VMware vSphere Reviews

It is os-independent having a very thin architecture with which it can offer unparalleled security and reliability. Unlike most other hypervisors in the market, this don't need a general purpose operating system clearing the hazards of processor overhead, Antivirus and other OS processor consumption. Its this feature makes it prominent in the market of hypervisors.

Well, not much drawbacks actually. It serves the purpose it is designed for but still a very few little things that i have notices that can be called its drawbacks can be 1. Fault tolerance limits features available to virtual machines. 2. Automatic fallback of VMs currently not supported. This can be crucial in some environments.

It is one easy to install and manage vitualization technique. Its pretty fast also, compared to some other vitualization techniques. And that is because its has a very small amout of resource overhead. It lacks the server console which decreases its booting time.

We can say its free but it's not. Free versions has limited capabilities and misses some very strong features. So in my opinion its not free. Other then that, it misses the console, which may be good from booting point of view, but from troubleshooting point of view, its bad. As it takes a lot more administrations skills to tackle problem without the proper control panes in the form of the console panel.

Most usable hypervisor in the industry. It's well documented, really simple and quick to setup.

You can not manage it from Linux.

VMware Server is a free, easy-to-use Windows and Linux application that provides a superior introductory experience to server virtualization for businesses to optimize utilization of their technology assets. Below mentioned standout features explains why VMware is so popular among all virtualization software's: •You don’t need to configure your hardware: VMware installs on top of existing OS, you don't really have to worry about configuring hardware to work with it. • Simple and basic Installation: VMware has done a great job making it easy to install. • Web-based management interface: Manage your VMWare installation via Web browser. • Large support for guest operating systems: Every version of Windows and many Linux distributions are supported.

1. In January 2010, VMware announced the End of Support for VMware Server with support ending on June 30, 2011. Users are free to continue using VMware Server but are recommended to migrate to another VMware offering to gain the benefits of newer technologies. 2. Additional Layer affect performance: Machine's own operating system sits between the hardware and virtualization software- meaning it isn't one of those bare‐metal virtualization products that you install directly on the server. The result is that a portion of machines capability isn't available to your VMware server because it’s devoted to running the underlying operating system.VMware is also known for the below given features : • Supports two-processor SMP systems and enables single virtual machine to span multiple processors: Allows you to take advantage of multiprocessing. • Virtual state capture : Capture your virtual machine’s state so if a problem arises you can roll back to a previous state. • Easy migration path to other VMWare products : upgrading to a different product is easy.

All these features mean that VMware Server is a great platform for personal experimentation or light business use. I've personally had a VMware Server host with a couple guest machines running continuously since 2009.

Greatly consolidated my server infrastructure; DR/BCP friendly

Hard to justify annual maintenance vs. HyperV

Unlike VMware workstation where we have to log in to desktop to run VM(s), with VMware Server we can run VM on the background. It also have a web based management interface so you don't have to install a software on your desktop to manage VMware server. It’s still quite useful virtualization software that you can use for free if you want to spend extra mile patching some files before you can compile support for your kernel.

VMware server already reaches its end of support on June 30, 2011. Since it’s not supported anymore, and new support for newer OS, if you use a new Linux distro, you have to patch some files before you can compile support for you running kernel.VMware itself suggest its users to move to VMware Player if you only need to run small number of VMs on your desktop, or VMware vSphere Hypervisor if you want to run on dedicated machine.

Not the best choice if you want to start learning virtualization. You better choose VMware Player, or VirtualBox if you want to run virtualization software on your desktop or VMware vSphere Hypervisor and XenServer Free edition if you want a free virtualization software on a dedicated machine.

• VMware Server is problem solving and cost saving. • No need to buy hardware for every server required, just purchase one server and run multiple virtual machines on that single hardware. • Offers testing solutions, provisioning solutions, and makes testing and rolling out installation easier. • Easy to use technology and industry leader in virtualization technology.

• The new Graphic User Interface is not of high quality. • Web based User Interface means breaching compatibility with any principle of rich client applications, and means lots of bugs particular to every different browser

A major issue with this server is that there are several free solutions offered. These are very appealing because of the virtualization rollout that cuts costs. If your intention is to decrease costs by using the VMware Server instead of several machines for several servers, the horsepower of the VMware hardware should be very powerful or every virtual machine will experience a mess.

ESXi has one major benefit that outweighs the others; IT'S FREE!Yes, it has plenty of other benefits, like running a wide variety of different virtual operating systems in virtual machines (it supports every platform but OS X, and that can technically still be "hacked" onto it).It's incredibly robust, has excellent resource management, and is easy to set up. It allows for importing of virtual appliances, or pre-made VM's, or a creation of your own VM's.

The only issue I have with ESXi is that it is console (CLI) based. While I personally have no operational issue with this, as most of my training began with CLI based systems, some people might not want to configure a high availability virtual machine server via the Command Line.They're now marketing ESXi as VMware vSphere Hypervisor, which makes sense because that's essentially what it is. There used to be another product called ESX, which was a step between ESXi and vSphere, but they did away with that and rolled some of the features into ESXi.

All in all, it is an excellent solution that I have deployed in multiple locations and organizations.