VMware Cloud Director Reviews and Pricing

it_user320277

Virtual Systems Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 9, 2015

Its flexibility allows me to adapt it to students' needs, although a better GUI for both students and administrators would be an improvement.

What is most valuable?

Flexibility – it allows me to adapt the product to all student needs.

How has it helped my organization?

Students using the environment vs. not using the environment. Students can find products that they want to use and if they’re using it, they’re happy with it.

What needs improvement?

Better GUI as they don’t hold with the programs that well. Better user interfaces in general. Both the administrative and user interfaces need to be better.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It’s fairly stable, no bugs no crashes.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales fine, it went from 1,000 to 2,000 machines without any issues at all.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support’s wonderful. Whenever we find an issue, we submit a ticket and they resolve it within an hour usually. Sometimes the complexity of the environment is high, and that’s fine, but usually it’s very quick.

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

We were using Lab Manager, and when VMware discontinued it, we needed to switch.

How was the initial setup?

Complicated – there was no upgrade path from Lab Manager to vCloud Director, so we basically had to design a new solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No, because of the time VMware has been in the market. I don’t like using people that are new, and VMware has been around for a long time. Also, we just thought it would be simpler to stay with the same vendor.

What other advice do I have?

I really don’t know of any products right now other than this. They’re pretty high – if someone has a peer review that’s low, I won’t consider the product.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user320640

Infrastructure Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 9, 2015

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We can import acquisition products into our environment without reconfiguring them and it's infinitely scalable.

Valuable Features

The physical segmentation of networking and security.

Improvements to My Organization

Lately we have been using it to import acquisition products into our environment without reconfiguring them at all, due to how the segmentation works.

Room for Improvement

I feel like vCloud is two years behind the feature set – in terms of the UI, and vCenter. I can't do the same tasks that I can do in terms of UI as with vCenter.

Stability Issues

It's stable, usually admin error if something goes wrong.

Scalability Issues

It's infinitely scalable.

Customer Service and Technical Support

It's good overall. We have had times when it has been slower than we would have liked, but I would say that about every vendor we use.

Initial Setup

Setup is easy.

Other Advice

You can't go wrong with VMware. The stability and the flexibility it allows, they do it best compared to competitors. Peer reviews are fairly important but I try to form my opinion from a POC over anything else.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Buyer's Guide

VMware Cloud Director

March 2025

Free Report: VMware Cloud Director Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about VMware Cloud Director. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.

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857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user297132

Presales Cloud Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 25, 2015

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It helps us provide private cloud solutions to our clients, but it is too platform dependent.

Valuable Features

The orchestrator is the most valuable feature.

Improvements to My Organization

It helps us provide private cloud solutions to our clients.

Room for Improvement

Though the product is quite good, I feel it needs a more public view, where the server access studies to migrate organizations into cloud be clearer. Also, orchestrator should be API based, and have templates to use instead of having to create the Java scripting from scratch. It also needs to be more independent of the platform on which it is used on.

Use of Solution

I've used it for two years.

Customer Service and Technical Support

It's very good.

Initial Setup

It was complex as it does not include a good, extensive feasibility and compatibility guide.

Implementation Team

We used a vendor team who were very good.

ROI

It is quite good on ROI and year on year it is about 50%.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

vCloud Director is a good solution, but it is costly when compared to other solutions like Nutanix.

Other Advice

Choosing VMware in general, is best in terms of functionality, but it is not necessarily cost effective, as their licensing and setuo cost are too hight. Maybe we will see more products for cloud and automation.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: VMware Partners

it_user234723

Senior Cloud Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

May 28, 2015

Even if there are some transition scripts or similar to help move certain aspects of functionality the transition is going to be a painful process.

Summary: vCloud Director, once the flagship product spearheading VMware’s vCloud Suite, is slowly winding down for enterprise customers – potentially leaving some companies with a roadmap challenge.

Having just started work for a cloud service provider in the Channel Islands (Foreshore) my focus has shifted and vCloud Director is a product I’m working with. After VMworld last year I wrote about how badly VMware communicated their product shift away from vCloud Director (vCD) and this year I’ve not seen much sign that communication has improved. At VMworld Barcelona this year only one session out of over 400 was about vCD. Yep. One (although to be fair it was ‘vCD roadmap for service providers’ – more on that later). How the mighty have fallen.

What do we know about the vCD roadmap?

As announced last year the vCloud Suite roadmap involves the current features moving into other products, both in the vCloud Automation Center (now vRealize Automation) and the core vSphere product. It’s likely that the provisioning aspects will go into vCAC (now vRealize Operations) and some of the network functionality (multi-tenancy in particular) will go into the ‘core’ vSphere product. vCloud Director will continue to exist for service providers but for enterprise customers there is a migration to be done. There was also the following statement;

Yes, VMware will offer a product migration path that enables customers and partners to move from vCD to VCAC…

So far, so good.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is it’s been a year since that announcement and there’s been near radio silence since then. If enterprise customers need to transition off vCloud Director then VMware need to provide information, preferably sooner rather than later, on how that’s likely to work.

The last I heard, 2017 was an approximate ‘end of life’ for vCloud Director for enterprises. While that’s a couple of years off that’s not long to transition potentially complex infrastructure, especially when the ‘final destination’ itself is in flux – what will vCAC look like in a couple of years? Presumably NSX (or some version of NSX Lite, backed into the core hypervisor) will provide the multi-tenancy but when? Should companies be buying into these products and gaining familiarity already?

While at VMworld I spoke to various VMware employees and I was told there is a team within VMware who are looking at this challenge. Even if there are some transition scripts or similar to help move certain aspects of functionality the transition is going to be a painful process. I’ll reiterate that everyone I spoke to tried to help and in some cases did make the situation clearer but it seems VMware didn’t send anyone with much knowledge of this to VMworld, and didn’t really plan on communicating anything. Maybe there’s just not enough to tell yet?

Given the timeframes involved I suspect VMware are relying on enterprises adopting vCAC and eventually NSX so that when the time comes to migrate it’s less of an issue.

A clearer roadmap for Service Providers

As I work for a service provider I also wanted to find out more about the roadmap for us. While at VMworld I made it my mission to find out some more information – that’s one of the great things about VMworld, there’s usually an abundance of information. Via the Meet the Expert sessions I spoke to Ninad Desai and Gurusimran Khalsa from VMware who were both very helpful (thanks guys) and I even tried the VMware stand in the Solutions Exchange but they didn’t have anyone to talk about vCD. vCloud Air, VMware’s new flagship offering, is still based on vCD under the hood so at least service providers can be assured that development will be ongoing and aggressive. It’s clear the components and APIs will continue evolving individually (vCNS to NSX for example) but there won’t be a VMware provided GUI to unify them in the same way that vCloud Director has in the past. vCloud Director’s latest release, vCD-SP 5.6, makes it clear that VMware partners will create the GUI going forward;

This was also covered in the single vCD session at VMworld (PAR3096, “New features and interfaces for vCD”) which included the three initial partners offering a front end for vCD (Onapp, Parallels, & AirVM). Unfortunately these third party GUIs will be an extra cost so service providers will have to decide whether they can absorb the increase or have to pass it on to their customers. VMware’s rationale is that a more frequent release cycle (driven by vCloud Air no doubt) justifies existing prices but I can’t help feel that service providers are getting less than we used to for the same cost.

As an aside, I’m still curious as to how partners will compete against vCloud Air despite VMware’s recent recommitment to it’s partner network. Antoni Spiteri thinks it’s all good but for a certain percentage of their partners I’m more inclined towards his earlier post entitled vCHS vs vCloud Providers. VMware will always be able to integrate new features before their partners, they have a larger marketing budget, and more market clout – the only thing VMare don’t have is a global network of datacentres (yet). Data sovereignty is critical to many customers so for the time being that’s enough to keep partners in business but they’re going to have to differentiate more keenly to stay in business.

Final thoughts

For enterprise companies who bought into VMware’s original vision for vCloud Director they can’t transition off the platform overnight – they’re using features which can’t be offered today via another VMware product and it takes considerable time to move to other tools, rewrite code, change processes and reintegrate functionality. Hopefully VMware have a migration plan and it can be better communicated so everyone can plan their roadmaps.

Personally I’m surprised there wasn’t more conversation at VMworld on this topic. Am I missing something? I’d love to hear in the comments.

What is most valuable?

It has easy to deploy machines.

How has it helped my organization?

A department can deploy a machine easily without using the IT department.

For how long have I used the solution?

I only used it for four months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

None in this version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Yes, a lot including, for example, with Chargeback Manager integration.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

8/10.

Technical Support:

5/10 as the VMware support seem very ignorant.

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

No, but in the future, we are planning to install Open Stack as it's simpler.

How was the initial setup?

It has an easy setup by following the documentation.

What about the implementation team?

We used a vendor team who I would rate as 7/10.

What was our ROI?

We couldn't calculate it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, with other colleagues. No implementations being done by us at the moment.

What other advice do I have?

I think VMware has abandoned the product a with vSphere 5.5, vCloud Director is an obsolete solution. As VMware no longer offers the product, it is now difficult to implement.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a VMware partner.

it_user209226System Administrator at a cloud solution provider with 51-200 employees

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Apr 3, 2015

Hi Eduardo
the focus of this product was realize a full cloud solution (private and public). Now vcloud director is focused only for public cloud (for service provide purpose), because vRealize substitute it in private scenario.
For this reason, in your private scenario you could choose vRealize and Openstack also... please let us know about your possible new experience with them.

it_user209226

System Administrator at a cloud solution provider with 51-200 employees

Mar 18, 2015

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Although deployment is simple, I suggest taking security and licensing compliance into consideration when doing so.

Valuable Features

The real multi tenancy and distributed administration for vDCs is the goal of this product, which combines consuming resources as a service with a great governance model for different customers.

Suppose you need to build one or more virtual datacenter, and meet the demands of customers, supplier and departments. In a traditional architecture (vCenter and esxi hosts) you need hard integration work to answer this problem.

vCloud director solves this problem weaving computational resources, storage and networking with consumption requests from companies, departments and individual operators in a dynamic and safe way.

Improvements to My Organization

We combine this architecture with existing vDCs with limited business impact (because vMotion could aid to limit or eliminate downtime). Now selling VM, request demo or trying an environment is very simple: just a few clicks to go!

Improvement in IT departments regarding the delivery of virtual datacenters for Business, Government and Captive area (holding headquarters and associated companies). Hospitals and Governments could use this because data is under their control, with very low risks for stability and security: governance still remains with the cloud consumer.

In my scenario I'm using 2 vDCs (marked as gold and platinum) in 2 different places and allow an organization (our customer) to use parts of these vDCs to stretch VM distribution across a datacenter, make DR on-demand (and without up-front costs) and respond quickly to business demands.

Use of Solution

I've been using this solution for 3 years.

Deployment Issues

Deployment is very simple, but I suggest a little design and hardening phase to meet security and licensing compliance.

Stability Issues

Product is mature enough to support huge loads: the underlining technology is the best in class to meet many customer needs. The product is very stable.

Scalability Issues

Product is born to be scalable, because it should be used in different modes (cloud provider and private cloud environment).

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

People say that VMware customer service is very helpful and quick to solve issues. In my life I've use this service only for administrative issues (contracts, portals, licensing); this is because documentation, their knowledge base and community always are enough for problem solving.

Technical Support:

Official documentation is very good, and could give you skill to deploy, run and improve your vCD system (VMware always work hard for this phase).

Initial Setup

Setup was quite straightforward, because VMware always provides great documentation for deployment, configuration and troubleshooting.

Implementation Team

I deployed and set up this system in-house (my team staff: virtualization area), because this is a company core-business, and it is the minimum to do to learn and solve problems quickly.

ROI

Our ROI was reached considering 2 factors:

- A service provider model built on VMWare contracts and many resource delivery models, cost are as-a-service and bound to the VM vRAM: licensing cost is 1:1 to the assigned resource. Considering 50% of infrastructure cost per VM in 3 years, 10% of VMware cost and 10% of infrastructure cost, break even could be in 1.5 years.

- In both private and public scenarios many administrative tasks are solved by on-demand models that could be elastic and efficient. Considered a manpower reduction of about 40% and a potential reduction of 99% for provisioning tasks. IT Virtual administrator staff finally do the real job: troubleshoot, provision and do only heavy activities with less effort.

One more important thing: vCloud works with his chargeback product to show and take many costs under control.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

As mentioned above, the service provider model costs are calculated considering:

- physical environment cost (up front cost or by loan)

- licensing cost 1:1 to vRAM

- setup requires no more than 1 week.

Other Advice

Before installing vCloud director, I suggest:

1. Check HCL and compatibility matrix between vCloud director, vSphere and vCloud network and security (ex: vShield manager)

2. Use vDC resources only for vCloud director purpose, don't mix traditional vSphere and vCloud director usage.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: VMWare Partner Service Provider