VMware vSphere Review

​Exponentially easier to manage servers, but plan for more storage than you think.

What is most valuable?

Robust, functional, reliable, ease of use, good value.

How has it helped my organization?

Exponentially easier to manage servers.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since 2009.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

None

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

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

No - prior was physical one up servers.

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

In-house plus one consultant.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Considered Hyper V.

What other advice do I have?

Plan for more storage than you think, use flash, use 10gbE SFP+ to SANs - well worth it.

**Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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2 Comments
author avatarit_user271026 (System Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees)
Vendor

I do agree, you need minimum of 25 to 30 % extra storage.

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author avatarChris Childerhose
ExpertTop 5Real User

Also depending on protocol you will use can determine storage requirements also - like FC, iSCSI, FCoE, etc. Also using 10GB helps tremendously which we have in our environment for iSCSI and VMs.

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Highlights
We are able to patch our hosts during production hours with the ability to keep services running.
Production people can quickly reboot the server with ESXi Quick Boot.
The most valuable feature is its ability to revert to previous snapshots during testing of various guest and application deployments.
We are able to create virtual machines and move them from one host to another, controlling the resources.
The most valuable feature is vSAN, as it reduces the cost of SAN storage and maintenance.
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.
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