VMware vSphere Reviews

• vMotion
• High Availability
• Storage vMotion
• DRS

We have v5.5 in production, and v6 in test.

As we are resellers of VMware, we will be migrating customers to v6 in the future. This is to keep in line with new features and better performance in new versions

I would like to have the old vSphere client back as it is a great client to use. Sometimes the web GUI can be a bit clunky along with the newer client.

I used it for two months in a test scenario.

It was fine.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Technical support with VMware is very good. Once they have the logs from your system they will come back with a solution fast.

We used a previous version of VMware.

We've only deployed v6 in a lab environment, but it was easy to deploy, and there was no major differences to v5.5

We did it in-house.

None as of yet but hopefully we will see one.

No other products were evaluated.

I would advise you to implement it as I believe it's still the best in virtualization for expandability and usability.

• Bare metal Hypervisor
• Management
• Mobility of VMs
• Distributed resource services - HA, DRS; Network and Storage

Hypervisor & Management in the new vCenter Server 6 with Platform Services Controller gives us a huge opportunity for scalability. It's also helped improve our SSO functionality with one click.

It would be nice if they could have offer a straight/forward deployment of vCenter from an OVA, not from an ISO.

I've used vSphere for about 15 years, and vCOPS for two years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

I have not needed to contact them yet.

I have not needed to contact them yet.

I hadn't used a previous solution.

It was straightforward.

An in-house implementation was done. All the pre-production implementation tests were made on VMware Workstation 11. Regarding vCenter 6, it is a must to install the VMware OVF tool in order to find, and make, the needed settings in the appliance *.vmx , before starting it. Having in mind the vCenter appliance is intended for ESXi deployment, in the production environment it was straightforward.

The ROI is much better with the VSOM.

From the position of an enterprise partner of VMware, it is not really easy to convince the end-customers of the VSOM benefits, having in mind the price tag.

No other options were evaluated.

• Isolation/partitioning of the server hardware
• Support for Latest windows and linux operating systems

• Reduction in hardware/software needs for datacenter
• Elimination of specialized hardware to enable lights out data center
• Improved utilization of purchased hardware (CPU and Memory)
• Increased DR/BC capabilities
• Removed hardware dependency
• Work load portability (vmotion) between on premise – cloud
• Burst to cloud capability

Heterogeneous management of disparate hypervisors.

I've been using it since VMware 2.5.

Minimal issues encountered.

Minimal issues encountered.

Minimal issues encountered.

8.5-9/10

8.5-9/10

I have experience with Microsoft Hyper-V, but production has always been VMware

It's very straightforward for the hypervisor (ESXi/vSphere), but View (Desktop) is more complex, and needs extensive planning in an environment like ours with 15,000+ desktops.

Hybrid. We brought in expertise from the vendor and reseller during the initial setup, and I would strongly suggest consulting. Expertise for initial deployments as the focus of a corporation, is the not the deployment, but the running and extension of the environment. Architecture and design is critical and specialized, and we used external resources.

This is always an issue. The ROI is heavily laden with soft dollar savings on an existing environment. Look two to three years out and make this a strategic decision rather than a tactical one and the ROI will be realized.

Price/License – Free is not free. Review what capabilities you want to have v need to have and then select the appropriate license. With that said, “Good Enough” is a valid stance now. You do not need to get everything you want to make it successful.

• High Availability
• computability
• vMotion
• DR

Our DR count changed – we had quite a few power outtages that opened our eyes to DR and by leveraging vSphere we are able to get to our goal.

I know a lot of the stuff that we have issues with have been addressed in v6 like template management. Some of the add-ons are expensive without a specific large need.

Very stable – its great.

Easy – very easy, expecially with Nutanix. It takes longer to get the hardware than to deploy it.

I’d say 10/10 – we’ve never had a problem that wasn’t solved right away if we have to call.

It was straightforward.

We looked at a couple others and VMware was just better because of vMotion, its ease of management, and the interface.

Peer reviews are pretty important, more so than online resources.

• vMotion helps with core banking operations and time-to-market
• We define architecture tiering
• Availabity is important
• Lots of compliance requirements, so being able to maintain application and business continuity

It's helped bridge business requirements into infrastructure. Because of the cut down in provisioning time, we’ve proved that VMs are valuable as assets, and helps establish trust between business partners and IT department.

I'd like to see the self-discovery of assets and integration of application profile into different assets. Also, the challenge we have is deploying an asset into a datacenter.

It’s very stable. Lots of fear in the past (“my application not a candidate for virtualization”), but we’ve proved them wrong.

It's very scalable, we have three core data centers and six to seven virtual data centers, and whenever possible, we consider VMs as first choice (can’t disclose numbers).

Some applications don’t perform well, so we engage our TAMs. The VMware engineering team works with TAMs.

Don’t hesitate, and go get it. From an architecture perspective, plan out a typical deployment, but you need to understand the business requirements and challenges, be able to define requirements, and make sure you choose the right-size server farm.

• Ease of upgrading
• Ease of backups
• Ease of deployment

We now have a quicker deployment of machines, as it’s been far more cost effective than our physical servers with a smaller footprint.

It’s pretty good the way it is, I can’t think of anything else I need.

It’s very stable.

We started with maybe 10, we’re up to 80, and it’s been very easy to add them all on.

I’d say they were very good, they’re very quick and responsive, I can’t think of them ever not being able to an issue.

We were running physical servers, the industry was headed that way, and we knew that we had to. Furthermore, 80 physical servers is too much to fit into one room.

I didn’t set it up, but I think they had a consultant come in.

Probably the availability of training is the most important thing to look at when choosing a vendor. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good, and VMware is great.

Peer reviews are pretty important, it’s an easy way to look at hands on market research that you don’t have to pay for, to be honest.

• Training is really great
• Ease of use
• Ease of implementation

It's opened up new services for us that we can offer to our customers. We've moved all our secondary products to virtual environments, so we're able to offer other physical hardware, and have our system simplified.

I'm not a big fan of the web client, and would have liked to have had them stick with the Windows client, as the web one is quite a bit different.

It's very stable, and just works which is one of the reasons we went with it instead of MS Hyper-V. It's more robust and feature rich than Hyper-V too.

Very scalable, and we can serve a wide range of clients with budgets ranging from $20 million to $20 billion.

They're knowledgable, and willing to help, but it's not as instantaneous as I’d like, but they do eventally answer.

It's very easy. I wan't involved in the early stages, and I came in when v5 was in place and when lots of infrastructure was already set up.

I’d recommend it, but take time evaluating to see which parts you need, as it can be a little more expensive, but it seems to work. Also, be sure to have a lengthy POC.

Nothing’s perfect, and they are docked points for moving to a web client. Also, single sign-on is unfriendly, and there were growing pains.

The level of consolidation that you can implement from a hardware reduction element – it is so valuable to us in our industry. Ease of use and simplicity.

The cost savings in itself from having to buy 15 servers in each hotel. Now we have one server for each hotel. When we release our new applications, we don’t have to invest in new infrastructure, we just scale because its already in place. We're on a five-year lifecycle so we can scale for five years with no further investments.

Centralized management could be better. A server can only be managed by one vCenter. This limits our visibility to remediate, troubleshoot and fix problems efficiently.

It's very reliable. They're is not another product similar, and we've had no major outages for seven to eight years. We have hotels where you can barely reach and because of the stability of the product they can trust the reliability.

It grows beyond belief. In my situation, because Im always dealing with corporate, I have shown that virtual machines can scale to whatever we have asked it to do. If we need to scale we can, and the hardware just needs to be ordered, and setup.

I love them, they are the best in the world. We only call in emergencies, and they are the best in the world. We are changing to v6 and the support model is changing so we to procure the enterprise support even for the basic offices. In the earlier versions, I had it but now we're trying to persuade VMware for that additional 24/7 service.

It's straightforward, and couldn't be any easier. I did training around the world for IT resources, even teams who have never seen it can adopt it, both in terms of administrative and installation.