VMware Cloud Director Reviews

Our company uses the solution as a cloud service provider for our virtual data center that serves 100 customers. 

We create demands and assign them to customers who run the workloads, access virtual machines, and perform network operations. 

The solution has more capabilities than OpenStack and integrates well with NSX and vCenter. 

Multiple events can be managed in the solution's environment.

It is easy to leverage the capabilities for server and network virtualization. 

The solution should integrate with other cloud systems such as Azure ARC and OpenStack. 

I have been using the solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support is good and I rate them a ten out of ten. 

Our company previously used OpenStack. 

The setup and deployment are rather complex because all networking and storage components need to be included. 

We partnered with the vendor for initial deployment. Our internal team of four included server, network, and VMware administrators. 

The solution provides us with the capability to offer managed services where we realize ROI. 

I recommend using the Enterprise or Enterprise Plus licenses because they unlock all of the solution's capabilities from the operational, networking, and log-in sides. A mid-high or high license will allow you to deliver all of the features available.

We evaluated the solution against OpenStack and decided to switch. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

What I found most valuable in vCloud Director is the multi-tenancy.

What could be improved in vCloud Director, particularly from the networking side, is its integration with other network devices. Currently, it is not connected with the core network devices, for example, Palo Alto or any firewall used in the company. Though there is good integration with NSX, some of the customers don't use NSX. There should be a good amount of integration between vCloud Director and the other network providers, because if there's search integration, then things will become more automated and it'll be more tightly integrated with everything.

What vCloud Director needs is a more simplified installation, because the process is a little bit complicated, compared to installing vRealize Automation or the set of vRealize solutions. They're much easier to deploy than vCloud Director.

Making the installation automated is an additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution. Now that VMware VCF is there, they have the automation layer ready. If any company or organization is planning to deploy vCloud Director, they will start from scratch. They will start from the hardware level itself. If they a tie-up with Dell or HP and from the server level itself, if they can start deploying with vCloud Director by following the best practices and verified architecture, then it makes sense.

I used version 10.2 of vCloud Director for the past twelve months, and the total number of years I used it was from four to five years.

vCloud Director is quite stable. It has good stability.

vCloud Director, in terms of scalability, can be improved.

The initial setup for vCloud Director was simple when we started, but then it became complex, particularly when we started growing. When we had multiple tenants, and a unique set of tenant organizations within vCloud Director, setting it up started to get complex.

I'm a team leader of a set of consultants in one company in UAE, so I downloaded reports, for example, about vCloud Director for reference. It helped me in designing a solution. I used to work for VMware as a post-sale consultant based in India, but then I quit and joined a different company. I have a personal experience with the vCloud Director.

In terms of maintaining vCloud Director, if you have a good amount of footprint of VMware staff, it would still depend on the number of objects you are controlling through the solution. If you have just one or two organizations created, it's fine, meaning one person can do the maintenance. In my scenario, however, I was supporting a customer who is one of the largest clients in VMware, who is using vCloud Director, so it was almost a team of six to seven people who were involved in maintaining the solution.

My advice to people looking into implementing vCloud Director would depend on their use case. vCloud Director has a very limited use case because most needs can be taken care of by vRealize Automation. If you're not a VCPP (VMware certified partner) and providing the VMware services to the external organization, you don't need the vCloud Director. You can have your private cloud based on open shift, open stack, vRealize, and a bunch of other solutions. vCloud Director is predominantly only for the VCPPs who are authorized to sell the VMware cloud to external customers, which they manage on behalf of VMware.

I'm rating vCloud Director seven out of ten.

We use VMware Cloud Director on our big service providers that allow different tenants to coexist from the same operational infrastructure. Each of our customers has their own tenant, so we can manage their workloads separately.

Offloading workloads to such large platforms allows for better economies of scale, facilitating management from a customer perspective that does not need to maintain their own infrastructure.

The reliability and flexibility of networking are valuable. You can do a lot with NSX, which is the VMware component that manages all networking. It integrates well with enterprise-level backup solutions, like Veeam or Vault.

VMware should simplify the whole solution as it comprises many different components, making management hard. Reducing the number of components would make it easier to manage.

Currently, it's more or less a year.

It is really reliable and works well.

As a technician, it's easier to work on VMware because there are many online sources for support, and it has more maturity on the market. At Nutanix, you need a lot of support from a partner, whereas the engagement with a partner for VMware is much less.

Positive

I'm considering that it might be worth looking into Nutanix since they are new in the market.

We work hand in hand with our customers to work on primarily Big Cloud Director platforms.

Since Broadcom's acquisition, the prices of VMware solutions have changed a lot. I'm mostly technical and don't deal much with budgeting and billing, so I can't really judge them.

I did evaluate other solutions like Nutanix.

Starting from scratch, it could be worth looking into Nutanix. The VMware acquisition by Broadcom has left some uncertainty, and Broadcom did a terrible PR job following the acquisition.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use it to deliver secure cloud environments to customers.

vCloud Director greatly improves our organization by seamlessly integrating with the entire VMware stack, simplifying operations, and making it easy to provide comprehensive cloud services.

The most valuable feature of vCloud Director for me is its user-friendly UI, which is much easier compared to other platforms. It enables users to do more with their virtual machines and disks, making it a simpler and more versatile solution.

There is some room for improvement in vCloud Director, particularly with its integration with various VMware components for automation. It would be beneficial if some features were built into the platform rather than requiring integration with multiple products, reducing complexity and licensing concerns. Specifically, having native automation capabilities within vCloud Director would be a great enhancement.

I have been using vCloud Director for three years.

I would rate the stability of the solution as a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of the solution as a nine out of ten.

I would rate the technical support as an eight out of ten.

Positive

I previously used Morpheus, but I switched to vCloud Director due to integration issues after upgrading. Specifically, Morpheus had challenges integrating with another solution we were using, prompting the switch.

The initial setup was quite simple.

I think vCloud Director is worth the price.

I would recommend vCloud Director as a solid solution for cloud providers. It offers comprehensive features and is easy to integrate with other VMware components, making it well-suited for diverse needs. Overall, I would rate it as a ten out of ten.

vCloud Director is used for our customers and my company for the cloud.

I have been using vCloud Director for approximately one year.

vCloud Director is a stable solution.

We have approximately three people using vCloud Director in my company.

The support provided by the vCloud Director is good.

The initial setup of the vCloud Director was not complex and not easy, it was in the middle range of difficulty. It could be made easier. 

My advice to others is for them to check the requirements before implementation.

I rate vCloud Director a nine out of ten.

We use this solution to manage our virtual machines and basic settings.

We can run it on self-hosted systems, and we are happy with the stability of vCloud Director.

We use vCloud Director along with Terraform, and it's difficult to make them work together. It takes a long time to deploy virtual machines with Terraform in vCloud Director. For example, it can take about one or two hours to create 10 machines. It takes up a lot of our DevOps' and engineers' time in comparison to that with other solutions. This is an area that they should work on and improve.

I've been dealing with this solution for two to three years.

I'm pretty happy with the stability of this solution.

The licensing costs are pretty high, but it might depend on the size of the company.

I would rate vCloud Director at nine on a scale from one to ten.

The most valuable features of the vCloud Director are global management, added services, and automation.

vCloud Director should improve by having support with other cloud providers, such as Microsoft Azure and Google cloud.

I have been using vCloud Director for approximately one year.

vCloud Director has been stable in my usage.

The environment of the vCloud Director is able to be scaled.

Our customer has approximately 40,000 users using this solution.

The initial setup of vCloud Director is simple, it is not complex.

We did the implementation of vCloud Director ourselves. We support the solution 24 hours a day seven days a week and we use two to three people for the deployment. 

vCloud Director is priced higher than other solutions, such as Nutanix.

We compared vCloud Director with Nutanix and we found that vCloud Director had more features at the time. However, they have had some updates and they have similar features now.

I rate vCloud Director an eight out of ten.

This solution is used for hosting customers and providing multi-tenancy so that we can have shared infrastructures used by multiple customers.

We have our own organization. We have a private cloud that we host, and we onboard customers on that private cloud.

It's a cloud-based solution.

There are currently more than 40 customers that are hosted on the private cloud across the US, UK, and Canada.

The most valuable features are the multi-tenancy and multi-site configuration. It's very efficient. The virtual machine deployment and segregation of customers due to multi-tenancy is also very simplified. That is the reason we chose this product for hosting the private cloud.

The integration between components could be improved. The cloud solution does not comprise a single product. If you look at Azure or AWS, they have tightly integrated all the components in the backend, and they just provide a UI. With VMware, we just have to integrate all products of VMware together and then provide a UI to the customer. 

If some component of the UI isn't working, in the backend we have to find out, is this vCloud availability the problem? Or is RabbitMQ the problem? This kind of integration is supposed to be done by the service provider, but the integration should be pretty tight between all the components, which form a private cloud.

I have been using this solution for almost 12 years.

The stability is good but not excellent because of the interoperability between different components of VMware products, which form a private cloud. The interoperability needs to be improved between the different components of the private cloud.

Scalability-wise, it's a pretty good product. We can scale to multiple regions, and we can also increase the number of sales as required. If the customers in a specific region are too many and there is a lot of access, we just need to add more vCloud Director sales for customers.

Technical support needs to improve because the private cloud is comprised of multiple solutions. A customer has to log to identify which product is having problems, and then log a call with a vendor. The support from the vendor is not very good. For some of the cases, we have to chase them for almost a month to get a resolution.

We previously used VLS Automation earlier and multi-tenancy was also quite simple over there, but the only thing was the SSO integration with the multi-tenancy was not consistent. That's the reason we switched from VLS Automation to the private cloud, vCloud Director.

Initial setup was pretty simple. For deployment, we used three or four people across six regions.

We use around 25 people to maintain the solution across six regions.

We pay monthly for all of the licenses.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.