VMware vSphere Reviews

• DRS
• HA
• vMotion
• vConverter
• Distributed switch

This product has help to reduce the number of physical x86 servers from 500 to 150. This has saved server hardware costs, data center floor space, power, and cooling. This has significantly reduced the CAPEX cost.

It needs to be easier to integrate with open cloud.

I've used it for nine years.

Deploying the older v3 and v3.5 had lots of issues, but the morerecent v4, v5, and v5.5 version are much easier to deploy.

The product is stable.

No issues encountered.

VMware has good customer service.

It's good.

I have not had to switch.

It's straightforward.

Storage vMotion and vMotion are the greatest of use in my current role; however, the most prevalent features would have to be Fault Tolerance, SRM and DRS.

In my current role, VMware has been used to reduce the overall physical footprint of the environment as well as ease the management aspect of all the virtual environments we used to house. In previous roles, it not only improved the aforementioned pieces but it also improved availability time lines in a significant fashion.

The room for improvement would be just like they did with the C# (thick) client back in 2.5.1 and 3.X, they need to work on the speed of the web client as they are moving towards a distributed management environment. The C# client had its issues back in its inception so they are going through the same growing pains again with the web client. Other than that, I would like to see a stripped down version of DRS brought into the Standard licensing model as the jump from a Standard license to an Enterprise (or Enterprise Plus) license is enormous.

I’ve been using VMware in an enterprise workspace since version 2.5.1 in 2005. I have since had experience with version 3.5, 4, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0. I'm also currently using vCenter Server 6.0.0A and B.

No issues were encountered in the latest migrations that have been performed but this is due to previous experience.

VMware has a great customer service department. If you use a trusted partner hardware (ie, HP in my experience) for your servers, they will also assist in diving into the hardware aspect of the issues you are faced with to hopefully resolve the problem. I’ve always found the VMware support has been there when I needed them. Their response times are very good and the knowledge each support engineer I’ve worked with has been more than satisfactory. I haven’t run into a “blame game” with support while using VMware.

At my current employer, they used to use Hyper-V 2008. We migrated to VMware due to a more robust feature set and the fact that, yes Hyper-V has a lot of the features that VMware does but, once deployment is complete, VMware is a clearly more stable product than Hyper-V in the long run. I’ve seen and been involved with a few Hyper-V migrations that go from VMware to Hyper-V and after six to 12 months, most of those installations wanted to migrate back to VMware.

The initial installation and setup of an ESXi server is very straightforward. When you start getting into the implementation of a vCenter Server you find all the “nooks and crannies” of the installation that are available. It is definitely more complex with a vCenter Server but that is mostly only if you are using all the features available to you. If you just use vCenter for managing multiple hosts at an Essentials license, it isn’t very complex at all.

We implemented using an in-house team (myself). The advice I have is: When you are building a virtualization environment, be it VMware, HyperV, Citrix, KVM, etc., you need to make sure you build the hosts that are going to run the environment properly. Along with that, you need to make sure the storage infrastructure and network are healthy prior to performing an upgrade. If you “cheap” out on any of those aspects, the deployment will suffer in some way.

Yes, we evaluated Hyper-V 2012. From previous experience as well as feedback from the community we decided to move forward with VMware.

• The HA functions
• vSphere Distributed Switch

It gives us a good consolidated overview of hundreds or thousands of servers at a time.

It gives us the ability to easily manage those from a centralized point, and a lot more reliability because we can easily migrate between hardware and consolidate workloads.

The web client, the GUI, could use some improvement. It’s pretty clunky and slow. Some things are only available in the web client, some are only available in the fat client so it would be nice to have them in both in one interface.

I've used it for about two years.

No, we’ve been using vSphere for a long time so we’re quite familiar with it, and we have a good relationship with VMWare. Deployment was easy.

We don’t see many crashes, if any, on the vSphere side.

Again, it’s simple as popping extra hosts in. Quite easily scalable.

They’re very good. We’ve got a good relationship with VMware, and they’re always available - they give us previews on upcoming tech or quickly connect us with someone we need to speak to.

It’s good. It’s usually quite easy and quick to log calls and get support services. The vSphere client has a built-in means of pulling logs which logs which we can send directly to VMWare technical support. We can get tier two or three support quite readily.

Not since I’ve worked here, so at least 10 years. We started with vSphere.

It kind of depends; we work with a number of different customers. It’s relatively straightforward, but for complex implementations there can be some complications. They publish all of the necessary installation information so it’s quite easy to find support for deployment.

We do it in-house.

It’s not something I really deal with as an engineer. Because of the types of service we offer, we don’t sell customers vSphere licensing.

I’d grab the software from their site - you can deploy it and use it for 60 days free of charge, so whether you’re doing a large or small deployment try it out and see if it works. You can also engage with technical support services. The software is free, so grab it and play with it.

• High Availability options
• High server consolidation ratio
• Space, noise and power consumption reduction
• Easy to administer

• Response time to all areas of our company.
• Server deployment, SLA, everything was accelerated rapidly.
• Testing environment, templates, storage usage, all areas were enhanced.

• Server consolidation
• Response time
• Internal process management
• Storage usage and performance

Five years

We never found any issue during deployment of VMware vSphere. From version 5.0, 5.1 and now in 5.5 works everything fine.

The virtualization changed everything in our company, and is the way to lead from now.

We never found any issue of stability using VMware vSphere. From version 5.0, 5.1 and now in 5.5 works everything fine.

The virtualization changed everything in our company, and is the way to lead from now.

None.

VMware vSphere is a solution that offers excellent resources optimization and utilization. The solution himself improves the data center management and resources utilization is many ways.

We can't think our data center without virtualization.

Customer service from VMware was always excellent. Being a client of VMware, our company have the best response, even from our partners.

Never required technical support from VMware. As a VCP, I always solve the issues myself, but I know some examples from other companies and they are very happy about this.

No. The initial solution was VMware and we loved the product. There exists other solutions, but no one offers the level of trust and features that VMware offers, even open Source solutions like Xen.

No, anyway. From initial installation of ESXi servers to configuration in vCenter Server the installation process is very intuitive and easy (remember that I'm VCP).

In-house.

Our ROI was 6-12 months. The budget required to mount our virtual infrastructure was high at first glance, but the ROI was more quick than expected.

We are very happy with this and consolidation that VMware offers.

Some licenses are expensive, mailny Enterprise Plus versions, but the features that this versions includes are impressive. Just make sure you get the right version for every business or needs.

We evaluate other options, but VMware is centuries ahead other solutions of virtualization. Microsoft Hyper-V is the closest, but not reach the level of VMware. Open Source solutions was not considered at initial instance, they do not apply for a serious project of virtualization.

Evaluating migration to vSphere 6.0 in brief. I'm currently taking vSphere 6.0 courses and reading a lot, including writing a lot in my blog about this version. The improvements are really big and we wait more announces in VMware World 2015 very soon.

Distributed Virtual Switch – you only have to configure it once, and then you can promote it to all the servers, so you have a single switch for all the systems.

Also, the HA system works very well right out of the box.

I’ve been working with VMWare for at least 10 years, so I can say that the loss that you have with virtualization has dropped – you have less loss than if you would run it on real hardware. It went from around 30% to 15%, so basically better by half. And it improves with every version.

A solution for all the different appliances that you now see running would be good. In the past you had VMWare agents, so every manufacturer installed agents on the IIS6 layers but that didn’t work well. Now every supplier has its own virtual appliance, but now some customers have five or six VAs per ESXi host which consumes a lot of processing and memory power. So maybe something like a hypervisor for virtual appliances.

I've been using it since it was released, at least two years.

Never. It just deploys. It works if you use the hardware that’s on the HCL on the VMWare web site. If you don’t do that, you could be in trouble. Some customers do that and expect it to work magically.

Yes, in combination with Broadcom network cards – there was a lot of latency in the storage area through vSphere. So in those situations we had to change the hardware – there was something buggy in the cards.

No issues encountered.

Very good. VMWare visits the customers themselves, at least in the Netherlands. Once or twice per year they come on site to talk to the customers to see what they need, anything extra, any support, anything. It’s a very open contact with them.

It works like every other support agency – it depends on how high you set the priority of your call or contract. If you have a basic support contract it won’t be the same as a 24/7 high priority contract, for example. So it varies depending on your support contract; it also depends on which support engineer you get. Most of the time I get a lot of questions back from the support engineer, so maybe they don’t fully understand the systems. I have a production support contract – so I expect them to take over the system and fix it! Eventually they fix the problems, but with some it takes a lot of time.

No, I've always used VMWare, as I’m not a fan of the other options available.

It depends – mostly it’s complex; first of all, I have a lot of customers that just buy some hardware and expect it to work like magic, but also not all of the configuration information is always easily available. Different components need specific configurations, and so we have to go to the vendors to get configuration information for the hardware which takes a lot of time. Customers don’t understand that and think that one size fits all.

I implement it for customers.

Get an expert with you before you buy something. Most of the customers that I work with have some licenses already; but when they explain what their core business, plans, etc., are we find that the licenses don’t match the mission. That starts with Microsoft a lot of times – the licensing isn’t correct – working with VMWare, and the vendor doesn’t see the combinations. A lot of the time, we see the software vendors maybe are VMWare partners, but they don’t care what licenses they sell. They just want to make a lot of money. So there’s a real gap in the market.

No other options were evaluated.

Look at the total product – if you’re comparing it to Citrix and Microsoft, look at all the features VMWare is hosting in your product and make a comparison. Also, understand your plans – what do you want to do, what’s your vision, and how does it match what you’re looking to buy?

It's consolidated in that multiple VMs can run on a single host and have a single point of management.

• Application protection
• Load balancing
• Protection against network/host failure

5.1 SSO is a disaster, it was re-done for 5.5 and improved again for 6.0. VMware even recommend upgrading directly to 5.5 and skipping 5.1, and we are now planning to upgrade to v6.

Personally since 2012, and in my current role only a few months.

There were no major issues.

Not really, as 5.1 has been out for a very long time, and any stability issues have been ironed out as with any product.

Upgrading from 5.1 to 5.5 is the biggest issue.

Very good and the communities help a lot too.

Very good and the communities help a lot too.

The solution in this company started on v4.1, and has moved to v5, and is currently on v5.1. This was to do with keeping with in support and being able to use new features.

With v5.1 you have to consider the various roles and how you wish to deploy them. SSO, Web, inventory, vCenter can all be installed together, separately, or any mix in between, and even physically if you wanted. I have inherited this design, and I would have done it differently, but as time passes, best practice is improved.

All this was done in-house, with the help of specalist consultants, I have inherited this role and the environment is currently in flux

For the company very good, as they run loads of different applications at the same time

If you can go for enterprise plus, do so as you get access to the VDS and all the features it provides, esp LBT and NIOC.

Hyper-V is gaining traction but VMware is currently still the way to go.

Plan it properly and skip 5.1 if possible. I would avoid 6.0 until Update 1 is out, so any initial bugs can be ironed out.

Thanks to vSphere we have improved our availability and scalability, and we are now able to dynamically move to a cloud paradigm. vSphere for us, is not a simple computer virtualization; it provides a complete infrastructure which combines computer storage, and networking elements in a single software layer, that we are calling SDDC.

Previously, we thought it was a simple server consolidation, where bulk and power consumption were drastically reduced. Now we are moving to a software-defined storage and software-defined networking to keep control of all IT environment, from service to a single infrastructure components.

We hope to keep all the physical datacenter elements under the same software layer, and we are hoping that that dream will comes true in the next years.

The introduction of a web console could be a great improvement for sysadmin, but the poor responsive interface has been solved in v6.0. The previous sysadmin/design experience with vSphere client could become a dangerous loop for its development.

At the moment, VMware admins say that the vSphere client will never die!

The vSphere installation, and operations are fully documented. I think that VMWare spent a lot of time writing documents which could be useful during the platforms lifecycle.

Before installing this product, try to design all the components, and don't be shy asking for comparisons or sharing your experience. Often design guidelines are the result of customer implementations, and different points of view. Before bringing it into production in your environment, execute hardening procedures.

If you are working for an ISP, where network admin rules an IT organization, try to get control of all networking devices connected to all services provided by your platform. Often, ISP network administrators are specialized in internet networking, and often they don't know data center networking issues and design impacts.

One of the worst savings to do when trying to consolidate, is to use less networking devices; for this reason I suggest you never play around with them when you need to use eight interfaces per host. If you need them there is no reason to have less than you have asked.

vSphere provides a lots of great features. In my opinion, VMotion is a feature that helps save time, cost, and effort.

You can arrange for system maintenance at any time you want without required downtime.

We've used it to implement a virtual datacenter server for in-house applications and services and have achieved a green and efficient virtual datacenter.

After consolidating all the physical machines in our datacenter onto vSphere, we have also achieved faster server provisioning. With the help of templates, we have reduced the time from weeks to several minutes and, therefore, we can provide services for other departments nearly instantaneously.

I think that all the improvements VMware could make would be related to monitoring. vSphere should be equipped with a better monitoring solution.

I have been using VMware products for 8 years.

Starting with testing software on a VMware Workstation box, and then virtualizing all IP services such as routing, DHCP, DNS, etc with an ESXi 4.1 host. And lately transformed almost services to VMware vSphere 5.0.

As with any software, ESXi and vSphere have their own requirements, but if you meet the requirements for hardware, network, storage, etc., then deploying a vSphere system is just easy as pie.

It's efficient and very stable.

VMware helps scaling with VMware vSphere is just easy by adding more ESXi hosts to an existing cluster, and then vSphere DRS will does the work for you like monitoring resources and spreading VMs to balance workloads on all the hosts between that cluster.

I have not made any calls during the time we have been running vSphere.

I have used KVM and Microsoft Virtual Server before switching completely to VMware vSphere. With VMware vSphere, we have a good management tool, with easy provisioning, and easy troubleshooting.

It is a quite straightforward setup. It’s just a easy-to-follow wizard installer, and I don’t think that there is an easier way to do it.

Pricing and licensing models vary, and are dependent upon your organization requirements and operations. Always start with the minimal licensing model then, later, upgrade to meet your needs.

Due to the simplicity of vSphere deployment, the ease of management, and the small footprint of its hypervisor, we decided to use it without wasting time on other products.

We were seeking a green and an efficient solution for our datacenter. We found vSphere to be a great product and decided to become their customer.

When working with vSphere, I think you always have to take three things into consideration:

• Know your system requirements - are there any compatibility issues, or performance impacts etc.
• Monitor the current physical infrastructure so you have a specific resource consumption, and can then develop the best investment plan
• Make a transformation plan from the physical infrastructure to the virtualized one