VMware vSphere Reviews

I think that the Fault Tolerance and High Availability features are the most valuable ones. Storage vMotion, Server vMotion, and all the flexibility that vSphere can provide to a storage environment without interruption is also very good.

In the past, many organizations had many physical servers, and with VMWare we can consolidate many servers without compromising on the performance. We can save a lot of space in the data center. It also helps us to save power that, at this time, is a very important factor. With VMWare, we can use all the resources available on the servers without losing CPU or memory resources, and we can centralize the space into just one storage space.

In many areas of IT, you can use VMWare solutions. Here we have many applications running on the VMware vSphere, such as Oracle Database, MySQL, SQL, web applications, Apache, and many more. For all solutions of course, it depends on how the applications work, but until to day, I haven't observed any applications that won't work inside the vSphere infrastructure.

I have been using it since v3.5, so more than eight years, I have experience with other VMWare solutions too.

No, I did not have any issues because it all depends on how the environment was configured.

Nothing too important yet. The new v6.0 improves upon many features in vSphere High Availability. The enhancements correct issues of recovery from storage issues with a new feature called Virtual Machine Component Protection. This feature corrects many problems that we had when the backup tool lost connection with the ESXi servers.

No, I did not have any issues because it all depends on how the environment was configured.

I haven't had any issues with customer service and most problems can be solved through their website.

I have not had any issues with technical support as they have solved any issues that I have had to contact them about.

We have other solutions in the environment such as Oracle Rac and Microsoft Hyper-V, but I believe that vSphere is the most reliable product on the market.

The initial setup wasn't complex because we have experience with other VMWare solutions.

I implemented ii in-house.

Our ROI is high because we have 800 virtual servers spread across 22 physical ones.

When compared to the impact that the product has had, I do not believe the cost to be too high.

I have tested other products such as Hyper-V and Zen, but I believe that vSphere is more stable and has many more features available.

Go ahead and get it as this product is very, very stable.

• Distributed Resource Scheduler
• High Availability
• Storage I/O Control
• vMotion
• Storage vMotion
• Fault tolerance
• vSphere distributed switch

Using vSphere, we have more confidence that the virtual servers are secured with the HA feature.

Party auditing users, as today we do not natively know what each user is doing in the virtual environment.

I've used it for 10 years.

There were no issues as we followed the documentation.

No issues encountered.

The scalability of vSphere is amazing. No other virtualization manufacturer can even come close to the limits of vSphere's standards.

99.9999%

99%

I used a different solution, but it was not even close to vSphere. It was a good solution for certain environments, but lacking some features.

Take the time to study vSphere to get to know more about the product. There are a lot of documentation and labs available to help a person develop the skills required to work with vSphere.

• High Availability
• Distributed resource scheduling & vMotion
• Robust management toolset for automating routine tasks

vSphere provides the infrastructure framework to manage server and client systems in a multitude of user environments, from dedicated virtual workstations to short-term use systems. vSphere makes the provisioning and deployment of virtual servers and clients quick and predictable, centralizing the customization process while removing common hardware problems.

Fault Tolerance, which was introduced in version 5.5 and improved in 6.0, is a promising feature that has potential to ensure highly critical system availability in the enterprise environment. It presently has vCPU limitations which makes its deployment scenarios limited, but VMware has made great strides between the two versions, indicating that its usefulness will continue to improve.

I've used it for four years.

ESXi has some specific hardware requirements that administrators should make sure they are able to meet before deploying. While the platform can run on a considerable range of hardware, various features make use of specialized virtualization instruction sets in the hardware CPU that make the hypervisor suited to only a fraction of the common server hardware on the market. This is not a bad thing, as the benefits from these advanced features are well worth the cost of more advanced hardware. This is the only circumstance in which I have encountered obstacles to deployment.

No. The vSphere hypervisor is exceptionally stable, and the higher-level vSphere environment is quite adaptable to a fluctuating datacenter environment.

No. The ability to expand the capacity of the vSphere environment is one of the core capabilities of the product.

Efficient and knowledgeable.

Good value, particularly considering a support contract is required with the purchase of vSphere licenses.

No previous solution was used.

It's straightforward, as vSphere is a mature product with well-rounded documentation, and an easy-to-understand interface.

Our system was installed by a vendor team, but was configured in-house. Our vendor team provided a solid architecture solution, but it was insufficient for our requirements.

Licensing is not a major obstacle to adopting this product in an enterprise environment. VMware does offer some specialized vSphere editions for small business environments in which cost may be a considerable factor. There is a wide range of options provided by VMware with suitable price points for each license.

We did not evaluate other options.

Have a plan for system virtualization before pursuing vSphere. Often, the actual needs of an organization, particularly small and medium sized, are overestimated which leads to spending more for a product or product license than is necessary.

I'd say vMotion, High Availability, and Distributed Resource Scheduler, which have allowed us to administer hardware resources in a better way.

With High Availability, we have had only one incident where one of the hosts failed, and the VMs were moved immediately. It took about four minutes to complete migration, thus affecting operations minimally.

Reporting, and perhaps more DRS-friendly functions.

We've used it for almost three-and-a-half years, and previously we were using older versions, such as 2.0.

No, but that is relative. Sometimes issues are raised eventually.

No, but it does become difficult to have a standardized infrastructure.

No, but I guess cost is the main obstacle.

So far, good service, but it's managed by our corporate office.

It's good, but it is relative. I have been able to resolve many of our issues using the web.

I used to manage an IBM solution - SAN with VMware technology.

It was complex, as the setup and management was not too friendly.

We used a vendor team and the expertise was good, but it could have been better.

All I am able to say is that our SLAs have been achieved over the last two years.

This depends on the particular scenarios. Ours is a big one, and requires full stability (Enterprise license). We manage four geographic areas (Mexico, China, Czech Republic and Brazil).

Review the SLAs with customers and provide several options describing cost/benefits to them.

• The out-of-box application works well even without customization.
• vCenter web UI is great.

I work on it daily and it's easy to build VM's and take snapshots. I can also test the VM's as much as I want.

• vCenter web UI has the occasional bug.
• Sometimes it takes a while until the VM responds to a mouse click.

I've used it for six months.

None.

No.

Haven't yet needed to scale.

Haven't needed customer service.

Haven't needed technical support.

No previous solution used.

Straightforward.

In-house.

We did not evaluate other options.

The stability in general, and the manageability of features like high availability, storage vMotion, and vMotion configuration via distributed switches.

vSphere is a core product in our services. Building our services on top of this product provides us the ability to create stable, enterprise level services.

Currently none, as the development of new features is already going at high speed.

I've been using it for seven years, since v3.5.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

8/10.

7/10.

We previously used XenEnterprise and RedHat Enterprise Virtualization based on KVM. Due to the stability and lack of features, we switched.

It was straightforward.

We did it in-house by our infrastructure team who are VMware Certified Professionals.

Using the vCloud Air Network program, we are in a usage based program. So no upfront investments are made for licenses.

• 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.

We work with a company that provides this service.

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.