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Vikram Casula - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Infrastructure & Cloud ops at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Helps with large scale deployments and maintenance
Pros and Cons
  • "Also, the automated builds are being done through it, and we don't have to manually do it anymore. All of my AIS platforms are completely automated now with the VM suite."
  • "It could be more composable. At present, a fluid pool is not available to us. It would be great to have the flexibility."

What is most valuable?

VMware vSphere gives us a complete landscape to manage the infrastructure in one view. With the REDOPS automation in place, it is easy for us to manage our VMs on top of it. 

Also, the automated builds are being done through it, and we don't have to manually do it anymore. All of my AIS platforms are completely automated now with the VM suite.

What needs improvement?

It could be more composable. At present, a fluid pool is not available to us, and it would be great to have the flexibility.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with VMware vSphere for more than eight years.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been good. On a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, I would rate technical support at 4.5.

Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
July 2025
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
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How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

VMware vSphere helps with large scale deployments and maintenance. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at nine.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Head of enterprise systems at Fidelity Bank Plc
Real User
Good dynamic resource scheduling and fault tolerance capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "Its dynamic resource scheduling and its fault tolerance capabilities are two features that I've found to be valuable. I also like that VMware vSphere is stable, scalable, and easy to install."
  • "I would like to see improvements in simplifying automation, cloud native deployment, administration, and fault resolution."

What is our primary use case?

It's used as a private cloud, and currently, we operate the original enterprise infrastructure. For VMware, a majority of the workload is posted on VMware, and it's posted on the HCI solution.

What is most valuable?

Its dynamic resource scheduling and its fault tolerance capabilities are two features that I've found to be valuable. I also like that VMware vSphere is stable, scalable, and easy to install.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see improvements in simplifying automation, cloud native deployment, administration, and fault resolution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using VMware vSphere since 2008.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My impression is that it's a very stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I believe that VMware vSphere is scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

The customer service and technical support were fine.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Hyper-V, which is a Microsoft product.

How was the initial setup?

It was easy to install. We performed a complete deployment because it was a full MCI, so it required some architecture. I believe it took about a month.

What about the implementation team?

I used consultants for the implementation process because it was a refresh project.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I currently use the yearly licensing option, and I think that the pricing is fine for this solution.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution at 9, on a scale from one to ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
July 2025
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PeerSpot user
Senior System Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Real User
Feature-rich, easy to install, stable, with good support
Pros and Cons
  • "It is easy to use."
  • "They have multiple components required for the setup. It would be better to integrate it into one solution, especially for small business companies."

What is our primary use case?

We are resellers of VMware products. We sell both VMware vSphere and VMware vSAN.

This solution is used for infrastructure virtualization. It is deployed to get the most benefits of our hardware or for the user's hardware.

What is most valuable?

It is easy to use.

The features are very rich.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see it more open to working with other platforms.

They could improve the pricing. The license could be cheaper.

They have multiple components required for the setup. It would be better to integrate it into one solution, especially for small business companies.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been acquainted with vSphere for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable solution. We have between 10 and 20 users.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is fine.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

Depending on the environment, it can take a couple of days to complete the installation and configuration.

We have a team of two engineers to complete the entire setup.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's a perpetual license paid on a yearly basis.

A customer can buy a license and support on a yearly basis.

The pricing should be more flexible and more affordable for the customer.

What other advice do I have?

I can recommend vSphere to other users who are looking into implementing it.

I would rate VMware vSphere an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
PeerSpot user
Presales Engineer at Emet Computing
Real User
Simple to use, offers a good user experience, and works well in mixed-OS environments
Pros and Cons
  • "The GUI is very simple to use."
  • "Stability-wise, there are some minor issues."

What is our primary use case?

We are a solution provider and VMware vSphere is one of the products that I have experience with. This product is used as a virtual IT environment. It hosts applications such as SQL databases.

What is most valuable?

The GUI is very simple to use.

The user experience is good.

What needs improvement?

Stability-wise, there are some minor issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with VMware vSphere for between 10 and 15 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are some issues with stability, although I don't think that it is a big problem. In general, it is a good product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability has not been a problem. Israel is a small country, so the level of service is less.

How are customer service and technical support?

As a system integrator, I have not had to contact technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have experience with KVM and it is also easy to use, but it is not as good as VMware.

How was the initial setup?

It is easy to deploy this solution from nothing.

What about the implementation team?

We deploy and maintain this solution with our in-house team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This is an expensive product and the price needs to be reduced.

What other advice do I have?

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it.

If you have a mixed environment that includes Windows, Linux, and other operating systems then this product is a good choice. However, if you have a purely Linux environment, such as Red Hat, then you can save money and have better performance by implementing KVM instead.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer1275930 - PeerSpot reviewer
reviewer1275930IT Executive Leader / Innovator at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
Consultant

As a leader of teams supporting the deployment and operation of VSphere, I'm always interested in how companies say this solution is too expensive.  I would advise those companies to take a hard look at what is the process of managing your IT Infrastructure environment (servers on-premise, remote and in cloud); have you identified how much in labor costs are incurred if little or no automation levels are being used. Understand what the business plans are over the next 2 - 3 years and make SURE IT can support those business plans with the people, processes and tools currently in use.  Then, compare that with the costs of designing, deploying and maintaining VSphere in your environment.  The costs may be closer than you think and the benefits are going to provide a more stable environment.

System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We switched to vSphere from IBM Power because the hardware is cheaper.
Pros and Cons
  • "Virtualised automation is a useful feature."
  • "The pipeline feature can be improved, as it doesn't allow for specific situations."

What is our primary use case?

We are just beginning on vSphere. In the next two and three years, I would like to explore the virtualized automation.

What is most valuable?

Virtualised automation is a useful feature.

What needs improvement?

The pipeline feature can be improved, as it doesn't allow for specific situations.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using vSphere for about 2 years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Because vSphere is a minimal interface, it tends to be stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As you can set up various environments, vSphere is very scalable. In the future, we may consider switching from vSphere to Hyper-V.

How are customer service and technical support?

We purchased the OEM, but not from VMware. We bought it from HPE. The first year of support provided by HPE is okay for now.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

IBM Power. We switched to vSphere from IBM Power because the hardware is cheaper.

How was the initial setup?

The setup of vSphere is straight forward. I have set up a few vSphere environments.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

vSphere is very expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would give vSphere 9 out of 10, as it is easy to use, and there is good support available.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Solutions Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feature-rich, easy to implement, and easy to scale
Pros and Cons
  • "I don't see any challenges in using this product."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using vSphere as a multi-tenant platform. We are hosting VMs for a few of our customers.

    What is most valuable?

    We are utilizing all of the features and they are good.

    I don't see any challenges in using this product. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have been using VMware vSphere for between three and four years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    This is a stable product and I haven't heard any negative feedback from my implementation team about it.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We implement this product for medium and large-sized companies. It is easy to scale.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I have not personally been in touch with VMware support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We have not used another similar solution.

    How was the initial setup?

    The implementation is an easy process for us, which is why we're using VMware cloud as a product. The length of time required for deployment depends on the customer. We need to know their requirements, and then we proposed timelines and inform them accordingly. It is defined by the number of nodes and the number of workloads.

    What about the implementation team?

    We deploy vSphere for our customers. We also offer maintenance and support as part of a managed service.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    This is quite an expensive product, although everything is included in the standard licensing fee.

    What other advice do I have?

    Overall, for me, everything with this product looks good and I can recommend it.

    I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Private Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Other
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1081776 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Systems Engineer/Systems Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    The most feature rich and reliable hypervisor on the market today
    Pros and Cons
    • "Their command-line tools integrate well with other Microsoft products like PowerShell, so I can manipulate VMs using it."
    • "The web user interface can be a bit clunky from time to time, so there may be some room for improvement in that regard."

    What is our primary use case?

    I use vSphere for general server virtualization. I am not doing anything spectacular with it.

    How has it helped my organization?

    vSphere has absolutely improved the way our organization functions. This is because of the ease of management and the number of servers that we are able to virtualize. When we first went to VMware, we took 200 physical servers and converted them to virtual. Instead of running on 200 pieces of hardware, they were running on 8.

    Obviously, this is much easier to manage from a hardware perspective, power perspective, and reliability perspective.

    What is most valuable?

    The vSphere is very good at advanced things like memory sharing between VMs, and CPU scheduling between VMs.

    I use the automation tools that they have today.

    Their command-line tools integrate well with other Microsoft products like PowerShell, so I can manipulate VMs using it.

    The capability to add on new features like site recovery and monitoring is helpful.

    What needs improvement?

    The web user interface can be a bit clunky from time to time, so there may be some room for improvement in that regard.  I was a fan of the C# client for as long as I could use it.  The move from flash to HTML5 for the web interface is an improvement but still not a good as C# was.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been working with VMware vSphere for approximately 12 years.  Since VI 3.5 days.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    In 12 years, I can think of one time that we've had a server crash. It was one of our host servers and the problem was hardware-related. It was attributed to bad memory on the physical host server, itself.

    The VMware operating system is stable and I've never had it crash.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scaling is very easy. Just build it, acquire a license from them and add it to vCenter.

    We have about 2,000 people in our organization, and everybody has some server on there that they do something with. It may be file services, file servers, or Citrix XenApp servers.  Most of our VMware environment is our legacy servers because they still support older operating systems that I can't put on Hyper-V or AHV. For example, we have a couple of Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers. VMware is the only hypervisor that I can run those on.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    It has probably been 10 years since I've had to call support for anything but from what I can remember, they were helpful and they solved our problems. It has been so long that I've had to use them that I would hesitate to give them a perfect rating, since I don't know what they're like today, so I think that rating them a nine out of ten is appropriate.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    vSphere was our first hypervisor.

    Since then we have added additional hypervisors in our environment. We have AHV from Nutanix and Hyper-V from Microsoft.

    AHV doesn't support things like memory sharing, at all, and Hyper-V is just not very good at it.

    How was the initial setup?

    I knew what I was doing, so I found that the initial setup was very straightforward. If an inexperienced user's initial setup involves a little bit of searching in Google then I would think that it wouldn't be very difficult.

    What about the implementation team?

    We did use a vendor for our initial implementation, 12 years ago.  Since then we have done multiple upgrades and I have done several new implementations for other orgs.  They were competent at their work and I learned a lot from them that I used in my future implementations.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Basic vSphere, without centralized management, is free. When you get into the centralized management vCenter server, it starts adding cost. Then, it's license-based upon the number of CPUs in your host servers.

    What other advice do I have?

    VMware vSphere is my preferred hypervisor. It always has been, and always will be. I suggest using it, and not hesitating. I'm sure that they're working on great stuff to enhance this product that I can't even think of, but from my perspective, everything that they do today is great. I don't know what they could possibly do to make my life easier, but I'm sure they'll come up with something.

    I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1266792 - PeerSpot reviewer
    IT Infrastructure Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Stable, easy to scale and deploy, vCenter and SRM features are good
    Pros and Cons
    • "I think that the solution is perfect. It's the best on the market."
    • "Response time could be improved."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use VMware vSphere for virtualization and to deliver VDI.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The  vSphere plataform allow us to consolidate our datacenter and give us more availability.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable features are the vCenter, and SRM. 

    Technically speaking, there is nothing that I don't like. I think that the solution is perfect. It's the best on the market.

    I have not used all of the features but the features that are provided are perfect. There is nothing that this solution doesn't have.

    What needs improvement?

    I don't think that the solution must be improved.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using VMware vSphere since 2007.

    We have the latest version and 6.7. 6.5, and 6.0.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It's stable, we have not had any issues with stability.

    We have 100,000 employees in our organization.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    it's very scalable. It's easy to scale.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I would rate the technical support an eight out of ten. They need to improve the time it takes to resolve a case.

    Response time could be improved.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Yes, a used Microsoft Hyper-V, I switched because vSphere is more mature and stable.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is straightforward. It's easy.

    It takes can take 10 to 15 minutes to deploy a new server into the vSphere platform. It's so easy.

    It may take more time for testing and implementation.

    Deployment varies, if you are referring to the deployment of the full solution, it includes deploying the vCenter, deploying the servers, the host, and creating our clusters can take up to three hours.

    What about the implementation team?

    The implementation were with VMware consultant team.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I don't like the price because it's too expensive.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    No, I evaluated just vSphere and Hyper-V.

    What other advice do I have?

    It's important to contract a good level of support from VMware.

    I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free VMware vSphere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: July 2025
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free VMware vSphere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.