Real User
self-service feature has helped migrate new customers from on-premise infrastructure to on-cloud enabled us to build a powerful cloud
Pros and Cons
  • "Working with VMware has supported us especially in terms of building a very powerful cloud for our customers."
  • "There are some shortcomings. There are bugs with opening support."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for the cloud project and we have utilized it very well so far. 

How has it helped my organization?

Working with a single vendor, especially with optimization, has improved our organization. Working with VMware has supported us especially in terms of building a very powerful cloud for our customers.

It has helped us provision new clients faster because it's built on an automated system. It has helped speed up provisioning around 75%.

What is most valuable?

We have found the whole suite of cloud applications to be the most valuable features. If you start a cloud, either private or hybrid, it will support you and you will get more features. It covers support in terms of computing, networking, and everything.

The self-service feature has helped migrate a new customer from on-premise infrastructure to on-cloud.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable enough to run a business on it. 

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is very good. You can scale up and out. 

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support is very solid, we have a good relationship with them. So far, we haven't had any issues with them.

How was the initial setup?

It can be easy to deploy but there is some complexity in terms of the configuration.

What about the implementation team?

We used a consultant to integrate. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Working with VMware is different than working with Microsoft SPLA. SPLA is only for service provider level agreement. However, for VMware, you can work in different aspects. With VMware you can build an infrastructure whereas SPLA you can sign and have your licenses for building your infrastructure later on. You can't have the best of both worlds. VMware is better in terms of cost than Microsoft.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight. So far we are satisfied with it, but there are some shortcomings. There are bugs with opening support. So far they have helped us very well.

I would tell someone looking into this or a similar solution that before deploying any cloud, you need to have a good consultant that can help you to build the cloud well, especially from the start and especially with the infrastructure. There are a lot of components that need to be taken into consideration before doing this.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Technical Services Team Lead at Novosco
Real User
Orchestrator offers functionality and is worth the cost
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the functionality that's available with Orchestrator. The platform stability stuff that I would be involved in worries me from the automation side because you have a lot less hands-on control of things. Price point, it kind of puts us off."
  • "Technical support is something that we've had problems with in the past. Across all the VMware solutions we have not always had the best response from support. To be fair a lot of the issues that came up for us have been quite niche but it seems that in terms of release cycles they introduced a lot of bugs and it's a lot of stuff that support generally has to work quite hard on. There have been cases when we've logged critical priority issues and not had responses in time. I think support is something that can be worked on."

What is our primary use case?

I do a lot of monitoring around this solution. Our hosted platform guys use it more than I do. Everything I use it for works well.

What is most valuable?

My impression of the data protection, data recovery, and container features is that they're all very good, I like them. Although I don't particularly have a use case for them within our company. It's very expensive but it's something we've looked into.

I like the functionality that's available with Orchestrator. The platform stability stuff that I would be involved in worries me from the automation side because you have a lot less hands-on control of things. Price point, it kind of puts us off.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't had problems with stability. It's pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are a lot of scalability options. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is something that we've had problems with in the past. Across all of the VMware solutions we have not always had the best response from support. To be fair, a lot of the issues that came up for us have been quite a niche but it seems that in terms of release cycles they introduced a lot of bugs and it's a lot of stuff that support generally has to work quite hard on. There have been cases when we've logged critical priority issues and not had responses in time. I think support is something that can be worked on.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We picked up this solution because we needed to provide new services.

We went with VMware because we have a lot of VMware experts in our business, it's something that we're quite skilled at. We are partners as well. VMware is generally the first protocol for these sort of things.

What about the implementation team?

We integrated in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Compared to alternatives like Microsoft SPLA, this solution is on the expensive side. It's an expensive solution but it comes with its benefits for being pricey. 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight. I haven't had too many problems with it but I don't think it's perfect. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
vCloud Director
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about vCloud Director. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
769,662 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Engineer at T-Systems
Real User
VMs can be managed on their own but searching in the cloud is problematic
Pros and Cons
  • "We like the basic operations that we can do with the VM such as restarting, rebooting, creating snapshots, and deleting snapshots."
  • "If I just need to look for something quickly, it's quite difficult to find it with the way it's set up now. They should make the search button better."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case of this solution is to manage VMs on their own.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved our organization by speeding up some basic scenarios. They can manage a simple operation on their own. 

What is most valuable?

We like the basic operations that we can do with the VM such as restarting, rebooting, creating snapshots, and deleting snapshots.

What needs improvement?

I would like to be able to search in vCloud Director more easily. If I just need to look for something quickly, it's quite difficult to find it with the way it's set up now. They should make the search button better.

The option to build up vCloud Director on the flash is quite annoying because you need to have integrated the flash, which can be problematic with the processor. Finding the integration plugin which works with the processor and which works with the flash is hard. I think this is an important feature to redesign. Eliminating the integration plugin would make it much better.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Generally, it's quite stable. We don't have issues where the Director doesn't work. However, sometimes the vCloud Director cannot finish some operations for some reason. We'll need to try the operation twice or three times, redeploy, and do other steps. It could use some improvement. It would be better if it was a click and go.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is fine. If we need it, it works nice, but it's not our main focus.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their technical support is good. Their guys are well trained and answer quickly. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Most of our clients are using classic solutions from the vSphere, 6, 5.5, or even older. We give them vCloud Director as an option for their business. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This solution is cheaper than other alternatives. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked into other cloud solutions like Microsoft Cloud and ABS. Our clients chose NSX because they have us as a middleman for support. 

What other advice do I have?

I rated this solution a seven because the search button really bothers me. Also, because it isn't always able to finish an operation. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Ringo Chau - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Kepro Solutions Limited
Real User
Top 20
Is scalable, but the initial setup can be complicated
Pros and Cons
  • "vCloud Director is a scalable solution, and we have 10 customers who use it."
  • "The initial setup is not straightforward; it can be complicated. The deployment can take one to two weeks."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for hybrid cloud management and orchestration.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for three years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

vCloud Director is a scalable solution, and we have 10 customers who use it.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not straightforward; it can be complicated. The deployment can take one to two weeks.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing cost is high for vCloud Director. It is mostly a perpetual license.

What other advice do I have?

I would not highly recommend vCloud Director and rate it at seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Senior Professional Services Consultant at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Leaderboard
Easy to setup and manage, reliable, with a good interface and accessibility
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the UI, the interface, and accessibility."
  • "In the next release, we would like to see improvements with the pricing. It could be reduced."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the UI, the interface, and accessibility.

It's easy to manage, it's stable, there are fewer bugs, and the version is upgradable.

We are using 8.0 which is going out of support and will need to upgrade to 10, which would not take much time to upgrade.

What needs improvement?

There is no support for versions below 10.x. Support for previous versions would be nice, but it's the end of support which is the company policy. We cannot debate it and they provide us with extended support as well, for a year.

This is is more than enough time for an organization to upgrade to the latest version to be secure and protected.

There is always room for improvement.

In the next release, we would like to see improvements with the pricing. It could be reduced.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

vCloud Director is scalable.

We have over 1000 people in our organization who are using this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good for version 10.x. There is support through the vendor but not for the previous versions. 

For versions 9.0 and above, there is support available.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

The time it takes to deploy depends on the number of cells. For example, if you have two cells it will take 40 to 45 minutes. Not more than that.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This is an expensive solution.

What other advice do I have?

We will upgrade and continue our usage of this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using this solution. It's a very good product.

I would rate vCloud Director a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Enables us to provision our clients faster but the initial setup was complex
Pros and Cons
  • "Their technical support is great. We had some difficult cases and they were able to solve them in a timely manner."
  • "Initially, the setup was complex."

What is our primary use case?

We use vCloud Director for our customers. They use it to deploy work machine networking and to manage their own applications and backup solutions.

How has it helped my organization?

It enables us to provision our clients faster but the process is different. It is faster and the customer can auto-deploy via a template. It can take three to five minutes depending on the type of operating system.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features for us are that our customers can create their own data center.  At the moment we don't use vCloud Director for data protection or disaster recovery. We are thinking about seeing the demo for vCloud Director and to implement the data next year. 

The self-service capabilities have allowed our customers to have their own templates and to deploy from those templates. 

What needs improvement?

We would like to see them up the storage. 

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've been using this solution for more than four years and we have found it to be stable.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have found it to be scalable. Each year we know they will implement more and more features. 

How is customer service and technical support?

Their technical support is great. We had some difficult cases and they were able to solve them in a timely manner. Overall, we are satisfied. 

How was the initial setup?

Initially, the setup was complex but VMware is working to simplify the integration. 

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it ourselves. 

What was our ROI?

Our customers see reduced costs because they use our solution. I see that the company is growing and is a positive part of the solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Our customers use different products like Azure, Amazon, and VMware. They use our infrastructure for disaster recovery. The objective is to recover. 

We chose to switch to VMware because our customers don't want to spend a lot to change make a transition.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise someone looking into this or a similar solution to use vCloud Director if a customer wants to remove their old hardware.

I rated this solution an eight because it's a good product.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
it_user669336 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at a tech services company
Consultant
With the resource pool payment model, you pay for resources instead of paying for hourly use. As pure IaaS software, it includes no additional services.
Pros and Cons
  • "Remote console (ability to control booting and OS installation process)."
  • "Lacking additional services reduces the level of cloud integration companies just love with Amazon and Azure."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are:

  • Remote console (ability to control booting and OS installation process).
  • Support for Windows desktop OS's (mostly used as test machines for software development companies).
  • Resource pool payment model (pay for resources instead of paying for hourly use).

How has it helped my organization?

We were able to test Windows desktop OS's (XP, 7, 8, 8.1, 10).

What needs improvement?

This is pure IaaS cloud backend software with absolutely no additional services which are offered by Amazon and Microsoft today. Lacking additional services reduces the level of cloud integration companies just love with Amazon and Azure.

To go into more detail:

vCloud Director is the alternative to Amazon EC2 and that's it. However,
Amazon AWS offers approx. 50 other services such as S3, Glacier, RDS,
Lambda, Workspaces, Elastic Beanstalk, RedShift, X-Ray, etc. Compare it to VMware Cloud Platform and you will quickly see how many services VMware doesn't offer today.

Customers require tight integration of different platforms provided by a single vendor in order to increase performance of their environment and drive down TCO. VMware still doesn't have cloud offering that compares to Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure.


For how long have I used the solution?

I have used VCloud Director for over five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The resource pool payment model is very limited when it comes to scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

I rate technical support 6/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used rented servers running VMware ESX/vSphere on SoftLayer and decided to switch to VCloud Director because we got tired of the hardware issues we had with those servers (RAID controller failures, HDD failures).

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was straightforward.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We tried Terremark, which was also based on VMware (don't know if they used VCloud Director).

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Infrastructure Expert at Cloud Counselage Inc. (www.cloudcounselage.com)
Consultant
FT capacity issues are now resolved in vSphere 6.0.

What is most valuable?

vCloud Director: To name a few, ease of use, robust security and easy extensibility to VMware's Hybrid cloud platform; VMware vCloud Air and public cloud space.

vCAC (vCloud Automation Center): Now known as 'vRealize Automation' is the best in class, high profile automation for your cloud workflows. Vendor neutral; Apart from VMware Cloud suits, it can be used with other vendor cloud platforms like Amazon, OpenStack, Azure etc.

vROps (vCenter Operations Manager): Now known as 'vRealize Operations'; vROps is the best in class most granular, high penetration monitoring, investigative and troubleshooting tool for your Cloud, datacenter, VDI environments Used for Capacity planning, Performance monitoring and troubleshooting etc.

vSphere: vSphere being the foundation for vCloud, there are many takeaways; Long distance vMotion, HA, FT, DRS, Storage DRS, Storage profiles, dual heartbeat in cluster environments. 4X capacity increase in 6.0 compared to version 5. vCenter Server Appliance now has the same scalability numbers as the Windows installable vCenter Server: 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines. FT now supports 4 vCPUs VMs and 64GB memory with Storage redundancy.

How has it helped my organization?

vSphere: vMotion (ease of migrating VMs from one host to another), DRS (ease of migrating VMs from one host to another automatically to balance out workloads in cluster environments), Storage DRS (ease of migrating VMs from one Datastore to another automatically to balance out workloads in storage cluster environments, HA (High availability is ensured by the newly developed FDM construct. FT (Ensuring 100% up-times reliably), Storage profiles (to bifurcate storage tiers accoring to the SLAs etc., dual heartbeat in cluster environments for confirmed Host isolation avoiding false alarms/isolation responses; key to maintain SLAs.

What needs improvement?

FT capacity issues are resolved now in vSphere 6.0. Cheers!!

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using vSphere, vCloud Director, vCOPs suits and vCAC for almost 4 years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

None.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

FT capacity issues are resolved now in vSphere 6.0. Cheers!

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes; Microsoft's Azure for cloud and Hyper-V for virtualization. The reason for switching was indeed the efficiency crisis with Hyper-V resulting in subsequent service issues ->service tickets-> increased number of troubleshooting tasks -> increased number of breaches in the SLAs

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward, as it's designed at a more abstract level.

What about the implementation team?

Vendor as-well-as in-house. I give them a 5-star rating.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Depends on the licences purchased per ESXi, vCenter for vSphere and licences purchased for vCloud Director, vCOPs suites.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes; Microsoft's Azure for cloud and Hyper-V for virtualization.

What other advice do I have?

Go for it. Follow the bottom-up approach; VMware's Implementation Guide for each product and you will sail through.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Cloud Counselage Inc. (www.cloudcounselage.com) is an official 'Solution Provider' Partner with VMware Inc. 1. Our website link for events: https://www.cloudcounselage.com/events.html 2. Our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/cloudcounselage 3. Our LinkedIn page: www.linkedin.com/company/cloud-counselage 4. Our Twitter page (still new): www.twitter.com/CloudCounselage
PeerSpot user
it_user8685 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user8685Infrastructure Expert at Cloud Counselage Inc. (www.cloudcounselage.com)
Consultant

Hi Kapil,
Latest 5.5 version of vSphere has maximum capacity of 512 VMs per Host. This number can vary depending on the size of each individual VMs. For a FC storage, a maximum of 64TB LUN can be attached to a host and a maximum of 256 LUNs can be attached. This number again depends on the size of each individual LUN that is to be attached. Number of volumes and its individual size follows the same maximum conventions that of LUNs.

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