VMware vSphere Reviews

We use it to create ThinApps.

We do not need to deploy the software to each and every client machine. They just can access ThinApp, and they are good to go.

Overall, it is a pretty good solution. We do not have to worry about upgrading the versions that people use for our in-house software. We just create ThinApps, and as soon as they log in, they always get the upgraded version. This part really works well for us.

We've been using vSphere on Windows 7, and it had less fluff associated with ThinApp. Currently, with Windows 10 version that we have, it adds a lot of bulk to ThinApp. We have offices spanning across Canada from the east coast to the west coast. A ThinApp that is roughly around 400 MB in size would take minutes to open up. With Windows 7, the same ThinApp used to be close to 75 to 80 MB in size. So, I'm really not happy with the extra fluff that is bundled in Windows 10. It really messes things up for us at times.

It includes a lot of fluff from Windows 10, which is not at all needed. That's the worst part of it. Otherwise, it works fine.

We have to create an image before and after we deploy the software, and that part takes a while.

It is simple in terms of scalability. There are no issues.

The whole team uses vSphere to create ThinApps that are used by all of our employees. We have close to 5,000 users. So, we are using it quite extensively.

I haven't used their tech support.

Previously, we were deploying all of the in-house software to client machines, but we didn't find it practical enough. Considering that we have offices all across Canada, we needed a solution that allowed us to create a new version of the in-house software and then deploy it remotely. That's where vSphere came in. We do not need to deploy to individual clients. It is just a link that is shared on their desktop, and they can access it straight away.

It is very simple. You just need one person. It takes seconds.

It doesn't require maintenance. Every time we need to upgrade the software or we have a different or higher version, we just create a ThinApp. It takes seconds for the users to get it. It is a very simple process. They just need to close the existing software and reopen it, and they get the updated version.

We have definitely seen a return on investment. Previously, if a plant's PC goes down 4,000 kilometers away, we had to ship that machine to our head office to repair it and then send it back. We don't have to do that now because we are using vSphere. We just can upgrade all of our software with ThinApps.

Considering the number of users, it is pretty reasonable. I am not aware of any costs in addition to the licensing fees.

I do not prefer the newest version because of the bulk that it adds to ThinApp, especially with Windows 10 operating system. If they can find a way around that, it would be really good.

Considering the returns and the number of users for the ThinApps that we create using vSphere, I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of 10.

It is largely for workload virtualization. 

Instead of having so many servers, we have got just two server nodes that are configured in high availability. We are running all our application servers, databases, and Linux and Windows systems on two servers. We've got about 12 virtual machines. If we didn't use VMware, we would have needed to buy 12 physical servers.

The virtualization, the remote management user interface, and the web console are most valuable.

The biggest room for improvement would be just simplicity. It is very intuitive, but it needs somebody with a lot of IT background. 

The way VMware manages storage is not the best. Nutanix manages storage a little bit differently, but we are not using Nutanix. VMware needs to find a way to manage storage properly. There should be storage aggregation and better management of storage.

We tried to install drivers for 100 Gigabit Ethernet Mellanox, and it was very difficult to put third-party hardware and upgrade the servers. We had to roll back because it just wouldn't boot.

Its price definitely should be improved. Its pricing is on the expensive side.

I have been using this solution since 2017.

It is very reliable.

We tried to plug in more hardware, but the drivers were not seamless. We are using the OEM version for HPE because we are using HPE. It could be because it is yet to work with HPE hardware. HPE hardware works with Mellanox, but it just couldn't take Mellanox. We downloaded the Mellanox drivers from their website, but it just couldn't boot, so we had to roll back.

We have three administrators. The number of users varies over time. We started with 24, and because of COVID, we've reduced the number of people who can work in the office to about five.

They are very responsive.

Its initial setup is very straightforward. It is very easy to install.

They can do better by giving better pricing. Their pricing is on the expensive side. As a matter of fact, we are considering switching to OpenStack.

We only work with perpetual licenses. As a company, we don't do subscriptions.

I would recommend this solution any day. I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of 10. It is excellent.

Our clients use the product for virtualization. Some of our internal divisions also use the product for virtualization.

The solution saves cost. We can run seven to eight different applications on it. SDDC is the best feature. The data center replication features and high availability are valuable to us. We use the product because of its HA. The HA solution is more comprehensive.

VMware is not efficient. The solution is slower than other tools. We can run applications on other platforms whose VMs are faster than VMware’s. We can also run bare metal on physical servers, but it will be very expensive compared to VMware.

I have been using the solution for seven to eight years.

The tool is stable.

The tool is very scalable.

The support could be better. The team is not very responsive. It keeps sending us to the resellers and distributors. Support is not that good compared to Microsoft’s.

Neutral

The deployment is very complex. We cannot design the tool without VMware-certified architects or professionals. We need at least five people for designing, planning, deployment, and maintenance. Maintenance does not require many people. Our operations personnel can maintain it. The deployment takes at least two weeks. The learning curve for operations is not that steep, but the learning curve for deployment is very steep.

The product is very expensive.

We use the solution internally and externally. We have different virtualization platforms. VMware is a mature solution. It's stable but a bit pricey. It doesn't have any competition. If we compare it to the full solution stack, it's a very mature solution. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

The most common use case for VMware vSphere is, of course, virtualization, specifically operating system virtualization. We also have containers that are running on them.

Essentially, we have the flexibility for a hybrid cloud. We could easily move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and vice versa if we were running on-premises and cloud, which is one of the most important points in the new releases, in particular.

The quality of support could be better.

We have been using VMware vSphere for six to seven years.

We have dealt with various versions that range from 5.5 to 7.

VMware vSphere is a stable solution.

In our organization, we have at least 60,000 users.

It is being used extensively. It is one of the core products in the infrastructure.

Support has not been as good as it once was. It used to be better, but it appears that the quality of support is declining for some reason. I'm not sure why.

Previously, we were using Hyper-V, but I don't have a lot of experience using it.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. It's very simple.

The time it takes to set up will vary, but it will most likely be within a day. You could set up the environment in a day. It is determined by a variety of factors. If it is done by an experienced engineer, it will be done within a day. If not, it will take longer.

We have a team of three engineers to deploy and maintain this solution.

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis. The license is a one-time payment. You buy it once and own it forever, but you must pay for support, which is provided by the vendor, on a yearly basis.

We are also using NSX and vSAN. We have been using NSX for three years.

It's not strictly a cloud solution; it can be on-premises as well as in the cloud. It is, in essence, a network virtualization solution. It can be used for virtualizing the network, virtual routers, virtual switches, and virtual firewalls.

Virtualization and on-demand networking are two of the benefits. On-demand networking is the best option if I can memorize it. If you need virtual switches, we can create them as well as routers.

Virtualization would be our area of expertise.

VMware vSphere is, in my opinion, one of the best in its class on the market. However, depending on the use cases, we could certainly recommend it.

I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

It is a compute virtualization software. It is mainly used to virtualize physical servers and deploy virtual machines on top of virtual servers. So, instead of having one workload per server, you can have multiple workloads.

The fact that you can use all the CPU and memory power that the server can provide is most valuable. In a physical server, you might end up not using all the physical resources. There are a lot of benefits, such as flexibility and mobility, in virtualizing computes.

The improvement is more from a licensing perspective rather than from a feature functionality perspective. There could be more flexibility and fewer model options to make it easier to sell. Today, there are so many different options available, and sometimes, it is not really clear which one is the right version or the right model to propose. 

We have been providing this solution to our customers for 15 years.

It is definitely stable.

It is scalable. In our country, I believe 50% of the customers are running vSphere virtualization.

I don't have experience with their technical support. 

I never did an installation, but as per my understanding, it is straightforward.

The number of people required for installation and maintenance really depends on the scale of the project. Usually, one engineer can deploy vSphere very easily.

It depends on the contract they have with VMware.

I can recommend this solution. I would rate it at least an eight out of 10.

There are two versions of function more popular in our industry. One is the VMware solution, and one is Hyper-V. We choose VMware. We manage the VMware solutions with the vSphere. If you have a VMware solution, we have to use vSphere. However, if we choose Microsoft we have to use Microsoft management tools.

It is easy to deploy and manage backups for me. That said, I've used it a long time and therefore am quite comfortable with it. Upgrades and restores are simple.

The product is stable as well.

The scalability has been good.

Technical support could be a bit better at assisting. 

The solution should be more secure. Of course, it can depend on the deployment of your system on your side. Sometimes if the system is closed, you don't necessarily need more security. However, since we use different applications and tools, we must use different tools. We don't combine our security tools. However, we need to ensure that products like these are secure, and it would be ideal if more security was baked in.  

I've been using the solution for about 14 years or so. It's been well over a decade. I've used it for a while now.

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

Scalability is very simple. You can improve or expand it as needed. It's not a problem at all if you want to expand it out. 

vSphere is for managing an organization's solutions management software. The size is not based on the number of users. Only IT, those responsible for managing the system center, or the hardware, or software of the solutions really have access to the product.

Technical support isn't ideal. They are slow to respond. We've had issues previously.

We also have used Microsoft's Hyper-V solution.

I find the solution, based on my long history with the product, very easy to set up. It's a pretty straightforward step-by-step process.

Typically, you just need one person to set it up. It only takes maybe an hour or so. Of course, the first time a person does an implementation, they might go slower.

We have two people on the system side and five people on the software side that are capable of working directly with the product.

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't need the help of any integrators or consultants. I'm capable of reinstalling it or doing a whole new setup as needed. 

We pay a yearly licensing fee. 

We're using version seven or thereabouts. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I would recommend it to other users and companies. 

We implement all the standard VMware data solutions. Typically, that's vSphere and sometimes DataCore, the other product we like. We use vSphere for the virtualization of data servers, and other common uses.

Our customers opt for virtualization because it's cheaper and better than non-virtualized solutions. VMware is probably the best on the market now. 

We're implementers and we started using vSphere when it was first released. We've been with VMware since the beginning. There was no ES6 at that time, only GS6 on Microsoft, so we started with Windows-based VMware. It's an old solution. We've been using it for a long time. 

We haven't encountered any limitations with vSphere's scalability. At the same time, we usually do not install huge server farms here in the Slovak Republic, so we only use VMware for small installations with a few host servers. I don't think we'll reach the limits of VMware's scalability since we only work with small organizations. 

We tried Hyper-V a few years back, but there was a problem with the 2012 version of Hyper-V, so we prefer VMware because we know it works. However, I'm not sure about the newer versions of Hyper-V. I can only speak to our experiences with the older one. We weren't satisfied with the features, and the Microsoft code had bugs that they didn't repair those errors. 

Overall, Hyper-V was a highly unstable solution at the time, so we decided to stick with VMware because it was much more reliable. Maybe Microsoft has improved Hyper-V since then. I can't say.

I rate VMware vSphere nine out of 10. It does what we need it to do, and works fine. There aren't any additional features that we need at this time.

VMware vSphere is the basic application for making the virtualization on our environment.

VMware vSphere helps us in not wasting resources like we did when we were using physical servers. It changed our whole environment.

The features that I have found most valuable are its vMotion and the other features that are basic in any product. Snapshot, Virtual switch, and VDS are very useful. Its features are so good and fit our needs.

In terms of what could be improved, we do face some bugs when cloning the virtual machine - it fails sometimes. Also, using the customization certification also fail sometimes. Sometimes powering-on the virtual machine fails. But we opened the ticket with VMware as we have the warranty.

I have been using VMware vSphere for three years.

VMware vSphere is very stable.

Of course VMware vSphere is scalable.

In our 15 member team, all of us work on vSphere. We are all system operation engineers.

Overall, we just require two people for deployment and maintenance.

Of course we'll increase our license in the future. Our business needs to improve every time. So we'll use it extensively.

The technical support is so good. My friend works at the support team for VMware.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is so easy.

The ISO file is available for everyone to download and there is a trial period so if you don't purchase this product, you can try it for free.

We increase our servers every year. So for one server, deployment takes about one hour or less to deploy a product.

There are many strategies to install the product using vCenter. We can make clones from the profile of the server itself so it could take less time. 

We deploy it ourselves.

I did an overview on the Hyper-V, which is another solution. VMware vSphere was simpler and easier to use and had a lot of features. The Hyper-V must be installed on a Windows server which has a lot of vulnerabilities and it's not stable as VMware vSphere.

So after I did an overview I thought this solution is the best in the meantime.

I don't need to give any advice - this product sells itself.

My recommendation to anyone considering VMware vSphere is that if you need to virtualize your environment, you will buy this solution for sure. But you have to have the servers before buying the license. You can first install it for free on a demo, or you can get the virtual environment to try the solution. But it doesn't need any advice, it is quite simple.

After working on this solution, I have joined the official course for vSphere and I took the certificate, so it allowed me to know all the features in this product.

On a scale of one to ten, not to be extreme, but I would give VMware vSphere a nine.