What needs improvement with VMware vSphere?

VMware vSphere requires a lot of paid add-ons that need to be integrated into it.

The platform's main area for improvement has increased, particularly after Broadcom acquired VMware.

Virtual machine snapshots and consolidation need to be improved. Also, there are licensing and subscription issues.

It would be good if the licensing cost of the solution could be cheaper.

n areas like coding and microservices, users can find lots of features in Kubernetes. With Kubernetes, if one of your pods is down, then automatically, another pod will be up, so there are no manual tasks or opt for microservices since such a pod will run in the back end automatically. The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required.

VMware is not efficient. The solution is slower than other tools. We can run applications on other platforms whose VMs are faster than VMware’s. We can also run bare metal on physical servers, but it will be very expensive compared to VMware.

The current concern revolves around the pricing as it might be less affordable for certain regions. In countries like Tunisia and many others in Africa, there seems to be a challenge regarding the cost of licensing.

The solution needs to improve its stability.

There could be an inbuilt dashboard for reporting purposes. At present, we have to use another paid solution for the same.

Given that I've been using version seven, it seems that some of the bugs I faced during that version have already been addressed in subsequent updates. Although I haven't personally tested them yet, it appears that these issues have been resolved. In version seven, there was a problem with the network interface not responding due to certain configurations not being properly filtered. However, in version eight, this requirement has been minimized, so the mentioned bug is less likely to occur. Instead of solely addressing these fixes in newer versions, it might be beneficial for them to consider applying these improvements to the older versions as well. This approach could prevent users from feeling compelled to upgrade to version eight solely to avoid encountering the issue, and instead provide updates for version seven users.

In future releases, I would like to see less pricing. The license can be improved.

I'd like to see the snapshot feature that Nutanix has in their product. It takes a snapshot as a backup without processing as a third-party product. I'd like to see that backup feature in VMware.

There is nothing from my perspective that the product needs to improve. It works for all my needs. I recommend that VMware vSphere continue to release more features.

They can lower the price of its license.

VMware vSphere could improve on the automation features and the ease of use of the solution in many areas, such as the interface. However, VMware is doing lots of great things.

Before the latest versions of this software, we used to work with versions 5.5 and below. We used VMware vSphere as a client, as an application, e.g. it was not web-based. Now that has changed, because they've moved it from the application to the web-based version. It's the only change I've seen which I found very difficult because it was challenging to connect to the web, particularly because it can be very slow. It freezes, unlike the app version which was absolutely perfect. The performance was better with VMware vSphere as an app, but not with the web-based client. The web-based client could be improved, in terms of its speed. It could be faster, but I also just learned that since everything is moving to cloud, there's a reason why there's a web-based client now.

The cost is an area that could be improved. Today, there are many hypervisor solutions on the market that are less expensive and provide the same functionality. They share the same characteristics. I believe that one area where VMware can improve is in pricing, as we have found VMware products to be on the expensive side at times. I'm only considering the VMware solution, with the cloud solution. I would like to see cloud integration, such as cloud service and cloud feature, in the vSphere license. That's exactly what I'm looking for. In terms of cost, I believe there is room for improvement. They must work on the price, as well as the technical support.

Without a lot of physical RAM on the hardware, it's not very effective. The stability could be improved in cases like this. In addition, I would like to see easier and more widely available integration options.

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.

The performance of the solution could be better and there could be an extra level of security.

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.

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

Both the price and the licensing fee are expensive, especially for our clients with a smaller workload.

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.

The only concern I have with VMware vSphere is that the level of support is inadequate. It's not very fast. The support is good, but it's slow. When we need help, we require someone to answer the phone quickly.

I would like to see VDP and other features included to back up the VMs in a native manner.

While they have got enough integration as of now, they definitely need to get more cybersecurity integration as that is always beneficial. The installation is complex and you need to have a good understanding in regards to what you are doing when you are setting it up. The solution is relatively expensive. It's a big downside.

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.

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.

The enhancements that come out from time to time usually surpass what we need. We tend to upgrade because we do not want to be behind, but our needs don't continually grow. We are not very fast in terms of appetite for new things. However, we do appreciate that there is a continuous improvement, and for us, it is just a matter of being able to spin up a new environment quickly. An improvement could be in terms of keeping up with the upgrades. The upgrades could be set in an automated way so that the newer features don't require you to manually update, or you get an option to update automatically. This would be a useful enhancement.

If you're converting from any other virtualization system to VMware, you will note that the price is significantly higher.

It could be more scalable.

The licensing costs for the solution are quite high.

I would prefer it if there was a better connection between the storage and the server. For that reason, I'm going to HCI or dHCI. I want to integrate it all into one interface and I can't do that here. That's why I'm going to HCI or dHCI. The initial setup is a bit complex. You likely will need some help with the implementation. It's not something just anyone can do.

Its cost needs to be improved. It is very expensive as compared to other solutions.

The initial setup could be better. Follow the instruction you can set it up, but it's not very straightforward, and you need some storage and network knowledge to get the better understanding.

There was a time we lost the password for the ESXi and we had to do a hardware reset. At this point, we had to fill up the ESXi from the bottom up. I am not sure if there was another solution to this problem but it took a long time. We were told it would only be a few hours to resolve but in fact, it took one day. Having to explain this downtime to management was not the best experience. In an upcoming release, there could be a better ability to manage and control the synchronization of the power in the vSphere.

The documentation could be improved. It does not help me to show the client the value of going with VMware vSphere rather than an open source or cheaper solution. If we have extensive documentation that is complete and helps us understand all the features, it will help us to try to propose the solution itself and try to show the value of going with it.

The solution doesn't seem to be missing any features currently. It would be ideal if the integration capabilities were a bit more robust. Technical support could be faster in terms of response times.

It could be more composable. At present, a fluid pool is not available to us, and it would be great to have the flexibility.

The solution is quite expensive. I haven't evaluated or looked at any other solutions for the most part and therefore can't speak to any aspect that is really lacking compared to what else is on the market.

I can't think of any particular features that are missing within the solution. It's quite complete. There are occasionally bugs or errors. Some customers are of the opinion that the pricing is too expensive for them.

I would like to see it more open to working with other platforms. They could improve the pricing. The license could be cheaper. They have multiple components required for the setup. It would be better to integrate it into one solution, especially for small business companies.

There is some room for improvement but if we're not satisfied converting all of our physical assets into virtualized ones, since we have a scope for other technologies, we can always go for containerization. There are some challenges around ESXi hosts — converting them into VMs. Also, it could definitely be more secure, overall. It would be nice if other users could see or accept the VMs that we create — this has to do with the cluster. The cluster should be able to be viewed by multiple sets of users apart from the operating team. If a developer also wants to have access to the cluster, it's complicated. Role-based access should be available to make this easier.

Its performance is an issue in version 6.5, but with the inclusion of HTML files in vSphere version 6.7, the experience is seamless. In version 6.7, VMware has included the HTML file protocol for the web browser or web console, which has changed the console's response and improved the performance. We are using the trial version of vRealize Operations. It would be nice if some of those capabilities could be included in future versions of vSphere, not as a part of vRealize Operations, but in vSphere itself. It can provide some kind of forecast about your resource consumption based on the actual workload and modeling or testing scenarios. It can give you some advice or tips for the future growth of your infrastructure.

Its price could be better. It is expensive, and its price is a big concern.

The graphical vSphere vCenter interface is now in HTML. I'm not very found of it. Sometimes you can't find items and you need to log in to the different hosts. Some work has to be done with this admin console.

In terms of what could be improved, they should improve their storage management part. vSphere has its own file system type, called VMSS, and that file system doesn't report on proper data usage or things like that. There are certain loopholes wherein it sometimes shows you erroneous data. Again, their VMSS file system, their data storage management system, and its reporting must be improved a lot. There are certain features which are called VCE which are available as a separate suite for this VMware cloud. The networking is almost integrated within the vSphere so it would be really helpful for the implementation team if they also had an orchestration for a different storage. There might be multiple OEM storage in the back-end, for example, that could connect with the vSphere while the vSphere shows it to the front-end user as a single storage. There is a lot of scope in terms of managing hybrid storage at the back-end of vSphere.

The price could be better.

The biggest problem in this solution is the incompatibility of some of the features with some of the drivers installed on servers. For example, if I want to install vSphere on an HPE server, the driver is really different from a Dell server or a Fujitsu server. I need to download different drivers and install them manually, which can be improved by VMware. They can offer a special image to match different servers. We face different problems when we install vSphere on an ESXi server and have different drivers on the storage. ESXi cannot detect different kinds of storage, and they should improve this. We updated our existing version to vSphere 7 in a private environment, but it seems that this version is not very stable. We are facing issues with restarting the host. In earlier versions, such as vSphere 6 or 6.5, we didn't have any such problems. It would be good if VMware can offer specific applications for mobiles to enable us to control the management of all servers by mobile. They should also improve the vCenter GUI because it is currently not compatible, and there are a lot of problems. Some of the options do not appear well in the browser. VMware should spend more time resolving the problems in the GUI.

The pipeline feature can be improved, as it doesn't allow for specific situations.

The web user interface can be a bit clunky from time to time, so there may be some room for improvement in that regard. I was a fan of the C# client for as long as I could use it. The move from flash to HTML5 for the web interface is an improvement but still not a good as C# was.

I don't think that the solution must be improved.

I'd like to see a simplified integration with services automation. At the moment it requires a lot of network from partners and solution providers to do this - there are a lot of third party components that require integration. If they could improve this it would mean less integration for some key products and services.

One problem that needs fixing is when we run the backup for the servers, the servers become inaccessible to everybody on-site while it is creating a snapshot. If your server size is large you will have to wait longer when the server is unavailable. In the future, it would be a benefit for VMware to improve on the Storage vMotion feature by making it become faster between host. It takes a lot of time to transfer files between hosts currently.

One of the areas creating a crash is when you are cloning. If you are cloning a virtual machine and you have any license on another system it will crash and we have to contact third-party support for assistance. It's not cloning 100%.

I think what they need to improve on is their pricing. They're starting to get a little high-end in terms of price compared to other solutions and the other solutions are catching up. Everything with VMware is very modularized and you can't just buy one piece and be done with it. In my opinion, they would be wise to include a high availability out of the box type set up and not just for cloud, but site to site.

Its price can be better. It is very expensive.

The price is a big issue for us because the market is very competitive in our country, so we can't really push our VMware vSphere products because the customers will prefer to use something cheaper. Customers in our country are very price-sensitive, so if the price were reduced it would be more popular.

The visualization market is likely going to adopt more features in the network aspect of the typical data center. It would be useful to have features like micro-segmentation, changing the mix as well as part of vSphere. This is not currently provided and to achieve this, you need the VMware NSX product, which is a different product with its own license. I think some sort of migration tool could be introduced to migrate to the cloud. It should include integrations with a hooked cloud environment, or on-prem and even between clusters. For example, sometimes I need to migrate a VM from a vSphere environment to a hooked cloud environment.

The main issue for us is the cost of the solution.

Commercially, you see other products, like Nutanix, which offers a free hypervisor. It would be ideal if this solution was the same in that regard. There are certain tools the can't run in parallel and occasionally, in those instances, we have trouble migrating customers from one source to our data center. If I'm replicating workload from the data center and, I have to migrate some of the workload to my location, I have to stop that application. Only then I can run vSphere. That is the biggest challenge. If both the tools cannot run in parallel, it becomes a problem. There should be some sort of way to run these two products in parallel.

The biggest pain point is probably the firmware management of the underlying hardware. It could be a lot better. We use HP hardware. The biggest thing is the firmware upgrades and other items at the backend. You have to take down the system. It's an in-memory database and that can sometimes cause issues. If you have to do firmware upgrades, it's organizing downtime and all sorts of things, which normally in a VMS space isn't an issue. They have embedded some of this in 7.1, however, I haven't tested it or seen it in action as yet. That said, one of the problems is that when we're sort of behind big memory servers and the databases in them if you migrate it, it potentially breaks the system off. That's a big pain point that the firmware management of the underlying hardware should handle. VMware doesn't really cater to it, however, Nutanix to some degree does cater for. It gets pretty expensive, however. We are always sort of one or two versions behind. We never test the latest version. I would say for me personally, the management aspect with large memory and in-memory databases for the motions and stuff like that is what it needs. That's one of the key things that I need really, from a support perspective. That's caused a number of issues already. You do get something called host profiles, which they've also improved slightly, however, I still think it's a bit clunky in terms of the way you can manage it. They can produce something to improve that aspect slightly.

The licensing costs are expensive and most of the important features require a license. For example, we would like to use DRS but there is an additional license for that. If it were free then it would be very helpful.

I would like to see support for endpoint virtualization. Another thing that I would like to see are improvements with respect to performance.

The user interface could use some improvement.

The HR proxy is actually a little bit harder to install and setup than other vmware products. So, direct integration with a vSphere distributed switch would be great addition, but you can bypass this setup if you chose an NSX-T switch. The distributed switch, which is the networking part of vSphere, should have more functions. It should be like VMware NSX-T so that network management with VMware Tanzu will be better, although it is already good. vSphere 7.0.1 is not available on ARM computers for production loads. I hope that it will become available soon so that we can run our production web server container on it, for example.

The container management could be improved. It's far from perfect right now.

The only way for it to be a complete product is if you integrate all the functionalities. Then you don't need any backup solution anymore and you can do it by yourself. Integration needs improvement. They should improve a lot of the functionality because normally it's half of a product. You're only protecting yourself against technical failures but not against any cyber threats or any other stuff. It's not about prevention, it's about time to recovery because it's going to happen anyway.

I would like to have replication between sites available in the standard version.

I can't think of any features that are missing. I'm not really using any advanced options and don't have complex requirements. The solution could be a bit more user-friendly.

The cost can be better.

The solution is too expensive for us and we don't have any funds to direct towards it. We just started the company, which makes it hard to explore the solution the way we want to with the amount of cost involved to do so. They should work to make the licensing more affordable. I want to be able to use OpenStack, however, I can't do that without vCenter, and it's so cost-prohibitive for us, it's become a problem. We've only faced one technical issue. That is downloading the virtual machines and uploading the virtual machines. It takes a lot of time and we cannot transfer the VMware from one machine or directly from one server to another. That action requires vCenter. That may only be an issue on the free version and not the pro version. On the pro version, you have much better features. It would be ideal if they could integrate billing software so that clients can customize it directly on the virtual machine. Billing should also be done automatically. Perhaps this is already the case, however, I haven't really had a chance to explore it fully. While I'm currently on the free version, I'd like to have the ability to explore the pro version to see what is on offer there.

The way that vSphere manages the alerts on the data machine is not easy to configure.

I'm not aware of every option that our solution provides, but I see mostly two things. Provide a better solution for hybrid clouds and migration to the cloud. That could be one thing. The second one is providing some integration with different solutions at the application level, such as Kubernetes. There is always a problem that the application level solutions are not aware of lower levels of infrastructure, of architecture. Some bundled applications with a stack of new VMs with better templates, including the deployment of such things. Monitoring could also be improved.

It is expensive. They can improve the licensing cost for Cloud Director. They can also improve the integration with other applications and the metering feature, which is currently not flexible.

OS templates should be readily available, so there is no need to get an OS separately. Only the activation part should be different, which is not presently available due to the need to get the OS from a different location, then create VMs. If it connect with Internet, it should ask this during VM creation with the help of selection. It should auto download the OS so it will be beneficial only at time of activation by entering a valid key. If a key is not valid, then it should start with a trial version.

The ability to run ARM based VMs on an x86 platform for testing purposes. With the growing use of SBCs running on ARM architectures for IoT devices, it would be very useful if developers could build and deploy VMs running operating systems like Raspbian used on Raspberry Pi devices on their existing x86 ESXi environments. Even if this is not possible through some form of emulation, the ability to add ARM hypervisors to vSphere environments would be very useful. This will enable more rapid development cycles for customers just getting started with IoT but already existing vSphere users.

I would like to see better fault and performance reporting in the GUI. I should not have to resort to using the command line to see what is going on.

Reducing the cost of vSphere would be an improvement.

It would be great if the free version included a management tool that was a scaled-down vCenter Manager.

Improve the patch and updates online and remove mandatory reboot, or move the virtual machine onto a physical host that needs patching/maintenance. I would like to see VMware vSphere provide a centralized patch service on the VMware level, regardless of your operating systems.

Reporting on vCenter needs to be improved.

The solution should be more user-friendly for upgrading host ESXi units, bringing them into the control unit of vSphere. Generally, the user interface needs to be improved for non-technical people. A technical person can hover around and find the right tool or task that needs to be done. But, for people who are new, they require guidance because it is not intuitive. They have to ask for help from here and there to get it right.

Two improvements that I would like to see are higher resolution console modes for guests and easier switching between consoles.

The scalability of the solution should be improved.

Although vSphere is a nearly perfect product, it does need a little improvement. Datacenter and Cluster structure should be mixed so that the management of clusters would be easier.

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

We want to see improvement from VMware with security. We want minimal downtime. We want automation. We want to deploy more efficiently. If there is a disaster of any kind we want to respond quickly and recover from it. With vSphere, you get to provision server resources with ease. While we like vSphere, one problem we have is saturation. For example, if I want to deploy 10 virtual machines, I will have to install the operating system one by one. I will have to install the patches one by one, also to every kind of script. I will have to learn more, but automated deployment is not easy to implement. It makes you spend a lot of time on deployment. You can't have time for doing other things. On login incidents and other events, I would prefer to have some notification in the logs. These are the main areas of improvement that we would like to see.

Improvements to the vCenter server appliance are still needed, especially the HTML5.

Improvement in price.

When I needed to equip a new startup, I was unable to get the budget for vSphere past finance, so I ended up adopting a cheaper alternative even though it meant more work.

We stopped using a lot of cloud services. However, I see that VMware has integrated with Amazon Cloud. We will now to have to move everything to the cloud. My goal is to uplift our environment to the cloud, which will be probably in two years, but it will happen. It is where everyone is heading, since it is the next big step.

The functionalities and management of the product demonstrations need improvement.

The pricing and tech support need improvement.

I would like to see more software as a service solutions.

It needs to integrate better between multiple modules.

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.

I think they should consider lowering the pricing of entry-level products. In addition, I think they should come up with a backup feature that is more product enrichment-based. It should be a full-fledged backup solution. It just is not there right now.

When checking the utilization reports, the operational reporting and matrixes are a little weak. In terms of what has been the starting growth or trend analysis is something which, currently they have an add-on which we have not used because it's an add-on product, which we have not bought. As of now, they have this capability but I've not seen these features to be more integrated on the base product itself rather than having as a special add-on. As I mentioned, the necessary improvement would be to add additional features that would integrate reporting and management in terms of automation. Those are the two things I would say it's a lot of, or the third item could be of some service important to integration. Right now everybody is talking about private clubs, but these are the base foundation so, the effect it has had on embedded software attack, running on the hypervisor for self-provisioning, it definitely has an edge.

I would like to see VMware head towards a more GPU friendly environment.

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.

The biggest thing to improve is to have more self-service in the portals. I would like to receive more help through the web interface. I would like to see continual improvements of the client. It doesn't need to go much larger for support on the number of VMs or its size, because there are pretty high limits already. However, it needs a bit more in the management and the reporting aspect. We have to get a third-party for that. It would be great if it was a bit more integrated.

vSphere is the Rolls Royce of hypervisors. Moving forward, they just need to continue integrating and simplifying that user interface experience. With VMware Cloud Foundation, that's the Day 2 lifecycle management. You've got the VMC offering that's obviously all public cloud. They need to keep on integrating the APIs and simplifying the user experience. And they're definitely moving towards the one-click experience that you have with other technology vendors.

I put information on my blog stating that I would like more Amazon stuff inside of VMware. They have announced many thing that I am looking for today, so I am happy.

As far as additional features go, they've already added the VMware Update Manager to this version, which has been great; it's been very nice to use. It would be nice to see it a little more tightly integrated with the patching solution so you could do it in one pane of glass. Right now, you have to jump back and forth. It's still not difficult, but you have to jump back and forth to do your update definitions and then go back and actually do the updates themselves.

There are still a few features that have been left out as far as updating and sending firmware to the host. You still have to go into the Flash interface to do that. But, for the most part, there are just those few missing features from the HTML5 interface.

There are a few things I wanted to see in the next version of vSphere 6.7 which, it turns out, were announced today (at VMworld 2018) so I haven't had time to explore them. But one of the things that was most important to me was the ability to automate or improve deployment of VCHA in an advanced configuration, where it's not hosting itself. I'm looking forward to playing with the new release and seeing where it's at.

There is definitely room for improvement and that improvement should be in the licensing and the simplicity of procuring additional licenses or additional VMware products. Right now, it's very complex.

I see room for improvement in the vSphere product just a little bit. I know they are doing all that transition from the traditional fat client to the new HTML5 interface. I've watched that grow from being technical previews to where it's at today, and it's probably 90 percent there. But I think that VMware could continue to put improvements into that UI, so that all the tasks can be performed as quickly as they used to be done in the fat client. Just yesterday, I met with the lead solutions architect for vSphere, and one of the things that I really kind of sat him down on was, "What's the deal between these Custom Attributes and these Tags? What are you trying to do with that?" He said, "So here's the deal. I know that they're halfway done and we have a vision of where they're all going, but we'll get it there." That that would be a great ability, to keep all that metadata about your virtual machines inside the solution and staying with the machines.

As far as room for improvement goes, I really feel like each release they're coming out with new features, making it better and better. The new HTML5 client is almost there. It needs just a little bit more and then it will definitely be ready.

Where I think there is room for improvement is in the HTML5 interface in vCenter. What it lacks, for me, is integrating into VMware's other products, especially NSX.

vSphere is going in a good direction already with its improvement. The one area where I would love to see an improvement is the HTML5 client. It's great, but it could get better. I know it can.

As with any piece of technology (hardware or software), there's always room for improvement. vSphere is incredibly mature from a core feature and function perspective. As we continue to push mission-critical workloads into vSphere, and those workloads are not readily protected at the application layer for availability, continuing to increase the size limitations on FT-protected VMs would be a great advance. vSphere management has evolved over time. It's inherently complex. Operating a large virtual infrastructure is not an easy task for anyone. That's why certifications, such as VCP exist, because you have to have the right skill set to operate the environment. As the product evolves and starts to take advantage of things, like DRS, workload placement becomes less of an issue for humans to worry about, because the system takes care of it for you. Of equal interest is SDRS, storage management and storage placement, as historically, it was one of the most challenging things to mange in a large production VMware environment. With SDRS, we've actually seen our need to babysit it and manage it as a human go way down.

A slight improvement could be made to the interface of the management of vCSA, so that they answer on the 5480 ports. That kind of graphical interface could be improved, but it is not a main point.

I can see the room for improvement still in the user interface (UI). There is still room for improvement with the HTML5 Web Client. They are working on it, as I can see on their blog. However, there is still room for improvement in the newer features that they can push into it.

I have seen some sessions for version 6.7 covering its improvements, which I was looking for, mainly the content library. Our requirement is to move our templates from one location to another location. Previously, this was not available. We are happy this was introduced. Another thing is the flash. However, in 6.7, they completely removed it and they are bringing in the HTML. Let's see, as I haven't tried the 6.7 update yet. I hope it will satisfy everything from our point of view.

An improvement could be allowing a "dark mode" for the interface. I think the HTML5 client is a little bit hard to read. It's all white. It's a little bit bright on the eyes. A lot of us IT guys view in the dark.

My biggest suggestion would be some kind of a mechanism - and it's almost an AI-type thing, a Siri/Cortana - for where to find how to do certain things. If there was the ability to just type in a basic question and say, "How do I change the VM settings for this?" and it could bring me right there, that would be really awesome.

I think the cost should be reconsidered. VMware is not the cheapest solution out there, despite the fact that it may be one of the best. In addition, I think some of the backup features or the prediction features can be improved. The legacy workloads are not prone to be virtualized. Some users may want to see a common deduction product across the physical service.

We would like VMware to add capacity to add more equipment. We also think it could improve with the hyper-converged.

I know, coming out in 6.7 Update 1, that the HTML Client is going to reach full parity and have all the same features that they had in the now-deprecated thick client that used to be on Windows. That's one really neat feature I'm actually looking forward to. There are always little "gotchas." In the past, little changes have broken things in vSphere. Going from 6.0, which worked perfectly fine on the Mac Pro, there were certain changes in hardware drivers, when 6.5 came out. Some were no longer present or had been deprecated. As a result, it didn't work on the Mac Pro anymore, which was business-critical. Okay, everybody could stick on one version and wait until it was fixed. We were able to take drivers out of the 5.5 version, add them to the build package for installation and it worked. It was not the most efficient, and storage I/O was kind of slow. Since 6.5 Update 1 came out, that has been solid, no real issues with that.

I would like to see AI in future releases.

Maybe it's there and I don't know about it, but I would love to be able to build a standard server set and be able to give users, who want to build another server, the ability to click in and have a pool of 20 options for the five groups that are using them. I could just say, “Hey if you want a server click here," and then the server is built for them, tells them how to connect, how to login to it. Done. That would be so cool.

Flexible pricing would be nice. Some of the pricing models are fairly big.

The roadmap VMware has for Workspace ONE is on target with what we want to do. A year from now I might have a different opinion, but right now, I'm good. I see no negatives at this point.

I would like to see continued support of the HTML5-based utilities.

There has been a lot of improvement with UI: its speed and usability features. Before, it was very slow. When it comes to cross-regional (e.g., someone in the US managing the China vSphere implementations), it can be a somewhat slow. I would recommend increasing the speed. While there has already been improvement there, I would like to see more.

It's simple enough right now, but some more automation tools would definitely make it simpler. It's pretty well integrated with vROps but the integration could be improved a little bit.

I have just been looking through what vSphere 6.7 has coming, and one of the things I'm most excited about is the fact that we won't need to use multiple Clients any longer, if all the features that are supposed to be available are, in fact, available in the HTML5 Client. That's one of the biggest things because, for me, it's all about management. For the most part, all the other things that have made VMware invaluable in our lives should be working just as well, but a little bit more speed won't hurt.

Management of the solution depends on the interface you are in. The Flash interface can be a little cumbersome sometimes, but thankfully they are moving all of that into the HTML 5. I did see that with the 6.7 Update 1, every function now is pretty much capable of being run from HTML 5. I'm really happy about that and looking forward to moving to that. Unfortunately, because I'm the infrastructure guy, some of the features, day-to-day things, require me to go back into the Flash version, but I long to go with the HTML 5. It's really fast, performance is great on that, it looks really good, and using it is not a pain. It would be nice if they could make the upgrades a little bit smoother but sometimes that's a little tricky because, unfortunately, everyone can throw plugins into the environment and VMware can't necessarily control all of those. So I understand the headache for the engineering team there.

I'm looking forward to the HTML client being finished. That's the thing that's annoying me, but I know it's coming this fall. If they were going to make the transition from the standalone installable client to the HTML, I wish they would have done more development on it before they released. It's not feature-complete, so we have to go back to the old client to do certain things, and I don't really want to.

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.

I do not find it to be simple and efficient to manage. The tools, the interface to manage it, are a pain. In the latest version, they moved us to web-only, the Web Client and it's terrible. It's slow. It crashes. It's annoying. I used the Web Client in the older version and was happy. I would go back to the regular thick client but I don't have that option anymore, so I am always fighting it.

Code: They need to stop pushing it out so fast. Nobody in the real world is really using it yet, because it's not ready for prime time. It needs to be more stable. They need to get their product more stable before they push more code out. An example, in vCenter 6.5, they pushed HA, but it doesn't work. I've worked with so many engineers who finally said, "Give up! It doesn't work." I asked a question to one of the guys who did a demo with us on 6.7, and said, "Did you guys fix it?" They immediately skirted around the question. I said, "I'll take that as a no."

The vSphere Client always feels slow, and/or like it doesn't keep up with what I'm trying to do. So I usually use the thick client most of the time. I'm looking forward to some of the new features on 6.7 where you can record your actions in the Client and then it will spit out all the code. So if you want a script of what you just did, it gives you all the code for that. That's probably the one thing I'm looking forward to the most in the 6.7.

I would like to see DRS for the GPU machines.

I'd like to get rid of the Flash Client. There are still some things that require us to go into it and use it, some plugins and other things aren't supported in the HTML5. I love the HTML5 Client. I think it's a lot smoother, a lot faster. Version 6.5 was kind of slow. From our testing, from what I've seen, 6.7 is supposed to be better. That would be my biggest complaint right now: that the 6.5 Flash Client is slow. It takes a while to load.

It will be nice when it's all HTML 5. It would be nice if it had auto-scaling, no need to select CPU or select database size. Let it auto-scale, let it use the features that VMware has, instead of having to preselect.

In terms of management, it's getting better. There were recent changes with the infrastructure and the architecture, going from a physical vSphere vCenter client to the web interface. That has slowed things down a little bit, to be honest. It's getting better. With the 5.7 release they've optimized it, the menus are a little snappier, and it isn't as cumbersome to manage through as it was on the previous website or vSphere Web Client instance. Also, reading some of the sensors in the hardware itself, that's where VMware does a really great job in the digital infrastructure and being able to scale things and knowing what's going on in vSphere. But not having to buy something from a third-party to scan the actual hardware components, like the hard drives and the port containers and fan speeds; not having to bolt something on and go through another vendor, would be helpful.

* Keep innovating. * Make it more efficient and stable.

* It is simple to break. * As far as ease of use and their front end (vCenter), it needs refreshing. They are doing some good things with HTML5. I would like them to move into having a containerized application to manage the vCenter. * I would like having something that works on a smaller screen, so we can get to it on our iPads and have it more touch-centric versus having to sit at a laptop.

As far as the web client goes, one of the frustrating things is that it's dependent on different browsers. One day it may work with only a given browser or there may be issues with Flash. So I look forward to being able to use the HTML 5 client. Hopefully, it will be a lot more stable and not have the kind of issues that I necessarily run into with the web client today. One thing that is a little frustrating for me is that you have the network side with bandwidth and, if it's a system that's virtualized, obviously, you have VMware vSphere in the mix. There are all the different components. If someone has a VM and they don't like the performance or they see something that causes them to say, "Oh, this seems a little sluggish," they contact us and say, "Hey, what's going on?" And that becomes a kind of "magical mystery tour," a black box sometimes. I think, "Okay, where do I need to look? Is it even a problem within the virtualization infrastructure or is it somewhere else?" So that's what I'm hoping to find out about in some of the sessions, here at VMworld 2018, and maybe get some answers. I haven't seen the new client with vSphere 6.7, so it's hard for me to say what additional features I would like to see.

In terms of additional features I would like to see, I just heard about them here at VMworld 2018. They're rolling in security to be a core feature. Built-in app defense is something we'll take advantage of. The ability to utilize tools that are in the cloud - we don't really use the cloud - will be available for use on-premise, and that is a pretty big feature.

I'd like to see a little bit more integration for VDI. I think that Composer servers, security servers, broker servers with connections, I'm not sure they are necessary at this point. Perhaps they could have a lot of those functions baked directly into the hypervisor. It seems to me that if the hypervisor is scalable and flexible enough, that the processor and compute can handle all of that. Maybe we eliminate those other components for VDIs and have more mixed workloads: server workloads and desktop workloads all in the same hypervisor.

It could use a smaller learning curve.

I would like to see a little bit more visibility regarding errors. When an error does occur, there are times where it says "Unknown error" or something to that effect, and it doesn't necessarily give you a lot of metrics. If you go online and you give a description of it, normally the VMware forums can help you find out what it is, but I'd like to see a little bit more visibility from the software itself regarding what's going on: "This went wrong, this is why."

I would like to see the UI incorporating all of the functionality that the thick client had.

On Vista, there should be a lot more new features. We would like to see more security features to harden our environment in the future. From a technical point, there is not much room for new innovation in the hypervisor. It is more about improving the environment or the landscape, not the product. The licensing should be more competitive based on its price. There should be more features for the licensing that you own. Money is a factor, because our management is looking right now at its money. The most annoying thing is to tell people that I would like to continue using VMware, and have them argue the other solutions are free.

VMware has expanded, from a corporate standpoint, to where they have gotten very large. I have noticed, in the last couple of years, the breaking apart of specific added benefits and charging license upcharges for them. That would be the only negative thing that I have to say: As a large consumer of the Hypervisor, we have a hard time justifying the cost of utilizing the extra products, especially when it's a couple of grand here and there, a couple of hundred dollars here and there. It's hard for an IT administrator or an architect to sell to upper management. When they're seeing so much ROI from the Hypervisor, it's hard to show them that there is extra value in the additional products that can be tied on top. I would really like to see an assessment of which products are actually going to be beneficial to charge for, and that they then continue to keep some of the products bundled in with the initial Hypervisor. There are some competitive vendors out there who are sticking to the original model that VMware seemed to have, which includes a lot of additional features and functionality in the initial pricing, and I think they are gaining a lot of market share based on the fact that they are keeping their licensing simple. The only argument I have with VMware is that, when I ask our VMware team about a new solution, I hear comments like, "For a nominal fee we can upgrade your license and you can have that." For the large number of Hypervisors and the scale we have, it's frustrating to hear that I have to go ask for additional money for very small, additional features that I think should be included. I respect that VMware has to grow and there are some features that they should not bundle in and that they should ask more money for. So I would like to see an analysis of sales and what's included and what the consumption rate is. I think they could dial it in a little bit better to where they have more bundled solutions. Unfortunately, I think the type of model that VMware is moving toward is having an a la carte type of fee list. There are so many products that start with a "v" that I tend to get drowned with all the capabilities and I have to pick the particular thing I want to go after. Whereas, if there were more bundled services, or a package that included more bundled services, I might be able to swing that more easily than asking for money here and there.

The problem often is that when I use VMware and Citrix there are conflicts.

One thing that would be helpful is, these days we have an environment where we are often using clouds as well. A solution that would be a little more cloud-aware would be really helpful. I know there is a product from VMware that is more specifically for the cloud, but it would be nice if VMware Cloud Manager would be cloud-aware. It would simplify certain processes. It's all about doing things faster. If it were more cloud-aware it would be easier to work it into a hybrid environment and literally have seamless interfacing with the leading cloud solution. That would be nice.

In the next release, I would like to see programming. I'd like to see a lot more about customization for people who want to customize programming API, SDK.

I would like to start to using NSX in the next release.

Get the HTML5 client to 100% parity to replace the Flash client. When the next release comes out ensure all bugs/fixes are implemented as there was some pretty nasty ones on initial 6.5 release.