what you pay for. It's as simple as that. With vSphere, from my perspective, I don't want problems. I want it to be as seamless as possible. That's unfortunately why you've got to pay for it.

Regarding this solution, vSphere is the gold standard. It has been there for 15 years, and you're not going to find people who are dissatisfied with vSphere. You're not going to find people complaining about vSphere. The only thing you will find is when we talk about things like VxRail, things like that, where issues can come. vSphere by itself, I can't think of anybody who's not happy with it.

I would rate vSphere a ten out of ten. You're not going to find anything better.

In the organization where I have worked for the past nine years, there are multiple virtualization platforms. Virtualization software includes Microsoft Hypervisor, Red Hat KVM, Oracle virtual machine, and Oracle virtual cloud.

vSphere is optimized for a specific type of virtualization.

There is the simplicity of management, accessibility, and availability.

The interface is really user-friendly.

The only concern that I have with VMware is the support. It is very limited and can be better.

When you get support from the VMware global team or support locations, customer complaints are not entertained or taken seriously by the VMware global team or support centers. Other OEMs, such as Microsoft and Oracle, would make you a priority.

I have been using VMware vSphere for three years.

We recently upgraded to the latest version.

It's a very stable solution. In fact, when it comes to virtualization, you can tell anyone to use the system.

In our organization, we have 600 users. 

My previous organization had a population of approximately 35,000 people.

The support is the only negative feedback, they need improvements.

I'm familiar with all of the virtualization platforms that are now available on the market.

The initial setup and installation are straightforward. It is something that can be done by anyone.

In one hour, we can complete the installation and configuration.

Admins are only required to look after the VM portion of the new VM creation as well as the configuration or modification. Aside from that, we have a team of two or three admins to deploy and maintain this solution during their shift time, such as in the morning and afternoon shifts.

The organization pays the licensing fees.

We looked at a few alternatives and compared them to vSphere.

The freelance experience for the platform is excellent.

I would recommend this solution to other users.

I would rate VMware vSphere a ten out of ten.