VMware vSphere Reviews and Pricing

Infra Director with 51-200 employees

Jul 28, 2014

Enables combining many physical servers but is pricey

Use of Solution:

I have been using the solution for 7 years.

Valuable Features:

Reliability, Flexibility, High Availability; Vmware enables virtual servers to instantly move from 1 physical server to another with no user downtime.

Improvements To Organization:

Enables combining many physical servers to a few or one.

Room For Improvement:

The price could be lower.

Deployment Issues:

No issues with deployment.

Stability Issues:

No issues with stability.

Scalability Issues:

No issues with scalability.

Customer Service:

Very good customer service.

Technical Support:

Very good technical support.

Previous Solutions:

Yes, we previously used Citrix Xenserver and Microsoft HyperV.

Initial Setup:

It was straightforward, but you need training first.

Implementation Team:

We implemented through an in-house vendor team.

ROI:

1-3 years depending on how many physical servers are eliminated.

Setup Cost:

Our setup costs/every day costs are several thousand dollars.

Other Advice:

Do a pilot / proof of concept first, and test -- take a non-ciritical server, convert it to a virtual server and let it run for a few weeks - then a 2nd, then a 3rd. If it all works, well, then do more

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user131937

Works at a non-tech company with 501-1,000 employees

Jul 9, 2014

Download

Improved our server consolidation and research work but lacks live migration features

What is most valuable?

Hypervisor, VM deployment, Migration, Dynamic frequency scaling.

How has it helped my organization?

Server consolidation and Research work.

What needs improvement?

SDK of vCenter server PowerCLI lacks live migration features.

For how long have I used the solution?

3 years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

vCenter server installation is really a headache.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Often the virtual disks are corrupted if servers are shut down due to power fluctuation.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

vCenter comes with strict licensing which is not only expensive but also not realistic.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: Have not experienced yet.Technical Support: Not much support for vBenter SDK.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward till the installation of vCenter.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, Xen and Cloudera.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSphere

May 2025

Free Report: VMware vSphere Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user71133

Senior Manager of Network at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Jun 23, 2014

Download

I have tried XenServer, Hyper V, & KVM...but ESXi has been doing it better for longer

What is most valuable?

You can get it downloaded and installed for free. It allows you to do more with less. It's easy to use and simple to configure. There are hardware vendor specific builds of the software, increasing visibility and manageability of the product.

How has it helped my organization?

We have less physical servers to monitor and put under warranty.

For how long have I used the solution?

10 plus years in various forms as GSX, ESX and now ESXi.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Deployment options are varied with ESXi, so depending on what you're trying to achieve within your business.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Due to the multitude of configuration options, you can occasionally experience compatibility issues with 3rd party storage vendors such as NetApp which recently had a known issue with NFS reporting all ports down.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Never encountered any scalability issues with this product. It is truly enterprise.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: Good to excellent.Technical Support: Good to Excellent depending on what engineer is assigned to you.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have tried other hypervisor technologies including XenServer, Hyper V, KVM, Parallels and virtual box. They all do the same thing, but ESXi has been doing it better for longer.

How was the initial setup?

Exceedingly simple setup. You can make it more complex depending how truly enterprise your needs are, like stateless implementations of ESXi.

What was our ROI?

Reduced Electricity Bills, reduced hardware and warranty costs. Reduced server implementation time. Increased management and availability of corporate services.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Not on this occasion but I have assessed other hypervisors.

What other advice do I have?

Assess why you think virtualisation is the answer to your problem. Research hypervisor choices, perform Proof of Concept exercises with those products you choose to assess and most of all think about the legacy of what you're doing. i.e. what do you want to leave behind?

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user133545Works at a tech services company

Report as inappropriate

Aug 30, 2014

There will be no performance issues as long as you run the correct no of vm that is supported by the hardware.
Here is a simple calculation to find out the no of vm you can run on your hardware.
A Hard disk with
7,200 rpm - 100 iops
10,000 rpm-150 iops
15,000 rpm- 200 iops
For Example : You have 9 Hard disks configured in Raid ,Count the no of hard disks that contribute to the storage.
In this case all 9 hard disks contribute to the storage.And the hard disk has a 10,000 rpm speed so the no of iops is 150
Hard disk*no of iops=Total no of iops
9*150= 1350
if we would like to run 40 virtual machines
1350/40 = 33.75 each vm would get around 33 iops which would give you no performance issues.
Instead you chose to run 50 vm
1350/50 = 27 each vm would get around 27 iops which would cause performance issues.

See all 6 comments

it_user128259

Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Jun 17, 2014

Download

VMware ESXi is better than its predessor, ESX 3 & 4.

What is most valuable?

Its high availability, hot memory and CPU enabled features. Not forgetting the Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS), vMotion, Storage vMotion and Dynamic Power Management (DPM).

How has it helped my organization?

We are beginning to experience less downtimes and if there is going to be any downtime, it is extremely minimised. Continously consolidating servers and utilising resources to save power and water.

What needs improvement?

We have noticed the great need for more power and memory requirements especially when the vmware servers (guests) start to request for more processing and memory.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since 2011.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Our deployment of VMware went smoothly.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The Vmware environment was available and stable when we first deployed it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We had plenty of room to increase our environment so there is no problem with it.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: We did it ourselves and did not include VMware.Technical Support: No support from VMware.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, we went straight to VMware.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straight-forward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented this solution with the support from IBM, and their support was pretty good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No, we never evaluated any other options.

What other advice do I have?

Since I don't have experience with other solutions, except Vmware, I like it and recommend others who are looking for such a solution to consider talking to VMware.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user6384

Infrastructure Expert at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

May 1, 2014

Download

This server class product is very stable, but expensive.

Valuable Features:

This server class product is very stable, I have been using it for more than 7 years, previous versions were named different with less bugs. No downtime.

Room for Improvement:

Pricing can be considered as measure block small and mid range companies. Company needs to think in this direction as well.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3405Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Report as inappropriate

Mar 6, 2014

@Radu and Carlos,

If you are installing Vsphere 5.1, it comes with a web interface, just be sure to install it, the software runs on port 9443, it is called VMware Vsphere Web Client. Most of the time, people select the default installation items instead of installing this aspect of the program.

See all 6 comments

it_user4524

Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 1, 2014

VMware vSphere 5.5 Review

The industry’s flagship virtualization platform, VMware’s vSphere, reached its latest release in September of 2013 with the launch of version 5.5. I am a ‘best tool for the job’ sort of technologist, and strive to stay impartial and always recommend the right product for the purpose. Currently, this release is better than any other hypervisor on the market in many ways, such as performance, scalability, management, and automation. I make this statement unequivocally and without bias because I believe so strongly in this product. Every environment that I encounter in my job has some sort of VMware infrastructure powering some set of its critical business applications.

The core of the platform is the server-level virtualization hypervisor, VMware ESXi. It is a bare metal hypervisor that gets installed on each server, and the installation footprint is as low as 2GB! Most of my new installations either run from an SD card embedded on the motherboard, or a certified USB key.

The centralized management portion comes from the vCenter Server. It provides relatively simple management for the environment, and unlike some of VMware’s competitors, vCenter Server is included with the vSphere suite of products. A web-based management interface (unfortunately Flash based at the moment, so iPads need not apply), in addition to a fat client, is available for remote management.

The scalability of the product is simply incredible. A single virtual machine can now scale up to 64 vCPUs and 1TB of vRAM. CPU and memory overhead take a benchmarking team to determine the virtualization ‘wedge’, or performance penalty, which the virtualization layer imposes on performance. Storage latency is under 100 microseconds per I/O. at this point, the VMware ESXi hypervisor layer’s impact to performance is so minute that I consider it functionally transparent.

It has the capacity to run over 85 different operating systems, well beyond its competitors. Bells and whistles like vMotion and Storage vMotion, shared-nothing vMotion, Distributed Virtual Switches, capacity management features such as Storage and Network I/O Control, and capacity management tools such as VMware vCenter Operations Manager (Foundation version included at no cost) stack up to make this the most flexible, scalable, and capable virtualization platform on the market today.

My home lab is completely virtualized with VMware vSphere 5.5 is running at its core. Anywhere from three to six hosts are powered on at any given time, and can handle anything that I need to replicate a problem encountered at a client site, or tinker around with learning scenarios for continuing self-education.

Add-ons to the core hypervisor, such as Site Recovery Manager, vCloud Director, vShield, and vCenter Operations Manager continue to enhance the platform, and add that much more capability and flexibility into an environment that is already the flagship of the industry.

The core VMware vSphere suite is capable of handling just about any application workload that I have ever ran across, and is suitable for any datacenter at tiny businesses all the way up to Fortune 50. Leverage VMware’s vSphere to let your infrastructure move at the speed of the business, not of the IT department. Welcome to the cloud!

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user4524Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Report as inappropriate

Oct 21, 2013

I have used everything from just a single server with local disks all the way up to the large VCE vBlocks. It all really depends on the workload properties of those individual web servers. Do you know how utilized the current web servers that you have are? What sort of IOPs and throughput requirements do you have? Usually web servers are CPU and memory intensive but not very disk hungry.

See all 2 comments

it_user4524

Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 1, 2014

Download

VMware's vSphere is THE industry leading virtualization platform - today

Valuable Features:

- Increase the flexibility and agility of the infrastructure to move at the speed of business by decoupling the server from the hardware - Server consolidation has driven the virtualization industry shift, and vSphere leads the charge. - Virtualization overhead is the smallest of any hypervisor on the planet. - Supports over 90 operating systems, whereas other vendors cannot even come close - Centralized management and built-in performance statistics collection make management easy - Complementing tools, such as Site Recovery Manager, vCenter Operations Manager, vShield, and vCloud Director just increase the power of the stack. - Add in the licensing for the operating systems and the applications running virtualized, plus the cost of management tools. The competition costs the same.

Room for Improvement:

- The entry point for small business is fairly high. They are working on this currently. - Capacity management for top-tier business critical servers - Currently VMware has a tremendous amount of products that complement the vSphere suite. Some of the products are complementary, and some compete with each other. This product list is sometimes hard to navigate. - Security access granularity for end users can be complex.

Other Advice:

VMware's vSphere is currently THE industry leading virtualization platform. I have been using VMware vSphere and its predecessors for almost ten years now. The core hypervisor continues to lead the industry. At the present time, you cannot go wrong with VMware's vSphere suite. However, competitors are rapidly closing the gap, so watch the market closely over the next few years. I implement business-critical applications on vSphere for all sizes of business almost daily, and am proud to be a virtualization enthusiast. At the moment, VMware vSphere is my hypervisor of choice - without reservation.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Report as inappropriate

Sep 16, 2014

Does anyone know what is the correct number of JVMs per virtual machine? Thank you.

See all 12 comments

it_user82776

Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 7, 2014

Provides adaptive and cost effective security services within a single management framework

The VMware vShield family provides adaptive and cost effective security services within a single management framework for securing virtual datacenters and cloud environments at all levels-host, network, applications, data and endpoint. The vShield products are built from the ground up to protect virtualized infrastructure more efficiently and economically than legacy physical approaches to security relied upon by vSphere competitors. vShield products enforce security at the ESXi hypervisor level and are managed by specialized virtual appliances to make security virtualization-aware. The vShield product family includes, VMware vShield Zones, VMware vShield App, VMware vShield App with Data Security, VMware vShield Edge, VMware vShield Endpoint and VMware vShield Manager.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.