I use the solution in my company depending on our client's problems. My company has used Visual Studio Code based Modeler along with Microsoft Virtual Server.
In my company, we have been using Microsoft SQL Server on virtual machines to help us decide if we want to use the tool as a PaaS solution offering or if we want to use it as an offering meant for virtual machines. Microsoft SQL Server on a virtual machine is known as Microsoft Virtual Server.
Microsoft Virtual Server has already been improved since Microsoft Fabric is available. Microsoft SQL's data warehouse is available as a component within Microsoft Fabric.
Microsoft Virtual Server's cost was an area of concern. Microsoft Fabric and the shared costing structure have already mitigated the price-related shortcomings of Microsoft Virtual Server.
I feel Microsoft Virtual Server will be stopped in a couple of months or a couple of years, and it will be completely replaced with SQL Server data warehouse and Microsoft Fabric. Microsoft Fabric has unified all the technologies, like real-time analytics, with data warehouses and then with the use of Power BI on top of data warehouses. Microsoft plans to get rid of all the separate components and start pitching Microsoft Fabric as an alternate solution to all its different or related services offered, but it could take some time, and it will not be an overnight switch. The long-term plan for Microsoft is to unify all its services under Microsoft Fabric.
I have been using Microsoft Virtual Server for more than a year. My company has a partnership with Microsoft.
The performance and scalability offered by the tool meet our company's expectations.
My company deals with small, medium, and enterprise-sized companies that use the tool.
The support provided for the product is satisfactory. If the product team gets involved, I rate the support a ten out of ten, but otherwise, I rate it seven or eight.
The product's initial setup phase was easy because of the documentation.
The time required to deploy the product depends on the requirements of the tool's customers. From site to site, requirements may vary, but I can say that the product can be deployed in a couple of minutes to a couple of hours.
The cost of the tool was an area of concern since users were forced to buy licenses for Microsoft Virtual Server and ADF separately. The tool's cost has been taken care of with the help of Microsoft Fabric and with a consolidated or unified interface, where the entire product serves as a SaaS offering for the user.
Amazon Redshift was a product that my company had tried, but it can't be compared with Microsoft Virtual Server.
The product is used for testing and development. The effectiveness of the product in the area of testing and development is something that depends on the problem faced by our company's client. Nowadays, our company prefers to do everything on Microsoft Fabric because it also includes Synapse Data Warehouse, which is Azure SQL Data Warehouse's alternative.
The most beneficial area of the product for virtualization needs stems from the fact that one of our company's customers could deploy it on an on-premises system. The tool had always caused issues in areas like security and maintenance, but the product's virtualization has helped as it offers a layer of protection on top of the virtual machines, making it easy to maintain, and in the future if a user wants to move away to a different offering, it is easier to do that on Microsoft Virtual Server.
When it comes to the integration capabilities, similar to the data warehousing capabilities offered by any other solution, the tool offers connection strings, and you have the ability to connect and pull the data, which is usually something that depends on the ETL tool, but Microsoft Virtual Server is quite compatible with the ETL tools, like ADF.
One person can maintain the entire solution.
If people plan to use Microsoft Virtual Server or any other services by Azure, they need to look into Microsoft Fabric since it is a tool with some nice offerings.
I rate the tool an eight out of ten.