VMware NSX Reviews

We use this solution for network virtualization alongside Nutanix and for the firewall blueprint. I'm an IT manager. 

This product is like the layer between traditional networking and virtualization. It gives you the flexibility to deploy and have network virtualization on different types of firewalls. We implemented this solution when we moved to the private cloud. 

The setup of the solution could be simplified.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

We haven't had any issues with stability. 

The solution is scalable, but we haven't tested that yet. We have three network engineers using the product. We don't plan to increase usage in the near future. 

The response time of the technical support team could improve. We also sometimes had the feeling that they didn't properly understand the issue.

Positive

The initial setup is not that straightforward. We used a consultant and even then deployment took a full week. It wasn't easy. 

This is a good solution if it fits your requirements. You can achieve a lot if it suits your needs. I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

The solution is mainly used for rolling virtual environments and private clouds. I use the product for my company and for other customers.

It's important to have whenever I need to segment or control the traffic from virtual machine to virtual machine. This was not the case without the NSX.

NSX is good in managing security or controlling the security and the access control for each single VM. 

It is essential and it can be useful up to a certain level of access control. That said, if we need further detailed or further security features, we should use another product like Palo Alto or Fortinet or other competitors.

It integrates with certain vendors like Palo Alto seamlessly.

The product is stable. 

We can scale the solution. 

It's just access controlled. It should be leveraged by adding more detailed, deep security products to facilitate the NXS. The security needs improvement. 

It's not feature-rich. It's not doing many tasks like a Next Generation Firewall such as Palo Alto for VM or other vendors like Fortinet for virtualized environments. 

It has to have the features from next-generation firewalls, and it needs to complement other features, as in the unified security gateway, to be a good competitor against other solutions.

It does not integrate well with many platforms. 

I've been using the solution for a couple of years now. 

Stability is not an issue. It's not buggy. It doesn't crash or freeze. the performance is good. 

It is a scalable product. 

We have around 1000 or more people on the solution. Our customers use the solution. We do not use it internally. 

We didn't have experience with VMware technical support. Mainly, the issues we need are covered via assistance from Palo Alto. I've never directly communicated with VMware support. 

We didn't use any solution for the virtualized environment.

That said, for other solutions in the market that have the same feature, we have experience. This includes Juniper, Cisco, and Palo Alto. These all have next-generation firewall features, which have been standard for 20 years now.

It's intermediate in terms of ease of setup. It is not so straightforward, and it's not also complex.

 It integrates with certain vendors like Palo Alto very well. That said, other vendors, like Fortinet or others, do not have the same level of integration.

I'd rate the process a there out of five in terms of ease of setup. 

The deployment took three weeks the first time we did it. The strategy is mainly segmenting between operational virtual machines which have, for example, the database and the application front end on the same VLAN. If I need to segment this traffic, it wouldn't be possible without NSX.

We have two people that can handle deployment and maintenance tasks. We need someone who understands the schema of the solution itself, the software itself, the front end and the database, and so on. Then, we also need one person from the security team.

We had a consultation and fielded recommendations from a Palo Alto engineer.

From a security point of view, the ROI you would see would be based on making things secure. The risk is at the lowest possible levels. However, the level of security that would be improved using this solution alone isn't so good. I'd rate the ROI a two out of five as it doesn't do much on its own. 

I'm not sure about licensing, as this is out of my scope as a technical engineer.

We did look into other options before choosing this solution. 

We are a partner. I'm using the latest version of the solution. 

It has good features for tagging and auto-tagging and so on. That said, without another complementary solution like Palo Alto or other micro-segmentation firewall vendors, it would not be of that much use. It needs the support of other software.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten. It lacks standard security features, which is why I rate it so low. 

The stability or the high availability in connecting two or more servers has been pretty good. This is to maintain the operations in the possible highest stability. That was a very important part of this project since you have to move all virtual machines to the new infrastructure. It took a very, very long time to understand how the old architecture was arranged and how to migrate to our new architecture.

There were some issues in finance and other accounting. The applications there are very old. To move these applications, we had to use some controls or web services for programming in a new program, for example, in Python or visual C#. You have to move these applications to new programming software. It was very, very complex to move them. However, we ended up doing it very well.

ESX servers are a part that they don't implement. The client that this part of the VMware is important. You can implement more virtual machines using ESX server infrastructure. However, they couldn't complete this part since, for some arrangements in the contract, they don't put it in the contract. They need to buy new licenses to complete the project.

I’ve been using the solution for six to eight months.

The solution is very stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn’t crash or freeze. The performance is good.

We have maybe 2,000 users using the solution. We use them to move to new infrastructure.

I have experience using help desk support to understand all the users' needs. We were in the area of quality control, so all the requirements that the users or the managers were indicating to me, we had to transfer to the area of programming and they would say, “okay, I'll let you know if I can do it or not.” I was the go-between. It worked very well. Support was offering quality service.

I am able to help clients set up the solution. I’m an integrator.

The original cost started at $1,500. The solution is paid monthly. All the institutions have to pay monthly for the services in the cloud. They have to pay $30,000 every month for this service every three years.

I am not a reseller. I am an integration company. More prominent companies contract us and we work for them.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten.

VMware is a very, very good product. It's used a lot here in Ecuador in a lot of enterprises and institutions.

We use NSX as a security solution. The solution is deployed on-premise. We are using version 6.4 of NSX. 

The solution is easy to use and is good for management control.

It isn't easy to deploy.

I have been using VMware NSX for almost 10 years.

We currently have 2,000 users.

The solution is scalable.

I haven't used technical support. If I have a problem, I find out what the best practice is.

We previously used a different solution for server virtualization, but we switched to NSX.

The solution was easy to install but not easy to deploy. 

We have a technical team. The time it takes and the amount of people needed for maintenance depends on the solution that is deployed. Sometimes it is easy, and sometimes it takes more than one day.

The subscription is on a yearly basis.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

Have used this solution to implement PAS (PCF) and have also used it for Native Datacenter networking as part of DC refresh.

Have worked on multiple organizations with VMware NSX. It heavily depends on the use case of the solution and how well you are able to use all the features of the product. When using for K8s container platforms or a networking backed for on premises cloud using a CMP(VRA, VIO) then VMware NSX is the best SDN solution but If an organization is not able to use NSX to its full potential (Switching, Routing, Load-balancing, Firewall, IDS, IPS etc.) then its not worth it.

Logical routing, switching are  overall good feature of this SDN solution especially when using CMP's and distributed firewall is very attractive features for micro-segmentation.

In rare situation there are  mismatch in the control plane data and dataplane data i.e. the details and what you actually see on the transport note. This is rare but time consuming to troubleshoot . Additionally, there could be better integration between VMware Cloud Federation (VCF) and NSX-T. Currently, there are some limitations, for example, VCF allows just one overlay transport zone. Also there is not upgrade path from VCF 3(NSX-T 2.5.x) to VCF 4 (NSX-T 3.x)

I have been using the solution for approximately five years.

The stability is good and is getter better after each new release.

The solution is scalable. In the 2.4 version, the controller got merged to create the cluster manager, it now is even better.

The technical support was pretty good, but recently I have had quite a few bad experiences with the support. But that really depends on the account and geographic location and multiple other factors

We have using Cisco ACI  and it is a strong competitor. When you are not using NSX NCP then everything that you need from SDN prospective can be done in Cisco ACI except for the distributed firewall at the vnic level.

The initial installation feels at first a little complex because there are a lot of components, but when you get the understanding after a short time, it is fine.

I was not involved in the purchase of the solution but I hear it is on the expensive side. That is why quite a few companies are moving towards open source because there are multiple solutions such as NginX, that can do the load balancing, and Calico and Flannel can do your logical switching routing.

If there is already VMware environment then it makes sense to use NSX-V, NSX-T as it can be integrated with other VMware automation products. But if approach it towards opensource then other SDN solutions like flannel, Nginx etc. can be evaluated depending on the use case.

If you are wanting to implement this solution I would advise if your project supports it then definitely. You should have a solid use case, the solution is rich in feature sets and you should use all of them. Then only is it worth the money, if you are just buying it for your logical switching and routing, then it is not worth it.

I rate VMware NSX a seven out of ten.

This is a product for network security, and network management. 

We don't use it at the production level. I am conducting a PoC.

We are using this in our testing data center and not in our live data center. This infrastructure contains many security devices from other vendors such as Palo Alto.

We are also using vSAN and vCenter.

The most valuable features are stability and low cost.

There are always issues integrating with Cisco.

Switching is always a big problem for us because our switch is not supported.

If the integration was more open, then it would be good.

I have been using VMware NSX for three years.

We are using the latest version, and we already want to upgrade it.

It's a stable solution. We plan to continue using it.

There are three users in our organization who are using this solution.

VMware technical support is good but we find that the Cisco support is better for us.

This product is better for network security than Cisco ASA and Firepower.

The initial setup is straightforward but still takes time.

It takes longer to deploy than Cisco products. It takes between three and seven days to deploy,

We had a team of five for deployment. Two are from our company and three were from the vendor.

We have a license.

It is an expensive product, but cheaper than some competing solutions.

It's a good product.

This is a solution that I recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The tool is very useful for cloud providers who need to manage things like Microsoft Enterprise.

The performance is good.

The setup is complex and should be made easier.

I have been using the solution for three years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. Good to scale in and scale out, and add benefits resources. Customers use it across the globe.

The technical support team is dependable because we use the service a lot of time. We opened a lot of cases and it was solved.

The tool's setup is complex. When I deployed it myself, it took less than one day.

We can do many things with NSF; for now, most of the things are the micro security capabilities and features. I recommend the solution. I rate it eight out of ten.

We are using VMware NSX primarily to enable address mechanisms in terms of having to provide the workloads publicly.

In India and similar regions, the CSP faces a significant challenge. The primary issue is related to network address cancellation, which requires private to public IT mapping and the use of the CSP's own IP address space. VMware NSX has been effective in addressing this problem, along with the virtual firewall's ability to function as a network firewall. This has helped to minimize the need for customers to take responsibility for their network security. In these regions, customers expect full-service solutions and do not typically embrace DIY approaches. An analogy for this situation is that if a customer buys a toothbrush from you, they might expect you to brush their teeth for them.

VMware NSX's overlay network is its most valuable feature, as it aligns with any network philosophy and allows for efficient addressing mechanisms. Additionally, the ability to extend the on-premise network into the provider space is beneficial. There are many features provided.

There is room for improvement in VMware NSX's workload management, particularly in the orchestration layer and in managing workloads across multiple clouds.

Additionally, where workload management could be improved is in the ability to federate workloads seamlessly between different control panels. For example, if I am using VMware vCenter as my control panel and have partnered with a non-VMware provider, I should be able to manage my workloads as a customer without having to worry about orchestration. This is an area where there is potential for improvement.

I have been using VMware NSX for approximately eight years.

The scalability of VMware NSX is similar to other solutions. It is scalable.

I rate the scalability of VMware NSX a seven out of ten.

We did not have local support to go to in India. There is no support center here.

I have used Qumulo but we needed to buy a switch for it which was not favorable.

The initial setup of VMware NSX is not complex. If someone has an understanding of how networks work it will be easy. It can take some time to be completed. For example, to configure the solution with the correct commands.

The implementation time can vary depending on the clarity and complexity of the requirements.

When comparing VMware NSX to OpenStack, VMware NSX is simpler to implement.

I rate the initial setup of VMware NSX a six out of ten.

The price of VMware NSX is optimal. Additionally, the price of the solution can be negotiated with the vendor. Many areas of the solution can impact the cost, such as features, time for onboarding, and support needed.

We evaluated other options before choosing VMware NSX.

VMware is a pioneer in virtualization, they are good at what they do. They score high overall in capability.

I rate VMware NSX an eight out of ten.