VMware vSphere Reviews

• Ease of upgrading
• Ease of backups
• Ease of deployment

We now have a quicker deployment of machines, as it’s been far more cost effective than our physical servers with a smaller footprint.

It’s pretty good the way it is, I can’t think of anything else I need.

It’s very stable.

We started with maybe 10, we’re up to 80, and it’s been very easy to add them all on.

I’d say they were very good, they’re very quick and responsive, I can’t think of them ever not being able to an issue.

We were running physical servers, the industry was headed that way, and we knew that we had to. Furthermore, 80 physical servers is too much to fit into one room.

I didn’t set it up, but I think they had a consultant come in.

Probably the availability of training is the most important thing to look at when choosing a vendor. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good, and VMware is great.

Peer reviews are pretty important, it’s an easy way to look at hands on market research that you don’t have to pay for, to be honest.

It's flexibility is most valuable, as we're able to move things around without downtime.

We now have 200 virtual machines because building a machine is so easy that anyone can do it. Now, our answer is "yes" for any requests for new VMs.

More automation would be good. You can leverage CLI or vSphere with the API’s so that allows you to do anything, but if you don’t have programming experience you are limited.

Pretty solid, like any technology there are gonna be some pitfalls, nothing is perfect, but there is no clear disadvantage for making it virtual.

Very scalable, I don’t think we’ve hit a limit. Were running 2000 virtual machines on 50 hosts and that’s one data center, and we haven’t nearly hit our ceiling.

I haven’t used it that often – they are responsive. It's pretty standard, not above average.

Pretty straightforward, I've installed vCenter dozens of times, and I've run into a few issues, but other than that its pretty easy.

We've looked at Hyper-V, Citrix, Openstack, but we continue to use vSphere, because it’s a market leader – it’s a stable company, not going anywhere.

25% of the server costs are now going to VMware; it's expensive. The stability of the company is always important to look at though.

• The ability to virtualize hundreds of servers
• Hardware cost

We are a small company so having a solution that bring the costs as low as possible is the most valuable thing.

Right now, I’m looking to implement v6 with Operation Management so that would be the next step, and maybe VSAN as well.

It's pretty stable, coupled with good performance.

Really high.

Luckily we have never had to use them – that says a lot.

We have always been using vSphere.

Setup was very straightforward.

We implemented on our own.

To be honest, I didn’t try Microsoft, or Citrix, so it's difficult to compare, but I'm used to it and it works – works great.

Compatibilities with software, with OS, we have some applications that are only running on XP and 32 bits. You need to do some research to make it work.

The ability to spin up machines when we need a test and dev environment for client work.

It saves me time, and at the end of the day, that’s it for me.

It fits my needs right now, I honestly don’t need anything else.

It’s stable – no crashes, no bugs, knock on wood, but it’s been great.

We have scaled, from about one server to three now. Its very easy to just scale up.

I've used them just once. They were responsive, quick, somebody got on the phone and it worked to a resolution quickly.

We were limited on space in our data center, with physical servers, and we needed more.

It was very straightforward.

I did it, and it was easy.

Just VMware, my previous job we used it, and it was great. I’ve been a customer for a long time now. I just want something to work, and I know VMware does.

It’s been great. I would recommend it all the time, it’s great. Peer reviews are quite important, as I need to know what others are experiencing before I do.

• Redundancy
• Speed
• Security

I had 300 physical servers, but now I need only six. It’s less noisy, much cheaper, and has less of a tendency to get hot.

I want to see a better hypervisor.

I've used it for five years, since.

Deployment requires a special proficiency.

The product has good stability.

The stability is perfect, as long as you can afford it.

Customer Service:

We work with a company that provides this service.

Technical Support:

We work with a company that provides this service.

It was complex as we have many sites. Therefore, we needed to decide if we should put them all together in a single data center, or to use one instance of vSphere for all our data centers.

It's the best product on the market. I have never had anything that saved me more money than vSphere. I had 300 servers, each one cost us 15 thousand dollars, but now it’s much cheaper. Moreover, thanks to dynamic distribution I am able to maximize the servers' CPU usage.

It requires one person to manage it on a full-time basis.

We tested Hyper-V, and it was awful.

It costs a lot. You should go to a VMware 6 course.

vSphere is very easy to navigate and manage.

As a Tech Mktg Engineer, this product helps us develop test environments quickly.

The scroll window of processes at the bottom of the UI for the vSphere client is sometimes is hard to adjust.

About 4 months

No.

No

No.

Customer Service: I did not have to contact them.Technical Support: n/a

No.

n/a. It was already set up for me.

In house.

Not sure

No.

It works very well.

This really depends on the customers requirements. Manageability, transportation and low footprint (and thus higher consolidation ratio) are ones that are often referred to by customers.

Central management, easy deployment, easy management. This simplifies IT management processes and cuts on project costs and power/data center costs.

Licensing cost together with SA.

Since ESXi version 3.

None.

Depending on guest OS, there are some issues with controller type/driver versions.

None, if you have the resources you can easily scale out (or up)/down depending on your scalability requirements. Autodeploy, host profiles and customizations are a great help here. Further vCOPS will give you valuable capacity management options.

Customer Service: Great.Technical Support: Excellent.

No.

Straightforward, must have some knowledge though how to implement in the organizations required solution.

I do projects for customers.

Not at liberty to share.

Yes, XenServer and Hyper-V are often evaluated by customers.

Don't be intimidated by all the possible functions and comparison reports out there. Look what is needed for your requirements and match to available editions. Also when looking into costs, take the whole into account (not just initial costs, but also consolidation ratios, managebilty and the returns you get from those.)

Great product for users stepping into virtualization and consolidation

Management requires vCenter, with additional expense

This makes sense for smaller companies that are looking to start the consolidation process, or smaller divisions of large companies.