VMware Cloud Foundation Reviews

We have various on-premise environments. To upgrade user lifecycle management of those standalone environments with repeated patch upgrades, hardware lifecycle management, and software lifecycle management. For all of these issues, we use VMware Cloud Foundation because it does everything. 

The interoperability checkings, and supportability matrix, it does internally and gives recommendations automatically on what type of hardware we're using. For example, it gives automatic recommendations of all the hardware lifecycle drivers, and firmware, including the software stack. 

VMware Cloud Foundation reduces time complexity for the VMware administrator.

VMware Cloud Foundation's most valuable features are password and certificate management. The SDDC manager tool is the front tool we are using to manage the entire VCF stack. In the SDDC manager, we can able to rotate, and update the passwords of all users. Anything in the VMware portfolio, we can manage from a single dashboard and we have various data centers. We have connected everything into one Federation. From one single place, we are managing our entire virtual interactions.

In the early adoption of VMware Cloud Foundation, we have seen minor problems. For example, in our Federation, I see the single pane of glass where we need to manage everything, which is good. However, internally, we have a Kafka database that is distributed by the database used by the SDDC manager. During the distribution and synchronization, there is some issue and we need to stop the process. 

There are some other upgrade issues because it includes a lot of solutions, such as ESXi, NSX-T, vSAN, and some other components. The problem is it does not automatically upgrade. If it fails somewhere, we are stuck there. Until we solve this problem, we cannot move on to the next step, we are seeing some bugs, but those issues are being addressed in the later versions. Every version has some issues, but it has been addressed in the next version. In the earlier versions, we've seen a lot of issues, but VMware has done a lot of good progress in resolving them. The latest resolved whatever issues we have seen thus far. This is why why we are upgrading to the latest version, which is 4.5.

Initially, we are in a physical space and moved to a virtual one. From there, we are moving towards cloud and container-based environments. We don't have any future VCF to manage the containers. We have to come back to the vCenter to manage everything. If the features, could be inbuilt and available on the SDDC manager which is a VMware Cloud Foundation solution, it would be great.

I have been using VMware Cloud Foundation(VCF) for approximately one year.

The performance and stability of VMware Cloud Foundation are good. There have been some minor issues but overall the solution is good.

VMware Cloud Foundation is easy to scale out.

We have approximately 50 people using the solution in my organization.

We have a good relationship with the vendor and if we have any issue we are looked after, and our issue gets resolved.

I would rate the support of VMware Cloud Foundation a four out of five.

We have previously used Citrix XenServer. We started using VMware version 6.0 and move to 6.5, and 6.7, and are now using 7.0. We later implemented VMware Cloud Foundation.

We switched to VMware because we know they are a good vendor in the market for virtualization. We have many public vendors, but in a private cloud, VMware is good, they penetrated well in the market. Our business use cases match nicely with VMware virtualization.

For the implementation of VMware Cloud Foundation, you need to have data center knowledge. Additionally, having network knowledge is very important. You need to have multiple skills to deploy VMware Cloud Foundation. It is not very easy to do. 

There are a lot of design decisions that need to be made. We need to fill up the Excel sheet. For example, if I am the only one aware of the data center components, but not the networking components, then I cannot deploy VMware Cloud Foundation. Multiple teams need to be involved. A single person cannot deploy this solution from end to end. There need to be multiple storage, networking, and vSphere administrators. The initial setup is a bit complex, if you missed anything in the initial phase, you cannot modify it. You need to tear it apart and you need to redeploy it from scratch. This is one of the substantial pain points.

Our full implementation took us approximately five weeks.

We used the help of the solutions architects. However, our in-house team is very good at networking, storage, and vSphere, but the design of VMware Cloud Foundation is a bit complex. We need to have experts from the vendor side.

The price of VMware Cloud Foundation is a bit high. However, it comes with a lot of useful features and can handle a lot of operational complexity. Overall the price can be seen as being fair for what it offers.

If you want to reduce the operational overhead and manage your entire virtual infrastructure from a single pane of glass, then I would recommend VMware Cloud Foundation. It is the best solution to manage our data center virtualization.

I rate VMware Cloud Foundation a seven out of ten.

I have seen a lot of issues with VMware Cloud Foundation that needs to be resolved. However, we are not using the newest version.

It's a reference architecture. It's based on vSAN Ready Node, however, it basically is tied to VMware in the public cloud, so it has all the VMware components tied to it.

It's a hybrid-based solution, so it's installed on-premise. Basically, you can drag and drop resources without having to do any type of conversions, IP changes, or anything else, into AWS Azure, where they have the VMware workloads running as well as VMware partners that have their VMware public environments up and running. It's that reference architecture that gives you that complete elasticity to be able to transport workloads seamlessly to pretty much anywhere.

The solution can scale.

The stability is good.

You can grow in much smaller pieces through hyper-converged, and that's true of all systems. For my customers who had converged infrastructure, when they needed to add just a little bit of access capacity, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars at a minimum to add just a little capacity. This is due to the fact that they had to buy a bigger chunk of capacity, even though they only needed a little bit. Where, with hyper-converged or Cloud Foundation or Nutanix or whomever, you could grow much smaller chunks. You can grow in $20,000 increments versus $150,000 increments.

They've improved a lot of the supporting products, like NSX. They have NSX-Ts. They've done a lot of ancillary improvements as it's a conglomerate of products. They have VxRail where the whole platform's automated. Before, you had to say, "Okay, I'm going to have this type of server hardware. And I'm going to have these cards, these individual components." And they all had to line up based on the software. You had to have certain switches as it was all software-defined. Therefore, when you would basically push the scripts down, they had to have supported kernels et cetera. There were only two switches that they used for management. There was a Dell switch and one other obscure switch. Of course, then, you could use your leaf and spine switches. You could use Cisco, Arista, et cetera. However, it was very limited.

That was the tough part. To build out the solution, there was a limited amount of hardware. However, now, it's completely automated. The whole platform now stands up very clean, very automated. They've made it really easy.

The solution is quite expensive.

I've used the solution for five years at this point. 

The stability is very good. there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution scales very well and can get quite sizable. I've had environments where we've had 25,000 plus users on it.

I've dealt with technical support. I actually coached a lot of them myself. I was on the partner development team, therefore, I was involved with it in its infancy period, when it was currently being developed. A lot of that hadn't been out yet. As a partner, I was being brought in to coach the Dell teams and even some of VMware SAs. And that's kind of how I got brought in to a specific contract, as Dell was doing a sale direct and the VMware product development team was really limited. I was, as a partner, basically coaching them on how to position the product and sell it to the customer and everything, and present the whole thing.

A lot of the initial setup is automated depending on what workloads you're running. If you're going to run Horizon on it, which is what a lot of my customers did, that's completely automated. It's kind of like a cloud in the box. A lot of the things are automated. 

They maintain the product in terms of providing software updates and things like that. That said, you'd still need someone in the organization or a services partner or something like that to help properly maintain everything.

If you're going from one hyper-converged to another hyper-converged, there's probably not as much in terms of ROI.

It's not a cheap product. It was pretty expensive.

For example, both of my implementations were about $15 million, however, I was displacing solutions that were over $30 million. I was displacing converged infrastructure, like Vblocks from VCE that were costing the customers over $30 million. I was able to really cut that cost in half with the hyper-converged platform. IN that sense, we really saved the client money.

Amongst everything that's out there, I would rate the product a nine out of ten. There's always going to be room for improvement on some things, however, it really hit the mark on a lot of things. The issue is, for example, it's the same thing with Azure Stack - it only works with Azure. However, it scales with pretty much everything VMware. To me, to be a ten out of ten, if you could get it to seamlessly scale into everything Public Cloud, it would be great. Nutanix is trying to do a lot of that, however, there's still some conversion process that has to be done. 

I use the solution in my company for our own public and private clouds. We have created our cloud services using these products.

It is a good product, and it actually meets most of the requirements that our company has in terms of creating a cloud, and so that is why we are using it.

The tool's UI is great. I think it is easy to deploy the tool. As we have a user support base, I think it is a good product for our company.

The tool's integration capabilities are slightly complicated, so we use our company's SI partners. Integrations are slightly difficult, as getting resources to deal with it is not that easy.

I think the tool's integration features with multiple products are still slightly cumbersome. As VMware has a large stack of tools. At times, we find there are issues because the tools under VMware don't work with each other. In general, I think it is a good product.

I have been using VMware Cloud Foundation for seven to eight years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a highly scalable solution.

I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup phase is easy.

The solution can be deployed in one to two days.

A few people need to install the tool as VMware has multiple products.

The savings have been about 30 to 40 percent using the tool.

The tool's price is slightly on the higher side, but I guess you think there is no one-to-one comparison with other tools. The licensing part has become easier, while earlier, it was quite complex.

Maintenance is good because our company uses support services from VMware. To maintain the tool, we have a big team as we have it across 14 countries. We have around 50 to 60 people supporting the tool in our company.

In our company, we are not using the AI part of the tool, but there is vROps in the solution.

The tool is highly scalable, so the tool helps us grow. The scalability helps our company keep up pace with the way we are growing.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

The product provides an ease of deployment. We can refer to the guide for a procedure to check all the prerequisites. Later, it gets implemented seamlessly.

The platform needs improvement in terms of troubleshooting. They could send a hint or an error message faster when the system fails or encounters an issue.

We have been using VMware Cloud Foundation for two years.

The product has good stability.

It is a scalable platform. We have more than 200 VMware Cloud Foundation users. We might plan to increase the number of users in the next two to three years.

The technical support team is very responsive and capable of resolving technical issues.

We used OpenShift before. We switched to VMware Cloud Foundation as it is more user-friendly, easy, and provides efficient support. RedHat is an open-source product; thus, getting support services is challenging. Whereas VMware provides premium support services.

The initial setup is straightforward. It takes less than five days to complete the process.

We took help from a VMware consultant to install the product.

We have yet to receive a 100% ROI from the product. It may take one or two more years to recover the investment fully.

VMware Cloud Foundation is expensive compared to OpenShift.

I recommend VMware Cloud Foundation and rate it an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for auto-scaling and automation of VM created automation with some governance and policies.

The ability to auto-scale is the most valuable feature. Auto-scale with automation and business cases is valuable. I also like that VMs can create any cluster via click.

The deployment is clumsy and complex. There are too many things that need to be done in order to deploy. 

I have been using VMware Cloud Foundation for more than five years. 

It is stable and useful. After the deployment, for the user, this solution is very easy. But from an integrator's perspective, the reporting is very complex. It's not simple or easy.

The scalability is very good. Autoscaling, scalability, metering, and metering in any department is good. A department can meter how much they're using, which is very helpful. A business can calculate how many resources are being consumed by each department and how much it's costing. 

We have three companies that use this solution. One of our companies has more than 1,000 users. They have deployed more than 1,000 VMs over there. Another user has 400 VMs and our third company has around 4,000 users. 

VMware technical support is fantastic. They are very good at prioritizing. If it is a critical problem, they respond to us very quickly. 

Previously, I used HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex.

The setup is complex. It takes around 21 days to complete the deployment. 

All licensing costs are perpetual. You have to pay for support on a yearly basis.

For our country, we are an under-developed country so the price should be lower. VMware charges too much in our country. If our customer has the option to buy a server for $4,000 or $5,000, but VMware asks for two-person licensing $7,000 to $8,000, that is more than the hardware price. So sometimes, the customer cannot pay for it because it's too expensive.  

They should think about the different price perspective for our country, Bangladesh, since we are a developing country. Our customers have to pay more than any other PC and laptop they are buying which is why customers don't end up buying it. VMware has to consider under-developed countries where a PC is $400 but for VDI their licensing is more than $1,000. Their licensing is more than $1,000 per user and the customer has to buy the hardware separately. Customers don't pick this solution because it's too expensive.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten. 

In the next release, I would like to see better integration with NSX.

Our customers use the VMware Cloud Formation as an alternative to other public cloud services such as Azure or Amazon Web Services. It provides them with an additional option for their data analytics and business intelligence needs.

The most valuable feature is the ease of migrating from on-premises infrastructure when transitioning away from older systems.

It is currently undergoing continuous development and transformation in various aspects. These enhancements include not only migration technology but also infrastructure and automation technology. Working on features that could include the capability to migrate workflows from non-VMware environments would be highly beneficial.

I have been working with it for two years.

In terms of stability, there are still some challenges. These challenges arise during the migration process from on-premises setups to VMware Cloud Foundation. We've encountered certain issues and bugs in this transition, and we've had to involve the vendor to assist in troubleshooting these specific problems. It's important to clarify that these concerns pertain to the migration and onboarding of customers from on-premise locations to VMware Cloud Foundation, rather than the stability of the infrastructure itself. I would rate it seven out of ten.

There are around five hundred administrators currently working on it, so it is quite scalable. It is suitable for businesses of various sizes, including small, medium, and enterprise-level operations. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I found the technical support to be excellent. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

The pricing is moderate. I would rate it six out of ten.

This product is well-suited for refreshing and migrating workflows from legacy vendor environments to the new infrastructure. It excels in supporting migration processes. I would rate it eight out of ten.

We are using it for infrastructure automation. We have a manager of a manager to take care of day zero, day one, and day two operations, which makes deployment and management easier. We also have workload clusters that segregate the workload based on the different types of applications we have, such as sat clusters, PC clusters, mixed-door clusters, and container clusters.

The most important thing is the VMware platform. We have the product piece that completely simplifies different data center components. We have to compute, store, and network all under one data stack. Apart from this, starting from planning deployment, you have a planning seat, and then you have a cloud builder to bring up this composite stack. It's a complete solution, and you can deploy it easily. You need to upload only the build site in the cloud builder. The cloud builder will take care of bringing up the complete infrastructure. Then you have strategic management that will help handle password, license, configuration, and lifecycle management of these clusters.

On day zero, you have a template and a build cloud builder to bring up the template stack. It's a full-stack deployment. Then you have a conversation manager, lifecycle manager, password rights, and certificates- everything is taken care of.

I would like to see an improvement in the SDDC Manager. Specifically, VMware Cloud Foundation should improve some of the federation types, such as multi-site managers. For instance, if we have similar SDDC Managers, like the ones we currently have, which have three DCs in them, it would be helpful to have the ability to have multiple SDDC managers so we can look for foundation across multiple SDDC segments.

Apart from this, there are some features that could be added. For example, I think it would be useful to have better integration with other VMware products, such as vSphere or NSX. Additionally, the ability to customize resource usage based on business needs would be helpful. These are just a few examples, but I think they could really enhance the product.

VMware has duplicated a lot of functions. For instance, when I'm doing any individual upgrade, I have to follow the orchestration and upload. It takes time, and I cannot manage individual life and need an orchestrated process. We have to follow the sequence and the pre-check. So it's still easy, but I have to follow the system approach. I cannot do it on my own.

I have been working with VMware Cloud Foundation for the last three years.

The Veeam confirmation was launched five years back in 2015. But I have had some experience for the last three years.

From a stability perspective, there may be some issues, and that is very difficult. If I have to fix any issues, I need to connect with multiple teams within VMware. For example, if there is a DNS issue, it may impact multiple products. To fix it, I need to connect with different technical teams within VMware. It takes time, and it's not a one-step process. However, if you have skilled resources and knowledge, it is quick and simple.

The scalability depends on the hardware. For example, if it's on a VxRail or vSAN ReadyNode, I would rate it a nine. However, if there are some challenges, it would be rated lower. It depends upon the hardware stack.

It is suitable for companies with a lot of footprints, like a virtualization environment. If they have a software-defined data center, then it's fine. However, if they have a mixed environment of software and physical, it is not suitable. It also depends on their storage and network performance needs. If they need external storage or a physical kind of thing, it may not be suitable.

We have a Professional Services team. It's easy to connect with them since we are partners.

The setup process is complex. The adoption is not simple, but we need to ensure we've screened the resources. If we screen the resource who has knowledge of this product, it is easy.

VMware is on-premises. When it comes to hybrid cloud, we have rebranding like VMC. But the framework, the approach, the deployment, and the operation are the same. So the VMware Cloud Foundation installed on-premises is the same automated deployment and full-step deployment, and the single pane of management license is used. But on-premises, it is a VCF portfolio, and on a hyper-scale, it is rebranded to VMC-AVI.

If you purchase VMware Cloud Foundation as a bundle license, the pricing and all the VMs will be included. It's a better option compared to buying individual licenses. You can save up to forty percent of the cost. It's like getting a Visa and a Sixty license as a bundle instead of buying them separately.

However, if you purchase the products separately, it will be costly. I would rate the pricing within VMware a five out of ten.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. VMware Cloud Foundation covers all of its bases. It includes computing, networking, hyperscale containers, and more.

The solution is cloud-based.

There are two people using this solution in my organization.

I'm able to deploy many platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Azure on VMware.

The documentation could be easier to read.

I have been working with this solution for less than a year.

The solution is stable.

It's scalable.

I have worked with other solutions, but we switched because it's easier to use VMware in our environment.

Setup was straightforward. So far, we don't have a contract for maintenance.

I would rate it eight out of ten.

Deployment was done in-house.

I would rate this solution seven out of ten. I would like to see improved documentation.