vCenter Configuration Manager Reviews

We used to rely on traditional methods for managing edge management software, but now we utilize a virtual platform. We are using Window’s own patch management system based on the operating system. We would retrieve updates from the internet and evaluate which security patches are necessary for our servers. Only those patches deemed essential for server security are downloaded and applied.

vCenter is very easy to use if you have good skills. It takes a little time to configure everything. It is template-based, so you click, click, and then reboot. It takes 15 minutes.

The pricing and security could be improved.

I have been using vCenter Configuration Manager for over two years. We are using the older version of the solution.

The product is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is very easy. You have to stop the server, deploy the hardware, and hit the one reboot to stop the server. It will take every configuration over there. If you have primary and secondary servers, there will be zero downtime.

Around 1,000 users are using this solution.

We looked for Nutanix and vSphere because they are very scalable.

ROI depends on the load on the virtual platform.

Compared with our cloud, vCenter is very costly.

If any impact happens, then identification of the errors should be very easy.

Only two persons are required for the deployment: the maker, those deploying, and the takers taking parts. If you want it to deploy one team, one person is needed.

Since our world is moving towards the virtual platform, small organizations must explore the virtual world with its features. Whatever they are creating now on the virtual platform will be very helpful to the next generation. They can easily deploy virtual resources and migrate from virtual environments to the cloud. If a smaller organization wants to deploy without investing in cloud infrastructure, they should start with in-house applications on the virtual platform. Later, when they are ready to transition to the cloud, their virtual platform can be seamlessly converted to cloud technologies, facilitating a smooth migration process within a limited timeframe.

If you don't want to spend too much on renewals or have many servers and encounter build-level issues, You wouldn't want to overspend on human resources, power consumption, and hardware. In such cases, opting for the cloud is a viable solution as it eliminates the need for physical resources like hardware, power consumption, ISP, and server rooms. All you need is a network room.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We use the tool as a centralized configuration and management tool for large ESXi clusters. Additionally, it offers plugins for storage management. For instance, there's a plugin for NetApp storage that integrates with it. Consequently, you can now manage storage directly from within the product. It has compliance and monitoring features as well. 

My experience managing virtual environments using vCenter Configuration Manager has been quite smooth. Over time, I've observed that there's been a significant local competency built around the product, especially in India, where ESXi and VMware dominate the market. It's evident that vCenter Configuration Center is the preferred management tool in this context, and it's relatively easy to find expertise in the market.

The tool has automation capabilities that extend to overall IT infrastructure automation. This functionality is not limited to a specific area but can encompass various aspects of IT operations, including storage configuration.

The licensing model has shifted from socket-based to core-based licensing, resulting in increased customer costs. Moreover, if a customer utilizes software like VMware, which integrates seamlessly with ESXi, it becomes even more challenging to consider replacing ESXi. Hence, many customers, particularly in India, are actively exploring alternatives.

In terms of scalability, our experience has been quite positive. The solution is highly scalable and capable of supporting up to 64 nodes in an ESXi cluster.

Most partners in India are skilled in VMware, and we're one of them. We have good expertise in VMware. We rarely need to contact them for tech support, but when we do, their support is good, and we haven't had any complaints.

Positive

I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten. The product has increased its cost by at least two to three times its previous cost. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

I use the solution for customer management and the vDA environment to implement and deploy the solution. We can deploy 300 or 400 VMs in a fraction of a second. I also use the solution for cluster management, with more than three or four hosts, managing everything in a single window.

There is an HCI called vSAN, and the vSAN environment reduces 90% of the work in vCenter because we can do everything from a single interface.

I like vMotion because it manages fault tolerance. A major concern was that we needed to manage the environment and enable all functionalities from a single console, which is the major agenda met by vCenter. There are only two versions available, Foundation and Standard. Foundation has limited functionality, such as VM database movement and traffic management. In the Standard version, we get all the functions that are enabled.

When vCenter is in a Microsoft environment, there is a lot of licensing involved, where we face some difficulties. Moreover, some functionalities may be hidden in VMware. Everything depends upon the licensing because they have segregated two or three different versions of licenses. Everything is easier when you know all the terms and policies. Some things will be hidden when your customer asks for it, but you check with them to get confirmation and support from VMware. However, when people are newly entering the market and they want some support from VMware, the support received from them is pathetic.

I've been familiar with this solution for almost eight years.

The solution is stable. In some cases, the customer might develop their own applications. The moment we need support from the hypervisor team, the solution isn't as stable because, in some cases, we may not receive support immediately, and in some cases, we will.

The solution is completely scalable. We can implement it as a single federation with up to 96 nodes. There are a lot of products in VMware. For SMB customers, there is a product called Essentials. An SMB can use Essentials for over 500 users. However, Essentials can only be used on three hosts. There is a product known as the Essentials Plus kit that comes with vSphere, vCenter, and other products. The Standard license has socket-based licenses. Support with Essentials will be taken care of, and the product comes with management software, a hypervisor, and more. Though it costs a lot less, the functionality is very limited. The customer should go with the Standard edition when looking for higher functionality or more VMs or stability. They should go with the Enterprise Plus editions if they are looking for DRS, which means distributed resource scheduler and fault tolerance.

They should improve their support and license management. We sometimes provide support through three-tier or two-tier licensing, which means we are resellers. Here, we might have an enterprise customer who handles their enterprise partners through a global or named account, though that depends on the project. When I am selling to a customer, they have to transfer that license to the end user. If VMware makes it easier to transfer the license, that would be helpful for us.

Neutral

We have a very good team to implement the solution. We don't get any support. We handle the implementation since we work hands-on with the solution, day in and day out. Unless it's in a foreign state, we request support from the OEM.

When it comes to license generation or some other patches, and I require VMware support, that's when I get irritated with them.

vCenter's pricing is reasonable, but nowadays, they are drastically increasing their prices, which is pathetic. We would work for three to six months on our tenders and projects. When you commit three months to a customer, it is only after people have had many internal technical discussions that they come back, which may take a minimum of three to six months, at which point the price might already be higher.

With the software and three years of support, the Standard version costs us over 600,000 rupees.

VMware is working on plenty of products, and the one you want depends on your customers' use cases.

According to the market, drastic changes are coming in AI and ML. Regarding AI and ML, the price is higher, and the support is also very low. VMware can develop similar products with minimum functionality for entry-level products. VMware products are all on the higher end and would be in Enterprise Plus. There are a lot of licensing variations, with vCenter on the Standard version and vSphere on the Enterprise version.

I rate vCenter eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to check our sites and control machines. We have two separate systems and 100 users. 

The solution has great SRM, HA, and DRS features. 

The platform is straightforward and user friendly. A large knowledge base is not required to begin using it. 

Knowledge-based tests are offered and are useful in building skills.  

The solution needs to add its own backup system because it has issues integrating with third-party solutions. 

Chinese-owned companies that do not align with the solution's American systems are blocked. Some companies have a few Chinese-owned shares so struggle to obtain licenses.

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution itself is stable but we have issues when using a third-party products for backups. We get many snapshot errors when connecting with IBM Spectrum Protect. 

The solution is scalable. 

I have occasionally used technical support and rate it a nine out of ten. 

Positive

My company had the solution in place when I joined the team. 

The setup is straightforward and deployment takes about 30 minutes. 

Our environment includes two systems. I set up one and a consultant set up the other.

Maintenance is easy for two of our system engineers. 

The pricing is mid-range so I rate it a six out of ten. 

I have used many different platforms during my career but the solution has always stood out. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

I use the solution in my company for the virtualization of our environment.

The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I have been using vCenter Configuration Manager for a year.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It is a very scalable solution since it allows users to add a few more nodes and have all the detections.

Around 500 people in my company use the product. My company manages 90,00,000 endpoints of our clients who use the product.

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

For the deployment, I followed some of the same procedures that I had followed for Cisco since my company had to seek help from a third party from our country, which is Egypt. The deployment was done in a day.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The technical team for the product's deployment consists of managers, developers, and some end users.

I haven't faced any challenges with the implementation of the product since it is very simple and straightforward.

My company had implemented the solution with the help of a third party.

My company chose vCenter Configuration Manager since it offers the easiest configurations and management. My company took a few VMware courses. One needs to take the courses to understand and handle VMware and to know how to use it.

I would use vCenter Configuration Manager for patch management across our company's virtual infrastructure by creating virtual machines for my workloads, VM servers, Linux, and to deal with other such related areas.

A project or scenario where the solution improved the compliance part was related to the fact that it was meant for Oracle DB, and now our company uses it for SAP-based implementations.

The most valuable aspect of the tool for maintaining the system security posture in our company stems from the fact that the virtualization offered by the product is very flexible. For any other products, the virtualization offered by vCenter Configuration Manager is flexible. I think it is a very good solution. With the tool, I haven't faced any issues or had to do any troubleshooting until now.

The automation and configuration management tasks by the solution have impacted our company's team's productivity since automation is a very important issue for our organization. My company uses Dell VxRail, which is a very huge solution for us. My company uses VMware vSphere vMotion and some other features from VMware. Suppose the product is down or my company has to deal with some troubleshooting. In that case, we can transfer all our VMs to other nodes without thinking, especially since it can be done through automation and not by any human intervention.

The scalability feature of the product is very good in supporting our company's growing IT environment since I haven't faced issues with the product, especially since I always get help from technical support, who responds right away to any problems attached to the solution. Once a ticket is opened with the technical support team, you get a response in six or seven minutes. If a tech support person is unable to handle an issue, then they try to find an experienced and professional IT person in-house to help the customer.

I recommend the product to others who plan to use it since it is a good solution.

There are many benefits to the use of the product since my company uses it in several environments.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for patch management. When you are using different tools like antivirus tools for patch management, there may be a separation between operating systems, such as Linux and Windows. For Windows, there are many ways to use vCenter.

We use both Tanium and BigFix for patching. Initially, we had multiple tools, but now we've consolidated them into one. We have a mixture of environments. It's a hybrid solution, as most are moving to the cloud rather than on-premises.

The management and the way teams are defined can be improved. If the solution could manage on-premises and cloud resources with the help of one tool, it would be an extra agent. Further, the price could be improved.

I have been using vCenter Configuration Manager for around 2 to 3 years.

The product is stable.

The solution’s scalability is good.

10,000+ users are using this solution. There is some percentage of growth every year.

The initial setup is simple. Our engineering team takes around a few days to deploy the solution.

For deployment, there is a snow tool for the environment. We capture the requirement gathering.

The solution is expensive and is a great fit for large enterprises. The cloud-based version is for small enterprises.

We have used multiple tools. Once we receive requirements, a system image is generated from the most recent data using various tools. If it's a database server, appropriate properties are configured. Therefore, it encompasses all the necessary components for the database product. If the application is web-based, it might involve some Java-related components. For simpler applications, servers or their components are installed accordingly. We leverage multiple tools to automate our tasks. This diversity is beneficial, especially during compliance audits, as sometimes we require audit reports from vendors. The system supports those reports. There are no non-compliance issues.

The solution is expensive, but it's a good and reliable one. I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a 9 out of 10.

Certain requirements at our company can be fulfilled using vCenter Configuration Manager. Previously, we used an internal, custom configuration manager, but its infrastructure was unable to support the requirements. 

In my experience, vCenter Configuration Manager is the best tool for centrally managing resources. The newly released feature of vCLS is also valuable in the tool. ESXi is a Hypervisor that allows the accommodation of all the resources in our organization.

The product also provides a vital over-commitment identification feature. The configuration agent deploys on the cluster label and manages the ERS, too. 

The tool's performance needs to be improved. Sometimes, in our organization, we face issues with the solution, such as replication getting blocked or becoming extensively time-consuming. 

I have been using vCenter Configuration Manager for more than eight years. 

vCenter Configuration Manager offers satisfying stability. 

In our company, for on-premise deployment of the product, we didn't utilize auto scalability at first; instead, we used a manual scaling approach. I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. The solution is better suited for medium and large enterprises than small companies. 

Sometimes in our company, we have faced some issues related to the vendor, but the quality of support wasn't up to the standard, and it needs to improve. 

vCenter Configuration Manager can be used to integrate with Nutanix. 

The setup process of vCenter Configuration Manager is extremely simple. Due to my experience with VMware environments, I haven't encountered any complexities with the deployment of the solution. A beginner with VMware solutions may have some difficulty understanding the processes, services and features of vCenter Configuration Manager. 

In our organization, we have operation managers who use the vCenter Configuration Manager for reporting purposes. I would overall rate vCenter Configuration Manager a seven out of ten. I will definitely recommend the solution to others. 

I am not part of VMware Live Recovery (VLR) operation because I have just moved to the cloud.

The tool was beneficial for our company. We work mostly in the banking sector, so that is why we are using it. In India, basically, in the banking sector, we do not use particular open-source products, so the tool is beneficial for us.

From my perspective, I won't recommend any changes in the operations associated with VMware Live Recovery (VLR).

The tool needs to improve its interface.

I have been using vCenter Configuration Manager for more than six months to a year. I use the solution in my company as a customer of the tool.

I have not participated in the implementation of vCenter Configuration Manager. I only participate in the tool's implementation if I continuously participate in the operations associated with VMware Live Recovery (VLR). As of now, I am not working with VMware Live Recovery (VLR).

I am satisfied with vCenter Configuration Manager.

Right now, we are not facing any issues with the tool. If we are facing any issues with the tool, we have raised a ticket with VMware's team.

I am not familiar with the tool's AI capabilities.

There are so many more options in the market.

If any company mostly works on open-source products, I won't recommend the tool to such people.

I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.