VMware vSphere Reviews

Software Define Data Center (SDDC), easily manage couple hundred servers within one console, deploy multiple servers within an hour, capable of monitoring server’s CPU, RAM, Disk, Network activities, High availability (HA) and Cluster (DRS), vMotion and DataStore vMotion, and more.

We condensed our whole Data Center into three 42U racks, one rack for switches and 32 blade servers, one rack for UPS, one rack for the SAN. It uses less power consumption, less space, less network switches, Less UPS battery.

IOPs monitoring. We now monitor IOPs from SAN array. But, SAN array IOPs monitoring is based on virtual volume (vLun) not the VM. If VMware can provide VMDK IOPS information, it can help us catch performance issues.

Over 5 years.

No, everything works fine during deployment.

We did experience purple of death in our esxi host (HP BL685c G7) twice in the past two years after we upgraded to ESXi5.0. We are not sure if its HP’s problem or VMware’s problem.

Yes, multiple VM within one vLUN sometime cause random IOslead to performance issue. Although it is fixable, but still, when you are using large vLUN, you need to understand if that vLUN can provide sufficient IOPs for VMs that use that vLUN.

Although, I do not call them frequently, from my three calls, I would say the customer service is great. They call back and even remote-in to assist with the issue.

1 to 5 scale, I rate their technical support 4.

No, we did not.

It is somewhat straightforward except for the vCenter server and SQL database ODBC. You need to use SQL ODMC client v10. Windows server 2008 R2 did not come with an older version. You need to download sqlncli driver v10.

We did the implementation by ourselves.

We did not assess the ROI. But, as a system engineer, it is huge.

• SAN array with 40TB FC and 40TB NL -450K
• 4x HP BL465c, 2x16, 256GB, 2x 10Gb FiberSwitch, 16x vSpere License, ESXi enterprise License - 200K
• Planning to hold 300 virtual servers
• This is based on an a quotation. I do not know the actual purchase price. The day to day cost is not much. There is no need to go to the data center unless we need to upgrade the hardware. I can power off and power on any server from my desk in case the server freezes.

No.

VMware is a great virtualization solution. But, if your servers are very performance-demanded, my suggestion is you must also study the shared vLUN, SAN VV and VM’s IOPs requirement. Don’t just create vLUN and dump any VM into the vLUN. Some programmers and DBAs do not have ideas of how much IOPs their applications or database servers are needed. You will experience performance issues. This is not a problem when you use physical server because physical server resources are not shared.

The use case is that we want to upgrade to the new features and functionality of version 6.7.

We run several SQL Servers on there, Active Directory Servers, file servers, web servers; multiple servers running on it.

The new HTML5 interface is much more robust; a lot fewer bugs in it, more features. It's an overall better experience for us.

It's hard to say there has been a performance boosts for these apps but I would say it is a boost because the servers are much more responsive, the end-users complain less about it. So it must be a good thing.

The main benefit of the solution is that it makes end-users able to use the interface much more effectively. They don't have to install a client on their machine, they can do it from their phone, their laptop, their tablet, any OS, anytime. It's a better experience for the end-user.

The HTML5 interface is much better, it's faster, faster than the old C# Client, which was very nice to have. But with the HTML5 interface, it's smooth, fast, responsive. I can do it from any device, from my Mac, my PC, even from my phone.

The solution is very simple to use and to manage. Updates are simple. The biggest feature that enables the ease of use is the fact that you can update via the web interface. With a couple of clicks, the update is done; no manual intervention, you just click Update and it automatically reboots the server for you and you're back up and going again.

As far as additional features go, they've already added the VMware Update Manager to this version, which has been great; it's been very nice to use.

It would be nice to see it a little more tightly integrated with the patching solution so you could do it in one pane of glass. Right now, you have to jump back and forth. It's still not difficult, but you have to jump back and forth to do your update definitions and then go back and actually do the updates themselves.

In terms of stability, so far the impressions of this solution have been very good. It's been very stable. We haven't had any downtime at all with this new solution.

So far, we haven't had any issues at all with scalability. We've got over 1,500 VMs, about 84 hosts right now, so it's been very scalable for us.

I have used technical support before, via the web interface. You ask questions there and they respond with email or a phone call back to help you solve your problems.

I was an initial installer and I was actually a beta customer as well. The setup was very straightforward. Compared to the previous versions, it's much easier. You can upgrade from a Mac or a PC or via a web interface.

The biggest ROI has been technical. Technically, it's much easier to deploy, much easier for the end-user to use, we have much happier end-users. As they manage their systems, they're much happier without having to install a client, which takes time, takes resources on their machine. They can do it from any device, anywhere, at any time, which is very nice for them.

Anybody who's looking to research this, to upgrade in the future, should go for it. It's a very easy upgrade. The features are very beneficial. It's very worth the time to update. It's a much easier solution for the future, and it's a better experience for all involved.

Regarding using VMware Cloud on AWS, we use AWS right now, but for our backup solutions, is all. Cold backup, long-term storage out to the cloud, is all we do right now.

For us, the biggest criteria for selecting a vendor, right now, are the pricing and the support. Because we are higher education, we have to find the best price, and support comes right behind that. We need the best support as well.

I would rate the solution as about a nine out of ten right now. It could be better but it's very close to perfect right now.

Our primary use case for vSphere is not a primary use case, because we actually offer a pretty wide breadth of services. Our key use cases revolve around hosted private cloud, as well as being the underpinning virtualization platform for our multi-tenant vCloud Director based cloud.

We don't use VMware cloud on AWS.

vSphere has improved our organization by allowing us to deliver rock solid stability to our clients in a cost competitive fashion. The industry has moved far beyond bare metal infrastructure, other than for very specific us cases. As an operator of mission-critical applications on behalf of our clients, we chose vSphere because we needed the operability we get from features like vMotion, the stability that it gives us, and the ability to run pretty much any workload.

We host infrastructure for a very large number of clients. In many cases, we're running all their mission-critical applications in our data centers on top of vSphere. So, there is no single industry vertical. However, for each of our clients, we are their operator, and this is their mission-critical infrastructure.

When I think about the performance aspects of vSphere, we've been using it since before there was vSphere. We were actually a very early partner of VMware. I've been with NaviSite for a very long time, and I recall doing a VMware GSX Server deployment, from a number of years ago. 

When I look at the performance aspects, I've definitely seen a reduction over versions from the virtualization penalty. This has been significantly reduced over the years. The size limitations of VMs, number of CPUs, amount of memory which can be allocated, and amount of storage which can be allocated are no longer of practical consequence. So, the monster VM that we talked about over VM Worlds of three to five years ago, they're here to stay, and those limits are no longer practical impediments to virtualization. 

1. The most valuable feature of vSphere is vMotion, because it rocks. It radically changes the way we think about how we can operate a large infrastructure, and notably, in terms of proactive maintenance. 
2. The second biggest feature is HA, because complexity around IT resilience is a difficult problem to solve, especially at the application level. Therefore, being able to rely on the infrastructure to provide a 90:10 or 99:1 rule is more than enough resilience for most applications, and getting that directly from the infrastructure is fantastic.

These features are useful day-to-day, because we operate a very large number of single-tenant private ESX deployments, managed by vCenter, as well as VCD-based public cloud. Frankly, with hundreds and thousands of hosts under management, there's no way we could operate that infrastructure without the use of vMotion. The ability to migrate those workloads to free up the physical infrastructure for maintenance activities, patching, BIOS updates, etc., is a critical requirement to operate.

An important vSphere feature from a security perspective is VM encryption. As is the right thing to do in this day and age, security needs to be the number one concern for any IT operator. While there are security solutions which can be delivered at the physical, hardware layer, they don't necessarily address all of the requirements from an encryption perspective. Being able to have VM-centric, VM-level encryption is a great feature of vSphere.

As with any piece of technology (hardware or software), there's always room for improvement. vSphere is incredibly mature from a core feature and function perspective. As we continue to push mission-critical workloads into vSphere, and those workloads are not readily protected at the application layer for availability, continuing to increase the size limitations on FT-protected VMs would be a great advance.

vSphere management has evolved over time. It's inherently complex. Operating a large virtual infrastructure is not an easy task for anyone. That's why certifications, such as VCP exist, because you have to have the right skill set to operate the environment. As the product evolves and starts to take advantage of things, like DRS, workload placement becomes less of an issue for humans to worry about, because the system takes care of it for you. Of equal interest is SDRS, storage management and storage placement, as historically, it was one of the most challenging things to mange in a large production VMware environment. With SDRS, we've actually seen our need to babysit it and manage it as a human go way down.

vSphere has been very stable. It would be where it is in the market overall if there were any sense of instability. No software nor hardware is perfect, so really it comes down to the failure rate that we see running workloads on vSphere. Is it significantly, materially, measurably different than running those workloads on bare metal? I would say absolutely not. 

Equally important is the stability better because, when things happen, hardware is lost. In response, VMware HA automatically restarts those workloads and the effective downtime is radically minimized. This is compared to what it would be for a human response.

Scalability on vSphere has always been important for us, because of the scale at which we operate. We had a client, who maxed out under the VMware 5 limit of 32 hosts per cluster. So, it has been great to see the continued improvements in scalability. At the VM level, the limits are no longer practical impediments. Now, at the VMware cluster level, we're also seeing sizes which can operate pretty much any large client environment.

We've had to use vSphere and VMware tech support on a fairly regular basis, but not because there are fundamental flaws in the platform. Things happen. Client environments are complex, and in some cases, the interoperability with other third party products requires engagement with support. We have found the engagement able to solve our problems pretty much all the time.

I'm not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of our vSphere environments, but we stand up private vSphere-based clouds on a fairly regular basis. We manage those on a go forward basis in terms of patching, upgrading, etc. Deploying vSpheres is pretty easy. The biggest feature that has made that easier, as compared to three or four years ago, is the vCenter Server Appliance. Its ability to deploy the management plane as a virtual client and bootstrap an ESX environment. That's a big step forward.

1. Compared to deploying traditional infrastructure models, like bare metal, and the ability to virtualize and maximize the utilization of the physical infrastructure speaks well for ROI. 
2. In today's market, agility is the new currency. Without virtualization, and vSphere in particular, we wouldn't have the level of agility in the business that we have today. Frankly, it's needed by pretty much any industry. Regardless of whether you're technology-centric or not, you are a technology company.

If I had to give a rating of one to ten for vSphere, I would give it a nine. No software nor hardware is perfect, but vSphere is good. That's why I would say a nine. There is still some room for improvement, like larger FTVMs, continued evolution, and keeping pace with the scalability of underlying physical infrastructure.

For somebody looking to evaluate a virtualization platform such as vSphere or any of its competing open source solutions, like KVM or other virtualization platforms, one of the key considerations is to look at TCO. vSphere may seem expensive upfront, and there may be some sticker shock there, but if you look at it over the long-term and from a human capital perspective to operate the platform over a period of three or more years, the manageability of vSphere drives the total cost of ownership way down.

It's a virtualization service.

The product is performing well. We are quite satisfied with it.

We are looking into using VMware on AWS in the future.

We have seen an improvement in uptime. The whole hardware lifecycle process is easier, which was previously a pain.

I find the solution simple and efficient to manage. It is not rocket science. It is easy to install and maintain. I didn't need to read a lot of books. The solution is quite handy.

• The high availability (HA)
• VMotion
• The seamless 24-hour uptime

We have a lot of databases running on mission critical apps which control our end production line: Exchange, virtualize, and the main controller. We are at about a 85 percent virtualization rate. We also have mission critical apps which conform our factory.

On Vista, there should be a lot more new features. We would like to see more security features to harden our environment in the future.

From a technical point, there is not much room for new innovation in the hypervisor. It is more about improving the environment or the landscape, not the product.

The licensing should be more competitive based on its price. There should be more features for the licensing that you own. Money is a factor, because our management is looking right now at its money. The most annoying thing is to tell people that I would like to continue using VMware, and have them argue the other solutions are free.

Maybe 80 percent of the time, our issues were hardware problems caused by HPE. Crappy driver issues leading to a blue screen of death. If you have a corrupt driver, is it the fault of the VMware or is it the fault of the vendor who should support it? These were mostly our outages.

This was due to the product cycles being too quick. Neither VMware nor HPE could test the stuff properly. The cycles were too quick and they had to push out the software, then errors happened. Both software companies needed to fix or address issues in their old versions, but then they also implemented new bugs in their newer versions. Software will never be error-free, because the product cycle frequency is too high. 

We are version 6.0, but these issues happened on 5.0, 5.1, and 5.5. We haven't seen them on the current version. It is annoying because we work with clusters, and we can't really have one node fail.

It can scale linearly. At some locations though, we are using HPE SimpliVity to scale.

The technical support is very good. I have nothing to complain about, as they are quick and try to respond quickly. Sometimes, they don't have a solution right away, but that's reasonable. 

If you track down an issue and you don't have a solution or work around, you have to give it to the engineers who will take sometime fixing it. That's fair.

We have PCS support. It has better support compared to HPE. Maybe Cisco is better, but it is still good.

We were not previously using anything from a virtualization perspective.

If you figure out how to do it, it's quite easy. 

There are so many options on the market, and if you switch from a SAN to an S environment, you have to look for white papers and guidelines from Windows. It is also hyper-converged. Yet, if you can follow the guidelines, it's easy. 

We did the implementation on our own.

The business is able to gain in faster services because you are provisioning the ends more quickly due to templates. Thus, the provisioning is quite good. 

The pricing is too expensive. The reason why we implemented Hyper-V is because of the licensing costs. 

They are way too high. This is tough when you have to present to management with a flat budget, and everything will be more expensive. 

We are currently using VMware and Hyper-V.

Our shortlist consisted of KVM, Hyper-V, and VMware. We went with VMware back then because of its reporting, it was market leader, it has good support, and the price was previously fair. 

I would recommend trying the solution.

This solution has a very comfortable interface for snapshots for my virtual machines. That's very comfortable.

For example, if I want to make templates to create a certain type of virtual machine, I have it in vSphere. Moreover, it includes things like deployment, implementation of different templates, snapshot deleting snapshot, restoring a machine to snapshot or administrative administration things.

The web console is the most valuable feature for me.  Because no matter what happens with the server, I can still get to it with the web console.

There is room for improvement in Google Cloud. The reason thing there was, like, when I type something in the terminal and then immediately, I need to go to edit the certain like file for Node.js, for the server, or for Kubernetes. So I have to do it from the terminal to the editor.

And for some reason, each time I had to switch, I had to literally switch between the terminal and the editor. I wish I could have it on one screen to have the terminal and on the other to have the editor.  This would greatly improve my experience with this solution. 

I have been using it for a couple of years.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. It is very stable, and I have never had any major problems with it.

There are over a few hundred users using this solution in our organization. 

I would rate the scalability a solid eight out of ten.  It is scalable enough for my needs, but there is always room for improvement.

The initial setup was very easy and intuitive.

If I didn't understand something, this solution provides tons of information,e explanations,  courses, and instructions on their website. We also live in a reality of chatbots and AI, so everything is very easy to set up. 

I would advise you to check out the VMware website and watch some of the initial and fundamental courses. The web console is very intuitive, but it can be helpful to see how it works before you start using it. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is virtualization. All the clients who want to virtualize can use vSphere to do it.

I like stability and the organization of the different functions into the I#M feature which is also quite useful, quite stable. I would prefer the old solution because before, you had to install software on your client's desktop to administrate the environment. Since five or seven years, it's not needed. You can do everything through your web interface. And I prefer when it was more reactive, so when you have a client instead of using your desktop. But it's a good solution, quite stable and quite efficient.

In future releases, I would like to see less pricing. The license can be improved. 

I have used this solution for over 15 years. So it's one of the first products we've used with a client.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. Around 20 to 30 customers are using this solution. 

The customer service and support are good. However, it could be faster and more qualified. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It is intuitive-- Next. Next. Next. Next. Finish. Easy. Great.

For the deployment process involves materials, equipment, licenses, and the availability of the client team.

It took about one or two hours for one server; it's okay. The deployment was super quick. 

A team of engineers and admins is required to deploy and maintain the solution. We have a team of ten people. 

The licensing model is yearly-based. It is quite expensive.  Moreover, there are extra costs to the standard licensing fees. 

I would definitely recommend using the solution. I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

I would advise to be sure that the functionality brought by VMware aligns with the good functionality because there are other products in the market like ISPs, KV M, Oracle, Microsoft, and some other stuff. And VMware is a well-known product. But to be sure that the functionality provided by VMware is needed.

We can maintain our own infrastructure according to our needs. We need to buy the solution only once, and we can do what we need to do. We can deploy several servers. We can also deploy other machines. We can create templates. OVF is the best feature. We can create an OVF, send it to the other node, and create similar VMs with the OVF.

We can deploy our own bare metal hypervisor over the hardware at the required capacity. We must know how to configure it. The product is not difficult to use. The users access their PCs using a remote desktop protocol. It is as simple as using our own laptops. The solution’s high availability is very good. The tool provides 99.99% uptime.

The hardware cost is high. We need to change the hardware after some time. It is a big headache for the organization. Private clouds are more secure than public clouds. However, public clouds offer services that we can never see in vSphere. VMware must improve its login page.

The UI must be improved. The solution must improve its log system. When a machine fails, it mentions the log but doesn't describe the infrastructure or how the code is designed. If I put one machine on migration and it fails, the log is generated as the user timed out and disconnected the host. Apart from this, there's nothing else mentioned in the log. It is difficult to identify the problem with the machine. The log system is very poor.

It is a challenge to increase the storage. If we have ten users when we start, but the load on the server increases to 20 or 30 after a month, there is a chance that the site will go down. We have to be proactive in implementing datastore. If we have ten users, we must plan to have hardware for 20 users. The cost will be high, but it will be more secure.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The on-premise version is stable.

We are a client-based organization. The number of users depends on the clients. There might be 5200 people using the product in our clients’ organizations.

We have deployed the solution on-premises. The solution has a private cloud, too. There are no hybrid connections available. The initial setup is not difficult, but it is not easy. A normal user cannot do it. We need the expertise to install bare metal. The installation is easy if we know the configuration criteria.

The tool is neither expensive nor cheap. The pricing depends on the users. Suppose we have 100 users, and the architectural team spends $10,000 on infrastructure to build the data center. After some years, we have to replace the systems and upgrade them.

Since I am an engineer, I troubleshoot the issues I face. I recommend people use a public cloud provider. If someone requires a separate data center, they can choose VMware. It is the best solution on-premises and as a private cloud. Overall, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

I deal with the solution in my company to work in the area of data center virtualization.

The most valuable features of the solution are in areas like VMware vSphere vMotion and vSphere HA.

From what I know, the area revolving around the licensing part of the product is not quite friendly. The licenses for those who have a partnership with VMware are not a good thing because we have to use the tool for demos and simulate it in a customer environment. In our company's setup, considering that we have a partnership with VMware, it is very hard to have licenses, making it an area where improvements are required. VMware's NFR licenses were previously available for partners, and the tool used to provide demo centers within such licenses, but the aforementioned licensing structure for partners has been presently discontinued. The product should also provide the partners with the facility to provide the tool's demo in a test environment for customers.

The solution's technical team is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

I have been using VMware vSphere for five years. My company has a partnership with VMware.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our company's main customers who work with the solution use it in sectors like banking, finance, and government.

My company deals with small, medium, and enterprise-sized customers who use the tool.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

The solution's technical team offers fairly good support in some cases, and in a few other cases, they need to offer more help, which is quite difficult to get, and it also depends on the support engineer our company gets.

Neutral

I rate the initial setup phase an eight on a scale of one to ten, where ten means that the setup was a very easy process.

The solution is deployed on the public cloud and hybrid cloud.

The tool's deployment phase takes time, as it is not a quick process. The tool's deployment phase takes a few days to be completed.

The tool is a bit expensive.

With VMware vSphere, it is easy to manage the scaling of our company's virtual infrastructure.

VMware vSphere helps our company's customers in the area of virtualization since it provides good scalability features. In the government sector, people need to engage in a lot of documentation work when purchasing new hardware, and it can be helpful to use the product in such a scenario. In any environment, the product is easy to scale for general usage.

VMware vSphere's high availability or FT feature is used by our company's customers in their clusters to keep their servers available as much as they can. The use of the product ensures minimum downtime, and its users prefer to use the high availability feature of the tool.

The performance and efficiency of the use of the solution have improved our company's customers' organizations. From the use of VMware vSphere, the performance and efficiency of your customers have increased by 30 to 40 percent.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.