VMware NSX Reviews

We're moving towards hyper-converged solutions with VMware, including NSX and vSAN. This direction has promising prospects in the market.

One significant advantage of VMware NSX is the ability to provide advanced security at the micro-level, focusing on securing applications and workloads rather than just the network structure or virtualization-based network security.   

I believe we need to attain a certain level of maturity and work closely with multiple customers to make substantial improvements and achieve notable results. The feature it can improve is essentially application-based load balancing with intelligent load distribution for applications that require redundancy and high availability. This feature operates at a micro-level, specifically focusing on the payloads of applications.

To clarify further, I believe that if NSX offers this functionality along with robust security measures for application payloads, it would greatly benefit customers. Instead of investing in additional devices or appliances for load balancing and security, organizations would likely prefer to leverage NSX's integrated capabilities in this regard.

We have been using this solution for the past six months. 

As for stability, the customer I mentioned earlier is extremely satisfied with the product's stability.

VMware doesn't have a physical presence in Pakistan. They recently initiated their operations here. However, we do have interactions with their team based in Singapore, and I must say they are quite supportive. The customer hasn't raised any complaints regarding their support. The time required for deployment can vary based on the size of the infrastructure, but typically, it can be accomplished within a two-week timeframe.

One of our prominent clients is a major university in Pakistan, and they expressed dissatisfaction with their current solution, Sentra for SCI. They expressed a desire to transition to VMware, specifically NSX, as they are seeking hyper-converged integrations with both cloud and on-premises solutions.

Regarding the initial setup, VMware products, including NSX, are generally straightforward to set up and deploy, so complexity hasn't been an issue.

The implementation of VMware NSX can be cost-intensive, especially if an organization is looking for a comprehensive solution. The costs can vary based on factors like the level of conversation and discounts obtained during negotiations. Some government organizations, for instance, may find the prices relatively high, leading to concerns about budget hikes, especially when deploying the solution across the entire organization.

Regarding maintenance and support, they are typically included in the standard licensing costs for enterprise-level businesses. While these costs can be significant, many companies opt for standard licensing to ensure they have access to necessary support and maintenance services.

The deployment of NSX security can be somewhat challenging, and it requires a thorough understanding of the organization's specific needs and objectives. To effectively implement NSX security measures, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of the applications, payloads, and various components within the network environment.

The solution's most valuable feature is ease of use. Its filtering features work best for our business requirements.

It could be helpful if the solution's licensing model is based on the number of VMs rather than hypervisors.

We have been using the solution for seven years.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability as an eight.

The solution's scalability depends on the licensing model.

The solution's customer service is good.

The solution is reasonable at the local level. But it is expensive to deploy it globally.

I advise others to understand their business requirements. They should know if they want the solution to block some protocols or to make accurate filtering. I rate the solution as an eight.

VMware NSX is used for server virtual machines.

The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the ease of use and its user friendly. For example, it is simple to change the subnet masks.

The solution could improve by having a more streamlined setup.

I rate VMware NSX for approximately one year.

The solution is highly stable.

We have approximately 2,000 users using this solution.

VMware NSX scales well.

I have rarely used the support of the solution.

I rate the support from VMware NSX an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have not used a similar solution to VMware NSX.

The installation process for VMware NSX can be intricate. We obtained the executable file for the specific server we intended to install VMware NSX and then proceeded to configure it. This involved ensuring that the IP and ID matched the installation, as well as completing other necessary details such as setting up the gateways.

We are using the free version of the solution.

We have 10 analysts and administrators that do the maintenance of the solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate VMware NSX a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for our DMC firewall to micro-segment the networks for the CRUD matrix.

The most valuable feature is the integration with the firewall.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have around 4,000 people using the solution.

The technical support is sometimes delayed but they always resolve our issues.

Positive

The implementation was completed by a vendor.

The cost of the solution is a bit high.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The maintenance is done by our vendor.

The solution is great and I recommend it.

The micro-segmentation and the ability to create policy rules are valuable.

There's generally quite a lack of specialists in this space. One of the challenges as a reseller is that I need technical people to go and offer in-depth conversations about the products. We would engage someone to do that, or we would look for some engineering resources to be able to do the implementation. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of those. There is a massive skill shortage.

It's a good product, but the way that it has got so many multiple levels that need to be purchased makes it expensive and cumbersome. They seem to value shareholders more than customers, but most corporations seem to do that anyway.

I don't use the product. I sell the product. I've been with VMware for multiple years. It has been about three years or so.

It's stable. None of my customers have complained about it from a stability point of view. They complained about its cost a lot, but people are quite happy that it's a stable product.

There don't seem to be any issues with scalability. I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

Most of our clients are small to medium enterprises.

We are just reselling the product. I've seen demos and things like that. It seems very straightforward. 

There could be some challenges around the implementation time, and you need to know what you're doing. There were some challenges from one of our customers. It had to do with the migration of VTT that wasn't made clear to him, so he complained about that, but it's not my experience. Some of the end-users in that space may have a feeling that they're not being informed sufficiently of product changes in a timely manner. 

Our customers have definitely complained about its cost. It's expensive. I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of pricing where ten represents a high price. There are other products out there that are equally expensive.

I'd definitely recommend doing a proof of concept. Do a trial deployment so that you can understand the requirements and you can understand how the rules are created. So, definitely, try before you buy should be there.

I'd rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for micro-segmentation for the security of virtual machines.

VMware NSX offers some of the best features for security, such as micro-segmentation. This feature allows us to define policies on a per-virtual machine basis. For example, if we have four virtual machines, we can have four different firewalls attached to each of the VMs. This allows us to monitor the traffic between each VM, as they will have to go through two firewalls or two IPs. This added layer of security provides a great benefit to those utilizing the solution.

Despite being somewhat behind in the cybersecurity field, VMware should develop a cloud and a red team to continuously monitor for new malware and ransomware. They must maintain their own cloud to do their own research, and send the resulting hashes or values to all customers using VMware NSX. This will ensure that each customer is regularly updated with the latest malware and ransomware hashes to keep their systems secure.

Web filtering is a good feature that I would like to have added to the solution.

I would like the ability to limit the bandwidth per virtual machine to ensure that I understand the throughput requirements of any application that is running. This way, I can be protected from the risks of a DoS or DDoS attack, which may require a high level of throughput. This limitation would apply to Layer 4 or Layer 5 of the network.

I have been using the solution for three years.

VMware NSX is stable.

The great advantage of VMware is its scalability and hardware independence; The solution is compatible with a wide range of server brands, including Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Cisco.

My job was to offer consultancy, demonstrations, and conceptual approval to the VMware official team and their partners.

Positive

Of all the cybersecurity vendors we have, the installation of VMware products is the most straightforward. The time needed to deploy depends on the purpose of the use case. Complex tasks between two data centers could take up to four days, whereas micro-segmentation would usually take only two days.

I give the solution an eight out of ten. The solution is missing the red teams and R&D necessary to continuously receive updates from the cloud. Additionally, two other features are absent from VMware NSX which are bandwidth limitation and URL filtering.

We have two people using the solution. I'm the only architect, and the other person is mainly responsible for checking logs to determine if any resources are needed and then assigning those resources to the appropriate virtual machines. 

For someone who wants to secure their data center and three-tier application architecture (database, web application, etc.), they should use micro-segmentation with VMware NSX. This would enable them to set policies on a per-virtual machine basis. For example, if each VM has two virtual NICs assigned to it, each virtual NIC would have its own firewall, policy, and IP. This way, even when two virtual machines need to communicate with each other, their traffic will pass through two separate firewalls within the server. In addition to micro-segmentation, NSX also provides switching and routing services. The use of a data center firewall can be cost-effective for enterprise customers, SMBs, and medium-sized customers. By utilizing the routing, switching, and firewall capabilities provided by the data center firewall, the load on data center switches and routing can be reduced, making it a more cost-efficient option. The throughput required by the data center firewall, be it a Fortinet or Palo Alto Checkpoint, is directly proportional to the cost. With increased throughput, the cost of the firewall will also increase. VMware NSX offloads the workload from the data center firewall, taking on the task itself. This is possible without impacting performance because it is a software firewall, so it absorbs all the load from the data center firewall, providing the same security measures as the legacy firewall would.

I use VMware NSX for virtualizing networks for VMware virtual machines.

VMware NSX improved my organization because it's more flexible than network hardware and provides many solutions, such as firewalls and load balancers.

The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the high bandwidth.

A room for improvement in VMware NSX is that it has some security vulnerabilities, which means my company has to apply the patches every once in a while.

I have two years of experience with VMware NSX, and I've worked with the solution in the last twelve months.

VMware NSX is a stable solution.

VMware NSX is a scalable solution.

I have no experience contacting VMware NSX technical support.

I didn't use a previous solution before I used VMware NSX.

My company went with VMware NSX because the infrastructure within the company is VMware.

The initial setup for VMware NSX is not that complex. It's in the middle, so I'd rate it as five out of ten.

I'm trying to remember how long the deployment of the solution took, but it didn't take up a lot of time.

A third party helped my company with VMware NSX implementation.

I have experience with VMware NSX.

I'm using the latest version of the solution.

Sometimes, VMware NSX requires maintenance. The third-party was responsible for the first time, and then the vendor took over the subsequent maintenance activities.

VMware NSX has about three hundred users in the company.

I don't know if there's any plan to increase usage for the solution.

My rating for VMware NSX is nine out of ten.

I primarily use the product as network virtualization software.

VMware NSX is a great product for network virtualization. No other vendor can offer this kind of solution up until now, and it's great for enhancing security at the virtual machine level. There is micro-segmentation, and a distributed firewall, and all network and network security components can be virtualized with the help of this NSX-T stack. It is a pioneer software solution for network security in a virtualized environment.

This solution comes with an API that can easily integrate with other solutions. 

NSX features include micro-segmentation, distributed IPS, IDS functionality, URL analysis, gateway firewall, logical routing, and all the staple networking solutions like DNS, DSCP, and routing. All these features are very interesting.

The solution is stable.

We can scale it if we need to.

It should support Hyper-V also. Nowadays, NSX supports the KVM and ESXi hypervisors only. It should also support Hyper-V and Citrix hypervisors.

There have already been lots of improvements. For example, they edited the intelligent plans and added an advanced load balancer. The latest version, 4.0, really has all the features you need.

It's a bit complex to set up the product.

I have a total of around three years of experience using the NSX-T solution. 

The stability is good architecture-wise. We haven't had any issues. 

The solution can scale well. 

It is not a user-based solution. We deploy it to about 20 servers. 

We did not previously use a different solution before this product.

It is a little bit complex to set up. It depends upon deployment. Either it is greenfield or brownfield deployment. If it is greenfield, it is very easy. If it is a brownfield deployment, so you need to take care of multiple scenarios of your network, and you need to understand the network architecture, then the deployment of services. 

While deployment requires a complete team, maintenance only requires on VMware administrator. 

We handled the initial setup with the help of a third-party SI team.

This product provides end-to-end visibility and security to your virtual environment. So it's a very huge return on investment in terms of security enhancement and maintaining cybersecurity posture.

The cost of the solution is moderate. I'd rate it three out of five in terms of affordability.

There is no other option available for this kind of product.

The product should be implemented in any IT infrastructure virtual environment. It is a must-have.

I'd rate it a ten out of ten.

The solution is used for network virtualization. Normally, in my cases, I was billing it for the government clouds, for NIC, the National Informatics Computer of India. For them, I was making a cloud where a different government, a smaller government entity, wanted to buy a cloud from the government clouds.

Apart from the normal functionality, a few things are quite useful, including multi-cloud networking. They have container networking and load balancing. Those are quite useful in terms of when we are designing a solution.

It's a pretty mature platform right now. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

We found the solution to be stable. 

It's scalable. 

I haven't found any shortcomings. 

It might be nice to have more AI in the future. It would help keep us from redesigning every time. 

I've worked with the solution for four years now. 

The solution is stable and perfectly fine. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution can scale well. 

We had a user base of around 1200 people.

I dealt with tech support during pre-deployment, and they were fine. They were helpful when we were dealing with staging cases. I wasn't an active part of the actual deployment and can't speak of how helpful they were in that part of the process. 

I was the previous architect for the NSX, not the implementer.

My understanding is the setup process is quite straightforward. 

Our deployment was quite big. Including the staging and all the stuff, we were able to deploy in a four-month timeframe. That is not only NSX, that is the complete deployment of the cloud. We had a few issues here and there, however, overall, it was fine. 

It's easy to maintain for the most part. The orchestration layer for it was a bit hectic work for us. That needed a dedicated VMware team. Apart from that, everything was quite smooth for NSX or vSphere, et cetera, and it is quite simple to manage it.

The finance team handles the licensing agreements. I can't speak to the exact cost.

When going for multiple OEM solutions, like Juniper, Cisco, HPE, et cetera, NSX will be quite useful. Don't go for the ACSIs and all Juniper proprietary options since future upgrades will be a bit tough if something needs to be added. Therefore, if it is a multiple OEM architecture, go for NSX, it'll be more helpful.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the load balancing and routing of firewall rules. Many of the features are beneficial.

I have been using VMware NSX for approximately four years.

VMware NSX can be stable. However, before you start, you need a very thorough sturdy design. Once this is complete you can go on building your VMware NSX in your environment. 

I went to VMware to look at their best practice designs, but they didn't apply to our environment. I had to take some parts of different designs and build my own that was exactly what was right for us.

Get the designs first, study them very thoroughly and after that, you can implement what will work for you.

The scalability of VMware NSX is very good. However, you have to take into consideration that you have to study their documentation.

The amount of users or devices VMware NSX  can handle depends on the resource that you allocate to the Edges and to the management cluster. They are small, medium, and large. A large allocation can handle thousands of virtual machines. We mostly deploy medium to large-scale systems.

The support from VMware NSX could improve. We are a large company and when we have an issue we do not need to waste everyone's time with level one and two support. I try and explain to them I need level three support but they say they have to follow protocol and pass me through the different levels.   

I have used previously Cisco 1000V. It was much more expensive than VMware NSX. We cannot compare them because the Cisco 1000V is obsolete and I don't know if they have a newer version or something similar. They are not the same technology, Cisco 1000V is from 2015, and NSX-T is from 2021. There is a big difference between time and technology.

If you have experience with the setup of VMware NSX it is simple, but if you do not it could be difficult. I would advise new users to contact professional support from VMware.

The price of VMware NSX is reasonable.

I rate VMware NSX a nine out of ten.