VMware vSphere Reviews

The entire production and development environments are running on VMware vSphere using the 6.0 and 6.5 versions with twelve-node clustered configurations. Two data centers were deployed to separate the production side virtual machines from those of test and development.

The deployment of Enterprise VMware vSphere architecture helps us provide a robust and high availability infrastructure because of the combined features of VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter such as HA, DRS and Fault Tolerance. This base metal virtualization is highly compatible with almost all of the IT hardware.

The vMotion in particular I think is the most valuable because this feature provides migrations of virtual machines in case you want to run do maintenance. This his feature comes hand-in-hand with other features of VMware like the DRS, which automatically load-balances the whole VMware farm based on the usage and recommendation.

Improve the patch and updates online and remove mandatory reboot, or move the virtual machine onto a physical host that needs patching/maintenance.

I would like to see VMware vSphere provide a centralized patch service on the VMware level, regardless of your operating systems.

I have been using this solution for eleven years.

In my long experience, I have a single incident where our whole VMware farm went down. I can say it is very stable as long as the hardware is healthy.

The scalability is great. This solution is highly scalable and compatible with almost all IT hardware on the market.

The support is very responsive and highly knowledgeable.

Prior to this solution, we used Oracle Virtual Machine and Xen Virtualizations.

I  used the profiling feature.

I set up the system myself.

The license of VMware is a one-time payment and you can continue to enroll in support for troubleshooting and also administer the licenses.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

We use this solution for hardware consolidation and improved infrastructure resiliency.

It has allowed us to be more resilient to infrastructure and hardware failure, reduced hardware costs, and decreased recovery time from failures.

The most valuable features are cloning, snapshots, vMotion, and replication. All of these have increased our ability to recover from failure and balance workloads.

Reducing the cost of vSphere would be an improvement.

We have been using VMware vSphere for five years.

Our primary use case is infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

It provides more efficient use of compute resources through virtualization, making our infrastructure more cost-effective. It makes deployment and management of resources easier so that we can be more agile in our projects.  

The free ESXi hypervisor was a great way to get started, as it allowed us to introduce virtual machines so that users could start to experience the advantages.

It would be great if the free version included a management tool that was a scaled-down vCenter Manager.  

We have been using VMware vSphere since 2005.

We are an IT consulting company who serves and sells IT services.

I am using the last version to understand the new features. Also, we are using it to improve our code for our VMware clients.

We are also using on VMware cloud on AWS inside POC.

It is very simple to manage.

Some of the benefits that we have seen are:

• HTML5
• Web Client
• It is fast and available.
• It works well and is reliable.
• The ESXi Quick Book is a good new feature because production people can quickly reboot the server, where previously it took a long time.

• There is no need to have an iSCSI client. Some people use it, but the industry is moving to HTML5 clients.

I am testing more products and advising my clients about what they should do and implement with the newest version of VMware.

The most valuable features are:

• ESXi Quick Boot
• VM encryption
• New security features.

The new feature announced today with vSphere Update 1 inside vSan is impressive. I did not have a chance to test Update 1 yet. We shall see how it performs in the next few days.

Because my server is too old, I am using my own lab for TPM. I did not have a good chance to test everything. VM encryption is quite simple to implement: Just check two boxes and it is done. It is very easy to do. If you want to move from on-premise to cloud, it is quite easy.

I put information on my blog stating that I would like more Amazon stuff inside of VMware. They have announced many thing that I am looking for today, so I am happy.

The stability is very impressive. VMware develops many stable products. That is why we participate in the beta product testing to make things better.

The scalability is very impressive. As usual, VMware is able to scale out and up all their solutions.

I do use the technical support, and so do my clients who receive good support. 

I did use in the past Hyper-V, KVM and XEN. I do prefer VMware for the maturity of their  solutions. VMware is also available inside all big cloud provider like Azure, AWS, Alibaba and IBM.

The initial setup is very straightforward. There isn't any complexity unless you have very old servers, then you won't be able to install the latest version of VMware 6.7 because of TPM.

VMWare is one of the most used solution all around the world, it is easy to found some expertise on the market. Ask for a VMware certified person like VCP ou VCAP this will garanty a good knowledge of your tech support.

Our ROI is good. 

There is an average performance boost, especially if you use VM encryption inside the VMware with another product, like McAfee. You will see great improvement in these cases.

The price is high, but you get a lot functionnality included with the product. You can also start with the free version of ESXi.

I am using many solutions: IBM PowerVM, Hyper-V, Acropolis, and VMware.

VMware is the most natural product on the market at the moment, especially in virtualization. The other products are quite good too. I am not saying you can use them, because you can. They are stable now. However, with VMware, you receive more feature than with the others.

Think about your business needs, afterwards choose the product. Write down your needs on paper in bullets, then the solution will be clear and you can justify choosing VMware, not Hyper-V.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10. There is always space for improvement. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: It depends on the business's need. That is all. I am a consultant and must know what my client needs. If they want a Rolls Royce, I give them a Rolls Royce. If they want a Honda Civic, I give them a Honda Civic. I must know the products to fit them to the customer's needs. I don't sell too much, just what the customer wants.

We use this solution for production workloads.

This solution provides production uptime with its DRS and failover features.

The most valuable feature is vSAN, as it reduces the cost of SAN storage and maintenance. 

Reporting on vCenter needs to be improved.

I have used VMware products at five different software companies, and it was mainly used for the following functions: development environments, QA systems, internal infrastructures like wikis or ticketing. 

It was brilliant to consolidate systems, and it provided the best way of doing it at the time, as far as I was aware.

Snapshot and clone: make VM backups for fast recovery options, build systems and reduced setup times.

When I needed to equip a new startup, I was unable to get the budget for vSphere past finance, so I ended up adopting a cheaper alternative even though it meant more work.

It's very stable

Depends on your budget

Good

I also used Citrix Xen which was really great, but ended up mainly using Qemu and Libvirt with KVM because of costs.

Simple

In house

Great flexible infrastructure 

Depends on your budget and skill set.

Virtualbox, Xen Server and KVM

Linode, AWS and Digital Ocean now use KVM

Our primary use case is controlling our virtual machines, as well as our host machines.

We are able to create virtual machines and move them from one host to another, controlling the resources.

I love all of the features in this solution, but moving VMs between host machines is one that stands out.

The solution should be more user-friendly for upgrading host ESXi units, bringing them into the control unit of vSphere.

Generally, the user interface needs to be improved for non-technical people. A technical person can hover around and find the right tool or task that needs to be done. But, for people who are new, they require guidance because it is not intuitive. They have to ask for help from here and there to get it right.

The solution has been very stable up to now, and we are very happy with that.

I cannot make a prediction about the scalability, but I can tell you that we have close to five hundred users at this time. We must keep up with technology so we do plan on expanding the use of this solution.

Until now, I have not used their technical support.

The deployment of this solution was completed before I joined the company, although I don't think that it was complex.

In terms of maintenance, it depends on the task that you are doing. Normally, it doesn't take too much time. There are two of us that handle the maintenance.

There were consultants who assisted with the deployment.

It took quite a long time, but in the end, I think that it benefits us in terms of ROI.

The licensing fees are on a yearly basis.

When I hear that somebody is willing to deploy a similar solution, I suggest this product to them and even help with the deployment. I love this product.

Once this solution is deployed, only fine tuning needs to be done. Once complete and everything is in place, you don't have to do much. From the technical end, the product is great.

I would rate this product a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is High Availability Industrial Control Operator Interfaces, and Historian & Regulatory Compliance Data.

This solution offers an easy OS upgrade and safe migration in a live environment, where downtime is extremely costly.

The most valuable feature is its ability to revert to previous snapshots during testing of various guest and application deployments.

Two improvements that I would like to see are higher resolution console modes for guests and easier switching between consoles.