VMware vSphere Reviews

Our use case is virtualization of hardware infrastructure, for return on investment cases. We have done pretty well with it. I'm really happy with it.

The mission-critical apps we run on them include SQL; there is a lot of file sharing; there are a lot of websites and web servers running on them. There's some big data stuff for big science. We have to be able to digest lots of data and then pull analytics on it at a high-level, and be able to show big data in useful ways.

With the current compliance options that I have to go through, it's very nice to have a lot of the encryption built in. It checks a lot of boxes for the federal level so I don't have to either bolt something on or have something on top of it. Having it native and integrated into the system makes things much easier.

Also, being able to manage a lot of servers in one pane of glass makes things a lot simpler. Basically, a lot of things just happen in one area. You can roll things over, move things around more dynamically, without having to hit multiple systems. Being able to manage it, in its entirety, is easier and better for us.

• VHA
• DRS
• VMotion
• Redundancy, failover, any DR situation
• Reducing the overall physical footprint for electrical needs, heating, cooling
• Money-saving, in general

In terms of management, it's getting better. There were recent changes with the infrastructure and the architecture, going from a physical vSphere vCenter client to the web interface. That has slowed things down a little bit, to be honest. It's getting better. With the 5.7 release they've optimized it, the menus are a little snappier, and it isn't as cumbersome to manage through as it was on the previous website or vSphere Web Client instance.

Also, reading some of the sensors in the hardware itself, that's where VMware does a really great job in the digital infrastructure and being able to scale things and knowing what's going on in vSphere. But not having to buy something from a third-party to scan the actual hardware components, like the hard drives and the port containers and fan speeds; not having to bolt something on and go through another vendor, would be helpful.

Stability has always been really well done with VMware. I have always been very happy with the stability of the system. You can set it up, you can check your optimizations there. But as far as weird issues with being able to convert things from physical to virtual, I've really had no big problems in switching that over. It's been really seamless to the end-user as well, just doing standardized conversions. It's been very stable and easy to manage.

I haven't had any loss of data in quite some time. Data is the key to everything. Downtime and loss of data are almost unacceptable in my current position.

I can always go horizontal, vertical is a little problematic sometimes. Horizontally, being able to add storage on the fly - even hot ad-hoc remove, if we do have some higher workloads or the like - we can always scale that without re-booting, with the newer operating systems. So the scalability portion is always on key.

Technical support is pretty good. I've had to use them a couple times for smaller issues. They've always been very helpful and we've always come to a solution.

The backup solution we were using at the time was Dell's version of IBM's Tape Library with Symantec Backup Exec. We were doing tape backups at the file level, not really any virtual snaps, so incrementals every day, fulls on the weekends.

As data gets bigger it's harder and harder to back up and that's where virtualization comes in, because you can start doing analysis on data changes and deltas a little bit better. Tracking and things that are tied into VMware assist digital backup solutions to be faster, more resilient, and have less downtime in a restore situation.

In my previous job, I was a Senior Systems Administrator for a credit union. We were running VMware 3.0, 12 years ago, and having that experience - and being bleeding edge at that time - helped me really be a catalyst in getting over to virtualization. That knowledge that I had in the past has always helped me, because I've seen VMware grow and do the things that it has done. Having that knowledge was helpful in setting it up from fresh, again: making the redundancies, knowing some of the pitfalls you have when first setting it up, and seeing a lot of the capital that you can lose if you don't understand what you're doing at that time.

I set it up myself. I can get technical support, but I can't have on-prem or anyone else.

Performance is somewhat relative, but an overall return on investment comes from not having multiple physical servers and from helping to aggregate a lot of the processors and RAM, and being able to use them more efficiently. We're not really worried about speed but about more efficiency.

I've been with them for so long, I never looked to much else. I've always been happy with vSphere and seeing what they've done for VMware itself. Intel products weren't really there, and I still don't feel they're there.

I've really enjoyed the Dell partnership because I do Dell on the back-end. The hand-holding between Dell and VMware works relatively well, with their hardware control lists and being sure they stay compatible for long periods of time, without having to spend money on new hardware. You can stay in your swim lane. That partnership is really a key to success.

My advice is "do it".

I rate vSphere at nine out of 10 because the HTML version of things needs to get a little bit better. The vSphere side of things gets a little difficult to manage; right-click, in some browsers, doesn't work as well as it used to. I'm seeing a little bit of general latency that we didn't used to get with the thick client. It's getting there.

Version 6.71 brought some of those performance metrics back, but it's just hard to get from one end to the other. With the ever-changing federal requirements, we need to really strip down and minimize what can be done in the browsers. It is getting more and more difficult, Java being the key thing. Going to HTML 5, that's a great thing because Java is going to be pay-to-play next year. And you don't have the vulnerabilities with HTML 5. It works symbiotically. We're seeing that progress. There are some growing pains, but it's getting there.

We use it to manage multi-site, multi-regional implementations of VMware. We use the security end roles to give different tiers of access from the VM up to the VMware installation. We manage the roles and responsibilities within the security to do this. 

We do all the functionality inside vSphere. We use VMotion and DRS to manage some of our licensing issues that we have. With bigger software vendors, like Oracle, we use it to keep licenses and requirements compliant and keep VMs running on specific hardware. 

We use it for quite a few daily tasks: cloning and testing out patching. Then, we can perform snapshots through vSphere. 

Visibility: We can easily pull reports and give access to other people to look at specs or performance metrics. This came as a bonus to us. Yet, we have been using it for quite a long time (12 to 13 years). 

The solution is simple and efficient to manage. It has brought ease of use to employees who are not at a senior level. It has been able to expose minimal tasks which can relieve some of my senior guys to do engineering tasks, as opposed to help desk, reboots, restarts, etc. We have been able to pass some of those tasks along. 

The ability to segregate roles and responsibilities, as well as regions. For example, I can give access to my Chinese team to manage the China servers and hosts. On the other hand, I could give access to my Canadian team to manage global VMware installations. Therefore, I like the flexibility of this tool.

We have just migrated most of our SQL and enterprise databases to vSphere. We don't use it for Oracle, but we do for most other things. We also use it for our communications exchange link, etc. Therefore, it is pretty business critical when it comes to the back office support and server implementations.

There has been a lot of improvement with UI: its speed and usability features. Before, it was very slow. When it comes to cross-regional (e.g., someone in the US managing the China vSphere implementations), it can be a somewhat slow. I would recommend increasing the speed. While there has already been improvement there, I would like to see more.

I haven't had any real issues. In the very beginning, there were some issues when upgrading or migrating from versions. However, our last upgrade was 5.5 to 6.5 where went from Windows to the Linux OVF version, and we did not have any issues with it. 

It is easy to scale and obtain as much power as we need. It is easy to provision and join it to the cluster. We haven't had any issues or limitations.

Technical support is very good. I haven't used them in quite some time though, because we have on-staff VMware experts. When I did use them a long time ago for compatibility with network cards (we use FCoE, which is not the industry standard), they were pretty quick to link us back to some articles to help us resolve our issues. 

When I first came on board, they had a very small implementation of Citrix. The servers at that time would cost 20K per application. They didn't allow us to centrally manage any systems. There would be a hodgepodge of vendors and versions of hardware. Therefore, it was a more difficult to track. When I came on board, we were maybe 20 to 30 percent virtualized. Since then, we're probably 99 percent virtualized. This did reduce staffing costs.

The APIs and plugins are important. We used to use NetApp. We use now InfiniteApp and Compellent. Having these types of plugins and using their APIs in the storage subsystems, allows general admins to provision storage easily, as opposed to being a storage admin. It has alleviated having to have five to 10 storage admins. We consolidated to one or two storage admins, while having the others be able to provision their own storage. 

We are spending less on buying bigger machines, which are overprovisioned. Thus, the ROI is found in consolidation and cost savings.

There are a lot of management and soft skills that we end up being able to save on. For example, my engineers in Canada could watch over systems in China, California, and Phoenix. Thus, it gives us the flexibility of administration. 

We evaluated Hyper-V four or five years ago. They weren't as fast to develop technologies or even adopting the technology. There were some tools missing. Also, they were less innovative than VMware. Now, I think Microsoft has caught up a bit. However, it seems that VMware is putting a lot more R&D money into the product. So, we've been happy. We haven't had a need to leave.

• Look at the market and see what is supportable. How long can you support the product. VMware has the history. It has the people who can support it in the industry. 
• Look at the supportability of it. Look at the job market and how many people, from a staffing perspective, can support it. 
• Then, look at the cost, because I don't think cost is everything.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: They are a leader and more innovative than the competitors.

vSphere 8.0 is the primary virtualization technology in use at our firm and supports the entire organization infrastructure.

Has kept our business running with very little downtime and our clusters balanced with DRS/HA.  We are able to patch our hosts during production hours with the ability to keep services running.  It has also given us the HA capabilities for our vCenter servers using the new built-in HA option for the appliance and never having to worry about downtime.

vCenter Appliance, DRS, HA, Update Manager and SRM help us keep our business running smoothly.  Having the vCenter Appliance has allowed us to save costs on Windows licenses and have a more stable platform for managing hosts.  Also having Update Manager now as well it makes the move to VCSA that much better.  SRM has allowed us to failover our Tier1 services in under 30 minutes for each whereas it would take over an hour the old fashioned way.  DRS and HA have kept our cluster stable and VMs running optimally.  With the built in Update Manager now in the vCenter Appliance it is easy to scan and remediate our Hosts even during Production hours as we can use HA/DRS with Maintenance Mode.

Get the HTML5 client to 100% parity to replace the Flash client.  When the next release comes out ensure all bugs/fixes are implemented as there was some pretty nasty ones on initial releases.

More than five years.

There were some initial bugs with PSOD and certain hardware vendors but patching and updates have resolved most.

There are no scalability issues other than purchasing additional licensing when adding hosts or scaling up/out.

Technical Support has been good but better communication at times could help improve it even more.

Positive

No other solution has been used.

It was simple and straightforward as we have upgraded as versions have come out.  8.0 will be our last upgrade as it will be a hardware refresh next.

In-house implementation as we have VMware certified users.

Has allowed us to run our HPE DL580 G7 servers still without issues so spend on hardware has been next to nothing.

VMware is costly versus other competitors but is still one of the market leaders and expanding now with partners like AWS.  Ensure you get the right licensing for the feature sets you want within the product and research what those are.  Setup can be easy if you have someone that has worked with VMware before or costly when hiring external help, but research in to implementers prior to hiring them is always the best method to get good ones.

No other options were evaluated as VMware has been the primary hypervisor since I have been with my company.

vSphere 8.0 has been a great release with the vCenter Appliance and will only get better in the next release with the HTML5 client becoming 100% in parity to the flash client.

Virtualization, VDI and application publishing are the most valuable features of VMware vSphere.

The solution’s pricing is too high and could be improved.

I have been working with VMware vSphere for more than five years.

VMware vSphere is a very stable solution.

VMware vSphere is a scalable solution.

The solution's technical support team is good because if we open a priority ticket, they call within 30 minutes.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

VMware vSphere can be installed in just two days for a normal project. However, it would take at least three months to implement everything, depending on the scope of the customer's requirements.

The solution’s licensing terms keep changing, which is too complex for our customers. If a user purchases a new license, it cannot be mixed with the existing perpetual license.

Overall, I rate VMware vSphere an eight out of ten.

We use VMware vSphere in order to get access to the data center worldwide.

The performance of the solution could be better and there could be an extra level of security.

I have been using VMware vSphere for approximately three years.

The stability could be improved because there can be some connectivity issues. There are times the networks disconnect and then reconnect, this could improve.

The scalability is good.

Mostly everyone in our company is using this solution including the technical team and managers, approximately 400 people.

We have an internal team that is providing us with technical support.

Positive

The installation is not difficult it is self-explanatory.

We did the implementation ourselves.

There are some maintenance tasks needed, such as updating and upgrading.

There is an annual subscription to use this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. It is one of the best tools.

I rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

VMware vSphere allows you to run multiple virtual machines. For example, I can run up to 10 computers, virtual servers on one physical server. 

We have at least 10 people using this solution in our organization.

The most valuable feature of VMware vSphere is the ability to work in big system infrastructure. For example, you can move one bridge, one machine to another, or one virtual machine from one server to another. This is beneficial when you want to put a server under maintenance.

Also, the security features and implementation are very easy.

There is nothing from my perspective that the product needs to improve. It works for all my needs.

I recommend that VMware vSphere continue to release more features.

I have been using VMware vSphere for 7 years.

This solution is stable.

VMware vSphere is scalable.

Previously, I had used Hyper-v. VMware is a much better solution.

The initial setup of the solution is straightforward.

We use third party support for this product.

I would rate VMware vSphere a 10 out of 10.

We use VMware vSphere for many things in our business, such as ERP software, file sharing, and back office. Additionally, we use it for many types of servers, such as database and file servers.

We need to improve availability and disaster recovery in VMware vSphere.

I have been using VMware vSphere for approximately seven years.

VMware vSphere is stable.

I have found VMware vSphere to be scalable.

We have approximately 25 users in my company using this solution. All the employees are using the solution.

The technical support is good and they are available over the internet.

The initial setup of VMware vSphere was simple. The full deployment took approximately two weeks.

We had a consultant that did the deployment of VMware vSphere.

We have two engineers for the support of the solution.

VMware vSphere is a good solution, but we are looking for ACI opportunities.

My advice to others is when you are looking for a solution, look for a vendor in the county you live in.

I rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

We're using it to run all kinds of workloads.

Its stability and manageability are valuable.

There should be more stability in the updates. They had an issue with the last release.

Their support should also be improved.

I have been using this solution for 15 years.

It's absolutely scalable. We have 130 users who are using this solution. All of the company is using it.

I am not satisfied with their performance or speed for anything below P1 or production-down status. Anything below that is worse than we could expect.

Its installation is straightforward. That's not a problem.

The deployment duration varies. For a specific installation, it could take 15 minutes to set up the whole thing, and it could also take three weeks. It depends on how we're scoping it.

I could do it myself.

Its licensing is typically yearly. From a value standpoint, it's worth it.

I would absolutely recommend this solution. I would rate it a nine out of 10.