

VMware vSphere and VMware ESXi compete in the virtualization software market. VMware vSphere seems to have the upper hand in enterprise-grade capabilities, while VMware ESXi is more cost-effective.
Features: VMware vSphere offers robust management tools, high availability, and vMotion for seamless virtual machine migration. VMware ESXi provides a lightweight architecture, basic virtualization tasks, and high availability, emphasizing cost-effectiveness with a free version.
Room for Improvement: VMware vSphere needs simplification in its licensing model and better feature integration for large-scale environments. VMware ESXi requires enhanced capabilities without paid upgrades and needs more advanced features to remain competitive.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSphere demands considerable initial setup due to its feature richness, suitable for complex IT environments, with customer support being robust yet sometimes slow. VMware ESXi offers straightforward deployment, ideal for small-scale operations, with adequate community-based support.
Pricing and ROI: VMware vSphere has higher upfront and ongoing costs, justified by ROI through reduced server counts and enhanced deployment efficiency. VMware ESXi is recognized for affordability with a strong cost-saving advantage, although pricing adjustments post-acquisition may affect its competitive edge.
We can say 10% is the approximate amount of savings because most of the things are automated and streamlined, so the manual work is eliminated in most cases.
I rate the technical support from VMware as nine or ten out of ten.
In the last three or four years, we did not require any support from VMware engineers, indicating its high reliability.
Customer service and support are good; they are reachable, and at times remote support suffices.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
The solution is scalable, allowing us to scale up or down regardless of infrastructure size.
vCenter Server can manage up to 1,000 ESXi servers within a single UI interface, allowing extensive deployment and management capabilities.
My customers are highly satisfied with its scalability.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
It is a highly scalable solution.
ESXi is stable, and our business operations depend on it year after year.
Stability rates a perfect 10.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
Mostly we don't have issues, but sometimes we have faced some stability issues because of some bugs and some CPU compatibility issues with Intel CPUs.
Providing a mobile application for remote access to ESXi servers would be beneficial.
It's not cost-effective for small users and creates a gap for alternatives, while favoring larger clients.
The cost of VMware ESXi is very high, especially after the acquisition by Broadcom, which led to price increases.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
The product is very cost-effective, though not fixed, as pricing tends to fluctuate over time.
The solution is moderately priced, not exactly cheap yet not overly expensive either.
The pricing is expensive, with the cost for customers ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The solution is too expensive.
Its capability to move virtual machines to physical machines is very efficient for our live environment.
As a level one or bare metal hypervisor, its unmatched scalability depends on underlying hardware, capable of managing large numbers of physical servers with one management platform.
vMotion is a daily used technology that allows us to have machines distributed across different sites while maintaining redundancy between the sites.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
I always use VMware vSphere vMotion; we work with this feature all the time. vMotion is very useful; that's why we use the virtualization.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| VMware vSphere | 18.1% |
| VMware ESXi | 2.1% |
| Other | 79.8% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 12 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 5 |
| Large Enterprise | 14 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 175 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 137 |
| Large Enterprise | 258 |
VMware ESXi serves as a hypervisor enabling virtualization by transforming physical servers into virtual infrastructures, supporting efficient server management, development, and production environments.
Organizations utilize VMware ESXi for its high availability and ability to host diverse workloads effectively. Known for stability and maturity, it efficiently handles server, networking, and storage demands, with integral features like vMotion and memory compression. ESXi integrates well with data center operations, allowing seamless resource allocation and virtual machine migration. Despite impressive capabilities, users encounter challenges with setup complexity, licensing costs, and technical support delays, leading some to explore different solutions.
What are the main features of VMware ESXi?
What benefits and ROI do organizations see with VMware ESXi?
Industries deploying VMware ESXi benefit in sectors requiring robust IT infrastructure, including finance, healthcare, and education. Its capability to support high availability and diverse workloads proves essential for critical applications, enhancing productivity and agility in dynamic environments.
VMware vSphere offers robust virtualization capabilities with features that enhance data center performance and optimize workloads. Centralized management and ease of deployment make it a cost-effective choice for many industries.
VMware vSphere is recognized for its high availability, vMotion, and Distributed Resource Scheduler, essential for efficient server infrastructure management. Users value its virtual machine management, seamless live migration, and strong resource allocation across data centers. Though the web client can be slow, and individual management of multiple ESXi hosts is challenging without central management, vSphere remains popular due to its flexibility and integration capabilities. While fault tolerance and free version features have their limitations, the product supports private clouds and hybrid cloud deployments effectively.
What are the key features of VMware vSphere?VMware vSphere is widely used in industries to manage server infrastructure effectively, hosting mission-critical applications like ERP and SQL servers. It supports development, testing, and backup environments, contributing to data center consolidation and cost reduction while enabling private and hybrid cloud setups.
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