What are real users in the enterprise tech community saying about server virtualization software in Q2 of 2017?
In the review excerpts below, we take a look at the most recent server virtualization software reviews on IT Central Station.
Users discuss the solutions listed below, sharing which features they’ve found most valuable, and where they hope to see improvements in the future:
Brian Gibson, Network Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees, shares:
“The most important feature for us is clearly the foundation it provides. In addition to that, we've found the high availability and flexibility to be important as well.”
Gibson also writes that vSphere “made us a lot more agile. We don't have to acquire new hardware just to bring it up or utilize new services for our customers. It makes it a lot easier for my team to allocate resources for the other business teams at the company.”
A Researcher and Professor at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees would like to see several features/capabilities added to vSphere:
A native multi-platform management client (not WEB based) - I suggest using Qt framework for native clients in Windows, Linux and Apple OS X.
A fully automatic and lightweight Virtual Center.
Automatic, on-demand Hypervisor setup for running some workloads on PC workstations at night.
“From our use of it, the most valuable feature we've found is that it can quickly deploy new virtual machines”, writes a Project Manager at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees.
He explains that “We need to test our new features in virtual machines before deployment. With VM Virtualbox, we can try our software in virtual machines so that we can find errors, fix them, and then re-test, and we can do this over and over again. Because of this, the Snapshots feature is particularly useful and valuable for us.”
“If I could maybe have cloud images, that would be awesome”, writes a QA Sales Engineer at a software R&D company with 51-200 employees.
“It's going to be hard to manage cloud with a cloud, or image with an image, but hey, if it can be done, we can do that, too. Why not? You have mobility, so you can use something. You can have a server with all of the VirtualBoxes there and the images there. For example, if you are managing an application, you can use it from a touch of a screen. Why not?”
For Daniel White, Technical Support Specialist at PCMS Datafit, the ability to “centrally manage multiple Hyper-V hosts” rather easily, while only having to pay for the initial licensing fee (for your OS), is a unique and a great option.
Amir Anwar, IT Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees, finds that the “networking component of the setup needs to be less complex,” so that he can better distribute the physical servers’ traffic load and be able to manage remote access.
Rana Hamza Liaqat, System Support Engineer at TMN, identifies the features most valuable to him in VMware ESXi:
“Its compatibility with LUNs and its vMotion, HA, FT and VDS. It works very smooth with LUNs. When we talk about its Cluster feature, then the HA, FT, and DRS features are just great in how they support large-scale servers and VMs without any trouble in the production environment.”
For Firoze Bhorat, Senior Environments Engineer - Virtualized Environments at Dervico, “The setup can be complicated for those who are not technically inclined...The pricing can also be complicated.”
“All features of the product are valuable, depends on the situation. I have used all of the features at one time or another”, writes Dan Withrow, Senior Manager of Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees.
Withrow explains that XenServer has allowed his firm to “maintain the desired level of high availability between our XenServer farms” and has also enabled “increased our response time to backend errors.”
In terms of improvements to the software, Withrow would like to see an option for “Integrated workload balancing and virtual switch management that doesn't require another virtual appliance to control.”
A Senior Linux Systems Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees lists several valuable features:
“The integrated web-based management console manages resources, virtual machine templates, and virtual machine images.”
This user than elaborates on how his tech services company has benefitted from the management console:
“It simplifies server management. In terms of server provisioning, it only takes a few clicks of a button and a bit of install automation. The server can be delivered in less than an hour, compared to physical machines.”
Adnan Nasir, a Senior Hyperion Systems Architect at Loudoun County Government, discusses the need for shorter implementation time:
“The Windows and Linux admins took some time, like a couple of days, to build servers for us, which as far as I think being an IT person, it's a virtual machine. Once you have the image it should be easy enough to import it into the new virtual machine, built up like a snapshot.
I think they could make the implementation faster. It's still taking some time, which should be eliminated in the future, I think, and it will be because I've seen a lot of improvement already.”
Patrick Gibson, Founder at a tech services company with 51-200 employees, describes Proxmox VE as “a solid, stable and powerful open source virtualisation product that has allowed us to bring virtualisation to smaller SMBs at an affordable price.”
As a result, explains Gibson, “All our client servers are now virtualized, which has reduced the risk of downtime due to a server failure that used to happen with non-virtualized servers. Servers can be backed up using snapshots etc.”
Gibson also shares that for Proxmox VE, “Storage IO management seems the weakest link, although this could be hardware related.
On decent servers, this is not an issue, but on smaller custom built servers we have occasionally had issues with IO speed. It is a well thought out product and the newer versions just seem to get better and better.”
Read more server virtualization software reviews from Q2 2017 on IT Central Station.
Good article...