2014-06-08T06:29:00Z
Ariel Lindenfeld - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Community at PeerSpot
  • 84
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When evaluating Server Virtualization Software, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?

Let the community know what you think. Share your opinions now!
83
PeerSpot user
83 Answers
RR
Senior Integration Engineer and CEO at a tech company with 11-50 employees
User
2022-01-27T03:06:11Z
Jan 27, 2022

Maturity, support, cost, ability to clone and move VMs. 

Search for a product comparison in Server Virtualization Software
EC
User at Maccor, Inc.
User
2022-01-25T23:37:03Z
Jan 25, 2022

I run Oracle Linux with VirtualBox which has the Ksplice feature that allows me to update without reboots which means my virtual machines get fewer interruptions due to updates.

User
2022-01-25T13:28:09Z
Jan 25, 2022

Price, Ease of Use, Integration & Support

it_user71133 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager of Network at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2014-06-24T15:03:40Z
Jun 24, 2014

For me personally all of the above are relevant, (except comments like virtual environments are very easy to use, but yet very hard to manage, they're not, they're just different and require more than a Windows Skillset) however I traditionally start from where its going to end and so the question is, what is this going to leave behind? What is the legacy of implementing this? If implementing something causes a technology or vendor lock in, massive support costs, proprietary hardware, specific skills training etc, then it is to be given serious deliberation as to whether it is viable option for the business/organisation in the long term. So my most important criteria is legacy followed by Can we do a Proof of Concept for free therefore minimising investment to just engineering time.

it_user280818 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2015-08-24T03:38:15Z
Aug 24, 2015

A good solution must meet a balance between cost, performance, management, availability and scalability.

it_user209406 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at a tech services company
Consultant
2015-03-17T15:53:01Z
Mar 17, 2015

I agree with all of the above I will add a -no nonsense approach-...a big dose of simplicity--many a software that has a great capability is immediately thrown out by users or Tech guys and cause a tremendous loss of business hours because of its highly Academic approach and fancy wordings. Here are some examples..Yahoo is successful because of its straight forward interface.
Google one line search approach is another example..Windows 8 was not successful because of its nonsense interface..VMWare workstation is the best example of a successful Interface...One will not need much support if the software is TIDY..in today s age time is of the essence...Tech people must be able to intuitively navigate and learn on the spot and so are the user .so INTERFACE is KEY followed by what the gentlemen described.

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AH
Storage Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2017-10-29T09:30:28Z
Oct 29, 2017

- Scalability
- Stability
- TCO and ROI
- Manageability

it_user758805 - PeerSpot reviewer
consultant at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
2017-10-20T14:11:51Z
Oct 20, 2017

Hardware/software compatibility
Performance
ROI
Scalability

it_user739734 - PeerSpot reviewer
Datacenter-specialist at Sigmax
Real User
2017-09-19T11:57:40Z
Sep 19, 2017

Price, stability, functionality, ease of use, tooling, third party intergration

it_user734196 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Administration at Cisco
Real User
2017-09-10T18:21:14Z
Sep 10, 2017

compute, network, storage, & scalability

it_user687540 - PeerSpot reviewer
Expedia Virtualization and Cloud at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2017-06-19T20:15:52Z
Jun 19, 2017

Industry adoption of the software platform and historical stability of the product line.

it_user661647 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager, Identification Solutions at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
2017-05-09T15:50:12Z
May 9, 2017

Most Important: The ability of the software to support the business need at reasonable cost -- initial costs as well as ongoing support costs. In my case, I'm looking to create a virtual sandbox for Windows application testing as a VM within my existing machine that does not have adverse affects on my daily operations.

it_user605154 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Technologist / Product Manager at Oracle
Real User
2017-02-08T14:48:03Z
Feb 8, 2017

Hardware isolation
Backup and recovery
Monitoring and Management
Security: VPN, Firewall, SSH access
Tooling: Automation, REST API, CLI
Alerts and notifications

it_user473592 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oracle Linux & VM Server Lead Manager at BT Global Services
Real User
2016-07-04T07:24:54Z
Jul 4, 2016

Scalability, stability, ease of deployment and straightforward operational support. Finally, good technical support from the vendor.
Which also should be cost effective.

it_user415746 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Architect at Avaya
Vendor
2016-04-01T10:50:21Z
Apr 1, 2016

1. TCO and ROI
2. Manageability

it_user354876 - PeerSpot reviewer
System & Network Administrator at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
2015-12-11T13:26:36Z
Dec 11, 2015

Scalability, built in automation and self-service application integration and completeness.

it_user335340 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
2015-11-18T13:27:11Z
Nov 18, 2015

Meets the requirements of all aspects
Availability of services
Customer Service

it_user336504 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Service Specialist at IBM
MSP
2015-11-05T04:04:53Z
Nov 5, 2015

High availability of services.....

it_user332739 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business and Operation Manager at a integrator with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-10-26T01:42:55Z
Oct 26, 2015

Reliability, Performance, Ease of Management, Support and TCO

it_user271026 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
2015-10-14T04:20:54Z
Oct 14, 2015

Performance, Reliability and Support.

it_user326604 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Support Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
2015-10-12T00:42:57Z
Oct 12, 2015

1. Reliability
2. Scalability
3. Flexibility
4. TCO

it_user322788 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Global Infrastructure Technology at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2015-10-04T17:20:25Z
Oct 4, 2015

Automation capabilities

it_user321246 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Manager - System Test at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-09-30T17:47:14Z
Sep 30, 2015

Definitely stability, scale and performance.

it_user320844 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Admin Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
2015-09-30T09:39:38Z
Sep 30, 2015

1. Scalability/Reliability associated with business requirements.
2. Network Security
3. Easy management and handling of disasters.
4. Low OPEX and high ROI

it_user317130 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at EMC
Real User
2015-09-28T10:02:46Z
Sep 28, 2015

Supportability, Scalability, Flexibility and Performance.

it_user312168 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2015-09-21T09:49:42Z
Sep 21, 2015

Strong solution with fast ROI. Ease of use, and well known in Fortune 500

it_user314574 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Infrastructure at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
2015-09-18T08:46:26Z
Sep 18, 2015

ease of management, scalability, good features and of course stability

it_user303576 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
2015-09-01T15:25:52Z
Sep 1, 2015

Compatibility with existing systems, ease of setup and configuration.

it_user300963 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-08-27T21:08:37Z
Aug 27, 2015

the best solution should be a balance between performance, management, availability, scalability and cost

it_user292629 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Support Analyst at T-Systems
Real User
2015-08-21T13:16:32Z
Aug 21, 2015

When you are researching by a virtualization solution, you must to have in mind what you hop from this technology and how much do you intend to grow (how their environment can grow in a not too distant future).
With this in mind, you can see that we have many possibilities, but some one of them can generate additional costs if you have to increase the environment in a short time period.
Based in this criterias, you need to consider ROI and Scalability as main characteristics to acquire a virtualization system.
In a first moment, a cheaper solution can seems the best, but as said before, if you have to increase the environment quickly, this solution that seemed cheaper could become the most expensive.

it_user296049 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Architect and Software Developer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Consultant
2015-08-20T19:09:54Z
Aug 20, 2015

Self service provision with seamless interoperability with other proprietary and open source vitalization solutions.

it_user295155 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Solution Architect and Product Team at a tech services company
Consultant
2015-08-19T17:28:07Z
Aug 19, 2015

Easy to deploy, OS compatibility, user friendly, stability, reliability, security, scalability, suitable price with the performance

it_user291504 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer II at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
2015-08-13T18:40:20Z
Aug 13, 2015

For me, the most important factor is whether it meets the customer's needs or not. There are many use cases for all of the virtualization platforms and not one does everything perfectly. Price is always a factor in meeting the customer's needs, a lot of times the feature list comes after the price.

it_user279888 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant and Engineer at Cloud Services
Vendor
2015-07-29T12:54:27Z
Jul 29, 2015

Beside current requirements fulfillment, Future Enhancements and Capability in case we have double or even more bigger infra. Backup, HA and Fault Tolerance.

it_user272265 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Technician
Vendor
2015-07-14T12:58:08Z
Jul 14, 2015

i would say live migration scalability, compatibility with backup and storage solutions. efficacy and licensing cost.

it_user264357 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-06-30T05:31:23Z
Jun 30, 2015

the ease of operation

it_user256740 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at Autodesk, Inc.
Vendor
2015-06-17T15:15:25Z
Jun 17, 2015

live migration

it_user252054 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Associate -Technology
MSP
2015-06-09T14:12:53Z
Jun 9, 2015

The System Performance and Cost for the solution.

Vendor
2015-06-01T12:23:30Z
Jun 1, 2015

To reduce the number of physical server using virtualization and optimize the resources in the cost effective way.

it_user246471 - PeerSpot reviewer
Delivery software engineer at Mphasis
Consultant
2015-05-29T08:24:27Z
May 29, 2015

* Interoperability with storage systems for reliable HA, vMotion, DRS operations.
* Easy-to-configure process & supportive help files(with diagrammatic representaions) for any new operations included. With this any feature could be executed without any hassle.

it_user246072 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Solutions Presales Manager and Manages Services Coordinator with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-05-28T09:43:31Z
May 28, 2015

Ease of use (especially management), flexibility and scalability.

it_user244725 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Real User
2015-05-26T14:48:22Z
May 26, 2015

Virtualization most important criteria
- scalability (being ability to move and build more without outage)
- flexibility, and resiliency (hardware outage without application outage)
- stability (knowing that the system will be available)
- manageability (managing the system with solid tools, and not have to manage the system everyday)

it_user231369 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analista da Infraestrutura - Coordenador at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-04-29T13:18:11Z
Apr 29, 2015

Use of technology with ease of upgrade to enterprise solution.

VR
Virtual Infrastructure Admin at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Real User
2015-04-23T12:35:22Z
Apr 23, 2015

TCO

it_user226011 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President of Web Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
2015-04-20T17:01:44Z
Apr 20, 2015

Stability, scalability and ease of management.

it_user225810 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a financial services firm
Vendor
2015-04-20T10:10:31Z
Apr 20, 2015

Performance and efficiency. Every bit of degradation between bare metal and the VM client is a cause for concern. I am trying to balance virtualization benefits (scalability and administration) against bare metal performance benefits.

it_user224781 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT and Hardware Product Management with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-04-17T07:16:43Z
Apr 17, 2015

Scalability, stability, ease of deployment
Performance, easy to manage
...

it_user222528 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Information Technology at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-04-13T20:08:26Z
Apr 13, 2015

As both a VMWare and Microsoft HyperV instructor, I get to experience both products in a classroom environment as well as a live environment. I look for stability and scaleability first and foremost. By far, VMWare wins hands down in these areas except costs. Now with VMWare NSX (Virtualized routing and Switching) VMware has taken the lead in this area as well. Microsoft is well behind.

Vendor
2015-04-07T11:11:30Z
Apr 7, 2015

Ease of use, stability, flexibility and met the business requirements.

it_user199644 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a energy/utilities company
Vendor
2015-03-18T14:29:13Z
Mar 18, 2015

Stability and ease of use/management

it_user208386 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Systems Specialist III at a tech services company
Consultant
2015-03-15T14:08:40Z
Mar 15, 2015

Stability, and flexible. meeting all other requirements.

it_user205110 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Operations Professional at IBM
MSP
2015-03-09T16:50:42Z
Mar 9, 2015

99.9 % Uptime with effective of minimum cost.....!

it_user203913 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-03-06T13:35:58Z
Mar 6, 2015

Storage

Vendor
2015-02-10T16:31:20Z
Feb 10, 2015

Flexibility and easy to adapt

it_user192321 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP ICT & Cloud Services at a tech services company
Consultant
2015-02-10T12:47:29Z
Feb 10, 2015

To meet the capability, usability, stability, performance, support and manageability towards business needs.

it_user189411 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a comms service provider
Vendor
2015-02-03T18:20:53Z
Feb 3, 2015

P2v, scalability , Migration Alternatives, Performance, Support

it_user188487 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator
Vendor
2015-02-01T07:10:51Z
Feb 1, 2015

Flexibility, Scalability, Migration Alternatives, Performance, Support.

Vendor
2015-01-29T18:21:31Z
Jan 29, 2015

Main criteria would be: Scope of OSes supported; Performance & stability; Support; Costs.

it_user184947 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. System Administrator at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2015-01-23T17:30:43Z
Jan 23, 2015

SLA should be minimized, Easy to maintain and support.

it_user181713 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Development at a retailer
Vendor
2015-01-14T20:50:15Z
Jan 14, 2015

Ease of end user transition followed by the difficulty to implement. Those are the top two.

it_user181560 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a tech services company
Consultant
2015-01-14T14:38:51Z
Jan 14, 2015

The most important criterias when looking for server virtualization software are: business support, certification, features like snapshot, cloning and backup and finally, openess. Clear and supported procedures on how to migrate between the major Virtualization platforms should be made available to make you feel confortable with the choice you make and provide you a way to migrate to an alternate platform in the future. Avoid vendor lock-in !

it_user179640 - PeerSpot reviewer
Database Expert at a tech services company
Consultant
2015-01-08T17:34:45Z
Jan 8, 2015

Performance of different type of the Guest OS hosting on the virtual hypervisor.
Performance of the storage devices connected with the Virtual Server.
Good Knowledge Base with the problems/solutions.
Drivers for the not standard devices (such as ethernet,wifi etc).

Vendor
2015-01-02T05:05:25Z
Jan 2, 2015

Ease to Adapt & maintain and support

it_user176196 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a tech services company
Consultant
2014-12-29T12:44:26Z
Dec 29, 2014

Stability, support, do we have the skills within our area and does it meat our Business requirements. Also in what other stacks can it inter-great into.

e.g scom, sccm

Does it have HA and recovery modes that are simple and not hard to use. replication between Production and DR installations must be a simple.

Vendor
2014-12-11T21:48:00Z
Dec 11, 2014

Flexibility, scalability towards business needs.

it_user168336 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager
Vendor
2014-12-04T07:54:49Z
Dec 4, 2014

Inter-interoperability with other vitalization Software and open source solution!

Vendor
2014-12-04T02:57:34Z
Dec 4, 2014

Usability would be first come out of my mind. Going virtualization is already hard. If it is very difficult to use, it will impede use to further using the technology.

Vendor
2014-12-01T18:42:25Z
Dec 1, 2014

Stablity

it_user166731 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
2014-12-01T08:50:56Z
Dec 1, 2014

Easy scalability and management of VM. Also important is backup and restor of single instances.

it_user163023 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at HP Singapore
Consultant
2014-11-14T15:20:42Z
Nov 14, 2014

End to End Security and all that is commented by Phil Durbin

Vendor
2014-11-13T08:23:22Z
Nov 13, 2014

Cost per user, scalability and how management of VM can be decentralized to end users

it_user160449 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Specialist at Zones Inc.
Consultant
2014-11-03T16:18:31Z
Nov 3, 2014

Most important is it should support most of your application, then come the stability and scalability. Also do not miss the word backup,

it_user158733 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company
Consultant
2014-10-26T19:50:38Z
Oct 26, 2014

P2V and V2P features.

it_user156303 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a tech services company
Consultant
2014-10-13T22:29:48Z
Oct 13, 2014

Depend of business, but apply for most ROI, escalibity and flexibility.

it_user143445 - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2014-07-29T11:45:18Z
Jul 29, 2014

Active Active failover between data centers and a single dashboard to cover all the various parts of the virtualization platform.

it_user135048 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech services company
Consultant
2014-06-21T15:30:33Z
Jun 21, 2014

Scalability, usability, stability, performance. It can be either open or not. Lastly, given the situation, it depends on hands on experience with the product for support. Without support, it's hard to run anything.

it_user134133 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Corporate Systems at a non-profit with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
2014-06-20T12:24:17Z
Jun 20, 2014

Scalability, stability, ease of deployment and straightforward operational support. Finally, good technical support from the vendor.

it_user133737 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT supervisor at a financial services firm
Vendor
2014-06-20T07:03:29Z
Jun 20, 2014

OS and storage compatibility, scalability ease of use obiviously. But one must also consider the subsequent backup technology associated with it because virtual environments are very easy to use, but yet very hard to manage.

it_user131634 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Expert at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
2014-06-20T01:43:57Z
Jun 20, 2014

in order to chose a Virtualization software, usually I think business first, meaning it has broad business applications certified stack (ERP, MRP, HR, CRM, Sales), then it must have a clear roadmap that meets IT Strategy (DRP, Backup, SDN) must have a solid support.

Real User
2014-06-19T17:18:43Z
Jun 19, 2014

ROI and scalability.

YE
System and Network Administrator at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Real User
2014-06-13T11:29:16Z
Jun 13, 2014

+1 for Scalability and stability and I will add that the virtualization solution must be compliant with backup software at least the well known ones.

it_user128034 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Delivery Manager with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
2014-06-12T21:34:48Z
Jun 12, 2014

Flexibility and ease of use

it_user127869 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a tech services company
Consultant
2014-06-12T17:59:44Z
Jun 12, 2014

The ability of the software to meet all business requirements.

Related Questions
AB
User at Visiting Nurse Service of NY
Jan 8, 2022
Hi community, I'm working at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees. Please let me know which virtualization software (Oracle VM, Azure VM, Microsoft Hyper-V, Google Compute Engine, VMware, ...) would you recommend for my organization?  Please let me know why would you choose the suggested solution.
2 out of 6 answers
SP
Principal System Engineer at BCBS of MN
Nov 29, 2021
I am not sure what workloads you're planning to run on the virtualized platform - databases, SAP, Hadoop, etc. But VMware vSphere is a great virtual platform to run (mixed of different types of workloads).  It is simple to deploy and maintain.  Do you still have 3 tiers of traditional infrastructure? Network Storage and Compute? Do you plan to implement HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure)? 
OA
Head of Architecture and DevOps at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Nov 29, 2021
Hi  If you are looking for on-premise VMware would suffice most of your requirements. However,  if you are allowed for Cloud I would recommend to select Microsoft Azure. I have recently locked the on-premise Data Center to Azure for one of the Healthcare providers in Dubai.
SA
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at DHA
Nov 29, 2021
Hi community, Can you please share your experience regarding real-time Virtual-to-Virtua (lV2V) replication from primary to secondary storage in any hypervisor platform? Thanks for your help!
See 1 answer
EB
Director of Community at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Nov 29, 2021
Hi @Abbasi Poonawala, @Chris Childerhose, @Daniel Aramayo, @Steffen Hornung ​and @reviewer1362099, Can you possibly share your experience with @Syed Abid Hussain ​or assist with this question? Thanks for the help!
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