VMware vSphere Reviews

I use VMware vSphere primarily to provide a layer of virtualization between our Cisco hardware and existing software. It ensures high availability and redundancy for our applications, minimizing downtime in case of OS or application failures. Additionally, vSphere simplifies migration when updating hardware and makes it faster to reinstall virtual machines along with applications.

I appreciate VMware vSphere for its versatility and usability across various use cases. The solution's flexibility allows us to implement it widely. We use it extensively, and I believe soon all our servers will run through virtualization for better efficiency using vSphere. It performs as advertised and meets our needs effectively.

In terms of improvement, the license fee could be more affordable, but overall, I'm satisfied with VMware vSphere.

I have been using VMware vSphere for almost 20 years.

vSphere is very stable. I would rate the stability as a ten out of ten.

Setting up VMware vSphere is very straightforward; no issues there. Purchasing involves acquiring licenses and the licenses often come bundled with hardware from vendors like HP or Dell. The deployment process is smooth, and support hasn't been necessary as the software is stable. For deployment and maintenance, we currently have about four or five active staff members involved. However, considering buying expertise and engineers, the team can range from nine to ten individuals.

The solution is not cheap.

Overall, I would rate vSphere as a perfect ten 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.

It is primarily our server virtualization solution. We have approximately 2,000 servers, all of which are running VMware vSphere.

In terms of the benefits, I'll take you back to 2010, when we first implemented this solution. We only have physical servers, and we have a lot of projects because my company works in the energy industry.

We have many projects that could not be completed on physical servers because we have 2,000 servers.

If we were to do all of these projects on a physical server and our data center, we would have to travel all over the country. As a result, VMware aided us in server consolidation.

It aided us in server consolidation, and with VMware, we were able to provision applications for our customers very quickly. As a result, the time to manage was extremely short. So that is the advantage that we can find with VMware.

The product is extremely powerful.

We have had a module called vRealize for three years. We primarily use vRealize to troubleshoot any issues that may arise with our virtual machines, which is the main reason why we believe this solution is excellent. When a user has a problem, it does not have to be that his application is very slow or that it can't work. Using vRealize, we can determine which part of the solution is causing the problem and resolve it.

The cost is an area that could be improved. Today, there are many hypervisor solutions on the market that are less expensive and provide the same functionality. They share the same characteristics. I believe that one area where VMware can improve is in pricing, as we have found VMware products to be on the expensive side at times.

I'm only considering the VMware solution, with the cloud solution. I would like to see cloud integration, such as cloud service and cloud feature, in the vSphere license. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

In terms of cost, I believe there is room for improvement. They must work on the price, as well as the technical support.

We have been using VMware vSphere for approximately 12 years.

Last year, we made some upgrades, and are now using the most recent version.

In terms of stability, we don't have any major issues with that product.

It is very reliable, and the product is very stable. 

It is a strong product, and it is dependable. Most of the time we have not had any problems with this product. It doesn't happen very often, I believe the product is very good.

VMware vSphere is a scalable product. We had about five host servers, we gradually increased to 10, and now we have approximately 40 host servers running long VMware vSphere. It is simple to add a new server to the clusters.

We are a group of four administrators who are working on a solution. However, with VMware vSphere, we place software for the company, such as customers.

When I refer to the company, it's not the outside customers, I am referring to employees in company fields such as HR and accounting. We have 5,000 people working in our company, and they are all using the VMware vSphere software that we provide to them.

It is used on a daily basis because we are constantly confronted with the extension of results such as CPU, RAM, and storage. We use vSphere on a daily basis.

We are pleased with VMware's vSphere global support.

If you give me a notation, on 10, 20, or something like that where the scale is set at 20, I will give them a 14 out of 20, because I believe they are no longer as good as they once were. The VMware support is now of lower quality. I will give them a 14 out of 20.

We started with VMware. 

I already have VMware and Nutanix in my infrastructure.

It wasn't difficult. I think I learned it about a month after I started, and I was able to deploy VMware vSphere.

This solution is being maintained by four administrators. We have 2,000 virtual machines, also known as VMs, and 40 host servers. We are a group of four people who do all of the patching and maintenance work.

We had a consultant to help us with the initial setup.

Yes, I have seen a return on investment, but I am not the appropriate person to tell you about it. Our company is large in size. There are people working on it, doing economic studies to see if we can get a return on investment. What I can tell you is that there is a return on investment. But I can't tell you the specifics right now.

This solution is quite expensive, but it provides the same functionality as its competitors.

Today, you have the Nutanix Hypervisor, which I believe is AHV and is also very good. However, because our infrastructure is so large, we have Nutanix servers that are similar to Hyperconverged, but we run VMware on them. However, we have some other sites where we have installed the Nutanix Hypervisor, which is AHV. And it is effective. And it's free if you buy the Nutanix bundle.

The license is expensive. It is powered by the CPU. The more CPU' you have, the more you have to buy.

I'll say that if you want the vSphere solution for all virtualization, you should first look at the size of your infrastructure. If it is small, you don't have to go to, as I previously stated, Hyper-V or another solution. However, if you are starting with a medium or large size, you should use a solution like VMware because its performance is very strong. And, because we have a large infrastructure, we can see that it works very well. This is my advice to anyone looking for server virtualization software.

I would rate VMware vSphere a seven out of ten. It has been difficult for me to find a VMware engineer to work on my project. They don't seem to be very close to the customers, in my opinion. That is the main reason I gave this score of seven out of ten.

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.

Server Virtualization is the most important feature because that helps me to utilize 100% capacity of my physical server or box. Its redundancy, uptime, or high-availability is also valuable.

Storage-sharing is also valuable. In vSAN, I can utilize the maximum storage. In the physical boxes, if you don't require storage, it lies idle, but with VMware or any kind of virtualization, you can utilize the full storage.

Its price could be better. It is expensive, and its price is a big concern.

I have been working with vSphere for the last ten years.

It is stable. I started my virtualization career with VMware 3.0 or 3.5. At that time, it was volatile, but now it is quite sturdy. At that time, it was working with Exchange 2003. When I installed it on VMware, I found that Exchange was giving problems and servers were hanging, but nowadays, servers are quite stable. Virtualization is quite good nowadays, and that is the future. All cloud solutions are good nowadays.

It is scalable. I have around 200-plus servers with me.

Their technical support is good. I am happy with that. When I call my VMware team members for any issue, they usually guide me. I am getting good technical support. When I open a high-priority ticket, and I want the support within 10 minutes or 15 minutes, I call my local team member or my Account Manager, and they arrange it for me. I find them very good. I don't find any issue with VMware.

Their training is also good. People, who are not a part of an organization and want to get some training, can connect to their virtual labs. They are doing pretty well. 

I didn't work on something similar before vSphere. After vSphere, I tried to work on Microsoft Virtualization, which is also quite good, but I did not get much exposure to that. My organization prefers to work on VMware. In our sister concern, we're working on Microsoft, but we are planning to move them to VMware vSphere because I want to establish my DR on the other side. We had VMware DRS hosted at one of the service providers, and then we moved to Microsoft Azure, but now we're planning to move back to on-premise.

Its price is quite high. VMware licensing is quite costly. You have to pay for the CPU and Threads, but if you want good service, you have to pay the price. Its cost is not more than 1 million for us.

If you want 100% utilization of your hardware, you should definitely use it. There is also network virtualization and storage virtualization, but it would be quite cheaper if you go for physical storage.

If you are a medium to large organization, the hybrid environment is also there. If you are a small organization, you should go for the cloud because if your utilization is not much, it is always recommended to go for the cloud. Otherwise, go for VMware virtualization. It is 100% useful for an organization.

VMware is bringing a lot of features. They are quite ahead in terms of features. They have containerization, monitoring, operational manager, and all required features. vSAN and storage utilization are also there. They are bundling everything. Their Research and Development is very good. 

I would rate VMware vSphere a nine out of ten.

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.

We use VMware vSphere for the virtualization of environments.

The solution is easy to use, user-friendly interface and has high availability features. When comparing it to other solutions it is more robust.

I have been using this solution for approximately 10 years.

This solution is more stable than competitors.

VMware vSphere is scalable.

The technical support could improve by being a little faster.

Positive

I have previously use Hyper-V.

The installation is easy and can be done in one day.

I did the implementation myself.

The solution requires a license and it could be cheaper.

We previously evaluated Hyper-V and RHEV.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate VMware vSphere a ten out of ten.