VMware vSphere Room for Improvement

Egor Marachev - PeerSpot reviewer
IT systems engineer at VeriFone

There is room for improvement in Google Cloud. The reason thing there was, like, when I type something in the terminal and then immediately, I need to go to edit the certain like file for Node.js, for the server, or for Kubernetes. So I have to do it from the terminal to the editor.

And for some reason, each time I had to switch, I had to literally switch between the terminal and the editor. I wish I could have it on one screen to have the terminal and on the other to have the editor.  This would greatly improve my experience with this solution. 

View full review »
it_user171321 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. System Engineer VMW Specialist at a government with 501-1,000 employees

IOPs monitoring. We now monitor IOPs from SAN array. But, SAN array IOPs monitoring is based on virtual volume (vLun) not the VM. If VMware can provide VMDK IOPS information, it can help us catch performance issues.

View full review »
SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Arsium

In future releases, I would like to see less pricing. The license can be improved. 

View full review »
Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
BK
Instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College

The biggest thing to improve is to have more self-service in the portals. I would like to receive more help through the web interface. 

I would like to see continual improvements of the client. It doesn't need to go much larger for support on the number of VMs or its size, because there are pretty high limits already. However, it needs a bit more in the management and the reporting aspect. We have to get a third-party for that. It would be great if it was a bit more integrated.

View full review »
BS
IT Supervisor at APM Terminals, Inc.

We want to see improvement from VMware with security. We want minimal downtime. We want automation. We want to deploy more efficiently.

If there is a disaster of any kind we want to respond quickly and recover from it. With vSphere, you get to provision server resources with ease. While we like vSphere, one problem we have is saturation. For example, if I want to deploy 10 virtual machines, I will have to install the operating system one by one. I will have to install the patches one by one, also to every kind of script. I will have to learn more, but automated deployment is not easy to implement. 

It makes you spend a lot of time on deployment. You can't have time for doing other things.

On login incidents and other events, I would prefer to have some notification in the logs.

These are the main areas of improvement that we would like to see.

View full review »
JO
Server Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

The biggest pain point is probably the firmware management of the underlying hardware. It could be a lot better.

We use HP hardware. The biggest thing is the firmware upgrades and other items at the backend. You have to take down the system. It's an in-memory database and that can sometimes cause issues. If you have to do firmware upgrades, it's organizing downtime and all sorts of things, which normally in a VMS space isn't an issue. They have embedded some of this in 7.1, however, I haven't tested it or seen it in action as yet. 

That said, one of the problems is that when we're sort of behind big memory servers and the databases in them if you migrate it, it potentially breaks the system off. That's a big pain point that the firmware management of the underlying hardware should handle. VMware doesn't really cater to it, however, Nutanix to some degree does cater for. It gets pretty expensive, however.

We are always sort of one or two versions behind. We never test the latest version. I would say for me personally, the management aspect with large memory and in-memory databases for the motions and stuff like that is what it needs. That's one of the key things that I need really, from a support perspective. That's caused a number of issues already. 

You do get something called host profiles, which they've also improved slightly, however, I still think it's a bit clunky in terms of the way you can manage it. They can produce something to improve that aspect slightly.

View full review »
KD
Technical manager at Koninklijke Bam Groep N.v.

In terms of improvement, the license fee could be more affordable, but overall, I'm satisfied with VMware vSphere.

View full review »
Abbasi Poonawala - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Enterprise Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

There is some room for improvement but if we're not satisfied converting all of our physical assets into virtualized ones, since we have a scope for other technologies, we can always go for containerization.

There are some challenges around ESXi hosts — converting them into VMs. Also, it could definitely be more secure, overall.

It would be nice if other users could see or accept the VMs that we create — this has to do with the cluster.

The cluster should be able to be viewed by multiple sets of users apart from the operating team. If a developer also wants to have access to the cluster, it's complicated. Role-based access should be available to make this easier.

View full review »
it_user921882 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Analyst at Manufacturing Organization

VMware has expanded, from a corporate standpoint, to where they have gotten very large. I have noticed, in the last couple of years, the breaking apart of specific added benefits and charging license upcharges for them. That would be the only negative thing that I have to say: As a large consumer of the Hypervisor, we have a hard time justifying the cost of utilizing the extra products, especially when it's a couple of grand here and there, a couple of hundred dollars here and there. It's hard for an IT administrator or an architect to sell to upper management. When they're seeing so much ROI from the Hypervisor, it's hard to show them that there is extra value in the additional products that can be tied on top.

I would really like to see an assessment of which products are actually going to be beneficial to charge for, and that they then continue to keep some of the products bundled in with the initial Hypervisor.

There are some competitive vendors out there who are sticking to the original model that VMware seemed to have, which includes a lot of additional features and functionality in the initial pricing, and I think they are gaining a lot of market share based on the fact that they are keeping their licensing simple. The only argument I have with VMware is that, when I ask our VMware team about a new solution, I hear comments like, "For a nominal fee we can upgrade your license and you can have that." For the large number of Hypervisors and the scale we have, it's frustrating to hear that I have to go ask for additional money for very small, additional features that I think should be included.

I respect that VMware has to grow and there are some features that they should not bundle in and that they should ask more money for. So I would like to see an analysis of sales and what's included and what the consumption rate is. I think they could dial it in a little bit better to where they have more bundled solutions. 

Unfortunately, I think the type of model that VMware is moving toward is having an a la carte type of fee list. There are so many products that start with a "v" that I tend to get drowned with all the capabilities and I have to pick the particular thing I want to go after. Whereas, if there were more bundled services, or a package that included more bundled services, I might be able to swing that more easily than asking for money here and there. 

View full review »
Youssef_Hmani - PeerSpot reviewer
IT INFRASTRUTURE CONSULTANT at Hyfi Cloud Computing

The current concern revolves around the pricing as it might be less affordable for certain regions. In countries like Tunisia and many others in Africa, there seems to be a challenge regarding the cost of licensing.

View full review »
Sameer Gusain - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Sopra Steria

There could be an inbuilt dashboard for reporting purposes. At present, we have to use another paid solution for the same.

View full review »
Tommy Myo Min Aung - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Vantage Drilling

VMware vSphere could be improved with cheaper costs. 

View full review »
RK
Head Tim Infrastructure, and IT Security at Lembaga Penjamin SImpanan

We are provided with a mini dashboard that has been improved in the latest version but it still could be better. The monitoring is now available on the vCenter dashboard and the vROps has been added to the basic version that had to be purchased separately before. A complete dashboard has always been provided with some competitors, such as Nutanix.

View full review »
SK
Sr. Systems Engineer at a non-profit with 501-1,000 employees

I think what they need to improve on is their pricing. They're starting to get a little high-end in terms of price compared to other solutions and the other solutions are catching up. Everything with VMware is very modularized and you can't just buy one piece and be done with it.

In my opinion, they would be wise to include a high availability out of the box type set up and not just for cloud, but site to site.

View full review »
AT
Consultant senior en technologie de l'information at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The HR proxy is actually a little bit harder to install and setup than other vmware products. So, direct integration with a vSphere distributed switch would be great addition, but you can bypass this setup if you chose an NSX-T switch.

The distributed switch, which is the networking part of vSphere, should have more functions. It should be like VMware NSX-T so that network management with VMware Tanzu will be better, although it is already good.

vSphere 7.0.1 is not available on ARM computers for production loads. I hope that it will become available soon so that we can run our production web server container on it, for example.

View full review »
RS
System Administrator at ON Semiconductor Phils. Inc.

Improve the patch and updates online and remove mandatory reboot, or move the virtual machine onto a physical host that needs patching/maintenance.

I would like to see VMware vSphere provide a centralized patch service on the VMware level, regardless of your operating systems.

View full review »
Fritz RichardQuiras - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Engineer at Trend Micro

Given that I've been using version seven, it seems that some of the bugs I faced during that version have already been addressed in subsequent updates. Although I haven't personally tested them yet, it appears that these issues have been resolved. In version seven, there was a problem with the network interface not responding due to certain configurations not being properly filtered. However, in version eight, this requirement has been minimized, so the mentioned bug is less likely to occur. Instead of solely addressing these fixes in newer versions, it might be beneficial for them to consider applying these improvements to the older versions as well. This approach could prevent users from feeling compelled to upgrade to version eight solely to avoid encountering the issue, and instead provide updates for version seven users.

View full review »
FK
Head of Service and Storage Infrastructure at GS2E

The cost is an area that could be improved. Today, there are many hypervisor solutions on the market that are less expensive and provide the same functionality. They share the same characteristics. I believe that one area where VMware can improve is in pricing, as we have found VMware products to be on the expensive side at times.

I'm only considering the VMware solution, with the cloud solution. I would like to see cloud integration, such as cloud service and cloud feature, in the vSphere license. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

In terms of cost, I believe there is room for improvement. They must work on the price, as well as the technical support.

View full review »
FL
IT Supervisor at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees

There's a lot of things they can improve on, but it's just a matter of where they are at in their development cycle right now. I wish they would have been able to handle Apple at this point, but they can't. So it's just one of those things. They've got features I'm still trying to understand. We haven't gone to containers yet, and I'm trying to find a use for a container.

View full review »
Stefano Panigada - PeerSpot reviewer
Specialist SE Manager at Dell EMC

The improvement is more from a licensing perspective rather than from a feature functionality perspective. There could be more flexibility and fewer model options to make it easier to sell. Today, there are so many different options available, and sometimes, it is not really clear which one is the right version or the right model to propose. 

View full review »
MA
Senior Product Specialist at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

In terms of what could be improved, we do face some bugs when cloning the virtual machine - it fails sometimes. Also, using the customization certification also fail sometimes. Sometimes powering-on the virtual machine fails. But we opened the ticket with VMware as we have the warranty.

View full review »
JH
Lead IT Systems Engineer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees

There are a few things I wanted to see in the next version of vSphere 6.7 which, it turns out, were announced today (at VMworld 2018) so I haven't had time to explore them. But one of the things that was most important to me was the ability to automate or improve deployment of VCHA in an advanced configuration, where it's not hosting itself. I'm looking forward to playing with the new release and seeing where it's at.

View full review »
SP
Systems Engineer at BYU Idaho

As far as additional features go, they've already added the VMware Update Manager to this version, which has been great; it's been very nice to use.

It would be nice to see it a little more tightly integrated with the patching solution so you could do it in one pane of glass. Right now, you have to jump back and forth. It's still not difficult, but you have to jump back and forth to do your update definitions and then go back and actually do the updates themselves.

View full review »
KW
IT Analyst I at Los Rios Community College District

I would like to see a little bit more visibility regarding errors. When an error does occur, there are times where it says "Unknown error" or something to that effect, and it doesn't necessarily give you a lot of metrics. If you go online and you give a description of it, normally the VMware forums can help you find out what it is, but I'd like to see a little bit more visibility from the software itself regarding what's going on: "This went wrong, this is why."

View full review »
MH
Senior Systems Administrator at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of management, it's getting better. There were recent changes with the infrastructure and the architecture, going from a physical vSphere vCenter client to the web interface. That has slowed things down a little bit, to be honest. It's getting better. With the 5.7 release they've optimized it, the menus are a little snappier, and it isn't as cumbersome to manage through as it was on the previous website or vSphere Web Client instance.

Also, reading some of the sensors in the hardware itself, that's where VMware does a really great job in the digital infrastructure and being able to scale things and knowing what's going on in vSphere. But not having to buy something from a third-party to scan the actual hardware components, like the hard drives and the port containers and fan speeds; not having to bolt something on and go through another vendor, would be helpful.

View full review »
it_user366615 - PeerSpot reviewer
Datacenter Manager at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Even though the Web Client is faster and more efficient in v6 as compared to previous versions, it could be faster.

View full review »
HemantJoshi2 - PeerSpot reviewer
TEM Practice at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

It would be good if the licensing cost of the solution could be cheaper.

View full review »
PY
Assistant Consultant with 10,001+ employees

I can't speak to any missing features. It has everything I need.

View full review »
Ajay Dand - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Ninesec Integration Pvt. Ltd

While they have got enough integration as of now, they definitely need to get more cybersecurity integration as that is always beneficial.

The installation is complex and you need to have a good understanding in regards to what you are doing when you are setting it up.

The solution is relatively expensive. It's a big downside. 

View full review »
SK
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

We would like to see the container-based operating system launched soon for this solution.

In a future release, multi-cloud capability should be simplified and easy to handle for administrators. For example, if I have a private cloud and public cloud and we have a feature to run VMware between these two, currently there is some complexity. We are hoping this can improve to allow us to run the workload anywhere.

View full review »
MC
IT Solution Architect at KnowledgeOne

Its cost needs to be improved. It is very expensive as compared to other solutions.

View full review »
CB
Chief Technology Officer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

As far as room for improvement goes, I really feel like each release they're coming out with new features, making it better and better. The new HTML5 client is almost there. It needs just a little bit more and then it will definitely be ready.

View full review »
BM
System Administrator at City of Sioux Falls

I see room for improvement in the vSphere product just a little bit. I know they are doing all that transition from the traditional fat client to the new HTML5 interface. I've watched that grow from being technical previews to where it's at today, and it's probably 90 percent there. But I think that VMware could continue to put improvements into that UI, so that all the tasks can be performed as quickly as they used to be done in the fat client. 

Just yesterday, I met with the lead solutions architect for vSphere, and one of the things that I really kind of sat him down on was, "What's the deal between these Custom Attributes and these Tags? What are you trying to do with that?" He said, "So here's the deal. I know that they're halfway done and we have a vision of where they're all going, but we'll get it there." That that would be a great ability, to keep all that metadata about your virtual machines inside the solution and staying with the machines.

View full review »
MO
Head of enterprise systems at Fidelity Bank Plc

I would like to see improvements in simplifying automation, cloud native deployment, administration, and fault resolution.

View full review »
NP
Associate Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Its price could be better. It is expensive, and its price is a big concern.

View full review »
LA
IT Operations Services Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

I would like to see AI in future releases.

View full review »
it_user194427 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nothing I can think of. For a while, allowing for HA without shared storage was a missing feature, but as of 5.1, VMware introduced that feature.

View full review »
Zahid Eshaque - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at CompTech Network System Ltd

VMware is not efficient. The solution is slower than other tools. We can run applications on other platforms whose VMs are faster than VMware’s. We can also run bare metal on physical servers, but it will be very expensive compared to VMware.

View full review »
MK
Principal Consultant at Absolute Precision

We're moving towards containerization and it was unclear what I'd have to do to support containerized environments alongside multiple systems of Linux and Windows. My aim was to get to a single hypervisor environment in which I could support a container environment as one of the array of other applications. Whether due to a lack of training or information, I was unable to get to that. Some people look at VMware as being an alternative to containerization, enabling them to dispense with solutions like Kubernetes and Docker in order to do away with VMware. That's not the reality and I'd like to have a transparent platform that can support all of them.

Aside from cost, I'd like to see some simplification in the solution. The main issue is manageability or scalability of skilled resources, the degree to which the product delivers a stable environment that can be managed by a less technical person. 

View full review »
BH
Director Of Technology Operations at Kutleng Engineering Technologies

The biggest room for improvement would be just simplicity. It is very intuitive, but it needs somebody with a lot of IT background. 

The way VMware manages storage is not the best. Nutanix manages storage a little bit differently, but we are not using Nutanix. VMware needs to find a way to manage storage properly. There should be storage aggregation and better management of storage.

We tried to install drivers for 100 Gigabit Ethernet Mellanox, and it was very difficult to put third-party hardware and upgrade the servers. We had to roll back because it just wouldn't boot.

Its price definitely should be improved. Its pricing is on the expensive side.

View full review »
EF
Senior Oracle Database Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

It would be good if VMware vSphere could permit hard partitioning. If a company wants to purchase very expensive applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle Fusion and they have vSphere technology implemented in their data center, it will cost them a lot because it has a very heavy, strong, or robust server that has strong processing capacity. The license will not cost the license of vSphere, the virtual server created by vSphere. The license will be the license for the whole server, so it creates a lot of challenges.

If it's possible for virtual hard partitioning to be implemented so that those who are using very sophisticated applications like E-Business Suite and other applications that require licensing on a processor, a virtual processor, could benefit from it, then it would be great. That is, integration with more expensive platforms is needed.

It would be nice to pay once for an unlimited license. If you decide to quit later on, you could pay the support charges.

View full review »
TM
Systems Engineer at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

The licensing costs for the solution are quite high.

View full review »
ID
IT Manager at ducart

I would prefer it if there was a better connection between the storage and the server. For that reason, I'm going to HCI or dHCI. I want to integrate it all into one interface and I can't do that here. That's why I'm going to HCI or dHCI.

The initial setup is a bit complex. You likely will need some help with the implementation. It's not something just anyone can do.

View full review »
LS
Information Technology Support Coordinator at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The documentation could be improved. It does not help me to show the client the value of going with VMware vSphere rather than an open source or cheaper solution.

If we have extensive documentation that is complete and helps us understand all the features, it will help us to try to propose the solution itself and try to show the value of going with it.

View full review »
Ryan Dave Brigino - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Es'hailSat

The solution is quite expensive.

I haven't evaluated or looked at any other solutions for the most part and therefore can't speak to any aspect that is really lacking compared to what else is on the market.

View full review »
JH
Senior Systems Administrator at a consultancy with 5,001-10,000 employees

I'd like to see a little bit more integration for VDI. I think that Composer servers, security servers, broker servers with connections, I'm not sure they are necessary at this point. Perhaps they could have a lot of those functions baked directly into the hypervisor. It seems to me that if the hypervisor is scalable and flexible enough, that the processor and compute can handle all of that. Maybe we eliminate those other components for VDIs and have more mixed workloads: server workloads and desktop workloads all in the same hypervisor.

View full review »
it_user320091 - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitoring Tools Analyst at a individual & family service with 10,001+ employees

That’s a hard question since I don’t know what new features there are in v6 other than single-user sign-on. I’m curious to see the release of v6 here, as I want to see how the client version works. I also want to get an overall view of how it works, as well as how well the mobile management works.

Of course it has room for improvement, but it’s the best in the field as there’s not many better options.

View full review »
Ahmad Ali - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure System Engineer at King Saud University

The quality of support could be better.

View full review »
Ali Gursoy - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Cobantur

Technical support could be a bit better at assisting. 

The solution should be more secure. Of course, it can depend on the deployment of your system on your side. Sometimes if the system is closed, you don't necessarily need more security. However, since we use different applications and tools, we must use different tools. We don't combine our security tools. However, we need to ensure that products like these are secure, and it would be ideal if more security was baked in.  

View full review »
MS
VMware Software Engineer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

The latest version of the solution has a few bugs. This may be due to the fact that they moved to web-based management. There are some problems in that web-based management, however, it's a minimal issue.

View full review »
SS
Lead QA Analyst at Loomis Express

We've been using vSphere on Windows 7, and it had less fluff associated with ThinApp. Currently, with Windows 10 version that we have, it adds a lot of bulk to ThinApp. We have offices spanning across Canada from the east coast to the west coast. A ThinApp that is roughly around 400 MB in size would take minutes to open up. With Windows 7, the same ThinApp used to be close to 75 to 80 MB in size. So, I'm really not happy with the extra fluff that is bundled in Windows 10. It really messes things up for us at times.

View full review »
Udom In - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at The Olympia Medical hub

There was a time we lost the password for the ESXi and we had to do a hardware reset. At this point, we had to fill up the ESXi from the bottom up. I am not sure if there was another solution to this problem but it took a long time. We were told it would only be a few hours to resolve but in fact, it took one day. Having to explain this downtime to management was not the best experience.

In an upcoming release, there could be a better ability to manage and control the synchronization of the power in the vSphere.

View full review »
Vikram Casula - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Infrastructure & Cloud ops at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

It could be more composable. At present, a fluid pool is not available to us, and it would be great to have the flexibility.

View full review »
RB
Logistics and product Manager at a security firm with 11-50 employees

A little automation would help. VMs normally use CPU resources. Let's say that a particular host or a server has ten VMs. Out of that, five VMs are performing, and the others aren't performing at the best level. It would help if VMware automatically learned that, and the suit itself came down to that level. When you normally give a VM four CPUs and the entire GB memory, then memory and the CPU belong to that VM.

But let's say that the VM is not using four CPUs. It's just using two CPUs. Then automatically at the VM level and without the client or the customer knowing, it should just use it at the backend. It would be better this way instead of telling the customer that they are going to reduce it. For them, it's always four CPUs, but at the backend, it's always working with two CPUs or something like that. That would have been a cool feature.

I know VMWare has this Operations Manager. I know that it comes at a price because VMWare normally wants to charge for everything in the software. But I'm not seeing all the features of the Operations Manager. I only see a few features. If all the features can be included in one package, that would be good.

View full review »
AT
Senior Consultant at Cofomo

I put information on my blog stating that I would like more Amazon stuff inside of VMware. They have announced many thing that I am looking for today, so I am happy.

View full review »
DP
IT Systems Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

It's simple enough right now, but some more automation tools would definitely make it simpler.

It's pretty well integrated with vROps but the integration could be improved a little bit. 

View full review »
PG
Senior Manager Systems/Network, Global Information Systems at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

There has been a lot of improvement with UI: its speed and usability features. Before, it was very slow. When it comes to cross-regional (e.g., someone in the US managing the China vSphere implementations), it can be a somewhat slow. I would recommend increasing the speed. While there has already been improvement there, I would like to see more.

View full review »
CW
Director, Windows Server Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of additional features I would like to see, I just heard about them here at VMworld 2018. They're rolling in security to be a core feature. Built-in app defense is something we'll take advantage of. The ability to utilize tools that are in the cloud - we don't really use the cloud - will be available for use on-premise, and that is a pretty big feature.

View full review »
it_user127791 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Representative at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
At this time and with the way we use it, none. View full review »
NipunaNakandala - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at V S Indormation Systems

From what I know, the area revolving around the licensing part of the product is not quite friendly. The licenses for those who have a partnership with VMware are not a good thing because we have to use the tool for demos and simulate it in a customer environment. In our company's setup, considering that we have a partnership with VMware, it is very hard to have licenses, making it an area where improvements are required. VMware's NFR licenses were previously available for partners, and the tool used to provide demo centers within such licenses, but the aforementioned licensing structure for partners has been presently discontinued. The product should also provide the partners with the facility to provide the tool's demo in a test environment for customers.

The solution's technical team is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

View full review »
Endalkachew Admasu - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Computing and Storage at CBO

Virtual machine snapshots and consolidation need to be improved. Also, there are licensing and subscription issues.

View full review »
MM
Senior Infrastructure Solutions Specialist at Fiber Misr

If you're converting from any other virtualization system to VMware, you will note that the price is significantly higher. 

View full review »
PB
Sr. Architect, Business Continuity at Sayers

The ability to run ARM based VMs on an x86 platform for testing purposes. With the growing use of SBCs running on ARM architectures for IoT devices, it would be very useful if developers could build and deploy VMs running operating systems like Raspbian used on Raspberry Pi devices on their existing x86 ESXi environments. Even if this is not possible through some form of emulation, the ability to add ARM hypervisors to vSphere environments would be very useful. This will enable more rapid development cycles for customers just getting started with IoT but already existing vSphere users. 

View full review »
TR
Network Administrator

An improvement could be allowing a "dark mode" for the interface. I think the HTML5 client is a little bit hard to read. It's all white. It's a little bit bright on the eyes. A lot of us IT guys view in the dark.

View full review »
Ajay Dand - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Ninesec Integration Pvt. Ltd

I think the cost should be reconsidered. VMware is not the cheapest solution out there, despite the fact that it may be one of the best.

In addition, I think some of the backup features or the prediction features can be improved. The legacy workloads are not prone to be virtualized. Some users may want to see a common deduction product across the physical service.

View full review »
JK
Desktop Support Supervisor at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

I would like to see DRS for the GPU machines.

View full review »
MF
IT Manager at pioneers

The monitoring is not good in vSphere, many times you have latency or you cannot find what you want. The events should be improved.

View full review »
YS
Senior Information Technology Consultant at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

VMware vSphere has a limited scope and necessitates the adding of additional products. This involves further complexity and expense. NSX is a product of VMware vSphere and it would be nice to see the solution have full integration capabilities with it. 

View full review »
FW
Sr. Manager IT at a non-profit with 51-200 employees

The initial setup could be better. Follow the instruction you can set it up, but it's not very straightforward, and you need some storage and network knowledge to get the better understanding.

View full review »
IS
Presales Engineer at Emet Computing

Stability-wise, there are some minor issues.

View full review »
RV
Chief Architect at RoundTower Technologies

vSphere is the Rolls Royce of hypervisors. Moving forward, they just need to continue integrating and simplifying that user interface experience. With VMware Cloud Foundation, that's the Day 2 lifecycle management. You've got the VMC offering that's obviously all public cloud. They need to keep on integrating the APIs and simplifying the user experience. And they're definitely moving towards the one-click experience that you have with other technology vendors.

View full review »
SC
Information Systems Analyst at San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG)

There is definitely room for improvement and that improvement should be in the licensing and the simplicity of procuring additional licenses or additional VMware products. Right now, it's very complex.

View full review »
MJ
Sr. Operations Engineer at Kamstrup

Where I think there is room for improvement is in the HTML5 interface in vCenter. What it lacks, for me, is integrating into VMware's other products, especially NSX.

View full review »
CH
Infrastructure with 5,001-10,000 employees

Management of the solution depends on the interface you are in. The Flash interface can be a little cumbersome sometimes, but thankfully they are moving all of that into the HTML 5. I did see that with the 6.7 Update 1, every function now is pretty much capable of being run from HTML 5. I'm really happy about that and looking forward to moving to that.

Unfortunately, because I'm the infrastructure guy, some of the features, day-to-day things, require me to go back into the Flash version, but I long to go with the HTML 5. It's really fast, performance is great on that, it looks really good, and using it is not a pain.

It would be nice if they could make the upgrades a little bit smoother but sometimes that's a little tricky because, unfortunately, everyone can throw plugins into the environment and VMware can't necessarily control all of those. So I understand the headache for the engineering team there.

View full review »
it_user851001 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Architect at Art Van Furniture

One thing that would be helpful is, these days we have an environment where we are often using clouds as well. A solution that would be a little more cloud-aware would be really helpful. I know there is a product from VMware that is more specifically for the cloud, but it would be nice if VMware Cloud Manager would be cloud-aware. It would simplify certain processes. It's all about doing things faster. If it were more cloud-aware it would be easier to work it into a hybrid environment and literally have seamless interfacing with the leading cloud solution. That would be nice.

View full review »
it_user370284 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager - System Engineering and Storage at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Stability and manageability need improvement. The core product has not changed much over the years and has large deficiencies in manageability and how they implement certain features. The basic hypervisor works OK, but all the management and bolt-on products have issues and at times overwhelm the core hypervisor.

View full review »
it_user321249 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

I'm excited to see in 6.0 the enhanced vMotion capabilities to connect our Phoenix, AZ and Culpepper, VA datacenters. It will have the ability to geo-vMotion instead of just metro-vMotion machines.

View full review »
it_user298431 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The web client, the GUI, could use some improvement. It’s pretty clunky and slow. Some things are only available in the web client, some are only available in the fat client so it would be nice to have them in both in one interface.

View full review »
NT
Information Technology Security Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

There should be a bit more flexibility in terms of the hardware we can use with the product. There needs to be better compatibility. 

View full review »
PM
System Advisor IT at CRIF India

The only concern that I have with VMware is the support. It is very limited and can be better.

When you get support from the VMware global team or support locations, customer complaints are not entertained or taken seriously by the VMware global team or support centers. Other OEMs, such as Microsoft and Oracle, would make you a priority.

View full review »
GP
Senior Software and Systems Engineer at SAMU.IT

The only concern I have with VMware vSphere is that the level of support is inadequate. It's not very fast. The support is good, but it's slow.

When we need help, we require someone to answer the phone quickly.

View full review »
EN
IT Manager at a legal firm with 51-200 employees

The product meets our needs pretty well. I can't recall noticing any missing features. It's pretty complete. 

Our hopes are that it continuously keeps improving.

The cost could always be lower. 

View full review »
KR
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The pipeline feature can be improved, as it doesn't allow for specific situations.

View full review »
it_user541089 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

vCenter is much more important than ever. The vCenter HA solution is the area in which VMware should improve. (I know vCenter version 6.5 has a similar feature, but it's not released yet.)

View full review »
it_user320484 - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Manager at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees

One of the biggest thing is support for non-Windows platforms, especially virtualized desktops which is big across Department of Education. It's only just been released so it's one of their most immature offerings and has room to improve and grow. A lot of the recent improvements have been leaning towards small businesses but in government we don’t have those challenges.

View full review »
JS
Infrastructure Engineer at a hospitality company with 51-200 employees

There is nothing from my perspective that the product needs to improve. It works for all my needs.

I recommend that VMware vSphere continue to release more features.

View full review »
WM
Network and Security Engineer at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Without a lot of physical RAM on the hardware, it's not very effective. The stability could be improved in cases like this. In addition, I would like to see easier and more widely available integration options.

View full review »
MA
Infrastructure Senior Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

The UI could use some improvements, especially in dark mode. There are some features not enabled or do not function as expected.

I would like to see VMware try a new service like Blockchain.

View full review »
JD
Autodidact Quantum Physics- Quantum mechanics. at IC Consultancy

The only way for it to be a complete product is if you integrate all the functionalities. Then you don't need any backup solution anymore and you can do it by yourself. Integration needs improvement. They should improve a lot of the functionality because normally it's half of a product. You're only protecting yourself against technical failures but not against any cyber threats or any other stuff. It's not about prevention, it's about time to recovery because it's going to happen anyway. 

View full review »
GS
Windows Virtualization Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

I have seen some sessions for version 6.7 covering its improvements, which I was looking for, mainly the content library. Our requirement is to move our templates from one location to another location. Previously, this was not available. We are happy this was introduced. 

Another thing is the flash. However, in 6.7, they completely removed it and they are bringing in the HTML. Let's see, as I haven't tried the 6.7 update yet. I hope it will satisfy everything from our point of view.

View full review »
DG
VP of Product Engineering at Navisite

As with any piece of technology (hardware or software), there's always room for improvement. vSphere is incredibly mature from a core feature and function perspective. As we continue to push mission-critical workloads into vSphere, and those workloads are not readily protected at the application layer for availability, continuing to increase the size limitations on FT-protected VMs would be a great advance.

vSphere management has evolved over time. It's inherently complex. Operating a large virtual infrastructure is not an easy task for anyone. That's why certifications, such as VCP exist, because you have to have the right skill set to operate the environment. As the product evolves and starts to take advantage of things, like DRS, workload placement becomes less of an issue for humans to worry about, because the system takes care of it for you. Of equal interest is SDRS, storage management and storage placement, as historically, it was one of the most challenging things to mange in a large production VMware environment. With SDRS, we've actually seen our need to babysit it and manage it as a human go way down.

View full review »
it_user330075 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT Infrastructure at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

VMware interacts with a lot of various hardware and has a vast array of capabilities and it seems that new capabilities are being added all the time. I would like to see more documentation and assistance provided by re-sellers to assist in the initial design of customer environments.

View full review »
it_user321576 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Reporting. If I lose a host, I have to report what was on that host, what was affected, and for how long. We create our own power state report providing info on hosts, and I would like reporting for what VMs were affected and what was the fault, what hosts were affected and restarted by HA. You can get third-party reporting, but it would be great to have it built-in.

View full review »
it_user281958 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer with 10,001+ employees

Fault Tolerance, which was introduced in version 5.5 and improved in 6.0, is a promising feature that has potential to ensure highly critical system availability in the enterprise environment. It presently has vCPU limitations which makes its deployment scenarios limited, but VMware has made great strides between the two versions, indicating that its usefulness will continue to improve.

View full review »
WK
IT Infrastructure Engineer at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

They can lower the price of its license.

View full review »
BA
Founder & Technology Advisor at EUC Solutions

To manage it properly, you have to know this product really well. For the most part, it is very easy to use.

View full review »
GF
IT Operations Support at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

The support for the latest version could be improved.

View full review »
DF
IT Administrator at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

On the older version of VMware vSphere, possibly version four, we had a feature that allowed us to backup Ziploc machines. It has not been available in the newer version such as six or seven. I have been looking for another solution to accomplish the backups but they should bring back this plugin-type tool to allow older backup capabilities.

View full review »
MD
Technical Account Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The solution could improve by providing better information on what other products it is compatible with. For example, we have customers that do not like AMD Chipsets used with VMware but it is not a technical issue, they need to bring more awareness. 

View full review »
MA
Senior System Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

I would like to see it more open to working with other platforms.

They could improve the pricing. The license could be cheaper.

They have multiple components required for the setup. It would be better to integrate it into one solution, especially for small business companies.

View full review »
OK
Solution Architect at KIAN company

The biggest problem in this solution is the incompatibility of some of the features with some of the drivers installed on servers. For example, if I want to install vSphere on an HPE server, the driver is really different from a Dell server or a Fujitsu server. I need to download different drivers and install them manually, which can be improved by VMware. They can offer a special image to match different servers. We face different problems when we install vSphere on an ESXi server and have different drivers on the storage. ESXi cannot detect different kinds of storage, and they should improve this. 

We updated our existing version to vSphere 7 in a private environment, but it seems that this version is not very stable. We are facing issues with restarting the host. In earlier versions, such as vSphere 6 or 6.5, we didn't have any such problems.

It would be good if VMware can offer specific applications for mobiles to enable us to control the management of all servers by mobile. They should also improve the vCenter GUI because it is currently not compatible, and there are a lot of problems. Some of the options do not appear well in the browser. VMware should spend more time resolving the problems in the GUI.

View full review »
AP
IT Infrastructure Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I don't think that the solution must be improved.

View full review »
TN
System Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

vSphere is going in a good direction already with its improvement. The one area where I would love to see an improvement is the HTML5 client. It's great, but it could get better. I know it can.

View full review »
RC
Systems Engineer at Vestmark inc

I'd like to get rid of the Flash Client. There are still some things that require us to go into it and use it, some plugins and other things aren't supported in the HTML5. I love the HTML5 Client. I think it's a lot smoother, a lot faster. Version 6.5 was kind of slow. From our testing, from what I've seen, 6.7 is supposed to be better. That would be my biggest complaint right now: that the 6.5 Flash Client is slow. It takes a while to load.

View full review »
AA
Senior Network Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have just been looking through what vSphere 6.7 has coming, and one of the things I'm most excited about is the fact that we won't need to use multiple Clients any longer, if all the features that are supposed to be available are, in fact, available in the HTML5 Client. That's one of the biggest things because, for me, it's all about management. For the most part, all the other things that have made VMware invaluable in our lives should be working just as well, but a little bit more speed won't hurt.

View full review »
RE
Systems Engineerineering Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees

Flexible pricing would be nice. Some of the pricing models are fairly big.

View full review »
it_user317979 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Vice President at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Heterogeneous management of disparate hypervisors.

View full review »
PR
Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

A solution for all the different appliances that you now see running would be good. In the past you had VMWare agents, so every manufacturer installed agents on the IIS6 layers but that didn’t work well. Now every supplier has its own virtual appliance, but now some customers have five or six VAs per ESXi host which consumes a lot of processing and memory power. So maybe something like a hypervisor for virtual appliances.

View full review »
Vikas Dhumale - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Simple Logic IT Private Limited

n areas like coding and microservices, users can find lots of features in Kubernetes. With Kubernetes, if one of your pods is down, then automatically, another pod will be up, so there are no manual tasks or opt for microservices since such a pod will run in the back end automatically.

The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required.

View full review »
Myo Ko - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at Access Spectrum Company Limited

The solution’s pricing is too high and could be improved.

View full review »
Chris Childerhose - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Infrastructure Architect at ThinkON

Get the HTML5 client to 100% parity to replace the Flash client.  When the next release comes out ensure all bugs/fixes are implemented as there was some pretty nasty ones on initial 6.5 release.

View full review »
Emmanuel Nguyen - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Anetys

Improvements should be made to the controller. 

View full review »
SM
Manager at a non-profit with 201-500 employees

The solution doesn't seem to be missing any features currently.

It would be ideal if the integration capabilities were a bit more robust.

Technical support could be faster in terms of response times.

View full review »
GC
IT Director at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees

The container management could be improved. It's far from perfect right now.

View full review »
PL
Lead Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

I know, coming out in 6.7 Update 1, that the HTML Client is going to reach full parity and have all the same features that they had in the now-deprecated thick client that used to be on Windows. That's one really neat feature I'm actually looking forward to.

There are always little "gotchas." In the past, little changes have broken things in vSphere. Going from 6.0, which worked perfectly fine on the Mac Pro, there were certain changes in hardware drivers, when 6.5 came out. Some were no longer present or had been deprecated. As a result, it didn't work on the Mac Pro anymore, which was business-critical. Okay, everybody could stick on one version and wait until it was fixed. We were able to take drivers out of the 5.5 version, add them to the build package for installation and it worked. It was not the most efficient, and storage I/O was kind of slow. Since 6.5 Update 1 came out, that has been solid, no real issues with that.

View full review »
RP
IT Director at Jewish Family Service

I do not find it to be simple and efficient to manage. The tools, the interface to manage it, are a pain. In the latest version, they moved us to web-only, the Web Client and it's terrible. It's slow. It crashes. It's annoying. I used the Web Client in the older version and was happy. I would go back to the regular thick client but I don't have that option anymore, so I am always fighting it.

View full review »
it_user321357 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at Maricopa County Community College District

We have vCloud suite, Hyperion was a pain, but now they've just announced integration into vCenter, so everytime I have a complaint, they’ve already started to address it.

View full review »
it_user3507 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager of Infrastructure with 1,001-5,000 employees
VMware product challenges / Areas for improvement: • Advanced Capacity Management and Performance Management & Analysis, Disaster Recovery, and private cloud capabilities are lacking out of the box for enterprise-level deployments. - Ability to “right-size” resources on all VMs is needed at enterprise installations. - Add-on / 3rd party products like vCenter Operations / VMturbo, SRM, or vCloud may be needed. - These add-on products add management complexity. They also add licensing and maintenance costs for the overall solution in a tough budget climate. • Difficulty using VMotion with Microsoft Clusters. We utilize clusters for our large SQL Farm, but we are unable to use VMotion during patching efforts. We are now looking at Hyper-V or physical servers for this functionality to minimize downtime. • Granting administrative privileges / roles can be a bit more tedious than are initially apparent.• VMware vSphere 5 is current architectural standard for 2 data centers - VMware was the major virtualization solution provider when first implemented years ago - Microsoft 2012 Hyper-V “proof of concept” is currently in progress for US - Educational discounts from Microsoft are significant - Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 version functionality appears to gain on VMware vSphere • Also have a large Solaris UNIX environment utilizing Solaris Zones. • VMware (or Hyper-V) will enable us to drive a re-platforming effort for Solaris -> Linux View full review »
JS
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The solution could be cheaper and less expensive.

View full review »
AS
Technical Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

I'm a big fan of vSphere; I have used it since the days of 3.5, all the way up to now. When you deploy it as a complete stack, from vSphere to vCenter to the vRealize Operations, Orchestrator, all the way up, you're into your NSX login site, the entire cloud stack. By the time you're done, you begin to feel, "do you really need so many different pieces that you need to connect? Could it not just be a single, unified product?" I'm not saying the integration is difficult. It is seamless. But it gets to you at a point. There are times where you really begin to think, "I got this." Not, " it should be much easier than this."

I can't think of anybody on the planet who would actually have issues with vSphere. vSphere is as stable as the word stable gets. When you do the entire stack scenario unless you're doing something like VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail, wherein it becomes a much more seamless solution where you are using discrete hardware, you're creating the entire cloud platform. It gets a little tedious doing all those workflows at times.

From a management center, particularly referring to the private cloud stack, I would prefer for it to be a lot more seamless. There are competitors, Cloud Management Platform or Morpheus, for example. It's a product you deploy and you're good to go. With this, there are so many different pieces to connect. It grows on you.

View full review »
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Solutions and Support at Esconet Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Both the price and the licensing fee are expensive, especially for our clients with a smaller workload.

View full review »
RS
Delivery Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of what could be improved, they should improve their storage management part. vSphere has its own file system type, called VMSS, and that file system doesn't report on proper data usage or things like that. There are certain loopholes wherein it sometimes shows you erroneous data. Again, their VMSS file system, their data storage management system, and its reporting must be improved a lot.

There are certain features which are called VCE which are available as a separate suite for this VMware cloud. The networking is almost integrated within the vSphere so it would be really helpful for the implementation team if they also had an orchestration for a different storage. There might be multiple OEM storage in the back-end, for example, that could connect with the vSphere while the vSphere shows it to the front-end user as a single storage. There is a lot of scope in terms of managing hybrid storage at the back-end of vSphere.

View full review »
CB
Systems Engineer/Systems Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The web user interface can be a bit clunky from time to time, so there may be some room for improvement in that regard.  I was a fan of the C# client for as long as I could use it.  The move from flash to HTML5 for the web interface is an improvement but still not a good as C# was.

View full review »
CK
Chief Technology Officer at Motor City Stamping Inc

I would like to see better fault and performance reporting in the GUI. I should not have to resort to using the command line to see what is going on.

View full review »
MH
Senior Automation Specialist at Federal Reserve Bank Of San Francisco

Reducing the cost of vSphere would be an improvement.

View full review »
MA
Systems and Network Administrator at Gulf Precast Concrete Co. LLC at Gulf Precast Concrete Co. LLC

The solution should be more user-friendly for upgrading host ESXi units, bringing them into the control unit of vSphere.

Generally, the user interface needs to be improved for non-technical people. A technical person can hover around and find the right tool or task that needs to be done. But, for people who are new, they require guidance because it is not intuitive. They have to ask for help from here and there to get it right.

View full review »
delete - PeerSpot reviewer
delete at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

It will be nice when it's all HTML 5.

It would be nice if it had auto-scaling, no need to select CPU or select database size. Let it auto-scale, let it use the features that VMware has, instead of having to preselect.

View full review »
CT
IT Analyst at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

On Vista, there should be a lot more new features. We would like to see more security features to harden our environment in the future.

From a technical point, there is not much room for new innovation in the hypervisor. It is more about improving the environment or the landscape, not the product.

The licensing should be more competitive based on its price. There should be more features for the licensing that you own. Money is a factor, because our management is looking right now at its money. The most annoying thing is to tell people that I would like to continue using VMware, and have them argue the other solutions are free.

View full review »
TP
Lead Administrator at Comcast

Code: They need to stop pushing it out so fast. Nobody in the real world is really using it yet, because it's not ready for prime time. It needs to be more stable. They need to get their product more stable before they push more code out. 

An example, in vCenter 6.5, they pushed HA, but it doesn't work. I've worked with so many engineers who finally said, "Give up! It doesn't work." 

I asked a question to one of the guys who did a demo with us on 6.7, and said, "Did you guys fix it?" 

They immediately skirted around the question. I said, "I'll take that as a no."

View full review »
JJ
Systems Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
  • It is simple to break. 
  • As far as ease of use and their front end (vCenter), it needs refreshing. They are doing some good things with HTML5. I would like them to move into having a containerized application to manage the vCenter.
  • I would like having something that works on a smaller screen, so we can get to it on our iPads and have it more touch-centric versus having to sit at a laptop.
View full review »
it_user297561 - PeerSpot reviewer
VMware(VCP5), VMware Regional Academy Director at a university with 501-1,000 employees

Continue to develop products that address the SMB market.

View full review »
it_user379716 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

Overall I’m very happy with what the product brings so I can’t suggest any major improvements. However, I’m very disappointed in VMware’s decision to push management to a web-based vCenter client and away from the standalone thick client. The web client is just terrible in so many ways, mainly on a performance basis. It is very slow. I also find the thick client much easier to navigate and work with my VMs. A large user population shares my sentiment as there are a number of posts in VMware’s forums regarding the issues with the web client. I hope VMware realizes this and either greatly enhances the web client or moves back to the thick client for management.

View full review »
it_user370200 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Analyst at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Currently we are struggling to keep the storage capacity under control and as we do not use thin provisioning our capacity is always a challenge, but the actual used space by the guests is pretty low. We need to find a way to go to thin provisioning and keep that under control and implement automation on the capacity management and have threshold alerting.

View full review »
it_user353388 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director & Head of Technologies at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Some modifications are still require to be done with the CLI, directly on the host, like SSL certificate management and reclaiming storage space on thin provision disk (depending on storage devices). It would save a lot of time if those could have a simple GUI in the vCenter.

View full review »
it_user335898 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at PlanSource

I would like to see much more of a, maybe, application intelligence. Unfortunately you have storage vendors who are doing that for us right now with your XtremIO and storage IO and cards inside of something that has some application intelligence. To make MySQL work, SQL work with storage that you can just buy, but VMware being able to characterize database platforms based on use cases of MySQL or SQL, they're very different. Being able to tell the difference between the two and say, "Hey look, this will work here, but it won't work here." That would be nice.

It's challenging using MySQL with vCenter because Linux as a whole is a latency sensitive OS, so you're only as good as your slowest moving part. Doesn't matter if it's disc, memory or processor and sometimes it's shortest path to storage. In order to make MySQL work you need micron second processing and in some cases when you have monolithic sized databases you need to be able to scale that at the same time.

So, unfortunately with the way MySQL plays with storage and the way VMware is right now, it's where I went with the application intelligence, there's a lot of, not taboo if you will, but doesn't really work. You're not going to find a lot of use cases because, unfortunately, our business falls into a different sector if you will, by running Linux as a primary OS.

So, better support for newer Linux kernels would be always great. The fact that they've released open tools and made it the supported platform for just about every Linux distribution out there now sees that they're solving the problem like the VMXNET3 adapter. The driver's not there, the machine's not online. There has been some pitfalls but VMware's been able to, from a company that supplies an application and an OS, solve a lot of those.

They are listening to the customer. It's very difficult to say what's still left because after today you never really know, that could change.

View full review »
it_user321303 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

I would like them to keep the client-based system, even though they are going towards web client.

View full review »
SS
Infrastructure Professional Service Team Lead at G-Able

I'd like to see the snapshot feature that Nutanix has in their product. It takes a snapshot as a backup without processing as a third-party product. I'd like to see that backup feature in VMware.

View full review »
HV
Head of Professional Services at Axians ICT Austria GmbH

We are very close to VM, all of our pain-points involve direct discussions. There are no special pain-points. This solution allows us to handle our system. It's required in business processes.

The management could be simplified for base-level customers, but of course, it would be difficult to match all customer needs. 

View full review »
SL
Principal Engineer at ST Engineering Limited

I'd like to see a simplified integration with services automation. At the moment it requires a lot of network from partners and solution providers to do this - there are a lot of third party components that require integration. If they could improve this it would mean less integration for some key products and services.

View full review »
SG
Owner at a transportation company with 1-10 employees

I'm not aware of every option that our solution provides, but I see mostly two things. Provide a better solution for hybrid clouds and migration to the cloud. That could be one thing. The second one is providing some integration with different solutions at the application level, such as Kubernetes.

There is always a problem that the application level solutions are not aware of lower levels of infrastructure, of architecture. Some bundled applications with a stack of new VMs with better templates, including the deployment of such things. Monitoring could also be improved.

View full review »
BG
System Admin at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

There are still a few features that have been left out as far as updating and sending firmware to the host. You still have to go into the Flash interface to do that. But, for the most part, there are just those few missing features from the HTML5 interface.

View full review »
CH
System Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

The roadmap VMware has for Workspace ONE is on target with what we want to do. A year from now I might have a different opinion, but right now, I'm good. I see no negatives at this point.

View full review »
GW
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees

As far as the web client goes, one of the frustrating things is that it's dependent on different browsers. One day it may work with only a given browser or there may be issues with Flash. So I look forward to being able to use the HTML 5 client. Hopefully, it will be a lot more stable and not have the kind of issues that I necessarily run into with the web client today.

One thing that is a little frustrating for me is that you have the network side with bandwidth and, if it's a system that's virtualized, obviously, you have VMware vSphere in the mix. There are all the different components. If someone has a VM and they don't like the performance or they see something that causes them to say, "Oh, this seems a little sluggish," they contact us and say, "Hey, what's going on?" And that becomes a kind of "magical mystery tour," a black box sometimes. I think, "Okay, where do I need to look? Is it even a problem within the virtualization infrastructure or is it somewhere else?" So that's what I'm hoping to find out about in some of the sessions, here at VMworld 2018, and maybe get some answers.

I haven't seen the new client with vSphere 6.7, so it's hard for me to say what additional features I would like to see.

View full review »
it_user515508 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

The licensing part. VMware must simplify the licensing mode to help selling to business and additional products.

View full review »
it_user516468 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at CityServiceValcon

I would like to see better licensing and less complexity of use.

  • Licensing: Any licensing after essentials plus becomes very granular. In turn, it is very expensive to license the features that you want. This is unfortunate, because IT for most companies is perceived as a “black hole” for costs. It becomes hard to justify because you cannot directly pin a value to it. Because of the perception, it is sometimes difficult to approve such large purchases, especially for something you can’t physically hold in your hands.
  • Complexity: There is a benefit in having granular controls. In many cases, this is largely unnecessary. You may need to look for a feature that maybe you don’t have to change often. Maybe you only have to change it once. You can sometimes spend large amounts of time and effort to find it, which can be fairly frustrating.
View full review »
it_user320235 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

I honestly can’t think of anything right now, it provides the access and management tools I need and keeps them in easy reach.

View full review »
it_user386772 - PeerSpot reviewer
Server Manager at a local government with 1,001-5,000 employees

There are a couple areas for improvement that I can see. First, I'd like to see better performance for vCenter. And, I'd also like to see NSF 4.1 fully supported. There are some NSF features lacking from version 3 to 4.1.

View full review »
it_user297717 - PeerSpot reviewer
Stevenson University Systems Administrator at a university with 501-1,000 employees

While ESXi 6 brings fault tolerance for VMs with multiple CPU cores, I desperately, passionately need a better Web Client than the Flash-based monstrosity we've grown accustomed to. Having to perform certain tasks in the Web Client and certain tasks in the C# Fat Client make life very frustrating sometimes.

View full review »
it_user320199 - PeerSpot reviewer
IS Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 501-1,000 employees

I think everything we’re looking at should be addressed in 6. I don’t like the web client, I’m sure it’s fine, but I believe 6.0 addresses that.

View full review »
DL
IT Support Officer at a non-profit with 501-1,000 employees

Before the latest versions of this software, we used to work with versions 5.5 and below. We used VMware vSphere as a client, as an application, e.g. it was not web-based. Now that has changed, because they've moved it from the application to the web-based version. It's the only change I've seen which I found very difficult because it was challenging to connect to the web, particularly because it can be very slow. It freezes, unlike the app version which was absolutely perfect.

The performance was better with VMware vSphere as an app, but not with the web-based client. The web-based client could be improved, in terms of its speed. It could be faster, but I also just learned that since everything is moving to cloud, there's a reason why there's a web-based client now.

View full review »
RK
Global IT Infrastructure Architect at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees

The challenge that we have is keeping the system up to date, as well as having the internal resources to maintain that platform. We're not an IT company, so it's challenging for us to keep the IT resources in-house. It is for this reason that we are now investigating public cloud offerings.

We would like to see VMware move in the direction of having a working model on the application level. The next level of virtualization, most likely container solutions, is what we're interested in. That would avoid us having to support the operating system and tooling. Overall, it would make it easier for us from a customer perspective to use it.

View full review »
UF
System support engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The reporting could be improved.

We'd like to see better monitoring. There should be better alert systems in place. 

View full review »
KA
Chief Technology Officer at perfekt

The integration with containers should be addressed. While they have started to integrate with Tanzu, the integration is not that good at the moment. 

View full review »
AS
Sr. Virtualization Engineer at a government with 51-200 employees

The price could be better. The licensing is definitely expensive and tech support is sometimes frustrating.

View full review »
RM
Enterprise Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Commercially, you see other products, like Nutanix, which offers a free hypervisor. It would be ideal if this solution was the same in that regard.

There are certain tools the can't run in parallel and occasionally, in those instances, we have trouble migrating customers from one source to our data center.

If I'm replicating workload from the data center and, I have to migrate some of the workload to my location, I have to stop that application. Only then I can run vSphere. That is the biggest challenge. If both the tools cannot run in parallel, it becomes a problem. There should be some sort of way to run these two products in parallel.

View full review »
VA
Assitant Director - IT at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

I can't think of any features that are missing. I'm not really using any advanced options and don't have complex requirements.

The solution could be a bit more user-friendly.

View full review »
WW
Manager IT at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

OS templates should be readily available, so there is no need to get an OS separately. Only the activation part should be different, which is not presently available due to the need to get the OS from a different location, then create VMs. If it connect with Internet, it should ask this during VM creation with the help of selection. It should auto download the OS so it will be beneficial only at time of activation by entering a valid key. If a key is not valid, then it should start with a trial version. 

View full review »
TC
Internship Student at NA

Improvement in price.

View full review »
AB
Head - Server and Storage at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

When checking the utilization reports, the operational reporting and matrixes are a little weak.  In terms of what has been the starting growth or trend analysis is something which, currently they have an add-on which we have not used  because it's an add-on product, which we have not bought. As of now, they have this capability but I've not seen these features to be more integrated on the base product itself rather than having as a special add-on.

As I mentioned, the necessary improvement would be to add additional features that would integrate reporting and management in terms of automation. Those are the two things I would say it's a lot of, or the third item could be of some service important to integration. Right now everybody is talking about private clubs, but these are the base foundation so, the effect it has had on embedded software attack, running on the hypervisor for self-provisioning, it definitely has an edge.

View full review »
SC
IT Infrastructure Architect at a retailer

I can see the room for improvement still in the user interface (UI). 

There is still room for improvement with the HTML5 Web Client. They are working on it, as I can see on their blog. However, there is still room for improvement in the newer features that they can push into it.

View full review »
MW
CIO at a library with 201-500 employees

Maybe it's there and I don't know about it, but I would love to be able to build a standard server set and be able to give users, who want to build another server, the ability to click in and have a pool of 20 options for the five groups that are using them. I could just say, “Hey if you want a server click here," and then the server is built for them, tells them how to connect, how to login to it. Done. That would be so cool.

View full review »
it_user882975 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Developer/Engineer at Navy Network Information Center (NNIC)

In the next release, I would like to see programming. I'd like to see a lot more about customization for people who want to customize programming API, SDK.

View full review »
it_user547797 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Support Engineer at TMN

When we talked about its Vmotion feature so we see we are able to move our Vms in running state from one host to another host within cluster and shared storage but we are unable to move VMs accros cluster and storage in running state so here is vsphere 5.5 suffer little bit.

I guess in vMotion it should have the ability to move VMs across clusters of vCenters and different type of CUPS.

View full review »
it_user335907 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect at Rackspace

One of the things that I really wanted to see was the catalog because it came from vCloud Director, and they are adding that in 6.0, so they have that catalog, and they are extending it to where you can really replicate those catalogs out and share them. That was one of the features I would have really liked to see, and fortunately it's there.

One of the other features that we had been wanting to see was the vMotion between clouds, which of course that was announced today, that it's one of the things that's coming. I think that's going to be a game changer really.

View full review »
it_user321291 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Ditch flash-based web client, make it HTML5. Would like more customization of the web client to make it do what I want. I occasionally flip to the old client because I know it. Web client is a better solution, but it's not done right.

Make training more accessible. Right now very expensive and hard to see the value. Lowering cost would be huge.

View full review »
it_user300507 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineering Associate Manager with 1,001-5,000 employees

I think VMware should make it easier to manage different components (ESXi Hosts, vCenter, etc.) through firewalls. Some organizations have to separate the components with firewalls for security purposes, and VMware does not act well when hosts are separated from vCenter by firewalls.

View full review »
it_user284382 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analista de Suporte Sênior Especializado at TIVIT

Party auditing users, as today we do not natively know what each user is doing in the virtual environment.

View full review »
BB
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
  • Honestly it’s the leader of the pack so it just needs to keep innovating while the competition catches up
  • Maybe the only thing to improve is the compatibility with non-standard devices. In particular we have issues with SAS Tape drives
View full review »
it_user77823 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
VMware has a good sight for what businesses are looking for. They have been ahead of the curve since the beginning. They have good support and quick response. I don't see too many improvements with vSphere itself. View full review »
EC
Database Administrator at a government with 1-10 employees

An area for improvement for VMware vSphere is the archiving tool, because sometimes we are using the VMware OVF Tool for backups, but archiving is not very fast when we are backing up the virtual machines. It needs improvement.

What we'd like to see in the next release is for the exporting process to be improved, because what we've observed is that when exporting VMware graphically, sometimes the process stops. We have to use the command-line utility: OVF Tool which is more reliable, so we'd like VMware vSphere to have a better and faster exporting process.

View full review »
FD
Freelance, Automation Project Administration, DCS, I&E at Centennial Cayman Corp Chile S.A

I'm using vSphere at a high level. Sometimes, I find it challenging to integrate different networks, but I think it's just my lack of knowledge. For example, some companies have private internal networks, so we must connect to external networks, routers, or switches. 

And the backups are something we have to integrate with one of them because they are just running with what they have. And I don't know why it wasn't considered from the beginning because they believe that they can back up the whole computer, but it's not a good solution. I have taken measures like exporting critical databases that I normally modify and figure out, but I would prefer a centralized system.

View full review »
LH
Cloud Professional Architect at FPT Software

VMware vSphere is perfect for the on-premise solution, but we are in the cloud era, so I think maybe VMware needs to invest more in the cloud and the microservice chain. It would be better if VMware offered more cloud solutions and continuous applications.

View full review »
JM
Founder at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

There are certain issues that can be improved. No solution is perfect, even though it's working for most of us most of the time. There are certain issues that crop up and some of them are not due to VMware. It could be due to the hardware it is running on. Therefore, it would be ideal if they could provide more knowledge on the fault tolerance and the high availability as some things are just assumed and then users find later that the use cases are different. Sometimes you may assume something applies to a use case only to find that it doesn't. If they improve on the knowledge base and documentation, it would be extremely helpful.

View full review »
SP
General manager at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

The solution should offer more integration capabilities. 

View full review »
AV
IT Infrastructure Specialist at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It could be more scalable. 

View full review »
SK
Project Specialist at integra software

Security and patch-related items need improvement.

In the next release, we would like the security system improved.

View full review »
ST
Head of System Architecture Department at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I can't think of any particular features that are missing within the solution. It's quite complete.

There are occasionally bugs or errors.

Some customers are of the opinion that the pricing is too expensive for them.

View full review »
KS
Owner at Computech Associates

Its price should be better. Their support should also be more customer-friendly, and they should train people like us so that we know more about the latest technologies and features. If there is some program and drive from their side to teach us, it is definitely going to help us.

Pricing and support are the most important features for mid-level companies. We are not implementing this solution for big tech companies.

View full review »
JL
Pré-vendas at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

The visualization market is likely going to adopt more features in the network aspect of the typical data center. It would be useful to have features like micro-segmentation, changing the mix as well as part of vSphere. This is not currently provided and to achieve this, you need the VMware NSX product, which is a different product with its own license. I think some sort of migration tool could be introduced to migrate to the cloud. It should include integrations with a hooked cloud environment, or on-prem and even between clusters. For example, sometimes I need to migrate a VM from a vSphere environment to a hooked cloud environment.

View full review »
JP
Systems Security Administrator at Twin River Casino

Improvements to the vCenter server appliance are still needed, especially the HTML5.

View full review »
it_user855678 - PeerSpot reviewer
Azure Infrastructure Architect at Wireless Car

I would like to see VMware head towards a more GPU friendly environment. 

View full review »
it_user802905 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Architect at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

We stopped using a lot of cloud services. However, I see that VMware has integrated with Amazon Cloud. We will now to have to move everything to the cloud. My goal is to uplift our environment to the cloud, which will be probably in two years, but it will happen. It is where everyone is heading, since it is the next big step.

View full review »
it_user373449 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I’d like to see a better web console or rather, transform the web console in a real single pane of glass for the whole infrastructure instead of having to go for vRealize Ops Manager. Other vendors are providing this already and vSphere (vendor) has that capability. I’d also like to see solutions such as vSAN in vSphere, really take off. It has a lot of potential and since it has been jointly done with other hardware vendors it somehow lost track of what the real purpose was, offer a whole very simple and very effective solution. Support for Virtual Volumes will be the next big thing, and although it is already implemented, it will take a while to see its light in production in customers.

View full review »
it_user231912 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

I'd like to see small VMDKs in the next version since Hyper-V provides that option. Right now, that process with vSphere is still manual and requires downtime.

View full review »
it_user297714 - PeerSpot reviewer
Server Virtualization Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

The web client needs a lot of work. Unless they replace the C# client with something better, they're going to have issues. Without a better management interface, they're going from a great system to a very poor one.

View full review »
it_user11286 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT - Server Administration with 501-1,000 employees

We are a small shop but still pay the big bucks for licensing vSphere products in order to gain the features that fit our goals.

I'm looking forward to a review of VMTools updates in vSphere 6, which have hopefully been revamped. We currently have a somewhat dated change process so tools updates are hampered by a process that doesn't quite fit and requires more after hours work that is necessary.

View full review »
it_user320115 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

That’s a difficult question because there’s so many features that have been developed but not released yet. I would like to see more workshops with training opportunities at no cost to the customer. That would be very helpful.

View full review »
FG
Systems analyst at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I would like to see VDP and other features included to back up the VMs in a native manner.

View full review »
MO
Operation Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The initial setup is quite complex.

We would like the pricing to be lower. It's very expensive right now.

There could be more security features added to the product.

View full review »
TS
Senior Distributed Platform Administrator at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

When you run vSphere on its own, that thing can run for 50 years without crashing. The problem starts when you start integrating it to clusters, migrating the virtual machines, doing the DRS, and applying the resource pool. The problem is with the memory. 

Sometimes it's impossible to prevent problems from happening. With vSphere, you never know where the problem is going to come from, but you will always know that there is a problem. This is the problem. 

I would make integration much better and improve speed. I would also make the errors more visible to the user. 

View full review »
RK
IT TECHNICAL/ SERVER ADMINISTRATOR at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

One problem that needs fixing is when we run the backup for the servers, the servers become inaccessible to everybody on-site while it is creating a snapshot. If your server size is large you will have to wait longer when the server is unavailable. 

In the future, it would be a benefit for VMware to improve on the Storage vMotion feature by making it become faster between host. It takes a lot of time to transfer files between hosts currently.

View full review »
SW
System Administrator at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

The user interface could use some improvement.

View full review »
DC
Works

Two improvements that I would like to see are higher resolution console modes for guests and easier switching between consoles.

View full review »
it_user834129 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP Cloud Business at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The pricing and tech support need improvement. 

View full review »
it_user265812 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Solutions Architect at Clouditalia Telecomunicazioni

A slight improvement could be made to the interface of the management of vCSA, so that they answer on the 5480 ports. That kind of graphical interface could be improved, but it is not a main point.

View full review »
it_user367830 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Director at a government with 501-1,000 employees

Big improvements were introduced in v6 compared with v5.5, but I am still expecting some additional improvements for our activity. Another area is the backup solutions that are relying on CBT. For the moment it is resolved, but due to the fact that during the last three months there appeared some critical bugs, the virtual machine backup might be inconsistent.

View full review »
it_user350622 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator - Backup & Storage Specialist at METRO SYSTEMS Romania

Hard to say what I'd like to see in the next versions. Over the years, the VMware development team constantly delivered major improvements to this product. I've only had the chance to work version 4.5 up to 5.5. Since I haven't had the chance to test the current version which is 6, I think it wouldn't be fair to make suggestions due to the fact that some of my ideas may have already been implemented starting with version 6. 

However, when I think of what tried me most with vSphere, it's probably the fact that my colleagues and I on the Virtual Infrastructure Admin team always had to do debugging and troubleshooting on VM configuration files in a manual manner if we wanted to bring to life broken VMs. 

Sure, some official KBs are pretty useful but not all issues can be covered by them. It would really ease up and speed up the troubleshooting process for advanced and experienced administrators if vSphere had some sort of VM file debug tool that can also run automatic integrity checks and repairs based on the entire set of configuration files, live run-logs, a potential database that logs the history of changes made to the VMs, and stuff like that. 

This would be especially useful when you have environments that tend to do a lot of Snapshot manipulations such as those that use specialized virtual backup and/or replication software.

View full review »
it_user85836 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer with 51-200 employees

I’m keenly awaiting multi core Fault Tolerance, so I can have all our VM’s covered by FT – currently it’s only available for single core VM’s.


Fault Tolerance is now available for multicore VM's, but, you;ll need to factor in how many cores the host has before rolling this out to the more powerfully specced VM's.

View full review »
it_user320970 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP, Infrastructure Management and Security Services at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I would like to see non-cloud native apps to be able to run on infrastructure and not be dependent on the underlying VMs for stability.

View full review »
it_user320238 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Technical Support at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

I don’t think we're large enough to use it like some other firms do, so v5 is perfectly fine for me. We’re running v6 now, but we really don’t even need that.

View full review »
it_user292629 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Support Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

This product already does this very well, but all improvements are related to how physical resources, as well as memory and CPU, are managed . These are the main problems of the virtualization, it uses more memory than CPU. We still have problems with memory in virtualization environments, and some cases can present problems of throughput with virtual disks, too.

View full review »
OscarMunoz - PeerSpot reviewer
Jefatura del Departamento de Tecnologías de la Información at SERGEAR SAC

We need to improve availability and disaster recovery in VMware vSphere.

View full review »
SK
Vmware Administrator at Intertech

An area for improvement would be integration with different platforms. In a future release, I would like to see a feature that alerts the user if they make a mistake with configuration or if there is a vulnerability.

View full review »
HI
Scrum Master - Digital Marketing at Vodafone

vSphere could perhaps be improved by more integration or better security. If there is ever something that could be improved, I am open to looking into it and proposing the improvement. 

View full review »
CM
Principal Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

VMware vSphere could be more secure and well-known to everyone.

View full review »
AO
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The installation is a little bit complex.

VMware vSphere needs to increase the datastore volume.

View full review »
DV
Senior IT Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The HTML 5 client has always lagged behind. It would be nice if this wasn't the case. It's one of the key areas that they need to improve on.

In a previous company, I did not have a very good experience with technical support.

The main problem with the product is how it manages its snapshotting technology, which would need a complete ground-up rebuild. Likely, they won't put that in, however, basically, if you have an old snapshot, you want to get rid of it. It crushes the environment. This is due to the fact that all of your changes have to be written back to disk when you're deleting something versus just deleting it.

View full review »
FT
Information Technology Specialist at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

I would like to have replication between sites available in the standard version.

View full review »
AH
Director at OPEOPL LISTEN TECHNOLOGIES PVT. LTD.

The solution is too expensive for us and we don't have any funds to direct towards it. We just started the company, which makes it hard to explore the solution the way we want to with the amount of cost involved to do so. They should work to make the licensing more affordable.

I want to be able to use OpenStack, however, I can't do that without vCenter, and it's so cost-prohibitive for us, it's become a problem.

We've only faced one technical issue. That is downloading the virtual machines and uploading the virtual machines. It takes a lot of time and we cannot transfer the VMware from one machine or directly from one server to another. That action requires vCenter. That may only be an issue on the free version and not the pro version. On the pro version, you have much better features. 

It would be ideal if they could integrate billing software so that clients can customize it directly on the virtual machine. Billing should also be done automatically. Perhaps this is already the case, however, I haven't really had a chance to explore it fully.

While I'm currently on the free version, I'd like to have the ability to explore the pro version to see what is on offer there.

View full review »
JA
IT Infrastructure Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

The vSphere Client always feels slow, and/or like it doesn't keep up with what I'm trying to do. So I usually use the thick client most of the time.

I'm looking forward to some of the new features on 6.7 where you can record your actions in the Client and then it will spit out all the code. So if you want a script of what you just did, it gives you all the code for that. That's probably the one thing I'm looking forward to the most in the 6.7.

View full review »
BS
Desktop Support Specialist at Bank Independent

It could use a smaller learning curve.

View full review »
it_user694665 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Team Lead / Project Lead IT at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution could benefit by expanding the CPUs and memory from different physical nodes. A more mature dashboard is needed; currently, we rely on third-party VM Management Solutions but most of the features have matured since we first started using it in 2007.

View full review »
it_user419235 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Senior Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

They still have restrictions on fault tolerance features and managing snapshots.

View full review »
it_user366684 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution lifecycle manager at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

One of the features I would like to see is less constraints on the fault tolerance feature. Version 6 may have this, but we don't have it yet.

View full review »
it_user332808 - PeerSpot reviewer
IS Director at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Recent releases have had significant bugs, which ends up significantly delaying the deployment of new versions. In particular, with vSphere 6, there is an all-paths down related bug that is preventing us from upgrading. The VMware Update Manager component of vCenter desperately needs to be deployed as part of the vCenter Server Appliance, not requiring Windows Server and SQL Server.

View full review »
it_user313893 - PeerSpot reviewer
Operations Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would like to have the old vSphere client back as it is a great client to use. Sometimes the web GUI can be a bit clunky along with the newer client.

View full review »
it_user321141 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Services Representative at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I'm not a big fan of the web client, and would have liked to have had them stick with the Windows client, as the web one is quite a bit different.

View full review »
it_user313830 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Systems Engineer at a individual & family service with 10,001+ employees

I think the updates allowing me to run through the VCSA appliance could be better.

View full review »
it_user298443 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network/Systems Administrator at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

The room for improvement would be just like they did with the C# (thick) client back in 2.5.1 and 3.X, they need to work on the speed of the web client as they are moving towards a distributed management environment. The C# client had its issues back in its inception so they are going through the same growing pains again with the web client. Other than that, I would like to see a stripped down version of DRS brought into the Standard licensing model as the jump from a Standard license to an Enterprise (or Enterprise Plus) license is enormous.

View full review »
it_user3510 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager of Infrastructure at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- Cost - Lack of support for virtualization (all hypervisors) - Licensing- Started with VMware ESX ver 2.1 in 2004. Currently using vSphere 4.1i and working on upgrade to 5.1 - Chose VMware for several reasons (1) Had experience with Desktop and GSX products (2) Ran on bare metal (3) No other real competitors at the time View full review »
FP
Solutions Architect at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

An area for improvement is that when comparing VMware to Nutanix, Nutanix has higher availability, like clustering for virtual machines. That is a good idea and VMware could profit from something like that for higher availability installations.

View full review »
MC
Administrator at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution could improve by having more integration.

View full review »
DB
IT & Security Team Leader at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

They can maybe review its price. They can also consider offering a free public version for development for a certain number of users. 

I am using version 6.7, and it would be good if it has support for SaaS storage. They might already have this feature in the latest version 7.1.

View full review »
SM
Cyber Security Technical Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Whatever VMware features that are provided on a virtual workstation should also be provided here. However, various features don't seem to be included. 

There needs to be more integration overall. That would be quite helpful.

The stability could improve a bit.

View full review »
Muljo Witono - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO and Owner at PT Solusindo Total Teknikatama

The scalability of the solution should be improved.

View full review »
OY
System Architect at KT Bank

Although vSphere is a nearly perfect product, it does need a little improvement. Datacenter and Cluster structure should be mixed so that the management of clusters would be easier.

View full review »
MC
Technical Support at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We would like VMware to add capacity to add more equipment. We also think it could improve with the hyper-converged.

View full review »
it_user938985 - PeerSpot reviewer
Customer Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

My biggest suggestion would be some kind of a mechanism - and it's almost an AI-type thing, a Siri/Cortana - for where to find how to do certain things. If there was the ability to just type in a basic question and say, "How do I change the VM settings for this?" and it could bring me right there, that would be really awesome.

View full review »
JL
Systems Administrator at a pharma/biotech company with 51-200 employees

I would like to see continued support of the HTML5-based utilities.

View full review »
it_user383880 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

It seems like VMware comes out with something new every time I think how great it would be to have it. For example, they came out with Storage vMotion, although a lot of people haven't adopted it because some programs won't accept it. Also, with NSX they're working in the networking area, and I'd definitely like to see improvement there, such as integration with the cloud. We've got a customer for whom we're providing disaster recovery with vCloud Air, and there are some improvements could be made there as well.

We actually have two different vClouds -- one of the VMs to replicate to, and the other for the VMs to have Active Directory and a jump host for user connections. I'd like to see better vSphere integration with vCloud Air where they're seamless. This would be a big improvement.

View full review »
it_user312804 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Analyst at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

User interface and management. The ability to manage the underlying infrastructure is very poorly thought out and implemented. They moved from a C client to a web interface, but still require critical functions to use the client.

View full review »
it_user315288 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

It would be nice if they could have offer a straight/forward deployment of vCenter from an OVA, not from an ISO.

View full review »
it_user321018 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Corporate Systems at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

I don’t know that I'm looking for any improvements. I'm looking to use additional features that are already out there, and different additional products that they have out there.

View full review »
it_user321129 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. IT System Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

For most part, pretty good, but UI could be improved. Has GUI geared towards Linux, would like to see GUI for Windows so that Windows admin can install.

View full review »
it_user237264 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator and Sr. VMware Engineer at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees
  • Server consolidation
  • Response time
  • Internal process management
  • Storage usage and performance
View full review »
it_user293886 - PeerSpot reviewer
VMware Consultant at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
  • VDI
  • Backup solution
View full review »
it_user4524 - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- The entry point for small business is fairly high. They are working on this currently. - Capacity management for top-tier business critical servers - Currently VMware has a tremendous amount of products that complement the vSphere suite. Some of the products are complementary, and some compete with each other. This product list is sometimes hard to navigate. - Security access granularity for end users can be complex. View full review »
Fredrik Hallgarde - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting Manager at Real Time Services AB

There should be more stability in the updates. They had an issue with the last release.

Their support should also be improved.

View full review »
UB
self-employed

We have had some problems setting up the monitoring with vSphere. The process could be simplified.

View full review »
BY
Manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

There are many add-on modules for it.

It would be great if VMware could have a consolidated way of delivering this as software rather than pieces and several add-ons so that you could enjoy the product in its entirety.

There are many add-ons that you have to plugin to enjoy the feature or experience the full power of it.

View full review »
FW
Information Technology Manager & Chief Information Officer at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees

The enhancements that come out from time to time usually surpass what we need. We tend to upgrade because we do not want to be behind, but our needs don't continually grow. We are not very fast in terms of appetite for new things. However, we do appreciate that there is a continuous improvement, and for us, it is just a matter of being able to spin up a new environment quickly.

An improvement could be in terms of keeping up with the upgrades. The upgrades could be set in an automated way so that the newer features don't require you to manually update, or you get an option to update automatically. This would be a useful enhancement.

View full review »
DA
Implementation and Support Engineer at PRACSO S.R.L.

I think the pricing could be lower, and the technical support could be improved.

I would like to see more active replication in the next release.

View full review »
MC
Line Technical Agent at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

In the next release, I would love to have Java as a service, platform as a service, and container as a service.

View full review »
PE
Head of Technological Architecture at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

I would like to see more software as a service solutions.

View full review »
it_user817026 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. IT & Business Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

As we introduce the DevOps culture, we need to make sure that the principles and tools used to support this approach can be easily integrated and interoperated with the vSphere environment with no (or less) redundancy in tools and functionality.

View full review »
it_user389040 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

I definitely could see some improvements in Operations Management. That's another product that they have, but it's lacking in a few things. I feel that it's not as aggressive as it should or could be. They have different levels built into it, but I think they should have more aggressive levels.

Another area of improvement would be the further development of graphics virtualization. They've starting dabbling in that, it seems, but it definitely needs a lot more. They need to make it a little quicker and better.

View full review »
it_user365892 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Leader at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I'd suggest improvements in a couple of areas. First, the Web Client is too slow. Also, they need to improve vRealize Operations Manager.

View full review »
it_user320934 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Analyst at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I think room for improvement would be in the site recovery manager. I believe that VMware’s moving more towards using VMware appliances, as opposed to having to load components on Windows servers. I have had some issues with this – I need more tools to allow me to access database features on their appliances. They are sealed at this point.

View full review »
it_user271026 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

They should have a good built-in backup feature. Although there is a built-in feature already, it is called VMWare Data Protection, but it is not at all user friendly.

View full review »
SB
Engineering Manager, R&D at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

The performance of the solution could be better and there could be an extra level of security.

View full review »
VH
CIO at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Its performance is an issue in version 6.5, but with the inclusion of HTML files in vSphere version 6.7, the experience is seamless. In version 6.7, VMware has included the HTML file protocol for the web browser or web console, which has changed the console's response and improved the performance.

We are using the trial version of vRealize Operations. It would be nice if some of those capabilities could be included in future versions of vSphere, not as a part of vRealize Operations, but in vSphere itself. It can provide some kind of forecast about your resource consumption based on the actual workload and modeling or testing scenarios. It can give you some advice or tips for the future growth of your infrastructure.

View full review »
JS
Network Administrator at a mining and metals company with 201-500 employees
  • Keep innovating.
  • Make it more efficient and stable.
View full review »
it_user683454 - PeerSpot reviewer
DPSA III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Cloning large servers will require just as much space on the virtual volume as the original server. It makes it difficult when your system has limited space.

View full review »
FB
Senior Environments Engineer - Virtualised Environments at Derivco with 501-1,000 employees

The setup can be complicated for those who are not technically inclined. The pricing can also be complicated.

View full review »
it_user385854 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I think a lot of the areas of focus need to be on the user interface. There's been a lot of changes in recent years, the new carry-ons and the demands placed on the product. I think that they might be in the right spirit, but they still have a distance to go in that regard.

I think there's always room for improvement. I think that that's obvious in the track record that this thing has been setting because, every release, there's a very sharp increase in functionality and refinement, etc., but at the same time, it's a very, very good, solid product

View full review »
it_user321048 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. IT Technical Engineer & Solutions Architect at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Some of the features I would like to see, future enhancements of the vSphere product which starts with Virtual Center. The ability to manage more than a single host because right now, they're a challenge, because we have so many deployments, we can only manage one Virtual Center per one VMware host box. That's a limitation of the product. We would love to be able to see, we have various locations scattered throughout the US and international. We would love to see Virtual Center being able to manage more than one host at a single location because right now, we're challenging with having to login to Virtual Center at each location, instead of a single pane where the Oracle exist under one Virtual Center, our motto.

View full review »
it_user321036 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network/Systems Administrator at Tidewell Hospice

I can't even think of anything – it does everything I need it to.

View full review »
it_user321525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

The web client could use some tweaks, and the should move from flash-based to HTML5.

View full review »
it_user297123 - PeerSpot reviewer
Operations Support Analyst at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

5.1 SSO is a disaster, it was re-done for 5.5 and improved again for 6.0. VMware even recommend upgrading directly to 5.5 and skipping 5.1, and we are now planning to upgrade to v6.

View full review »
it_user209226 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a cloud provider with 51-200 employees

The introduction of a web console could be a great improvement for sysadmin, but the poor responsive interface has been solved in v6.0. The previous sysadmin/design experience with vSphere client could become a dangerous loop for its development.

View full review »
it_user209226 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a cloud provider with 51-200 employees

The product is very mature and stable, but vCenter web interface response could be improved.

View full review »
it_user183474 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Standalone GUI dismissed, the web GUI isn't a worthy replacement.

View full review »
it_user6384 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Expert at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing can be considered as measure block small and mid range companies. Company needs to think in this direction as well. View full review »
it_user6696 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Many features have been added over the years which makes it difficult to deploy without formal training. License costs are fairly high, especially compared with substitutes that are quickly catching up in performance and features. View full review »
it_user1122 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Expert at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The only issue I have with ESXi is that it is console (CLI) based. While I personally have no operational issue with this, as most of my training began with CLI based systems, some people might not want to configure a high availability virtual machine server via the Command Line.They're now marketing ESXi as VMware vSphere Hypervisor, which makes sense because that's essentially what it is. There used to be another product called ESX, which was a step between ESXi and vSphere, but they did away with that and rolled some of the features into ESXi. View full review »
it_user1122 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Expert at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Unfortunately, this software has reached its End-Of-Life, and has held that status for almost two years. Meaning, there are no new software updates or available downloads for it. This product has basically been replaced by ESX, ESXi and vSphere, which are functionally less resource intensive because of their design. We used this tool during my Linux classes when I was attending College for my B.A. View full review »
PM
VMware PSO Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

vSphere itself can handle lots of things, but I can say when it comes to other products, we have lots of other availability, lots of other visibilities with the data center that we have. The areas that could be improved are dependent on the project that we are working on and the use cases.

There are some limitations with the solution regarding migrating. For example, some features like EVC we have in vSphere, but still, it is not possible to migrate VM from Intel to AMD, or we still have some limitations even if we have EVC for VMs.

These are the features that maybe would be really useful for lots of customers that don't want to have downtime, and at the same time they want to be modernized, go through the new technologies now, cloud and everything.

View full review »
LO
Senior System Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

The way that vSphere manages the alerts on the data machine is not easy to configure.

View full review »
SE
Lead System Engineer at MITRE Corporation

It would be great if the free version included a management tool that was a scaled-down vCenter Manager.  

View full review »
SK
Infrastructure Manager at Petrolink

Reporting on vCenter needs to be improved.

View full review »
it_user332952 - PeerSpot reviewer
Researcher and Professor at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
  1. Native multi-platform management client (not WEB based) - Last improvements in this area are huge. However, some users prefer a native client. Please VMware, listen to your customers!
  2. A fully **automatic** and lightweight Virtual Center. Another time this has a huge improvement in last releases. However, a more automatic and simple deployment is required.
  3. Automatic on-demand Hypervisor setup for running some workloads on PC workstations at night. This function doesn't exist at time. We really like to see it!
View full review »
it_user420003 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I think this product has a lot of areas for improvement.

First of all, there’s no agnostic option of vSAN to use it with another hypervisor. The only option is to present the storage via NFS (iSCSI will be available with version 6.5). The problem with this configuration is that you lose all the benefits of HCI. Essentially, you transform the vSAN into a network data store.

Also, no PIN to SSD: If you have a hybrid mix of disks, you can’t configure a PIN for a particular VM on a particular SSD.

Additionally, some features are only available on the all-flash version.

Deduplication and compression are enabled cluster-wide. There is a way to disable these options, but the problem is that you can’t enable this option in any combination you want. Essentially, compression and deduplication are either both on or both off. This is not good if you intend to use it for an application like SQL server and Oracle DB.

The vSAN license not very cheap.

View full review »
it_user414402 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Director at ADMI France

A more graphical reporting of the health of vSAN.

View full review »
it_user321048 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. IT Technical Engineer & Solutions Architect at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Centralized management could be better. A server can only be managed by one vCenter. This limits our visibility to remediate, troubleshoot and fix problems efficiently.

View full review »
it_user320124 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I really don’t have much to complain about as we don’t need very much, so we really are happy where we are right now. However, they could do with bringing back the regular GUI.

View full review »
it_user321261 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Server Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

None that I can think of. It's a nicely-evolved product.

View full review »
it_user280818 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees

I think that all the improvements VMware could make would be related to monitoring. vSphere should be equipped with a better monitoring solution.

View full review »
AM
Senior Techical Support Engineer at A Cloud Compute Company
VMware should compete against their competitors in terms of Pricing. Hopefully, they can value add some features without any additional cost. View full review »
it_user2721 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
1. In January 2010, VMware announced the End of Support for VMware Server with support ending on June 30, 2011. Users are free to continue using VMware Server but are recommended to migrate to another VMware offering to gain the benefits of newer technologies. 2. Additional Layer affect performance: Machine's own operating system sits between the hardware and virtualization software- meaning it isn't one of those bare‐metal virtualization products that you install directly on the server. The result is that a portion of machines capability isn't available to your VMware server because it’s devoted to running the underlying operating system.VMware is also known for the below given features : • Supports two-processor SMP systems and enables single virtual machine to span multiple processors: Allows you to take advantage of multiprocessing. • Virtual state capture : Capture your virtual machine’s state so if a problem arises you can roll back to a previous state. • Easy migration path to other VMWare products : upgrading to a different product is easy. View full review »
it_user1065 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager of Data Center at a integrator with 51-200 employees
Few cons of VMware Server are 1) It is available for free so bug resolution and patch management takes time 2) Poor memory management 3) Requirement for supported SCSI and SATA controllers View full review »
MS
VMware Technician Manager at VAS

I would like to see more support regarding containers, and they need more features for them.

View full review »
VC
CEO at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The cost can be better.

View full review »
LH
Cloud Professional Architect at FPT Software

The SDK/API to help SPs (service providers) provide the pay-as-you-go business model in cloud service.

View full review »
HM
Deputy Manager IT at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

This solution should have a better backup policy. Furthermore, there should be an ability to expose the universal machine. In the current version, you need to shutdown and use an offline virtual machine to backup.

View full review »
JM
Engineering Manager at Turnkey Cyber Solutions

The thick client had features that were removed from the HTML5 web console and it has caused a learning curve deficiency. Training could be more customer-centric.

View full review »
SM
IT Professional with 5,001-10,000 employees

If I could talk to the engineers I would probably suggest a little bit different approach. There's a process that includes base-lining, then installing the program, and then doing the differentiation. That kind of approach for delivering applications, in my opinion, is way quicker. That approach would take me not more than half an hour to prepare any application. That's a feature I would like to see.

View full review »
it_user383799 - PeerSpot reviewer
VI Specialist at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

It would be very useful if they would configure the built-in backup application on this product.

View full review »
it_user385836 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

We have many versions of vSphere, but when it comes to the vSphere appliance, we don't have failover or a recovery point.

I also would like some added features to vSphere, such as Fault Tolerance with more CPU support. That would be really helpful to everyone, I think.

From a features perspective, with vSphere 6.0 and PSC being introduced as the new authentication module - you cannot use a PSC for a fresh 5.5 Install. I think we should have this feature enabled as this could help us in multiple instances.

Also, every would probably like to see a easy/recommendable way to  migrate from Windows vCenter to a appliance. 

View full review »
it_user321669 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

There are some networking changes, storage integration, and leverage features that aren’t available.

View full review »
it_user331992 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

it’s so simple that it’s idiot proof.

View full review »
it_user333873 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees

Improvements need to be made in the performance manager.

View full review »
it_user320466 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network/Systems Administrator at South Plains Electric Co-Op

It’s pretty good the way it is, I can’t think of anything else I need.

View full review »
it_user320667 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

More automation would be good. You can leverage CLI or vSphere with the API’s so that allows you to do anything, but if you don’t have programming experience you are limited.

View full review »
it_user321078 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

Right now, I’m looking to implement v6 with Operation Management so that would be the next step, and maybe VSAN as well.

View full review »
it_user320298 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Services Manager at Oden

It fits my needs right now, I honestly don’t need anything else.

View full review »
it_user275226 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director with 501-1,000 employees

I want to see a better hypervisor.

View full review »
PatrickCiPaaS - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager at SnapLogic
The scroll window of processes at the bottom of the UI for the vSphere client is sometimes is hard to adjust. View full review »
it_user88791 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Licensing cost together with SA. View full review »
it_user6696 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Management requires vCenter, with additional expense View full review »
MP
Senior Site Infrastructure Engineer at Kurungsiku
VMware server already reaches its end of support on June 30, 2011. Since it’s not supported anymore, and new support for newer OS, if you use a new Linux distro, you have to patch some files before you can compile support for you running kernel.VMware itself suggest its users to move to VMware Player if you only need to run small number of VMs on your desktop, or VMware vSphere Hypervisor if you want to run on dedicated machine. View full review »
MU
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The solution needs to improve its stability. 

View full review »
YB
Entrepreneur at WindiS

The graphical vSphere vCenter interface is now in HTML. I'm not very found of it. Sometimes you can't find items and you need to log in to the different hosts.

Some work has to be done with this admin console.

View full review »
SM
System Administrator at j5 Software South Africa

When I needed to equip a new startup, I was unable to get the budget for vSphere past finance, so I ended up adopting a cheaper alternative even though it meant more work.

View full review »
it_user321198 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Automation and Integration Focal at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I’d like to be able to expand the capability of SMP fault tolerant VMs. That’s a game-changer when talking about business-critical applications (i.e. Oracle). If we had this, we’d no longer need an Oracle rack (will have better solution with this improvement).

View full review »
it_user685386 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Education Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Commercially, the stock keeping units have changed with the latest iteration of the product.

View full review »
RR
VMware Engineer at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

The only improvement that is needed that come to mind are improvements in the vRealize Automation and vRealize Operations management simplicity.

View full review »
it_user418209 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Oracle Database Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The setup is complex even for experienced IT administrators who have worked with hypervisors, and it should be made a little easier.

View full review »
it_user334191 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I think the product licensing is very confusing still and should be simplified on a sliding scale. i.e. one to three servers are essential for four to 10 standard, etc. Instead of licensing per core.

View full review »
it_user321318 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I don’t like the web client, as it's real clunky, and not so instantaneous.

View full review »
it_user321009 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Analyst at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I would say that the internal notifications could be much clearer and the performance monitoring could be a lot better. They have an add-on but that costs money.

View full review »
it_user321261 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Server Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The web client is botched.

View full review »
CT
Database Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

One of the areas creating a crash is when you are cloning.

If you are cloning a virtual machine and you have any license on another system it will crash and we have to contact third-party support for assistance.

It's not cloning 100%.

View full review »
MM
Vice President with 1-10 employees

I think they should consider lowering the pricing of entry-level products.

In addition, I think they should come up with a backup feature that is more product enrichment-based. It should be a full-fledged backup solution. It just is not there right now.

View full review »
it_user284274 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Director - IT Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The price is too high right now.

View full review »
it_user321375 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Information Technology at Mountville Mills

I like web interface less and less, and miss the client interface.

View full review »
it_user250251 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer with 51-200 employees

The web client needs to be moved from flash-based to HTML5. I would like an app as well for remote access.

View full review »
it_user274569 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO with 51-200 employees

Currently none, as the development of new features is already going at high speed.

View full review »
JL
Virtualization Solutions Specialist at datec

One issue with the product is that the sentencing has changed a lot.

View full review »
NW
Head of Technical at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The price could be better.

View full review »
MW
IT Manager at a construction company with 51-200 employees

I would like to see the UI incorporating all of the functionality that the thick client had.

View full review »
it_user367836 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

In general, the management features need to be improved. vCenter has just gotten really big and overly complicated.

View full review »
it_user326694 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Technician at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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.

View full review »
it_user320919 - PeerSpot reviewer
Group Leader - Server Technologies & Storage at a government with 501-1,000 employees

The vSphere web client is not very good – the C# client is much better.

View full review »
it_user320928 - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees

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

View full review »
it_user320598 - PeerSpot reviewer
vSphere Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

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

View full review »
it_user316464 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Architect at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

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

View full review »
it_user300504 - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Vice President at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

View full review »
it_user279879 - PeerSpot reviewer
Programmer at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
  • vCenter web UI has the occasional bug.
  • Sometimes it takes a while until the VM responds to a mouse click.
View full review »
it_user132501 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Infrastructure at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

View full review »
it_user154353 - PeerSpot reviewer
Asst. System Maintenance Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

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

View full review »
it_user3402 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Infrastructure at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Costs is very expensive. But some cutting features like Vcenter Operations Manager Fundamentls are available in starting versions of vCenter. It is good way for the best marketing from VMware. But Enterprise or higher versions are very expensive. View full review »
it_user2814 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Infrastructure at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
You can not manage it from Linux. View full review »
ZB
Executive Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The price is a big issue for us because the market is very competitive in our country, so we can't really push our VMware vSphere products because the customers will prefer to use something cheaper. Customers in our country are very price-sensitive, so if the price were reduced it would be more popular.

View full review »
RT
Directeur Production, Infrastructure et Architecture IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

It is expensive. They can improve the licensing cost for Cloud Director.

They can also improve the integration with other applications and the metering feature, which is currently not flexible.

View full review »
SJ
Professional ICT at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees

The problem often is that when I use VMware and Citrix there are conflicts.

View full review »
it_user499017 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead System Architect at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

There is need to resume the C# client.

View full review »
it_user299115 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

One improvement could be to have the vMotion independent of the SSO Domain.

With Cross vCenter vMotion, it is a requirement to have both the source and the destination vCenter on the same SSO domain. It also requires version 6 and above. You cannot have this between a version 6 and 5.5.

I still experience lag with the web interface

View full review »
it_user363441 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deployment Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The webclient could use more features and a cleaner layout.

View full review »
it_user332244 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees

It's hard to say because now that Dell acquired EMC, which owns VMware, we have to see how that flushes out.

View full review »
it_user331854 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administor at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

vROPS should be part of the product and not something extra. There’s a bunch of third-party applications that can do the same thing for less money. If VMware wants people to get vROPS, it should be included. Price is an issue.

View full review »
it_user321165 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer 4 at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

I wish they would maintain thick clients and web clients, so you can choose which to go with.

View full review »
it_user320640 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I’m sure there is plenty that could be better, but nothing comes to mind immediately because it just rocks.

View full review »
it_user1020 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data Center at a tech company with 51-200 employees
With all the desirable features of vSphere and its proven track record, its no wonder that it's also the most expensive virtualization platform out there. This is the first major disadvantage when using VMware. Other vendors have competing products with similar capabilities. However, these products are not proven and tested.Another thing to watch out for when using vSphere is that you really need to plan your deployment and use thoroughly. With the high cost associated with this product, proper diligence must be taken in the planning on how to use this product to achieve the desired results.Lastly, make sure the hardware that you run vSphere on is fully supported. Hardware compatibility issues can limit the functionality of vSphere or worse render the hardware useless.Despite the inherent high cost associated with using this product, I will still highly recommend this for use in production environments. The benefits that will be enjoyed far outweighs the consequences as long as proper planning is done. View full review »
OscarMunoz - PeerSpot reviewer
Jefatura del Departamento de Tecnologías de la Información at SERGEAR SAC

The main issue for us is the cost of the solution. 

View full review »
NB
Director Global Security at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

I would like to see support for endpoint virtualization.

Another thing that I would like to see are improvements with respect to performance.

View full review »
CR
Pre-sales engineer

The functionalities and management of the product demonstrations need improvement.

View full review »
PC
Windows Systems Administrator with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'm looking forward to the HTML client being finished. That's the thing that's annoying me, but I know it's coming this fall.

If they were going to make the transition from the standalone installable client to the HTML, I wish they would have done more development on it before they released. It's not feature-complete, so we have to go back to the old client to do certain things, and I don't really want to.

View full review »
it_user282900 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Engineer at a non-profit with 5,001-10,000 employees

There is need for high availability for the vCenter and also a faster/responsive vCenter web interface. True high availability for a vCenter is required in the current virtualised world. With the introduction of 6.5, VMware has now introduced true HA with heartbeat monitoring.

As VMware have gradually decided to move from the C++ thick client to the flash based web portal, and now to the HTML5 web based portal, the legacy flash based web portal for vCenter 5/6.0 was sluggish and slow. On many occasions when going through nested windows for VMware configuration, the flash plugin or browser would crash. Fingers crossed with the new HMTL5 based web portal as so far it's been solid. Even though it doesn't currently have all the features of the flash based portal, I hope VMware releases a fully-functioning HTML5 in the next release of vCenter.

View full review »
it_user363687 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software QA Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

It's not perfect, and could use improvements with better stability and better support.

View full review »
it_user333861 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Architect - Enterprise Virtualization at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The VSAN storage could be improved.

View full review »
it_user321645 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical leader at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
  • Right now, the NIC teaming feature has only four roles, only supporting it for one role (IP route hash), but it should include all roles
  • MAC pinning feature should be there in NIC-teaming
  • It needs a more friendly UI, as right now it's difficult to see what we’re maintaining
View full review »
it_user321366 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President, Systems Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'd like to see the self-discovery of assets and integration of application profile into different assets. Also, the challenge we have is deploying an asset into a datacenter.

View full review »
it_user321339 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I don't use it enough to suggest improvements.

View full review »
it_user321339 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The alerting functions, right now based on performance, is not so clear now either by email or on the console.

View full review »
it_user300498 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Engineer at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

The web client has a lot of problems which hasn't been addressed properly.

The tools that VMware provides with vSphere need improvement, such as vSphere data protection.

View full review »
it_user161850 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Design Manager with 1,001-5,000 employees

For managing many ESXi's at once vCenter is required. when the number of ESXi is smaller, it is not practical to have a vCenter server. This should at least be solved especially for a test/development environment. This may be solved using a Application installed on the end user system like a windows machine where the credentials of the ESXi servers are then pre-configured and a double click is sufficient to open the console. (I am talking of the use case where advanced features of vcenter is not used.)

View full review »
SY
Technical Manager at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees

I would like to see the configuration simplified. It should be easier to configure.

View full review »
it_user862539 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastracture Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

I would like to start to using NSX in the next release.

View full review »
it_user375447 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Engineer at a consumer goods company with 1,001-5,000 employees

One way VMware could improve on this solutions is to re-incorporate the FAT client along with the web client.

View full review »
it_user335937 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead - IT at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

I guess all the features I'd like to see of future releases are being announced for version 6.1. All my needs are satisfied right now.

View full review »
it_user334515 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Engineer at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

The web tool could be improved, if that’s the direction they’re going, then they need to put more resources towards it to make it good. If we’re forced to use it based on hardware, it should be improved.

View full review »
it_user321069 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

I know a lot of the stuff that we have issues with have been addressed in v6 like template management. Some of the add-ons are expensive without a specific large need.

View full review »
it_user285072 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical lead - Infrastructure Consulting / Transformation at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It needs to be easier to integrate with open cloud.

View full review »
it_user131937 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a non-tech company with 501-1,000 employees
SDK of vCenter server PowerCLI lacks live migration features. View full review »
it_user128259 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
We have noticed the great need for more power and memory requirements especially when the vmware servers (guests) start to request for more processing and memory. View full review »
it_user5022 - PeerSpot reviewer
Student at a university with 501-1,000 employees
More tutorials to use the tool. View full review »
it_user3405 - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Moved away from local/domain end-user authentication to a single-sign on authentication mechanism, introduced a single-point of failure, added additional complexity that came be overcome with proper training View full review »
it_user3264 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees
The only problem with it is that it is now in the category of obsolete products. Though its still very good, but its support and updates won't be available. View full review »
it_user1125 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a retailer with 51-200 employees
• The new Graphic User Interface is not of high quality. • Web based User Interface means breaching compatibility with any principle of rich client applications, and means lots of bugs particular to every different browser View full review »
it_user365877 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer with 501-1,000 employees

The installation of vCenter SSO for a lot of my customers could be improved, but I think it's a totally useless feature.

View full review »
DL
Virtualization Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would like to see an additional licensing model based on size restraints rather than functionality. Also, a foundation licensing model that includes both NSX (Network virtualization) and VSAN (SAN virtualization) but with size restrictions. Then my SMB customers could benefit from our large customers' features.

View full review »
it_user280935 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Systems Administrator at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Reporting, and perhaps more DRS-friendly functions.

View full review »
it_user98646 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Web Client, SSO

View full review »
it_user6144 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Architect at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
You need to learn the internals of the system to really customize and reap all benefits. View full review »
it_user5931 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer at a university with 51-200 employees
• VMware has lesser functionality than the proprietary VMware ESX • VMware server does not fully control the scheduling of hardware resources because the complete control falls into the underlying operating system • VMware Server Support ended on June 30, 2011 View full review »
it_user3264 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees
We can say its free but it's not. Free versions has limited capabilities and misses some very strong features. So in my opinion its not free. Other then that, it misses the console, which may be good from booting point of view, but from troubleshooting point of view, its bad. As it takes a lot more administrations skills to tackle problem without the proper control panes in the form of the console panel. View full review »
IC
Product Management & Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

VMware vSphere could improve on the automation features and the ease of use of the solution in many areas, such as the interface. However, VMware is doing lots of great things.

View full review »
DN
Senior Buyer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

The solution could be more stable.

View full review »
it_user313041 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Systems Administrator II at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The vSphere Web Client could be better. The requirement for flash is what really kills it for me. Mobile access from iPads would be great too.

View full review »
it_user339246 - PeerSpot reviewer
VMware Architect at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

The web client is prone to errors and crashes. Dump this in favor of the C# desktop client.

View full review »
it_user320268 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

More storage capabilities would be great. Also, more hot-adding of devices would be helpful.

View full review »
it_user321027 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Analyst at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

I can't say as I'm still trying to figure out the product fully.

View full review »
RR
VMware Engineer at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

Needs improvements to the Fault Tolerance feature, focus more on the performance and quality of the hypervisor. I'd like for them to add more vCPU capability.

View full review »
it_user3264 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees
Well, not much drawbacks actually. It serves the purpose it is designed for but still a very few little things that i have notices that can be called its drawbacks can be 1. Fault tolerance limits features available to virtual machines. 2. Automatic fallback of VMs currently not supported. This can be crucial in some environments. View full review »
it_user320502 - PeerSpot reviewer
Asst. manager System Operations with 1,001-5,000 employees

Management features for multi-vendor products for complex environment need work.

View full review »
RT
Network and Systems Administrator at Ishango-it

The licensing costs are expensive and most of the important features require a license. 

For example, we would like to use DRS but there is an additional license for that. If it were free then it would be very helpful. 

View full review »
it_user411975 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Information Officer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

I would like to see data recovery responsible for the virtual machine snapshot. It is not reliable as the parent snapshot gets corrupted and the whole corresponding snapshots collapse.

View full review »
it_user320607 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'd like to see a different client. I know they are doing the HTML5 stuff with the web client, which has potential, but it could be better.

View full review »
it_user6561 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization Counsultant at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Little expensive Needs a lot of dependencies No web interface without vCenter View full review »
it_user1104 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Center Expert at a tech company with 51-200 employees
The major disadvantage that i can think off is that we have to pay for all the features to be available. Virtualization has made datacentre operations easier. As a sysadmin, managing multiple hosts is more simpler and flexible with the vmware ESXi. Running multiple hosts, operating systems on a single host makes it more efficient and saves costs. ESXi also allows you to pool the resources of several machines effectively, thereby helping to run the application smoothly without hassles. View full review »
it_user1020 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data Center at a tech company with 51-200 employees
- Free version limits server memory to 32GB - No central management of other ESXi servers, each one needs to be logged-in individually if you have multiple servers.My experience with VMware EXSi is that it's the fastest Virtualization platform out there. This is basically because of the very good architectural design of the underlying hypervisor, which consumes a very small amount of resource overhead and provides a rich set of features that are enterprise grade. The free version really has a great feature set plus a management software that you can use to manage individual server instances. View full review »
it_user367833 - PeerSpot reviewer
ITC Systems Administrator at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

We had some stability issues, though they were due to bad hardware and not software.

View full review »
it_user1728 - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Hard to justify annual maintenance vs. HyperV View full review »
it_user357519 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech company with 51-200 employees
ES
Senior Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Its price can be better. It is very expensive.

View full review »
AU
Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees

It needs to integrate better between multiple modules. 

View full review »
Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.