VMware vSphere is user friendly. It is scalable and stable, which are very important attributes for us.
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Is user friendly, stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
- "VMware vSphere is user friendly, and it is scalable and stable, which are very important attributes for us."
- "VMware vSphere needs to increase the datastore volume."
- "The installation is a little bit complex."
What is most valuable?
What needs improvement?
The installation is a little bit complex.
VMware vSphere needs to increase the datastore volume.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
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VMware vSphere
May 2026
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
How was the initial setup?
The installation is not overly complex. The integration project took two months, and the upgrade to version 6.7 took a lot of time.
For deployment and maintenance, you need a team of three or four admins and engineers.
What about the implementation team?
We worked with an integrator.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Hyper-V.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution and rate it at ten 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.
IT Infrastructure Specialist at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A cloud computing virtualization platform that's pretty stable
Pros and Cons
- "It's a very useful solution. It's easy to set up, and it's pretty stable."
- "It could be more scalable."
What is our primary use case?
We use VMware vSphere for virtualization, especially server virtualization.
What is most valuable?
It's a very useful solution. It's easy to set up, and it's pretty stable.
What needs improvement?
It could be more scalable.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using VMware vSphere for about ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
VMware vSphere is pretty stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
VMware vSphere can be scalable. We can scale it as much as we want, but it could be more scalable.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is pretty good. It took us about an hour to implement this solution.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented VMware vSphere. We need about two people to set up and maintain this solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay for our license.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to new users.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give VMware vSphere a ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
VMware vSphere
May 2026
Learn what your peers think about VMware vSphere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Information Technology Manager & Chief Information Officer at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
Allows us to create or clone a virtual environment in a short period of time and has good stability and support
Pros and Cons
- "The ability to create or clone a virtual environment in a short period of time for testing is most valuable."
- "An improvement could be in terms of keeping up with the upgrades. The upgrades could be set in an automated way so that the newer features don't require you to manually update, or you get an option to update automatically. This would be a useful enhancement."
What is our primary use case?
We use it to create virtual machines and things like that.
What is most valuable?
The ability to create or clone a virtual environment in a short period of time for testing is most valuable.
What needs improvement?
The enhancements that come out from time to time usually surpass what we need. We tend to upgrade because we do not want to be behind, but our needs don't continually grow. We are not very fast in terms of appetite for new things. However, we do appreciate that there is a continuous improvement, and for us, it is just a matter of being able to spin up a new environment quickly.
An improvement could be in terms of keeping up with the upgrades. The upgrades could be set in an automated way so that the newer features don't require you to manually update, or you get an option to update automatically. This would be a useful enhancement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their technical support is great.
How was the initial setup?
It has medium complexity. It isn't necessarily easy to set up. After you have set it up, it is easy to enhance.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of 10.
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.
IT Architect at Anetys
A stable and scalable solution, but the controller needs improvement and the technical support and installation could be better
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is stable."
- "The technical support is not too bad, but not the best."
What is most valuable?
I consider all the features to be of interest.
What needs improvement?
Improvements should be made to the controller.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using VMware vSphere for between three and five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is not too bad, but not the best.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy but could be moderately improved.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing could be lower.
What other advice do I have?
I am a consultant and reseller.
My advice to others who are considering implementing the solution is they have a good partner.
I rate VMware vSphere as a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. reseller
IT & Security Team Leader at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Versatile, extremely stable, and very scalable with useful DRS and resource pooling features
Pros and Cons
- "It is very versatile, and all features are beneficial and very good, especially DRS and resource pooling."
- "They can maybe review its price. They can also consider offering a free public version for development for a certain number of users."
- "I know that its price is a little bit high, and they can consider reviewing it."
What is our primary use case?
We use it for the virtualization of server infrastructure.
What is most valuable?
It is very versatile. All features are beneficial and very good, especially DRS and resource pooling.
What needs improvement?
They can maybe review its price. They can also consider offering a free public version for development for a certain number of users.
I am using version 6.7, and it would be good if it has support for SaaS storage. They might already have this feature in the latest version 7.1.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution in our company for 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is extremely stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. Its usage depends on each customer. We have small, medium, and large customers.
As a company, we are not a big consumer of VMware solutions. We do VMware deployments in other companies. We sell it to other companies, and we have a partnership with VMware.
How are customer service and technical support?
Based on my experience, they are very good. Their support used to be best, but it also depends on the number of subscriptions for each contract. Generally, their process is very good.
How was the initial setup?
It is easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm not a pricing or budgeting person, but I know that its price is a little bit high, and they can consider reviewing it. Its price is probably the highest in this domain.
What other advice do I have?
I personally do not recommend Hyper-V based on my experience, but I can recommend others to also look at Proxmox. There is also a solution from IBM. They are, for sure, very good contenders.
I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of 10. It satisfies our needs.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
Senior Oracle Database Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Is user-friendly, easy to install, stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
- "In terms of the usability, it's user-friendly; VMware vSphere is much simpler as compared to Oracle, much more stable than other products, and it is scalable and easy to implement as well."
- "VMware vSphere does not permit hard partitioning."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case for vSphere is that it can be used to deploy space applications to consolidate environments. You can be in production or in a data center, and you want each application to perform or to run only on a particular server. To create that consolidation and that separation of services, you could deploy vSphere.
Nowadays, servers are very robust. You can have a server of 18 cores and a server of 75 terabytes or 100 terabytes. That's a huge investment for a company, and you cannot just deploy a single application. So, with vSphere it will permit you to deploy the hypervessel on that server and later on add servers little by little that can meet your needs.
What is most valuable?
In terms of the usability, it's user-friendly; VMware vSphere is much simpler as compared to Oracle. Even a French-speaking citizen or foreigner can easily implement it.
It's much more stable than other products. It is scalable and easy to implement as well.
What needs improvement?
It would be good if VMware vSphere could permit hard partitioning. If a company wants to purchase very expensive applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle Fusion and they have vSphere technology implemented in their data center, it will cost them a lot because it has a very heavy, strong, or robust server that has strong processing capacity. The license will not cost the license of vSphere, the virtual server created by vSphere. The license will be the license for the whole server, so it creates a lot of challenges.
If it's possible for virtual hard partitioning to be implemented so that those who are using very sophisticated applications like E-Business Suite and other applications that require licensing on a processor, a virtual processor, could benefit from it, then it would be great. That is, integration with more expensive platforms is needed.
It would be nice to pay once for an unlimited license. If you decide to quit later on, you could pay the support charges.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using VMware vSphere for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's much more stable than other products.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very scalable because you can create a cluster. You can add a cluster and add another server in the nodes or in the cluster which you have created.
How was the initial setup?
It's user-friendly, and it's really easy for a beginner to install. Now, there are appliances that you can deploy directly. So, I think it's very easy compared to that of others in the market. I have deployed it in large environments and even a test environment.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented it ourselves.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think the licensing cost depends on the number of users.
What other advice do I have?
VMware vSphere is user-friendly and easy to implement, so I will recommend it. I would rate it at eight 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.
Head Of Network & Technical Support at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Excellent virtualization, high performance, and simple installation
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is easy to use, has high performance, and good virtualization."
- "The solution is stable. However, it could improve by being more secure."
What is our primary use case?
We are using this solution for a lot of proposes, such as in production environments.
What is most valuable?
The solution is easy to use, has high performance, and good virtualization.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. However, it could improve by being more secure.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have found the solution scalable.
We have approximately 500 people using the solution in my organization.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have been satisfied with the technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have used another solution previously.
How was the initial setup?
The installation is straightforward and is easy to manage. It took approximately two hours to install.
What about the implementation team?
We did the implementation of the VMware vSphere and we have a team of 15 that does the implementation and maintenance of the solution. The team consists of managers and heads of departments.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There is a standard license required for this solution.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to others.
I rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Systems Engineer at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Easy to navigate, simple to scale, and works well right out of the box
Pros and Cons
- "The stability of the solution is excellent."
- "If you're looking at virtualization, it's probably the most stable virtualization platform that I have worked on."
- "The licensing costs for the solution are quite high."
- "One of the problems with the solution is the pricing."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is a hypervisor.
What is most valuable?
If you're looking at virtualization, it's probably the most stable virtualization platform that I have worked on.
VMware offers one of the most stable if not the most stable virtualization hypervisor.
The solution makes navigation very easy.
It makes migration very simple.
There is a lot of very impressive innovation happening within the product right now.
The integration capabilities are excellent.
We've found the product to be quite scalable.
The installation is quite straightforward.
You can do so much out of the box with their product, with their built-in technology. In vSphere, you can manage the hardware itself using the same platform.
What needs improvement?
The licensing costs for the solution are quite high.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for about seven years now. It's been a good amount of time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the solution is excellent. There aren't any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is very good. You can scale down or scale up provided you have the right licensing.
There aren't users on the solution per se. Our IT team is mainly involved with it. That's it. We have three engineers that manage it.
I'm not sure if we will expand this product. It depends on what might happen next as one of the things that we will be embarking on is HCI technology. VMware came into HCI, however, there are multiple vendors such as Dell or HPE. It depends on how everything turns out in terms of the IT strategy. They're not that cheap.
How are customer service and technical support?
I personally have never had to ask for support from VMware's technical team. In the last six to seven years, I have never had to directly ask VMware for anything. Therefore, I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we were using mainly the normal Windows hypervisor, Hyper-V. At my previous employer, we used to also have Xen hypervisor.
How was the initial setup?
The installation of the product is straightforward. It's really not too complex. All you do is install and click through. You put in your networking and you're done. Out of the box, it's great. However, if you do need to do some configurations, it can get a bit complex.
I did not handle the installation process myself, and therefore can't speak to the actual amount of time it took to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
One of the problems with the solution is the pricing. The licenses are not cheap.
We do pay a yearly licensing fee. Originally, it was a five-year package. Now we pay either every 12 or every 24 months.
If I have three hosts, just three hosts, a minimum of three hosts plus the vSphere and Center, I'm almost spending close to $250,000 a year. That's half a million in every two years inside just three hosts. In a serious medium enterprise where we would need at least 20 hosts, it means our annual fee or annual license cost could jump into the million-dollar range which means in three years you're spending three million alone on software.
What other advice do I have?
We're just customers and end-users.
I would recommend the solution to other organizations, so long as they've got the money. If you don't have the money you probably want to look at things that are open source. It's not a one size fits all kind of product. I say this because of the licenses. The amount of money you spend on licenses annually might be less somewhere else. For a medium enterprise, if you want a cross-platform sort of initial hypervisor I would say yes, VMware is a good option. Of course, there's always something better than VMware as well. For example, Nutanix is way ahead if you are a big enterprise.
Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. If it was less expensive, it would basically be perfect.
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.
A cloud computing virtualization platform with a useful distributed resource scheduler feature
Pros and Cons
- "I like that it's like a distributed rescheduler. You can move to and use VMotion as well. You can move the server and move the virtual machines around different physical servers. This makes it easier when it comes to redundancy."
- "I think VMware support is excellent."
- "The initial setup could be better. It manages all the setups, but it's not very straightforward, and it takes time."
- "The initial setup is a little complex because of the infrastructure; it's not related to just the one physical server, you need to design the storage and networks."
What is our primary use case?
We use VMware vSphere for our windows server and other virtual machines.
How has it helped my organization?
No need to upgrade the hardware for individual machines, easily to assign more resources to virtual machines when desired.
What is most valuable?
I like that it's like a distributed resource scheduler, the workload can be balanced automatically. Also you can use vMotion as well to manually move the virtual machines around different physical hosts. This makes it easier when it comes to redundancy.
What needs improvement?
The initial setup could be better. Follow the instruction you can set it up, but it's not very straightforward, and you need some storage and network knowledge to get the better understanding.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using VMware vSphere for over ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's stable. These have patches regularly, and we apply the critical patch.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is fine. We don't have too many virtual machines because we're moving to the cloud slowly. That's why we don't have an issue with that.
How are customer service and technical support?
I think VMware support is excellent. They have the highest one, and I'll rate them nine out of ten. I'm still satisfied with their support.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is a little complex because of the infrastructure. It's not related to just the one physical server, you need design the storage and networks. There are three different areas.
What other advice do I have?
For my friend with stock in virtualization, I think maybe they can try the Cloud. That may be easier, and they don't need to stay on-premises.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give VMware vSphere a 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.
Implementation and Support Engineer at PRACSO S.R.L.
Has availability and is stable, scalable, and easily implemented
Pros and Cons
- "It is very stable and scalable, and implementation is straightforward as well."
- "I think the pricing could be lower, and the technical support could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
It's a VDI and also for virtualized machines. We use it for digitized databases.
How has it helped my organization?
It made provisioning servers and application a lot easier and faster
What is most valuable?
vVols, vMotion, and vSphere have availability. It is very stable and scalable, and implementation is straightforward as well.
What needs improvement?
I think the pricing could be lower, and the technical support could be improved.
I would like to see more active replication in the next release.
For how long have I used the solution?
3 years
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable. There are some bumps or unintended behavior from time to time, but it has not really been an issue.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is not that great, and it's not that accessible.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Oracle Virtualizacion. Was not so user friendly and lacking a lot of features
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was extremely straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
in-house
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side, and the licensing is on a yearly basis.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated a lot of options like Microsoft Hyper-V and Proxmox, and Red Hat Virtualization
What other advice do I have?
I would totally recommend VMware vSphere even though I have some complaints about it. It's one of the great technologies available right now. I would rate it at eight 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.
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