VMware vSphere Reviews

• 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.

The ability to aggregate resources.

We have saved money, reducing the number of physical machines. I probably would have had a couple hundred machines and I now have about thirty.

I can't even think of anything – it does everything I need it to.

I love it – over the years its been one of the most stable platforms I've ever dealt with. The platform is more stable than the OS running on it.

I think it’s great. It’s been able to grow even as we care for more and more patients.

I love it. I’ve had great experience with VMware support – they have never failed to resolve an issue or understand how we got there so I don’t get to that issue again.

I wasn’t there for the initial setup, but it's very straightforward.

When choosing a vendor we look at

• Support
• Usability
• Cost

You should also talk to someone knowledgeable not just online research – someone who can help cover questions that wouldn’t normally get covered.

Peer reviews are important but not the highest. There are a few groups I look to specifically, one of which is Spiceworks, but I respect the people I’ve dealt with.

Old school stuff - power savings, ability to consolidate, licensing savings, and ease of management. All the new features are great, but they’re just iterations of an already awesome product.

It provides us a global standardization, ease of management on a global level, and helps our remote sites for those who don’t have a sufficient tech level.

The core savings is huge and allows for quick and deep provisioning. It’s getting harder and harder to remember how physical servers work.

Ditch flash-based web client, make it HTML5. Would like more customization of the web client to make it do what I want. I occasionally flip to the old client because I know it. Web client is a better solution, but it's not done right.

Make training more accessible. Right now very expensive and hard to see the value. Lowering cost would be huge.

Extremely stable. There’s occasional bugs, but very rare.

Very scalable, eventually do run into licensing costs, but the platform itself is scalable, almost infinitely. The business around it limits scalability.

Used tech support on couple of occasions, but no system-down type issues, just minor bugs.

Easy to set up, not difficult, but more difficult to implement it the right way, especially for larger organizations, but that’s just knowing the platform. You have to do homework, and know what you’re doing. If you link vCenter, you must make sure, for example, to do it correctly (like MS SQL, you must know to separate logs and data files, etc.).

It loses points on cost, as there are free solutions, but we don’t want to use them.

Depending on the size and budget, if there's a smaller shop with less money, and you could get by with just a couple VMs, vSphere would be difficult to recommend. But if you're larger with more money, it’s the best platform for virtualization and cloud integration. VMware is further along than anyone else in this regard.