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.

Customer Service:

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.

Technical Support:

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.

• High Availability
• Fault Tolerance
• Live migration
• Reduced the overall cost of the infrastructure
• Centralizing the management.

We were able to centralize the server farm, thus able to focus administrators on their immediate tasks, reduce response time to incidents, concentrate the informational flows, facilitate the task of data protection.

2 years.

The deployment was really easy, migration to the virtualization infrastructure was transparent to the main business.

None encountered for now.

No. If you would plan an infrastructure from the beginning, you would not encounter any issues.

Customer Service:

We have never asked for any kind of customer service.

Technical Support:

We have never needed any kind of technical support from the vendor.

No, but, in future, we plan to use a Microsoft Hyper-V.

Initial setup was quite straightforward.

The implementation was made by our own team.

Before choosing we didn't evaluate any other options. It was planned to use the VMware as the first queue and the MS Hyper-V as the second one. The reason is in the migration plan of the servers - in the second phase it would be the MS SQL server's, so the MS Hyper-V is more suitable.

Always have a plan for the work document everything.

vSphere Replication, Storage APIs, vSphere HA, vSphere vMotion.

With VMWare virtualization environment; deploying servers; backing, replication and restoration are done in a matter of minutes.

Mounting ISO's ( You have to copy it onto the server and point to it and perform your installation); Citrix on the other hand allows you to easily mount iso files.

4.5 Years

None that were insurmountable.

VMWare in my experience has proven to be very stable; systems usually run unattended.

With the right amount of resources, additional host and servers can be added within minutes.

Customer Service:

5 out of 5

Technical Support:

5 out of 5

We also have in production Citrix Xenserver; Xenserver does not seem to be friendly with third party integration.

With the right amount of training initial installation is usually straightforward; even in the absence of that it's pretty much straightforward.

Implemented in-house

We evaluated Xenserver.

Its the most production ready virtual platform.

Scalability and Efficiency of your environment.

• On a basic level you can have one server perform the functions for a whole small business
• On a scalability level, you can simply setup with the right hardware effective failover functionality

• Honestly it’s the leader of the pack so it just needs to keep innovating while the competition catches up
• Maybe the only thing to improve is the compatibility with non-standard devices. In particular we have issues with SAS Tape drives

5 years

No issues encountered.

vSphere has no issue with software stability, if there is issues it’s because of faulty hardware.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

Excellent, we have a good relationship and they are happy to demo other products with us.

Technical Support:

Excellent

No we didn't.

Straightforward, the key to this working is to ensure you use compatible hardware.

In-house

For clients, they can purchase less hardware than what they would require if they did not take advantage of vSphere. Even a small company would have 4 or 5 required servers for applications (Authentication, Email, SQL/Application, and File & Print). Purchasing a single copy of vSphere Essentials or Essentials Plus is less than a server.

There is licensing cost and there is maintenance cost. Both compared to buying more servers are negligible.

No but we have compared it to Hyper-V and XenServer as they have come out with new versions. Hyper-V we play close attention to but XenServer we no longer follow.

• For companies comparing this to Hyper-V, this is still the gold VM solution. While Hyper-V is catching up, it’s still has a way to go.
• For small companies, I really advise to go for Essentials Plus. This gives you proper small scale HA capabilities and it gives you tech support. Essentials provides no technical support.

• Scripted installation.
• Host Profiles.
• Web Client.
• Windows Client

Previously we used one server per application, this product has increased our hardware utilization.

For managing many ESXi's at once vCenter is required. when the number of ESXi is smaller, it is not practical to have a vCenter server. This should at least be solved especially for a test/development environment. This may be solved using a Application installed on the end user system like a windows machine where the credentials of the ESXi servers are then pre-configured and a double click is sufficient to open the console. (I am talking of the use case where advanced features of vcenter is not used.)

One Year, qe are not using it in our organization. It is being used in out Lab environment for R&D purposes.

I have not found a way to automatically do console redirection to the COM port after scripted installation.

Very stable system.

Scalable to any level.

In house team using the official guides available.

Robust, functional, reliable, ease of use, good value.

Exponentially easier to manage servers.

Since 2009.

None

None

None

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

No - prior was physical one up servers.

Straightforward.

In-house plus one consultant.

Considered Hyper V.

Plan for more storage than you think, use flash, use 10gbE SFP+ to SANs - well worth it.

Memory overcommittment and deduplication, allowing higher consolidation ratios.

With VMware ESXi 5.5 and vCenter, we have a high-performance and stable virtual platform for converting 10 plus physical machines into few virtual machines. 

Reduce operation cost on physical machines, increase availability and performance of virtual operation systems.

3 years.

We have a issue when setup ESXi. There is no response from host machine when connecting VMware ESXi to IBM SAN (v3700), resolved by installing ESXi new patches.

The only setup cost is VMware license, no extra cost is needed as we have a IT team who familiar with VMware products. 

For small-to-medium business, I would recommend to install ESXi on USB stick or SD card. It provides more flexibility and lower cost to setup the virtual platform. 

The ability to maximize the use of existing hardware resources and run multiple servers at the same time.

Without too much detail, we use the ESXi Server to host our SBS for DNS, DHCP, and Exchange in conjunction with another server the is used to run our file share. We have another ESXi we use in our test environment that has worked out in not only pretesting certain configurations, but also we use it to recover data from, say, an infected hard drive. We simply grab an image of the drive, restore it to the virtual machine while isolating the network connectivity and perform all solutions and testing that may be needed.

At this time and with the way we use it, none.

The company has been using the solution for a couple of years now.

Yes. With ESXi one must make sure the hardware that is used matches the compatibility list provided by vmware. Once the host machine is configured appropriately, it's smooth sailing.

Amazingly, no. All is stable with the host, and the VM's whether Windows XP, 7 Pro x86/x64, 8, 8.1, and Linux.

I think the only limitations with scalability are related to the ESXi host machine itself. If it is not configured with enough horsepower, then it wont be very scalable. However a simple machine with an intel i7 processor, z87 chip-set, Intel nic cards, and 32 gigs of ram has the ability to run multiple servers with ease and speed.

Customer Service: I have not needed to contact their customer service.Technical Support: Support has been self driven via research and VMWare's web site. Being that ESXi is free, the support is great.

Previous to the current environment. I was dabbling with virtualbox. Awesome software but the application for it is different because its small scale and does not optimize its usage of the hardware its running on. It can crash windows.

The initial setup was fairly easy ONCE the correct/compatible hardware is set up for the host machine. I found the learning curve very minor, as well.

The initial setup was performed by our IT consultant. The consultant then showed me how it works and configuration that one can do. I also dove deep into research on ESXi. I would say the level of expertise about 7 on a scale of one to ten because of the way we use it.

Well I am not in the accounting office, but I would "guestimate" that it pays for itself with the increase in efficiency, the ability to circumvent the need to have a ratio of 1 machine for every server, and it doesn't crash.

I built the machine for the test environment we have in-house. The machine ran about $700.00 over all. Day to day cost is only that of the electricity used to run it. The 4 other ESXi hosts were built before I arrived. I can estimate the cost about $400 each plus the OS's (SBS, Win2008r2, etc, etc) to build and to run daily is again only the cost of the electricity.

I came into the environment where it was already in place. Despite that fact, I have test drove Hyper-V and virtual box to compare and get a feel for which is best. I am a believer in VMWare.

Plan, plan, plan. Always plan out your network changes, test those changes, implement, monitor, and note take along the way. Aside from that, do it.