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SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds Virtualization M...
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (7th)
VMware vSphere
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
457
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is designed for Virtualization Management Tools and holds a mindshare of 10.1%, up 8.8% compared to last year.
VMware vSphere, on the other hand, focuses on Server Virtualization Software, holds 18.1% mindshare, up 18.3% since last year.
Virtualization Management Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager10.1%
VMware Aria Operations27.1%
IBM Turbonomic11.9%
Other50.9%
Virtualization Management Tools
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSphere18.1%
Hyper-V17.2%
Proxmox VE13.9%
Other50.800000000000004%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Techsa Services
Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.
IA
IT Director at Def Industry
Has improved infrastructure monitoring and resource management but requires better support and cost efficiency
The high availability feature's resilience is not bad, but it could be better. For example, whenever you lose any hardware, you will have interruptions on the services, and it reboots again on the other hardware host which is available at the crash time. That's good, but we would prefer to have zero downtime instead of the rebooting on the other server. We would prefer to have a zero downtime always-on configuration. VMware vSphere has a built-in feature called Fault Tolerance, but it's very limited for very limited VMs or very limited core count or CPU count, so it's not so useful for all the environment because of the limitations. The Fault Tolerance (FT) feature is very limited to very little core counts or very little VM counts, so you can't run the Fault Tolerance for all the servers or all the VMs, and that's very bad. If VMware vSphere could have any kind of built-in patch management environment with a repository, offline repository option, with test, non-production, and production environment separated, this would be perfect. Management of patch management with operating systems and including third-party applications which are running on the servers would enhance the VMware vSphere environment. VMware vSphere is very expensive. The worst aspect of VMware vSphere is the price. I can't tell you the exact cost at this time because the other team members in my teams are working on it, but I remember that the prices are very high. VMware vSphere is easy to scale, but it could be better, similar to a Kubernetes environment. It should have an automatic scale-out feature when the load gets high; if it gets some scale out automatically, it would be better than this, similar to Kubernetes or OpenShift.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"The free ESXi hypervisor was a great way to get started, as it allowed us to introduce virtual machines so that users could start to experience the advantages."
"The scalability has been good."
"It's very transparent and independent."
"vSphere brings the features required for an enterprise class system with a lot of supporting components: An intuitive user experience that simplifies and helps operational management."
"It has high clustering and availability features. These features are not found with other hypervisors."
"The product is very easy to install."
"This product is useful for running multiple virtual machines from a single server so that people can utilize the hardware resources in their organization. Its ability for backups is also valuable. In case of a disaster, you can recover the entire server from the images. It is easy to use. In terms of features, whatever they are providing is more than sufficient for us. We are not exploiting this product up to a hundred percent."
"We have the possibility to move workloads to different locations."
 

Cons

"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."
"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The latest version of the solution has a few bugs."
"The price needs improvement. It is currently too expensive, which is a significant drawback of the solution."
"Without a lot of physical RAM on the hardware, it's not very effective. The stability could be improved in cases like this."
"We previously had a hard time using tech support."
"The installation can take a long time, they need to improve on the simplicity and length of the installation."
"Where I think there is room for improvement is in the HTML5 interface in vCenter. What it lacks, for me, is integrating to VMware's other products, especially NSX."
"The management of the product demonstration is weak."
"The solution should be more secure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."
"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."
"The product is worth what you pay for it. I definitely feel like I"m getting good value."
"VMware does provide organizations with discounts. The customer service license fee we got discounts on from the supplier in order for us to get the best out of the license fees. That's our experience. We possibly paid less than our partner company. The partner is only local and not global like our firm."
"Licensing fees are not paid yearly, or monthly."
"VMware is costly versus other competitors but is still one of the market leaders and expanding now with partners like AWS."
"We are spending less on buying bigger machines, which are overprovisioned. Thus, the ROI is found in consolidation and cost savings."
"The price of this solution is mid-range."
"Its price could be lower. There is the cost of one license, and then there is the subscription cost for support."
"You get what you pay for."
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Consultant, ASEAN at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Healthcare Company
9%
Non Profit
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business175
Midsize Enterprise137
Large Enterprise256
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at o...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
Proxmox vs ESXi/vSphere: What is your experience?
For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds VMAN
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elliot Health System
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
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