VMware vSphere Reviews

I like vCenter Server since you can monitor and control your whole environment from there. Also, the Web Client is nice to have, but I have heard from my colleagues that there are a lot of issues with it and it doesn’t work as good as it should do to make the C# client invane.

I think in our own way, it has it made the administration a lot easier, reduced maintenance time and made us more flexible in terms of large and quick deployments.

From what I have encountered, the Web Client should be improved so it loads faster locally, and certainly over a VPN connection, as I have experienced a very slow loading when using it over VPN.

The company has been using it for over three years, starting with v5.5, but I've only used v6.0.

Very good, I have opened a few calls with VMware already and I am very satisfied. I like the flexibility to open calls from the portal.

No previous solution was in place prior to v5.5.

We implemented everything through our in-house administrator team, but I wasn't involved.

The management piece of it, being able to see what all my servers are doing from one central place.

Higher return on investment, reduced cost of hardware, and central management which is key. The most important part is that it's nimble – I can deploy a server in minutes.

The product is perfect the way it is for us, for our needs.

Very stable – extremely so.

Easy to scale – able to scale out as we need.

Depending on what technical level you are on, they are responsive and very knowledgeable. Any time I have to use them a solution is forthcoming within 24 hours.

Somewhere in the middle – you have to know what you’re doing and have some knowledge. One thing with these products, is that the more you use them the easier it is.

We looked at Microsoft, and we looked at the viability of the product, technical support, and ease of use. VMware was chosen because of its ease of use, and the product itself.

It only breaks predictively.

• It's saved us costs for power and cooling.
• It's given us automation capabilities for server provisioning and management of configurations.

I'd like to see more trickle down features from vCloud/vRealize to the main feature suite.

Tentatively favorable – we haven’t had a lot of outages just wary about future upgrade ability.

I would go with unknown at this point – we're kind of small, at best were medium sized, so we're not sure what our scaling needs will be. It is not close to the maximum.

Good technical support – response time was good/ average.

Can be straightforward, but it can be complex, depending on the size and what you're trying to do.

It's easier to deploy if you have someone very knowledgeable. Use peer reviews; they're very important.

• DRS
• vMotion

However, without entire feature set we couldn’t manage.

It reduces the time needed to roll out new solutions. Also, it provides a single platform for our API integrations.

It needs color coding (e.g. production/non-=production, tier levels), as it treats everything the same.

It's pretty solid, most issues are resource and Java related, because Java is a resource hog, but it runs pretty smoothly.

There's no concern of scalability, and it gets better with each version. The only issue was with the FT portion, but with 6.0 no concern because it’s capable.

Zero issues with tech support. Our TAM answers after some time, but it's not a negative because they're dedicated just to our company.

The setup itself is simple, and the only thing is finding the minimums; it won’t tell you minimums prior to upgrades, and you won’t find out until machine dies.

It lose points because it lacks color coding, the web client is clunky, and the interface itself makes it harder to find stuff.

You should run the SQL scripts outside the intial install, cluster SQL, cluster vCenters and run as VMs, and set DR rules to match.

The virtualization is the valuable feature.

It's much easier to manage than a pile of hardware.

We are also able to roll out new ideas to the users quicker.

The web-based access is flaky. It needs to have a built in backup ability, and the update manager needs to be its own appliance.

I've been using it for four or five years.

It does not like working with the older Intel NICs nor the Realtek NICs, but I was able to work around that.

The one customer service issue I have had is almost three months old and still unresolved (that sucks).

I've never used tech support.

No previous solution used.

It's straightforward.

We did it in-house, and I would suggest you set up a couple of machines in a practice lab first though.

We can't quantify the ROI.

The pricing is reliable.

No as we've been using before any other virtualization software was popular.

• 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.

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.

5 out of 5

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.

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.