VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN Reviews

I have to set up SD-WAN infrastructure for a large global carrier company in China. Initially, we discuss with the partner the number of users and networks within China to decide the number of VCE VCGs needed. Various models of the VCG are deployed at customer sites, and orchestrators are set up in Shanghai and Beijing to serve customers. We deploy six VCGs in North and South China to support customers in different cities. A co-management ratio is agreed upon, granting administrative rights to partners for configuring the VC VCG through the VCO.

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN is recognized as an SD-WAN leader, offering user-friendly solutions that help end customers and enterprises solve network optimization issues efficiently. Its proprietary Dynamic Multipath Optimization (DMP) technology is regarded as the most powerful and valuable function by VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN. I see customer transformation to VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN networks showing a 30 to 40 percent increment per year.

I would like to see improved security features, such as adding more SASE functions. It's essential to ensure network security without needing to purchase additional components separately. This would benefit us and our customers.

I have been working with the VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN service for around four to five years.

The solution is stable, but sometimes there are minor bugs after version updates. The technical team from VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN addresses these issues promptly, making us very happy with their support.

I find the solution to be scalable. The customer base for VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN has been growing 30 to 40 percent per year when transitioning from traditional MPLS networks.

Technical support is offered through a ticketing system and directly via service engineers. I appreciate having dedicated service engineers who manage our account and ensure any technical issues are addressed efficiently.

Positive

I have experience with FortiNet SD-WAN, but I am not very familiar with it since it has an SD-WAN function embedded in their firewall.

The initial setup was straightforward due to the excellent support provided by VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN. They assigned a dedicated engineer to assist our provisioning team, ensuring a smooth deployment process.

We conducted thorough planning, gathering customer information to ensure a successful deployment. The internet gateways, such as VCGs, are strategically placed to minimize network latency for customers in different regions.

The deployment time with VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN saves 50 percent compared to traditional MPLS networks. As long as customers have internet at their site, services can be enabled immediately, reducing deployment time significantly.

The pricing is high, making the margin thin, which limits mark-up opportunities from the wholesale price.

The alternative solution I evaluated was FortiNet SD-WAN, but I am not very familiar with it.

I would definitely recommend VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN to other customers and carriers for its functionality and dependable support. I rate VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN as an eight out of ten.

Neutral

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN impacts an organization positively by reducing costs. Previously, organizations used MPLS links for 1 MB at around $200, but now they can use 4G or 5G SIM cards for half that price while achieving more bandwidth.

As an integrator, I find that deploying VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN is simple and it is a really beautiful solution.

The time it may take to deploy VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN depends on the customer's sizing. Some customers have only one branch, so we complete it in one day, while others have 50 branches. In a normal way, it does not take long because it features zero-touch provisioning, allowing me to deploy 10 edges in one hour.

We utilize VeloCloud's centralized orchestration for traffic prioritization.

The impact of VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN's Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization on network application performance has been significant. We have tested this feature multiple times, and it was really powerful for steering traffic and packet regeneration, resulting in better flow.

We have leveraged the automatic link resiliency feature in VeloCloud SD-WAN, conducting a VoIP test scenario that involved disconnecting link A and seamlessly shifting traffic to link B without any packet loss. However, we have not sold any CPE for VeloCloud in the last one and a half years due to the impact of Broadcom's acquisition.

The significance of VeloCloud SD-WAN's deployment flexibility in an organization's network strategy is critical now, as every organization needs to reduce costs and undergo digitalization. SD-WAN provides security and quality of service without needing costly links such as MPLS, and using this CPE from VMware meets the SLA the customer needs.

I evaluate VeloCloud's comprehensive visibility into network traffic as enhancing the network security posture. It provides detailed information such as user IP addresses, MAC addresses, and operating systems, giving us visibility for everything related to which customer, end user, application, and link are involved.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN a nine.

I provide VMware virtual cloud to my clients. There are several in Taiwan and across different countries. 

I implement the VMware SD-WAN solution in the manufacturing industry and the banking industry.

 Each client is different and has a different network design, and they work in different infrastructures. We faced different challenges and tried to resolve them. If we changed the topology, we had to resolve new problems.

In the cluster, I've learned to utilize the HA mode for improvements. And the integration of Ampere as a service and the Internet service enhances high availability functions.

The second feature is that because of the VeloCloud SD-WAN, we can exceed the application service. We define the quality of service layer to improve their application service experience globally. 

The third feature is enhancing the firewall service in the SD-WAN solution to help the equipment protect themselves from network attacks.

VMware solution could analyze the data through the site and the detection. We define the policy. For example, we define the ERP service in the high-level quality of service. But, after changing the file transfer policy label, when we try to go through the virtualized environment, the solution recognizes the package very fast. In the banking industry, I did a POC to compare the virtual solution and the multicast solution. I can clearly see the result when the traffic enters different devices, and the reception speed is different. VMware Cloud mainly surprised me because the speed is very, very fast.

When the type of package enters the equipment, it breaks a line in the reception speed. It’s very, very fast. So it surprised me.

This solution can be improved by integrating other security solutions. This solution could enhance its security level because it needs to integrate other security solutions, like FortiGate or Palo Alto solutions. If it can do that, this solution will be more robust.

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. Because they are actually planning functions to increase it, to enhance it. So I think it’s not really stable. But we faced the problem speed is very fast.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. Our clients are medium and enterprise businesses. 

A few times, I called support, but they didn’t reply to my problem as soon as possible.

So they don’t reply immediately.

Positive

The initial setup is easy.  It’s an easy configuration, easy improvement, and easy deployment. It’s a good solution.

Actually, my current usage is on the private cloud because the clients would like to integrate the internal service.

For one site, I need around four hours. Four hours. I can completely implement it. 

After improving the virtual receiving services, the transmission bandwidth increased significantly. Ampere’s service is very expensive, and users only had a little bandwidth to use, for example, ten megabits. But after we implemented the SD-WAN service, it increased around ten times because we integrated Internet service to increase their usage accordingly.

My clients pay. It’s reasonable.

If I had a chance to push an SD-WAN solution, I would tell them that VMware was a good choice. VMware solution is a good choice. Because, so far, their research, RT detection, and packet analysis are faster than other SD-WAN solutions.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use it for our remote office WAN connectivity.

The dynamic multi-path optimization feature is good because we don't have to worry about routing. It's more dynamic. In traditional routing, it was a bit challenging. DMPO takes care of the routing on its own, and it's more intelligent. It's a load balancer, so we don't have to do anything for load balancing between transport circuits. It does it own its own. 

It's easy to deploy and manage. Even a small group of people can manage a large environment. It's stable, easy to deploy, easy to install—all the stuff.

Currently, we don't have much visibility into the routing environment. Maybe they could give more visibility because we don't log in to it; only the cloud package does that. The visibility is quite low. So, since we are administrators, they can expand more visibility to the local IT administrator.

I have been using it for three years. 

Stability, we sometimes get issues. So I would rate it a nine out of ten. It's not a ten because even if one gateway is down, another takes over. From the production perspective, I don't see many outages. It's quite stable.

Scalability, I would rate it a nine out of ten because of the capacity issue with the cloud gateway and the hardware. Every hardware has its own capacity. So maybe they should be a little more scalable. It's a hardware difference. They can make some improvements.

The tech support people are good and supportive. The engineers who provide support have the right skills, so they have enough skilled people. At the time of an issue, though they join, there may be a delay in getting people, maybe one to two hours. But when they join, they have the right skills to troubleshoot and analyze the issue.

So from the skill level, they are good, but maybe the response level needs improvement.

Positive

I also have experience working with Cisco. Compared to Cisco, VMware is pretty good. I don't see any issues with this product. It's quite stable. They release patches very periodically. The VCO, their gateway, the orchestrator, and the edge are stable, too.  

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten with ten being easy. Our hardware is ready, ISP is ready. I can bring up the site in just five to ten minutes.

We use it for both on-prem and cloud, but they may have to make some improvements for the cloud. Currently, the cloud gateway has some bandwidth limitations. It cannot support more than 1.5 gigabytes. That's a challenge because, with the cloud, we expect more traffic. 

So, the capacity of each gateway could be a challenge. We use it for the cloud, but on-prem, it's perfect. Maybe for the cloud, they need to make some improvements.

We have one engineer on-site for the physical installation and remote support. Each region has some engineers just for the physical installation, but they don't have to be fully trained. We have less than five people who take care of the entire global deployment remotely.

They regularly maintain their gateway and orchestrator. Since we receive patches regularly, we do not have any security or other concerns.

I would recommend it because of product stability and ease of deployment. It is very easy, nothing to worry about. Ease of deployment, ease of management, and also for the stability of the product.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

One of the solution's most valuable features is the VMware core automation stack at an SDDC. It includes NSX, the VMware virtualization layer for the networks (the LAN virtualization), which works extremely well with the VMware SD-WAN solution and is the primary advantage over all the others. None of the other vendors could integrate with the virtual LAN, making it quite complicated and virtualized to be fully automized.

The other extremely nice function from some vendors is that VMware has been integrating VMware SD-WAN with the cloud vendors or software-defined networking. Microsoft Azure is the most important because I work mostly with Azure customers. So far, VMware is the only SD-WAN solution that integrates with Azure Virtual WAN. 

Furthermore, if you want to fully utilize the cloud vendors' hardware networking, as in Azure Virtual WAN, Azure backbone, Microsoft and VMware support everything. No other vendors provide those two. An important element for my customers was their use of different hardware stacks for networking and security. If you go for a software-only product, like VMware, you don't need to replace your firewalls and routers immediately. This is where Fortinet and Cisco differ significantly from VMware.

To improve the product, the company, alone or with a good partner, should manufacture their own hardware brand with boxes to make the product more shippable.  

Implementing VMware is much more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive than implementing Fortinet or Check Point. With Fortinet, you pay a couple of hundred dollars for hosting and a low-cost firewall, there's only one box to ship to each site, and it's much easier to manage.

Moreover, it would be easy for the large telecom operators and system integrators to sell the solution. It would also be a good fit for customers with multiple small offices, who I currently advise to choose hardware-vendor SD-WAN solutions over VMware.

I have been familiar with this solution for about four years. I was familiar with it when the name was VeloCloud, the company VMware acquired.

Customer support is very responsive to important issues. VMware has multiple support models. Basic support is rubbish, but real companies never rely on basic support. Production support is the basic model VMware offers, and it's pretty good. I would rate the service between seven and eight out of 10.

Mission Critical and Business Critical support for the larger companies are excellent. They are the best on the market. Of course, this support is an expensive extra, but VMware support probably deserves a rating of 10 out of 10.

Customers running all data centers on VMware definitely receive Mission Critical support.

Positive

Overall pricing could be lower. It is much more expensive than traditional hardware vendor pricing.

The question of licensing costs is slightly different because, in the VMware case, it's fairly rare for customers to buy a license without implementing VMware data center facilities or something similar. If you compare it to just buying a license per site and checking how much it is with Fortinet when you implement the software, it depends on how large a firewall you have. For a very small firewall, the Fortinet licensing is around 200 euros, but if your firewall is huge, it could be 5,000 to 7,000 euros per year.

From that perspective, it's pointless to evaluate VMware at a similar level because if you have VMware SD-WAN and NSX, then it's quite reasonable. It's more like a license for the data center. This process differs from the firewall vendors' because you don't need to buy a license for every firewall you have. However, you can do that in the case of VMware.

So think of it as the customer having data centers. Connectivity between the data centers will have two aspects. The first is the big costs for bandwidth and connectivity. The second is the software cost. The VMware environment is more about customers with different departments in different locations.

In these scenarios, customers with data centers should use a VMware stack. For customers with no data center who have everything on the cloud and are only looking for connectivity, Fortinet costs for 10 sites might be between 10 and 12, whereas VMware costs would be more than 20,000. But again, I would emphasize that the implementation is much, much more expensive on VMware in the case of virtual licenses.

It's an excellent product. The only small disadvantage is it's a bit difficult.

I would rate the product as nine out of 10.

Regarding the number of people working with VMware SD-WAN in our customers' companies, these companies have around 7,000 employees; they all work with VMware SD-WAN, including some 300 people in IT, a networking team of 12, and around 20 cloud guys. Less than 20 actually do product administration.

For people who want to implement VMware SD-WAN, I strongly suggest checking out the VMware SASE offering because there is a big difference in the approach. If you want something that combines all your VMware data centers into one with everything virtualized when you implement NSX, etc., VMware is a good solution. 

On the other hand, if you are primarily looking to replace FPS connections, VMware SASE is totally different from the big three security players, which mostly offer transfer capacity, bandwidth, and bandwidth transfer capacity as part of their SASE solution.

You should then check the combined operation of VMware and Microsoft's Azure Virtual WAN because it beats Fortinet for pricing and performance.  

If you choose Fortinet, which might be slightly more mature than the VMware solution, you'll need to replace all your network equipment in every branch. Some customers can't do this. It's laborious and incredibly expensive. In China, for example, network equipment is extremely hard to replace. The only approved vendor is China Telecom, which uses its own devices. With VMware, you have the boxes and old VeloCloud routers. But if you want a physical device or a small office, you can buy it. On the other hand, if you implement a software solution, you won't have to touch any of the existing network hardware.

Regarding overall performance, if you compare SD-WAN, all vendors provide high performance; that's not under question. The crucial factor is routing. Although SD-WANs all go through the same "public" internet, not everyone gets the capacity they want. Capacity doesn't only depend on having an internet connection. You also need to have a fixed bandwidth.

Buying IP transit capacity and using it with SD-WAN is much more effective, whether using VMware, Fortinet, Check Point, or implementing it like Azure Virtual WAN using Microsoft Backbone. It has much more effect on performance than doubling investment in SD-WAN hardware.

In short, the bottleneck is not due to the SD-WAN provider but IP connectivity between sites.

For our light branches and remote workers deploying secure connections, VMware is much more when you're looking to make direct connections to the cloud, especially where you don't necessarily have a lot of on-prem data. We have data centers where all our information is stored with the help of VMware. VMware SD-WAN is also good for everything in Microsoft 365 or Azure.

Feature-wise, VMware SD-WAN is a really strong cloud web security product. If you're looking to be able to provide your staff with remote access that doesn't need VPN into the router and go out to the internet, then I would say that VMware SD-WAN is a really good product for that. VMware has slightly better options and a variety of features in terms of what you can get with them. So if they have cloud web security, they have CASB, all those kinds of options you can then integrate, meaning you need to have one router. You can have decentralized firewalls, essentially cloud-based firewalls, which help remote staff connect directly to the internet rather than securely going via a corporate network.

VMware SD-WAN doesn't have the best built-in firewall. You would still need a firewall, depending on your needs. If you don't have a huge amount of outbound traffic, that's fine. If you are hosting a website or something like that, you would need an additional, more advanced firewall. They don't have a built-in next-generation firewall.

In the future, a built-in next-generation firewall would be good for the solution.

I have been using VMware SD-WAN for three or four years.

I don't have a huge amount of experience with the solution's stability. I don't use the solution's remote access feature, so I can't comment on that. From what I see, the solution's stability is good.

There are different bandwidth options when it comes to scalability.

VMware SD-WAN mainly works well for enterprise-sized customers. The solution is suitable for businesses of all sizes, including the fact that you can do it for a huge company.

The technical support from VMware is very active. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. I just don't have enough experience with them, honestly.

I am mainly in the sales department, dealing with presales elements, and I can say that VMware's support team is incredibly active. Considering the aforementioned detail, I rate the support a nine out of ten. Post-deployment, I haven't dealt with VMware's support team. The follow-up point is that we don't deal with technical support. I can't accurately comment on the company support because we only need the hardware support.

Positive

Considering my past experience with other tools, VMware is easy to deploy, cheap, provides remote access, and helps secure web gateway. The tool is quite good for a smaller company since it has good cloud web security features.

My clients have the solution deployed on the cloud as well as on-premises.

It takes 35 days for the solution's deployment phase.

One engineer and one solution architect can deploy the solution.

We make monthly payments toward the licensing costs of the solution. I don't know if there are different options if you make payments to VMware directly.

One needs to pay for the router and the license, and then you would also need to pay for the internet service to get into it.

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it. I'm a big fan of VMware, personally. These days nobody works in an office that much anymore. The important thing is connecting to the internet securely when you're working remotely, which is one big thing we see with some customers. If the aforementioned details are areas where people are struggling, then VMware is the correct choice. Versa would be a better choice if someone has more intensive internal corporate networks and they are more focused on private internal networks. If you are looking at a tool for one or two offices with not a lot of people, VMware is a better choice.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company uses this solution to migrate workloads between clouds.  When  doing quality assurance testing or developing a new release, we'll move environments back and forth.

Extending VLAN across clouds seamlessly is a great value.

I like the on-demand capability. When extra capacity is needed, we can get it very quickly. 

It has a lot of major restrictions and it's a little costly. For example, the requirement to have the separate nodes from VMware to monitor and control nodes is a big expense. We looked at it from a Dell perspective and the minimum they want just to monitor and have that capability is $10,000 a month. It's kind of expensive. There's always improvements to be had, but the problem is the price. That's always the driving decision point.

We don't want to have a SD-WAN for our business users and then have to go to someone like Zscaler for our private VPN. We would like to see one product do it all, so we're only dealing with one source when we talk about remote access, whether it be large installations or remote users. Having multiple products is a drain.

I have had experience with this product for over seven years. 

It's extremely stable. VMware is one of the best products out there.

It is a scalable solution. We have about 2,500 VMware users. We have a team of three people who handle maintenance for the solution, but they're not full-time. 

The technical support used to be better. It used to be excellent. Now, you can't really reach them. Everything is done via emails and online. Since they got divested from Dell, they've changed their whole approach and it's a little bit difficult. I would rate them as a three out of five. They used to be a five out of five. 

There was the product that Oracle puts out. It never had all the features, and they were late to marketing. They could never catch up on the functionality that VMware introduced. They had the basic functions, even going back to the mainframe days, but VMware got a jump on all of its competitors and nobody could ever match them on a product set.

VMware in itself is not difficult to set up. Being able to run guest machines takes a couple of hours. It has a network component that can be a little bit complex, but other than that, if you've done all the prep work, it's pretty innocuous to set up VMware.

We did most of the deployment in-house. 

It's hard to quantify, but we have seen an ROI because we're able to move back and forth between production and tests. We've gotten productivity gains that are hard to gauge, but we don't have to have all the on-prem infrastructure all the time. When we need incremental, we move the workload to the cloud and let it work in the cloud and then we bring it back. It's more of a time-to-market issue than actual quantifiable savings or results.

The minimum cost is $10,000 a month to have a monitoring station set up, plus the fact that you have to pay for the compute you want to have on-prem and the compute you have in the cloud.

My advice is that networking is the major issue. The prep time and understanding what you want to do and how much bandwidth you'll need and how you're going to configure it on the network, that's more of an issue than anything else.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. 

It is a valuable solution for organizations facing the challenge of managing networks across multiple locations. Its centralized console allows for easy network administration, addressing the complexity of handling numerous devices across various sites.

The centralized management proves economically efficient, making it a cost-effective choice for businesses.

One of the standout features is its ability to dynamically manage enterprise networks based on applications. Through application-based routing, organizations can efficiently direct traffic over multiple links. The solution incorporates features like link steering and forward error correction to ensure robust network performance. The seamless integration offered by VMware SD-WAN positions it as a versatile solution for evolving IT landscapes. It facilitates VPN connectivity without vendor restrictions, allowing organizations to establish VPN connections through any vendor. This flexibility eliminates the limitations associated with specific VPN protocols, offering a more adaptable solution. In the context of multi-tenancy, VMware SD-WAN stands out as a cloud-based, multi-tenant solution, catering to the needs of service providers looking to offer services to smaller customers.

There might be potential enhancements in better integration with other platforms, increased stability, and heightened security.

I have been working with it for a year.

The solution exhibits high stability; I would rate it up to nine out of ten.

The key strength of this solution lies in its scalability, especially as a cloud-based solution. In contrast to on-premise solutions where scalability often involves device replacement, cloud-based solutions provide a highly scalable infrastructure.

Setting up the system is extremely straightforward and efficient. The process is designed to be user-friendly, requiring minimal time and expertise.

The deployment process involves several steps. First, we'll configure and create profiles, segments, firewall rules, and network services within VMware VeloCloud's orchestrated unit. This configuration is profile-based, allowing us to set up and define parameters in advance. Upon registering the device with the cloud, we can pre-configure profiles. Once the device is active, it connects to the cloud, automatically downloading all the necessary configurations. Getting a site up and running typically takes just a day. The entire process is designed to be profile-centric, simplifying the management and customization of configurations. For enterprises and service providers, considering the scale and complexity, it is advisable to hire subject matter experts (SMEs) or consultants to ensure a smoother and more proficient implementation process.

If you're a service provider or managing a large enterprise, I highly recommend considering VMware, a leader in virtualization. Their cloud-based solutions, particularly in virtualization and software-defined networking, are top-notch. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

I am an infrastructure architect and I use SD-WAN to connect sites for clients. My client is a bank and they are planning a wireless connection where you put SIM cards on the SD-WAN.

My client saved money because SD-WAN is more cost effective compared to MPLS.

SD-WAN is cloud-based and you can manage multiple sites within one single pane of glass.

If you don't have an Internet connection, you can’t control it. It is also not that cost effective because it is a subscription.

I’ve been working with SD-WAN for a little under a year.

The solution is easy to scale because it’s on the cloud, but the hardware could be difficult to get because it's made to order. That or the client’s stocks of hardware will be limited. We currently work with a large enterprise client.

Customer support is good. They are helping with most of my requests.

Positive

The initial setup is easy if you have a background working with networks or connections. The initial setup will be much easier with support. Depending on the size of the network, SD-WAN takes about seven days to deploy. Maintaining the solution can be easy if you know the technology and you have the background and training. But if you have no idea about the product, you will have a hard time because it will be new to to you.

Price would be a challenge for customers, because it is expensive. We only had to pay for a license that included support and maintenance.

I rate SD-WAN a nine out of ten because most of the necessary technology is there. But there is room for improvement.