VMware vSphere Reviews

Every organization that I know of that has wanted to implement virtualization in their environments wants HA with every virtual server. That's why for us, we've found the most valuable feature is the ability to move VMs between vCenters and fault tolerance within our four vCPUs.

I would also add that the vSAN feature was not useful beforehand but now with Hyper-Converged infrastructure it will simplify vSphere management as well as storage. We may be acquiring xRAIL from EMC which will definitely eliminate needs for storage as well as Fibre Channel switches.

The biggest advantage is that it cuts costs. A few years ago, I worked in an environment of all physical servers. It was very expensive to maintain high availability with them. vSphere cuts that cost.

No more lengthy physical server server restores. When this product is coupled with Veeam Backup and replication restoring whole virtual machine or individual files or active directory objects virtually happen in minutes.

I'd like to see small VMDKs in the next version since Hyper-V provides that option. Right now, that process with vSphere is still manual and requires downtime.

I have used this product for the last five years.

With previous versions, for example in 5.1, it was inconvenient to deploy an SSO database. Now, an SSO database is local and automatically installed.

It's highly stable.

It scales without issues.

The level of technical support depends on who you're talking to. Some people are more experienced than others. Overall, though, I'd rate them well, but they don't respond very quickly during the weekends.

I used Hyper-V, which worked well on a single server running Windows 2008 R2. But as soon as a cluster is configured, there are lots of issues with SCVMM. I've heard that Microsoft made some improvements and the product is now more stable, but VMware ESXi is based on the Linux OS and is much more stable. I've had to learn command-line code in Linux, but VMware is better than Microsoft.

It's very easy to set up because it's a popular product and there are many online articles. VMware articles are a bit dry. Many consultants post their experiences, making deployment of vSphere straightforward so long as it's planned properly.

I have implemented this product either from scratch or as part of an upgrade. One piece of advice that I would give is to make sure that the certificate is minimum 1024 bits (I forgot to check that). Other than that, an upgrade or set-up is very straightforward, especially with v6.

Stability of the Hypervisor, DRS, and HA are some of the more valuable features.

VMWare (and any virtualization platform) completely changes the way an organization functions. The way you investment in hardware is done from a completely different perspective, in that an initial capital investment is required, and the resources would then be available for the organizations' use.

This, of course, allowed the organization to have a ton of flexibility in resource availability. We were then able to create and build high availability across deployed hardware that would've otherwise been much more complex to accomplish using more traditional methods.

Nothing I can think of. For a while, allowing for HA without shared storage was a missing feature, but as of 5.1, VMware introduced that feature.

I have used vSphere v4.0/5.0/5.1 alongside vCenter v5.1, and VMware Vieew v4.0 and v5.2.

There is a lot of know how required to deploy VMWare correctly, especially if it is being architectured to be highly available. A simple deployment is not too hard, but the issues that I had faced initially were mostly related to adequate shared storage connectivity, etc.

As mentioned above, the stability issues have been caused mostly by the inadequacy of the storage (90% of problems have been related storage).

Not at all. Scalability is one of VMware strengths. Running out of resources has really never been an issue, as it is easy to add new hardware, and/or storage, and expand existing infrastructure.

Customer service has always been available, in a more or less adequate time. VMware is good at responding at critical issues that have a high business impact, though sometimes I had experience less than stellar experience in slightly less urgent issues. This is mostly referring to the timeliness of service. Getting the help needed after getting in touch with support has never been an issue.

The support is usually pretty good. VMware support is good at making an effort to resolve the problem on first contact, and escalate as necessary. I have always received a solution to my problem.

For an enterprise virtualization platform, I have only used VMware. I have also used Amazon Web Services as an IaaS, but that doesn't exactly sit in the same category as an on premises virtualization platform.

As mentioned above, a simple setup is not hard. However, there are lot of intricacies to the product to set it up correctly with shared storage, so that fail over can function correctly, and DRS, HA, and vMotion to function efficiently.

I initially did the implementation on my own, with some help from VMware on best practices. I did get some help in getting my enterprise storage installed, and got some guidance from them to fine tune configuration of VMware vSwitches, to achieve optimal performance.

The ROI on virtualization platform isn't always necessarily completely obvious at first glance, as the initial cost to implement it is typically fairly high. However, keeping in mind the soft costs, it would easily prove to be more economical than traditional solutions. Not only that, but it also will require less engineers to manage the system, as all the management tools are built-in within vCenter, to create a unified solution that would ultimately reduce management cost.

The original cost of the first set of servers to migrate a whole school district to, was close to $100,000. More recently, an upgrade to an SSD SAN cost an additional $120,000. Keeping in mind software costs of maintaining the product, and all virtualized servers, the day to day cost of the product is essentially the cost of running the hosts, (power, cooling, etc).

No. I had started with VMware very early on, and adopted it when it became a viable enterprise product.

For anyone looking to implement VMware, don't take the initial implementation lightly, and don't cheapen up on the hardware, especially the storage. You will save a ton of headaches by investing in good storage that would be adequate for at least three years.

Also, do your homework on best practices, and how to implement things. It is very easy to get things working and it is more difficult to get things working smoothly. Never had I thought that I had to get familiar with the deep workings of disks, and IOPs, read and write/s ... but these are really necessary if a good implementation is the goal.

VMware leads the pack with their hypervisor. It's a tiny install, but it's packed with features.

The setup can be complicated for those who are not technically inclined. The pricing can also be complicated.

I've used it for 10 years now.

We did encounter issues during deployment, but they were mostly because of human errors.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

In my experience, I give VMware customer service a 7/10.

In my experience with technical support, I give them a 7/10.

The initial setup was straightforward, unless you not technically inclined, in which case it is complex.

We implemented it with out in-house team.

The pricing and licensing with VMware can be complicated, but once you understand it, it makes sense.

• It provides the option to view performance with advanced real-time monitoring.
• With it, it's very easy to create new virtual machines.
• It also helps you upgrade your machines by making hot templates of them.

We have migrated several databases based on the Oracle VM solution to VMWare as we've seen a great difference between these two products.

The setup is complex even for experienced IT administrators who have worked with hypervisors, and it should be made a little easier.

We've used it for one year.

It's a little complex, but we were able to do it. Other than that, we had no issues with deployment.

We had no issues with the stability.

We had no issues scaling it for our needs.

We previously used OVM but chose VMware to consolidate our architecture.

Our initial setup was quite complex because several machines where physical machines, others were OVM virtual machines, and others were VMware machines.

We implemented it through an in-house team.

I would have preferred to implement vSphere straight away instead of OVM and then switching.

• High performance for data access
• Scalability
• Simplicity

The more visible example is the performance seen by the user in my DaaS product.

A more graphical reporting of the health of vSAN.

I've been using it for six months to manage two clusters of four servers. One with vSphere ESX 5.5 with 30 ISCSi network storage, and one with vSphere ESX 6.0 with 40 vSAN six storage.

We had no issues during deployment.

For the moment, I have only one issue. One disk of a server is not seen by the system. I have opened this issue with Dell, but it’s not a hardware problem. I have to reboot the server but the problem persist.

We have had no issues scaling is to our needs.

Previously, I used a traditional ISCSi network with SAN.

It's simple because I followed their procedures. It only took me a week to see results.

I implemented it myself.

I pay for my consumption with VMware vCan Program.

Double check the hardware compatibility lists with the builder.

Inventory, vMotion, and cloning are the most valuable for me. Customization of VM's which include joining machines to multiple domains, changing names, IP address information, and post operation using Powershell scripts. I like the single pane of glass view for management

VM cloning speed is excellent and has allowed me to provide easy of use and speed when cloning one or more VM's using PowerCli.

I honestly can’t think of anything right now, it provides the access and management tools I need and keeps them in easy reach.

I've used it for five to six years.

It’s been very stable.

No experience of scaling.

It’s been great, no issues, they’re fast and straightforward.

It has always been vCenter, they were in a Rackspace physical environment beforehand.

I wasn’t involved.

I’ve always used VMware ever since the beginning, so I’m biased and I think they have a great product. I’ve played with Hyper-V and it’s just way behind in my opinion. Download them and try them all out and see if you like using the tool daily. Research and troubleshoot well.

It’s rock solid and there’s nothing in its class in terms of alternatives.