VMware vSphere Review

The best VM hypervisor

Valuable Features:

Memory overcommittment and deduplication, allowing higher consolidation ratios.

Improvements to My Organization:

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. 

Room for Improvement:

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

Use of Solution:

3 years.

Stability Issues:

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.

Cost and Licensing Advice:

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

Other Advice:

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. 

**Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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4 Comments
author avatarit_user2652 (Project Manager at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees)
Top 20PopularVendor

I would always recommend to install all the relevant vmware patches and hardware firmwares before the system goes into production to avoid any instability performance issues.

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author avatarit_user113166 (Engineer at a tech services company)
Consultant

I agree that any server used for ESXI or any other use should be on current firmware and that includes option cards before installing any OS. If you have vCenter you can keep track of the patches available for ESXI servers. Apply then during a scheduled maintenance cycle when you can schedule downtime. I have been supporting server hardware for 20 years and firmware updates should always be checked before use. There also firmware released after that can go on during the scheduled maintenance cycle. That can include storage too, I stabilized a couple arrays with a firmware update,

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author avatarit_user271749 (Network System Administrator at a government)
Vendor

Well-written account of real world experience with the product.

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author avatarChris Childerhose
ExpertTop 5Real User

As stated by others always update firmware and patch VMware prior to going in to Production. It will save on issues like you had.

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Highlights
We are able to patch our hosts during production hours with the ability to keep services running.
The vMotion in particular I think is the most valuable because this feature provides migrations of virtual machines in case you want to run do maintenance.
The free ESXi hypervisor was a great way to get started, as it allowed us to introduce virtual machines so that users could start to experience the advantages.
It has allowed us to be more resilient to infrastructure and hardware failure, reduced hardware costs, and decreased recovery time from failures.
The most valuable feature is the VDP Backup solution.
The ability of a running VM to be quickly relocated to another hypervisor or launched at another site via replicated storage greatly reduces downtime.
Its DR facility is good. Within a moment, data can be retrieve from another physical location over the Internet. The speed to recover data is good.
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