VMware vSphere Reviews

The virtualization is the valuable feature.

It's much easier to manage than a pile of hardware.

We are also able to roll out new ideas to the users quicker.

The web-based access is flaky. It needs to have a built in backup ability, and the update manager needs to be its own appliance.

I've been using it for four or five years.

It does not like working with the older Intel NICs nor the Realtek NICs, but I was able to work around that.

The one customer service issue I have had is almost three months old and still unresolved (that sucks).

I've never used tech support.

No previous solution used.

It's straightforward.

We did it in-house, and I would suggest you set up a couple of machines in a practice lab first though.

We can't quantify the ROI.

The pricing is reliable.

No as we've been using before any other virtualization software was popular.

It's stable and has the ability to execute the features it promises.

We have managed to reduce the number of our physical servers dramatically.

It now has an easier configuration, so new server deployments don't take much time anymore.

Also, we're getting much less out-of-work-hour calls.

The web client has a lot of problems which hasn't been addressed properly.

The tools that VMware provides with vSphere need improvement, such as vSphere data protection.

I've used vSphere for about eight or nine years, and this particular version for four to five months.

No issues encountered.

Not at all, I'm quite happy with the stability.

This products works quite well with scaling.

It has room for improvement, but the staff are usually very friendly and they know what they are doing.

It has room for improvement, but the staff are usually very friendly and they know what they are doing.

As system admins, difficulty isn't an issue as long it works after the deployment.

It was done in-house.

It's saved electricity costs for us as well as costs on unnecessary equipment procurements.

We did a trial run of Hyper-V. We didn't switch, but Microsoft is very aggressive and tried to leverage the licenses that we had already bought. We also looked at Citrix.

Stick with vSphere as long as they don't screw up the product.

• DRS
• HA
• vMotion
• vConverter
• Distributed switch

This product has help to reduce the number of physical x86 servers from 500 to 150. This has saved server hardware costs, data center floor space, power, and cooling. This has significantly reduced the CAPEX cost.

It needs to be easier to integrate with open cloud.

I've used it for nine years.

Deploying the older v3 and v3.5 had lots of issues, but the morerecent v4, v5, and v5.5 version are much easier to deploy.

The product is stable.

No issues encountered.

VMware has good customer service.

It's good.

I have not had to switch.

It's straightforward.

Storage vMotion and vMotion are the greatest of use in my current role; however, the most prevalent features would have to be Fault Tolerance, SRM and DRS.

In my current role, VMware has been used to reduce the overall physical footprint of the environment as well as ease the management aspect of all the virtual environments we used to house. In previous roles, it not only improved the aforementioned pieces but it also improved availability time lines in a significant fashion.

The room for improvement would be just like they did with the C# (thick) client back in 2.5.1 and 3.X, they need to work on the speed of the web client as they are moving towards a distributed management environment. The C# client had its issues back in its inception so they are going through the same growing pains again with the web client. Other than that, I would like to see a stripped down version of DRS brought into the Standard licensing model as the jump from a Standard license to an Enterprise (or Enterprise Plus) license is enormous.

I’ve been using VMware in an enterprise workspace since version 2.5.1 in 2005. I have since had experience with version 3.5, 4, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0. I'm also currently using vCenter Server 6.0.0A and B.

No issues were encountered in the latest migrations that have been performed but this is due to previous experience.

VMware has a great customer service department. If you use a trusted partner hardware (ie, HP in my experience) for your servers, they will also assist in diving into the hardware aspect of the issues you are faced with to hopefully resolve the problem. I’ve always found the VMware support has been there when I needed them. Their response times are very good and the knowledge each support engineer I’ve worked with has been more than satisfactory. I haven’t run into a “blame game” with support while using VMware.

At my current employer, they used to use Hyper-V 2008. We migrated to VMware due to a more robust feature set and the fact that, yes Hyper-V has a lot of the features that VMware does but, once deployment is complete, VMware is a clearly more stable product than Hyper-V in the long run. I’ve seen and been involved with a few Hyper-V migrations that go from VMware to Hyper-V and after six to 12 months, most of those installations wanted to migrate back to VMware.

The initial installation and setup of an ESXi server is very straightforward. When you start getting into the implementation of a vCenter Server you find all the “nooks and crannies” of the installation that are available. It is definitely more complex with a vCenter Server but that is mostly only if you are using all the features available to you. If you just use vCenter for managing multiple hosts at an Essentials license, it isn’t very complex at all.

We implemented using an in-house team (myself). The advice I have is: When you are building a virtualization environment, be it VMware, HyperV, Citrix, KVM, etc., you need to make sure you build the hosts that are going to run the environment properly. Along with that, you need to make sure the storage infrastructure and network are healthy prior to performing an upgrade. If you “cheap” out on any of those aspects, the deployment will suffer in some way.

Yes, we evaluated Hyper-V 2012. From previous experience as well as feedback from the community we decided to move forward with VMware.

• The HA functions
• vSphere Distributed Switch

It gives us a good consolidated overview of hundreds or thousands of servers at a time.

It gives us the ability to easily manage those from a centralized point, and a lot more reliability because we can easily migrate between hardware and consolidate workloads.

The web client, the GUI, could use some improvement. It’s pretty clunky and slow. Some things are only available in the web client, some are only available in the fat client so it would be nice to have them in both in one interface.

I've used it for about two years.

No, we’ve been using vSphere for a long time so we’re quite familiar with it, and we have a good relationship with VMWare. Deployment was easy.

We don’t see many crashes, if any, on the vSphere side.

Again, it’s simple as popping extra hosts in. Quite easily scalable.

They’re very good. We’ve got a good relationship with VMware, and they’re always available - they give us previews on upcoming tech or quickly connect us with someone we need to speak to.

It’s good. It’s usually quite easy and quick to log calls and get support services. The vSphere client has a built-in means of pulling logs which logs which we can send directly to VMWare technical support. We can get tier two or three support quite readily.

Not since I’ve worked here, so at least 10 years. We started with vSphere.

It kind of depends; we work with a number of different customers. It’s relatively straightforward, but for complex implementations there can be some complications. They publish all of the necessary installation information so it’s quite easy to find support for deployment.

We do it in-house.

It’s not something I really deal with as an engineer. Because of the types of service we offer, we don’t sell customers vSphere licensing.

I’d grab the software from their site - you can deploy it and use it for 60 days free of charge, so whether you’re doing a large or small deployment try it out and see if it works. You can also engage with technical support services. The software is free, so grab it and play with it.

• High Availability options
• High server consolidation ratio
• Space, noise and power consumption reduction
• Easy to administer

• Response time to all areas of our company.
• Server deployment, SLA, everything was accelerated rapidly.
• Testing environment, templates, storage usage, all areas were enhanced.

• Server consolidation
• Response time
• Internal process management
• Storage usage and performance

Five years

We never found any issue during deployment of VMware vSphere. From version 5.0, 5.1 and now in 5.5 works everything fine.

The virtualization changed everything in our company, and is the way to lead from now.

We never found any issue of stability using VMware vSphere. From version 5.0, 5.1 and now in 5.5 works everything fine.

The virtualization changed everything in our company, and is the way to lead from now.

None.

VMware vSphere is a solution that offers excellent resources optimization and utilization. The solution himself improves the data center management and resources utilization is many ways.

We can't think our data center without virtualization.

Customer service from VMware was always excellent. Being a client of VMware, our company have the best response, even from our partners.

Never required technical support from VMware. As a VCP, I always solve the issues myself, but I know some examples from other companies and they are very happy about this.

No. The initial solution was VMware and we loved the product. There exists other solutions, but no one offers the level of trust and features that VMware offers, even open Source solutions like Xen.

No, anyway. From initial installation of ESXi servers to configuration in vCenter Server the installation process is very intuitive and easy (remember that I'm VCP).

In-house.

Our ROI was 6-12 months. The budget required to mount our virtual infrastructure was high at first glance, but the ROI was more quick than expected.

We are very happy with this and consolidation that VMware offers.

Some licenses are expensive, mailny Enterprise Plus versions, but the features that this versions includes are impressive. Just make sure you get the right version for every business or needs.

We evaluate other options, but VMware is centuries ahead other solutions of virtualization. Microsoft Hyper-V is the closest, but not reach the level of VMware. Open Source solutions was not considered at initial instance, they do not apply for a serious project of virtualization.

Evaluating migration to vSphere 6.0 in brief. I'm currently taking vSphere 6.0 courses and reading a lot, including writing a lot in my blog about this version. The improvements are really big and we wait more announces in VMware World 2015 very soon.

Distributed Virtual Switch – you only have to configure it once, and then you can promote it to all the servers, so you have a single switch for all the systems.

Also, the HA system works very well right out of the box.

I’ve been working with VMWare for at least 10 years, so I can say that the loss that you have with virtualization has dropped – you have less loss than if you would run it on real hardware. It went from around 30% to 15%, so basically better by half. And it improves with every version.

A solution for all the different appliances that you now see running would be good. In the past you had VMWare agents, so every manufacturer installed agents on the IIS6 layers but that didn’t work well. Now every supplier has its own virtual appliance, but now some customers have five or six VAs per ESXi host which consumes a lot of processing and memory power. So maybe something like a hypervisor for virtual appliances.

I've been using it since it was released, at least two years.

Never. It just deploys. It works if you use the hardware that’s on the HCL on the VMWare web site. If you don’t do that, you could be in trouble. Some customers do that and expect it to work magically.

Yes, in combination with Broadcom network cards – there was a lot of latency in the storage area through vSphere. So in those situations we had to change the hardware – there was something buggy in the cards.

No issues encountered.

Very good. VMWare visits the customers themselves, at least in the Netherlands. Once or twice per year they come on site to talk to the customers to see what they need, anything extra, any support, anything. It’s a very open contact with them.

It works like every other support agency – it depends on how high you set the priority of your call or contract. If you have a basic support contract it won’t be the same as a 24/7 high priority contract, for example. So it varies depending on your support contract; it also depends on which support engineer you get. Most of the time I get a lot of questions back from the support engineer, so maybe they don’t fully understand the systems. I have a production support contract – so I expect them to take over the system and fix it! Eventually they fix the problems, but with some it takes a lot of time.

No, I've always used VMWare, as I’m not a fan of the other options available.

It depends – mostly it’s complex; first of all, I have a lot of customers that just buy some hardware and expect it to work like magic, but also not all of the configuration information is always easily available. Different components need specific configurations, and so we have to go to the vendors to get configuration information for the hardware which takes a lot of time. Customers don’t understand that and think that one size fits all.

I implement it for customers.

Get an expert with you before you buy something. Most of the customers that I work with have some licenses already; but when they explain what their core business, plans, etc., are we find that the licenses don’t match the mission. That starts with Microsoft a lot of times – the licensing isn’t correct – working with VMWare, and the vendor doesn’t see the combinations. A lot of the time, we see the software vendors maybe are VMWare partners, but they don’t care what licenses they sell. They just want to make a lot of money. So there’s a real gap in the market.

No other options were evaluated.

Look at the total product – if you’re comparing it to Citrix and Microsoft, look at all the features VMWare is hosting in your product and make a comparison. Also, understand your plans – what do you want to do, what’s your vision, and how does it match what you’re looking to buy?

It's consolidated in that multiple VMs can run on a single host and have a single point of management.

• Application protection
• Load balancing
• Protection against network/host failure

5.1 SSO is a disaster, it was re-done for 5.5 and improved again for 6.0. VMware even recommend upgrading directly to 5.5 and skipping 5.1, and we are now planning to upgrade to v6.

Personally since 2012, and in my current role only a few months.

There were no major issues.

Not really, as 5.1 has been out for a very long time, and any stability issues have been ironed out as with any product.

Upgrading from 5.1 to 5.5 is the biggest issue.

Very good and the communities help a lot too.

Very good and the communities help a lot too.

The solution in this company started on v4.1, and has moved to v5, and is currently on v5.1. This was to do with keeping with in support and being able to use new features.

With v5.1 you have to consider the various roles and how you wish to deploy them. SSO, Web, inventory, vCenter can all be installed together, separately, or any mix in between, and even physically if you wanted. I have inherited this design, and I would have done it differently, but as time passes, best practice is improved.

All this was done in-house, with the help of specalist consultants, I have inherited this role and the environment is currently in flux

For the company very good, as they run loads of different applications at the same time

If you can go for enterprise plus, do so as you get access to the VDS and all the features it provides, esp LBT and NIOC.

Hyper-V is gaining traction but VMware is currently still the way to go.

Plan it properly and skip 5.1 if possible. I would avoid 6.0 until Update 1 is out, so any initial bugs can be ironed out.