VMware vSphere Reviews

Our primary use case is for integrating data feeds from multiple applications. 

The ability to redistribute loads, to re-spin failed processes, monitor resource utilization, and such are all valuable features in VMware. In industrial IoT, most elements end up being terrestrial. With VMware, especially when you're working with niche products, you can manage the integrated solution and multiple systems from a single pane of glass.

We're moving towards containerization and it was unclear what I'd have to do to support containerized environments alongside multiple systems of Linux and Windows. My aim was to get to a single hypervisor environment in which I could support a container environment as one of the array of other applications. Whether due to a lack of training or information, I was unable to get to that. Some people look at VMware as being an alternative to containerization, enabling them to dispense with solutions like Kubernetes and Docker in order to do away with VMware. That's not the reality and I'd like to have a transparent platform that can support all of them.

Aside from cost, I'd like to see some simplification in the solution. The main issue is manageability or scalability of skilled resources, the degree to which the product delivers a stable environment that can be managed by a less technical person. 

I've been using this solution for two and a half years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is very easy to scale, especially when you are trying to scale resource availability and the management of the solution. You need to have a degree of transparency across all those environments.

I haven't personally had any contact with technical support. 

I've deployed Docker as a standalone using Linux, multiple servers, etc. I'm currently learning Kubernetes so that I can create a new island in the chain and do a container, but I still have the other systems that continue to run in environments best suited to VMware.

The initial setup is straightforward for a computer savvy guy. I haven't experienced any bugs or glitches. Our customers are generally small to medium size organizations. 

For now, I would go with VMware for the Windows and Linux environment and do Kubernetes as a new island in the chain for containers. For most organizations, the ideal is the number of other users of a solution, because they're the ones that find the problems before you. Going off into some experimental environment may sound great and you might have a good initial experience, but if you're going to be the only person walking the minefield, it may not be a good ending.

I rate VMware nine out of 10. 

Previously, we were using the conventional physical server but we now use the enterprise version of VMware vSphere to virtualize all of our servers. All of the servers in our company are now virtualized servers. In 2016, we do not know that virtualized servers can be monitored, we have implemented monitoring for the virtualized systems and management allowing us to create DR for the solution.

The most important feature is the ability to balance the servers with Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). It is a very useful feature and should be mandatory for vSphere to have but it is only available in the enterprise edition. It should be available in all versions.

We are provided with a mini dashboard that has been improved in the latest version but it still could be better. The monitoring is now available on the vCenter dashboard and the vROps has been added to the basic version that had to be purchased separately before. A complete dashboard has always been provided with some competitors, such as Nutanix.

I have been using the solution for approximately seven years.

The solution is reliable.

We have purchased the platinum technical support and they are responsive. They answer emails and telephone calls quickly.

I have used Hyper-V previously.

The initial setup is easy but the security configuration is complex.

We are on a perpetual license for VMware vSphere and the price can be expensive compared to other solutions, such as Hyper-V. They should lower their price.

I have evaluated Nutanix.

I would recommend this solution to others. I advise those wanting to use the solution to test it out and compare it to competitors.

I rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

It is largely for workload virtualization. 

Instead of having so many servers, we have got just two server nodes that are configured in high availability. We are running all our application servers, databases, and Linux and Windows systems on two servers. We've got about 12 virtual machines. If we didn't use VMware, we would have needed to buy 12 physical servers.

The virtualization, the remote management user interface, and the web console are most valuable.

The biggest room for improvement would be just simplicity. It is very intuitive, but it needs somebody with a lot of IT background. 

The way VMware manages storage is not the best. Nutanix manages storage a little bit differently, but we are not using Nutanix. VMware needs to find a way to manage storage properly. There should be storage aggregation and better management of storage.

We tried to install drivers for 100 Gigabit Ethernet Mellanox, and it was very difficult to put third-party hardware and upgrade the servers. We had to roll back because it just wouldn't boot.

Its price definitely should be improved. Its pricing is on the expensive side.

I have been using this solution since 2017.

It is very reliable.

We tried to plug in more hardware, but the drivers were not seamless. We are using the OEM version for HPE because we are using HPE. It could be because it is yet to work with HPE hardware. HPE hardware works with Mellanox, but it just couldn't take Mellanox. We downloaded the Mellanox drivers from their website, but it just couldn't boot, so we had to roll back.

We have three administrators. The number of users varies over time. We started with 24, and because of COVID, we've reduced the number of people who can work in the office to about five.

They are very responsive.

Its initial setup is very straightforward. It is very easy to install.

They can do better by giving better pricing. Their pricing is on the expensive side. As a matter of fact, we are considering switching to OpenStack.

We only work with perpetual licenses. As a company, we don't do subscriptions.

I would recommend this solution any day. I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of 10. It is excellent.

This solution is used as a virtual and a clustered environment. We provide a minimum of two central storage server clusters and the maximum we have is for approximately four server clusters. 

The solution is user-friendly and easy to manage.

The solution could improve by providing better information on what other products it is compatible with. For example, we have customers that do not like AMD Chipsets used with VMware but it is not a technical issue, they need to bring more awareness. 

I have been using VMware vSphere for approximately 10 years.

I have found the stability to be good.

The solution is scalable.

we have approximately 50 customers using the solution.

The customer service is good.

The installation is straightforward because it comes with the appliance, you only have to deploy the appliance. The installation can take a long time, they need to improve on the simplicity and length of the installation.

All the customers who have the VMware have the vSphere because there is no single installation.

We have five technicians for the installation and maintenance of the solutuion.

There is a perpetual license for this solution and the support is a yearly subscription.

I would recommend this solution to others. If you use VMware, then you need to use vSphere to manage the clusters.

I rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the product as a server. Most of the work we do for our clients. 

The product works very well for us. Over the last decade, it's been extremely dependable. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The stability has been very good.

Technical support is quite good and very responsive. 

The solution can scale well.

The product meets our needs pretty well. I can't recall noticing any missing features. It's pretty complete. 

Our hopes are that it continuously keeps improving.

The cost could always be lower. 

I've been using the solution for about ten years or so. It's been about a decade. We've had it a while. 

The stability is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's extremely reliable and the performance has been good. 

The product is very, very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so without any issues. 

Our clients have users that vary anywhere from hundreds to thousands. Quite a few people are on it.

We've dealt with technical support in the past and I would rate them very highly. They are helpful and responsive. They get us answers. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we receive. 

We didn't previously use a different solution. We've basically used this product since day one. 

You can save quite a bit using this solution. 

We're just customers and end-users. We don't have any business relationship with VMware.

We use the latest version of the solution. I can't speak to the exact version number.

We're very happy with the solution overall. I'd rate it at a nine out of ten.

Using this product is a no-brainer. It's a really easy product to use. If you're looking at simply a VM or anything similar or anything cloud-based, it's pretty much exactly what you need. 

We use this solution for network virtualization.

The most useful features are ESXi, DRS, Auto Deploy, and the Lifecycle Manager.

We would like to see the container-based operating system launched soon for this solution.

In a future release, multi-cloud capability should be simplified and easy to handle for administrators. For example, if I have a private cloud and public cloud and we have a feature to run VMware between these two, currently there is some complexity. We are hoping this can improve to allow us to run the workload anywhere.

I have been using this solution for approximately 10 years.

We have had some minor issues with stability in the past that has now have been resolved. 

The architecture has been redefined and the scalability is good. In the previous editions, we had boot failing issues but they have resolved them and introduced a new model of high availability in vSphere for vCenter. Scalable is just a single click and is very easy.

We were having some network glitches and some other issues known by VMware, they were all resolved through provided patches. Now everything is working fine.

We have also been working with AWS and Azure. We normally recommend VMware solutions for private cloud, and for public cloud, AWS or Azure. However, VMware is also having capabilities on AWS and Azure which we recommend.

The setup of this solution is very easy now, it was a bit difficult before and now has been simplified.

When comparing the price of VMware solutions to other vendors, such as Nutanix, they are costly.

We have compared this solution to Nutanix.

My advice to small to large-scale enterprises companies wanting to move to virtualization, vSphere is highly recommended for effective cost savings. The future is in virtualization, the industries are moving in that direction. Everything is in virtualization, such as networks, storage, and desktop applications. We can reduce the data center space, power cooling, and hardware lifecycle. However, the licensing costs are expensive.

I rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

The primary use case for vSphere is that it can be used to deploy space applications to consolidate environments. You can be in production or in a data center, and you want each application to perform or to run only on a particular server. To create that consolidation and that separation of services, you could deploy vSphere.

Nowadays, servers are very robust. You can have a server of 18 cores and a server of 75 terabytes or 100 terabytes. That's a huge investment for a company, and you cannot just deploy a single application. So, with vSphere it will permit you to deploy the hypervessel on that server and later on add servers little by little that can meet your needs.

In terms of the usability, it's user-friendly; VMware vSphere is much simpler as compared to Oracle. Even a French-speaking citizen or foreigner can easily implement it.

It's much more stable than other products. It is scalable and easy to implement as well.

It would be good if VMware vSphere could permit hard partitioning. If a company wants to purchase very expensive applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle Fusion and they have vSphere technology implemented in their data center, it will cost them a lot because it has a very heavy, strong, or robust server that has strong processing capacity. The license will not cost the license of vSphere, the virtual server created by vSphere. The license will be the license for the whole server, so it creates a lot of challenges.

If it's possible for virtual hard partitioning to be implemented so that those who are using very sophisticated applications like E-Business Suite and other applications that require licensing on a processor, a virtual processor, could benefit from it, then it would be great. That is, integration with more expensive platforms is needed.

It would be nice to pay once for an unlimited license. If you decide to quit later on, you could pay the support charges.

I've been using VMware vSphere for about two years.

It's much more stable than other products.

It's very scalable because you can create a cluster. You can add a cluster and add another server in the nodes or in the cluster which you have created.

It's user-friendly, and it's really easy for a beginner to install. Now, there are appliances that you can deploy directly. So, I think it's very easy compared to that of others in the market. I have deployed it in large environments and even a test environment.

We implemented it ourselves.

I think the licensing cost depends on the number of users.

VMware vSphere is user-friendly and easy to implement, so I will recommend it. I would rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.

The solution is a hypervisor. 

If you're looking at virtualization, it's probably the most stable virtualization platform that I have worked on. 

VMware offers one of the most stable if not the most stable virtualization hypervisor.

The solution makes navigation very easy. 

It makes migration very simple. 

There is a lot of very impressive innovation happening within the product right now.

The integration capabilities are excellent. 

We've found the product to be quite scalable.

The installation is quite straightforward.

You can do so much out of the box with their product, with their built-in technology. In vSphere, you can manage the hardware itself using the same platform.

The licensing costs for the solution are quite high.

I've been using the solution for about seven years now. It's been a good amount of time.

The stability of the solution is excellent. There aren't any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability is very good. You can scale down or scale up provided you have the right licensing. 

There aren't users on the solution per se. Our IT team is mainly involved with it. That's it. We have three engineers that manage it.

I'm not sure if we will expand this product. It depends on what might happen next as one of the things that we will be embarking on is HCI technology. VMware came into HCI, however, there are multiple vendors such as Dell or HPE. It depends on how everything turns out in terms of the IT strategy. They're not that cheap.

I personally have never had to ask for support from VMware's technical team. In the last six to seven years, I have never had to directly ask VMware for anything. Therefore, I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are.

Previously, we were using mainly the normal Windows hypervisor, Hyper-V. At my previous employer, we used to also have Xen hypervisor.

The installation of the product is straightforward. It's really not too complex. All you do is install and click through. You put in your networking and you're done. Out of the box, it's great. However, if you do need to do some configurations, it can get a bit complex. 

I did not handle the installation process myself, and therefore can't speak to the actual amount of time it took to deploy.

One of the problems with the solution is the pricing. The licenses are not cheap.

We do pay a yearly licensing fee. Originally, it was a five-year package. Now we pay either every 12 or every 24 months.

If I have three hosts, just three hosts, a minimum of three hosts plus the vSphere and Center, I'm almost spending close to $250,000 a year. That's half a million in every two years inside just three hosts. In a serious medium enterprise where we would need at least 20 hosts, it means our annual fee or annual license cost could jump into the million-dollar range which means in three years you're spending three million alone on software.

We're just customers and end-users. 

I would recommend the solution to other organizations, so long as they've got the money. If you don't have the money you probably want to look at things that are open source. It's not a one size fits all kind of product. I say this because of the licenses. The amount of money you spend on licenses annually might be less somewhere else. For a medium enterprise, if you want a cross-platform sort of initial hypervisor I would say yes, VMware is a good option. Of course, there's always something better than VMware as well. For example, Nutanix is way ahead if you are a big enterprise.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. If it was less expensive, it would basically be perfect.