What is most valuable?
Probably the extensibility as well as the out-of-the-box features it provides, which allow you to be very creative with things you can add on and customise. The extensibility is the most important part for me.
How has it helped my organization?
The extensibility allows you to take custom or proprietary requirements and make them happen. Where there's a lot of products, it will give you a set number of used cases, and if you have something that's outside of those, then it can be difficult to make that happen, but the vRealize Automation product allows you to just extend beyond what we'd initially expect them to be used for and make your own custom scripts that can be executed as well as the things that come out-of-the-box.
What needs improvement?
Yes, certainly. The ability to manage the product in code; so infrastructure is code. It certainly has improved in the last version, but it still isn't quite at the level that some of its competition is in. It's not infrastructure is called native, overlooks is getting closer to it, so that's probably the biggest single improvement to suggest.
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Yeah, there are some issues with stability. I suppose with any product, when new versions come out sometimes there are bugs, and depending how wide-spread that is, it can take a varying length of time to clean a patch from a big crash or fault. I give it a seven out of 10 for stability. There are issues, but it's not dreadful. It is certainly better than it was in previous versions.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No, it's very scalable. It's fairly easy to add the numbers of servers to allow it to scale up. As I've said, we've seen it running hundreds of concurrent deployments with the right design and the right number of devices. Obviously, while supporting the platform, it's very scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
It's probably a difficult question to answer. Depending on the type of relationship you have with them, I've looked at a couple of places. One company had business critical support. They were very quite good at certifying specialists, they were almost always able to at least categorise a problem, if not fix it in the first sort of hour or two. If you don't have that level of support, you often go through a couple of levels of help desk first and that can be quite frustrating and quite difficult. So I think the level of support maybe averages out to a six out of 10, but it could be eight or nine if they got the right.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, I worked in a team which tried a proprietary tool that did a very similar job, and the main reason for going a product like vRA, is that the development cost of it is handled by another company, so they'll maintain that, and we develop and maintain their own code base instead of paying for support from a larger organization. The idea is when you reach a certain scale, paying someone whose job it is or specialty it is to do this kind of work, they'll have a small team doing it, then having the rest of the people on that team might move on. I suppose to operate it into a prize scale was one of the main reasons for switching.
How was the initial setup?
The installation has been greatly improved in the latest version. There's now a lesser based installation, which has made it many times easier. It is still something that requires a bit of knowledge and time (if you've never used the product before). It is probably going to take you a week or so to get familiar with the concept and try the installation maybe one or two times before it works for you. Once you've used it a few times, you can probably do an installation in a day or two. So maybe a seven out of 10, for ease of installation.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
No, I've never been involved in the selection of this product, but I've actually joined teams that have already chosen to use it. I know some of the competition. Some of the other products have on from being the VMware vCloud Director. Some of the products are heard suggested via other places, like answerable and telethon.
What other advice do I have?
Probably the decision to run a private cloud, such as VMware, versus running things in someplace like the public cloud and it being AWS. The main thing is about the scale, and getting sufficient scale, it can be cost effective to run your own private cloud. Best to find the right algorithms, if not setting up the hardware themselves; but you probably do need to reach that multi-million pound scale to make that the right decision. Smaller players are probably better off thinking about comparing costs without a cloud provider, and maybe a less niche product.
It's a good product. It's very extensible. It is fairly complex to set-up, and its fairly closely tied to VMware's infrastructure, so there's a lack of portability to public clouds and a lack of ability to manage infrastructure is code natively. Although it can be persuaded to do it, it's not always straightforward. Those are probably the biggest downfalls.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
