VMware NSX Room for Improvement
RW
Ray Wakefield
Hybrid Consultant at Bechtle
There's generally quite a lack of specialists in this space. One of the challenges as a reseller is that I need technical people to go and offer in-depth conversations about the products. We would engage someone to do that, or we would look for some engineering resources to be able to do the implementation. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of those. There is a massive skill shortage.
It's a good product, but the way that it has got so many multiple levels that need to be purchased makes it expensive and cumbersome. They seem to value shareholders more than customers, but most corporations seem to do that anyway.
View full review »RN
Roger Nurse
VMware NSX T/V Consulting Engineer /Solutions Architect at Onebox Solutions
Traffic flow introspection topology visibility is definitely needed because at the moment, NSX-T lacks in this area.
A hardware scan of the ESXi host for possible incompatibilities should be added to NSX-T/vSphere, as it would allow us to know in advance, for example, if a pNIC is not compatible with a version of vSphere before moving forward with an NSX-T deployment.
It needs a better, integrated migration tool. Something like RestNSX with more elaborate capabilities from a troubleshooting perspective and pre-migration perspective would be an improvement.
In the next release, they should enhance the visual interface. With NSX-T, it's difficult to communicate between the public cloud and the container.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
VMware NSX
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware NSX. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
RN
Roger Nurse
VMware NSX T/V Consulting Engineer /Solutions Architect at Onebox Solutions
- NSX Manager console: limit on number of NSX Controllers an architecture can have
- Support for ESXi, KVM, bare-metal servers, Kubernetes, OpenShift, AWS and Azure.
- Integrate NSX Controllers into NSX Manager as a single virtual appliance so controllers no longer need to be deployed independently.
- Directs to vCenter by registering Transport Nodes instead of registering NSX Manager inside of vCenter.
- Use a more modern overlay technology for encapsulation that performs better and is more flexible for the future over older, more traditional VXLAN overlay technology.
We had some issues with the cloud version.
It needs to be cheaper.
We are stopping its use. We won't need it because we'll be using cloud-native.
View full review »One aspect that needs improvement is the need for further automation. We are already operating in a software-defined data center environment, and while the product is mature, there's room for enhancing automation.
SB
So Ben
Virtualization admin at Bouygues Telecom Mobile
The solution could benefit from improvements in its pricing and scalability.
View full review »MM
MostafaMourad
Cyber Security Division Head at TurnKey
It's just access controlled. It should be leveraged by adding more detailed, deep security products to facilitate the NXS. The security needs improvement.
It's not feature-rich. It's not doing many tasks like a Next Generation Firewall such as Palo Alto for VM or other vendors like Fortinet for virtualized environments.
It has to have the features from next-generation firewalls, and it needs to complement other features, as in the unified security gateway, to be a good competitor against other solutions.
It does not integrate well with many platforms.
View full review »The solution is only sold as part of a bundle and not as an individual product. Some customers only need vSphere or NSX for their use cases, but account executives focus on bundles so this is a problem.
Account executives need to talk with both systems and security staff to get a full picture of the environment's requirements. For example, systems staff have no need for the solution so they will never deploy it.
View full review »It could be more user-friendly, but it's manageable. When we add a specific node to this particular NSX and the configuration changes, it won't push through the errors where required, but it'll accept it. However, while using it, we will have issues. It can also be more stable.
View full review »Any technical product has its own limitations in one place or another.
Our technical team is always looking for the solutions that they work with to offer more convenient integrations.
View full review »ST
MD.SIHAB TALUKDAR
System Engineer at asa
There are always issues integrating with Cisco.
Switching is always a big problem for us because our switch is not supported.
If the integration was more open, then it would be good.
View full review »PW
Paul Walsh
VMware Administrator at Ryanair Holdings
The solution is quite complex. You need to keep your thinking cap on and know what you are doing: Go to the training and listen to the solution architects when they come in because they have a lot of knowledge.
There is a concern and some confusion around who owns NSX in the end, whether it's the network team or the VMware team. There is not much confusion about this anymore, but there was at the start. Would it be owned by the network team, who might never even have seen VMware before, but would understand firewall rules? Or would it be owned by your average VMware person? As far as someone else putting it in, make sure you know who is going to own it, and they have the staff and the capabilities to cover it.
View full review »It should support Hyper-V also. Nowadays, NSX supports the KVM and ESXi hypervisors only. It should also support Hyper-V and Citrix hypervisors.
There have already been lots of improvements. For example, they edited the intelligent plans and added an advanced load balancer. The latest version, 4.0, really has all the features you need.
It's a bit complex to set up the product.
View full review »I haven't found any shortcomings.
It might be nice to have more AI in the future. It would help keep us from redesigning every time.
View full review »HS
HectorSantander
General Manager at SIEC SISTEMAS
There were some issues in finance and other accounting. The applications there are very old. To move these applications, we had to use some controls or web services for programming in a new program, for example, in Python or visual C#. You have to move these applications to new programming software. It was very, very complex to move them. However, we ended up doing it very well.
ESX servers are a part that they don't implement. The client that this part of the VMware is important. You can implement more virtual machines using ESX server infrastructure. However, they couldn't complete this part since, for some arrangements in the contract, they don't put it in the contract. They need to buy new licenses to complete the project.
View full review »The network-extending capabilities for the physical environment need improvement. Instead of virtualization, the ability to add physical servers to the network could be enhanced.
View full review »FL
reviewer2170926
Head of SDN at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It could be helpful if the solution's licensing model is based on the number of VMs rather than hypervisors.
View full review »LK
LalitKumar7
Executive Engineer at ONGC
The solution could improve by having a more streamlined setup.
View full review »I'm not sure where the solution can be improved.
We did recently need a patch to deal with an outage on NSX.
The price is rather high.
View full review »I believe we need to attain a certain level of maturity and work closely with multiple customers to make substantial improvements and achieve notable results. The feature it can improve is essentially application-based load balancing with intelligent load distribution for applications that require redundancy and high availability. This feature operates at a micro-level, specifically focusing on the payloads of applications.
To clarify further, I believe that if NSX offers this functionality along with robust security measures for application payloads, it would greatly benefit customers. Instead of investing in additional devices or appliances for load balancing and security, organizations would likely prefer to leverage NSX's integrated capabilities in this regard.
View full review »
A room for improvement in VMware NSX is that it has some security vulnerabilities, which means my company has to apply the patches every once in a while.
View full review »SB
Saurabh Bhattacharya
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
In rare situation there are mismatch in the control plane data and dataplane data i.e. the details and what you actually see on the transport note. This is rare but time consuming to troubleshoot . Additionally, there could be better integration between VMware Cloud Federation (VCF) and NSX-T. Currently, there are some limitations, for example, VCF allows just one overlay transport zone. Also there is not upgrade path from VCF 3(NSX-T 2.5.x) to VCF 4 (NSX-T 3.x)
View full review »NSX's stability could be improved.
View full review »They have some limitations in the firewall features as compared to the on-prem or dedicated hardware appliance. They can add more features, such as IPS and IDS, to the cloud firewall.
View full review »There could be an improvement in regards to security. This solution cannot migrate all assets smoothly and continuously, for example, the host
Sometimes the physical hosts are not able to be converted into virtual ones, which needs to be fixed.
View full review »There is room for improvement in VMware NSX's workload management, particularly in the orchestration layer and in managing workloads across multiple clouds.
Additionally, where workload management could be improved is in the ability to federate workloads seamlessly between different control panels. For example, if I am using VMware vCenter as my control panel and have partnered with a non-VMware provider, I should be able to manage my workloads as a customer without having to worry about orchestration. This is an area where there is potential for improvement.
MU
Manoj Udaya Kumara
Executive Officer 1B at Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC
The cost of the solution has room for improvement.
View full review »JP
Jay-P
Senior VMware NSX Consultant at 27 Virtual
Since most people are very much used to physical networking, they find it difficult to use VMware NSX in the initial stage.
View full review »MR
MounirRaji
Technical architect at Metanext
The setup is complex and should be made easier.
View full review »VMware NSX can improve the migration tools from the older environments to the new environment. For example, the NSX-V has become a legacy solution, it's out of support, but customers are able to keep using it. For migration purposes, it's better for them to provide a proper tool. It will be easy to migrate from an old environment to a new one.
View full review »AL
Adam Lowles
Information Security Manager at Anana LTD
I would like to have automating reporting built into common service management platforms, such as JIRA, Serviceaide, and ServiceNow.
View full review »The security feature for the Kubernetes environment can be improved.
View full review »AD
AnimeshDixit
Cloud Article at Oracle
VMware NSX should be able to scale for different customers, even the big ones. Its scalability needs improvement. Stability for it should also be improved.
An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of this product is for it to have more integration with other public clouds.
View full review »The price is pretty high and their product stack forces me to use the feature set compared to all the others out there in the market from India. They could do more with cloud management, I need some third-party tools.
View full review »The tool's setup is complex and we need support to implement it.
View full review »TH
Tirut Hawoldar
Manager IT Security & Infrastructure at Currimjee Jeewanjee & Co. Ltd.
The setup of the solution could be simplified.
View full review »It isn't easy to deploy.
View full review »AH
Andres Hurtado
Chief Executive Officer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The engineering team has room for improvement. They should have more of a Knowledge Base about different case studies and should develop more advanced features. These kinds of improvements will change the way things get done.
View full review »Despite being somewhat behind in the cybersecurity field, VMware should develop a cloud and a red team to continuously monitor for new malware and ransomware. They must maintain their own cloud to do their own research, and send the resulting hashes or values to all customers using VMware NSX. This will ensure that each customer is regularly updated with the latest malware and ransomware hashes to keep their systems secure.
Web filtering is a good feature that I would like to have added to the solution.
I would like the ability to limit the bandwidth per virtual machine to ensure that I understand the throughput requirements of any application that is running. This way, I can be protected from the risks of a DoS or DDoS attack, which may require a high level of throughput. This limitation would apply to Layer 4 or Layer 5 of the network.
View full review »AA
Anthony Atterviry
Sales Manager at Dataworld Computer Center
The non-enterprise version of the solution should be improved.
I want to see the solution expand to more than just the network, for example, perhaps it could provide some VLAN technologies.
LC
reviewer1039620
Head of Business Development and Partners Management at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's very complex. However, I don't work directly with it typically.
We had started two projects for integration with OpenShift and OpenStack with NSX. It was declared by VMware that this is possible, however, the process is very tricky. The full integration was delayed to wait for a new official release. I don't know the actual stage, as this is something that happened more than a year or two ago. It was the beginning of the pandemic. In any case, the integration with OpenShift, the open-source cloud platform, at the time was in need of work and was (and remains) something required from our customers.
They have to work more and more on the integration for public cloud services and have cyber security platform integration.
View full review »RL
Richard Lovelock
Information Security Programme Manager at Dixons Carphone
It could be cheaper!
View full review »Just being more knowledgeable about the different functions. I think the product is fine. It's just learning more about the product, and how you can benefit from it, and what it's got to offer.
AL
manager813261
Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
I would like to see improvements made to the certification process. As it is now, you have to do the training with VMware itself, and you have to spend a lot of money doing it, which is very discouraging.
If you compare other certifications especially from the cloud providers, you can get trained from your choice of training providers and not very expensive or learn on your own at your pace, prepare for exams and pass and your certificate will be issued. In contrast, you have to register under VMware to get training done at minimum of $3000 before your certificate is issued to you. The training costs a minimum of $3,000, which is expensive and should be reduced.
View full review »FG
Frederic Giovannacci
System Engineer at GIP SIB
We would to have a reverse proxy. This would add great value to the solution.
We would also like better integration with the standards on the market. For example, with OSPF, their integration in NSX is very low. It's not a full OSPF integration. It is too thin from a protocol perspective.
The product need to be improved. It is too complex.
View full review »The integration with other brands is not the best and could be better.
View full review »MG
MichaelGonzalez
VMware NSX Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
So far, what I've seen here at VMworld, it seems to be improving just the same line as everything else. It's going to expand, grow and grow and grow. It's going everywhere. It's not just going into "I'm using the V version of NSX," but it's going out to every environment. It's going out to all the clouds so that even if you have the V, you can also use the cloud part and put it into there, so it seems to be growing where it needs to go.
It still needs to grow. There are still some features that it doesn't do, like it doesn't do multicasting. It does do some multicasting, but it's within their own infrastructure, but multicasting in general, it doesn't do.
DS
DarrylShorts
Infrastructure Architect
They could branch out to the physical layer. Today, it's just the virtual layer, and they're starting to talk about the physical layer. We'd like to see the physical layer incorporated.
View full review »WJ
reviewer1164561
Senior Cloud Consultant with 201-500 employees
There is always room for improvement, in any solution.
In some cases, this product is very technical.
Some configuration maximums are limiting to the user, especially when it comes to the deployment of very, very large environments. There are limits to the number of firewall rules, security groups, et cetera. With the number of security groups, you can nest all these limits, however, somehow limiting the use cases may be restrictive for the free design of different use cases.
View full review »I'd like to see more integration with other solutions.
View full review »VMware NSX provides a lot of automation capabilities, but there is still room for improvement.
View full review »TS
Technolo19ac
Technology Manager
I would like them to make integration with other vendors easier.
View full review »- Going through and getting more features sets from the routing protocols is definitely necessary for the future.
- Being able to properly manipulate BGP
- Getting multiprotocol BGP into the stack
- A little bit better redistribution
As a CCIE, I like to have all my tool sets, and there are some things which NSX is missing right now.
It's missing some more advanced features. As an engineer, we need those tools. We need to be able to manipulate routes. We need to be able to set traffic the way that we need it to be. Especially as we interact with other vendors, sometimes it makes it difficult to have to do some workarounds. Once VMware flushes out the RFC for things like BGP and OSPF, it will be better.
CD
Chinmay Dhaktode
Security Services Specialist Individual Contributor at a tech company with 11-50 employees
An area for improvement in VMware NSX is that it uses up more resources and is heavy on the network.
What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is more automation.
View full review »FL
Frederic LAPLAGNE
President at AKAWAN
One of the areas that we are struggling with is how do we perform the same security level as we had for an NSX solution for the legacy system. For example, if I have a switch, and I am connecting a legacy application on the legacy system that does not support the hyper vision or another feature, is possible to push the security topic to the switches to be compliant, or compliant with an NSX component, and to perform the same security level as we perform for hyper vision side. It would be beneficial for us if there was better integration with legacy systems.
In the future, the solution should be compliant with internet NIC. They could deploy this NIC into some switches, servers, or other product. It would be interesting to have this sort of NIC stamped by VMware, and we could push some security feature into it. It would be a very useful feature. I do understand VMware is virtual and not on a physical device path but this would be a good endeavour.
View full review »SL
Archtct10001
Architect at Computacenter
The next release of NSX should try to make Kubernetes and container integration a little easier than it is now. It's quite a complicated process.
I would rate this solution an eight because it doesn't have Kubernetes integrations yet, and it isn't multi-federated. Those are some of the things that need to be added to the product.
So the third-party marketplace is growing and growing for this product and being able to redirect traffic to them, to the third-party products in order to take advantage of those additional features, is wonderful.
I think that one of the more important things to see better integrated into the NSX product would be an IDS/IPS type solution, which right now we're handing off to a third-party, which sometimes doubles the cost of the product. However, there are new products that we're learning about over the course of this week like AppDefense, that may actually help provide some additional capabilities in terms of that IDS/IPS type structure.
View full review »AA
informat801459
Consultant at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
I cannot recall coming across any missing features. At this time, there is nothing I would need in a future release.
Occasionally the licensing is not very clear. They should make it easier to understand.
View full review »IS
reviewer1299408
Sr. Technical Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
The routing functionality needs to be improved, as there are lots of bugs in the system.
I would like to see automation capabilities in the deployment process.
View full review »PM
PrasadMane
System Advisor IT at CRIF India
VMware NSX needs improvement.
View full review »KO
Kolawole Olowoporoku
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
NSX could better integrate with open-source products. Of course, it integrates with some, but I know many people are uncomfortable deploying NSX with certain open-source solutions, such as Radar. They don't integrate so well, and the integration is usually so complex that many people would rather not use them.
View full review »BY
reviewer1437084
Manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
One drawback is this solution requires a lot of other products in the VMware ecosystem to have a full end-to-end operation orchestration monitoring. You have to buy a lot of add-ons to fully utilize the functionality.
Some additional features in the next release could be for the solution to be more directed toward the end-to-end functions, from physical to virtual monitoring. It should also include streamlined troubleshooting of our operation.
View full review »EP
Edgar Parra
Senior Technical Consultant at The Instillery
The upgrade process is okay overall, but we have encountered issues every time when upgrading with the ESXi hosts VIB installation packages not being properly deployed, and after upgrading NSX manager, the ESXi hosts still uses the old version. This causes additional steps to manually remove those old VIBs from the ESXi, reinstall them, and try again. In some cases, we had to uninstall and install them from scratch NSX and restore from backup, which in a real world scenario won't be desirable to do. You would like to have an in-place a seamless upgrade from one version to another, especially if you are changing minor versions (e.g., 6.3.1 to 6.3.2).
AM
Solution2aa6
Solutions Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
At the moment it hasn't helped us prolong our hardware refresh.
View full review »AC
Consudee5
Consultant with 51-200 employees
We would like them to improve the deployment time.
The management console also needs a bit of improvement.
View full review »VM
Vladimir Mlynar
COO at Axians ICT Austria GmbH
The technical support could use some improvement.
View full review »MW
Lead06b9
Lead at Accenture
We would like tenant segmentation available in future releases.
View full review »SA
reviewer1539471
Senior Vice President at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
VMware NSX could improve by having more compatibility with other none Window-based operating systems.
View full review »ML
Mohammed Amine Lablan
aucun at None
It should be more adapted to the physical side of network topology in order to prevent unavailability.
View full review »MS
Mohab Samy
VMware Technician Manager at VAS
NSX-T supports more platforms, and VMware NSX only supports some platforms like KVM. I want to see support for Hyper-V and other hypervisors.
Their technical support could be faster as well.
View full review »SA
SysEng189856
System Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
If you start with a new or greenfield environment, it is okay to implement. However, if there are other solutions already in place, it can be difficult to implement.
View full review »Pricing and licensing could be improved as we are a government entity. Lower pricing could always help.
View full review »SM
reviewer1553184
Cyber Security Technical Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Their licensing model should make it easier to purchase licenses.
View full review »JT
JimmyThomas
Architect Enterprise Business at Mindfire Technologies LLC
The product is quite complex and that could be an area where improvements could be made.
View full review »AS
reviewer1333941
Network Practice Lead at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Everybody needs a network to connect to, and VMware doesn't readily provide one. It is reliant on an existing network to connect to, which means that for me, it requires two different teams to manage the SDN.
View full review »There is one feature I'm finding with VMware which is special for us from IBM with JIRA routing protocols. This is in the future that they are planning, especially right now with our compatible AWS. AWS is good, understood, except for the software to improve, probably with Amazon right now doing this partnership. VMware and access are going to be improved for that.
View full review »BW
reviewer993597
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
The solution can improve by making it more straightforward, easier to install and maintain in the environment.
View full review »Speed of the NSX Controllers while deploying sometimes gets a bit slower which can be improved, overall its a great product
View full review »ES
Evgeniy Stepanov
Engineer at DataLine - лучшая команда виртуализации VMware 2015
I would like to see extended performance charts in other versions of NSX. For example, CPU usage, memory usage, and bandwidth usage on NSX.
I would rate this product an eight because it's a good product but it needs more work. They should fix some of the bugs.
View full review »- vRNI
- Improve integration with many third-party solutions, because only Palo Alto and Check Point, and VMware would be like improve this integration with other vendors.
CK
DeptMgr4ea4
Dept. Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I would like to see some more add-ons on the security features.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
VMware NSX
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware NSX. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.