VMware vSphere Reviews

We have used the following functions:

1. Hypervisor: to ensure that the virtual server provide web and email services to the company, thus providing a stable operation a with single sign-on integration of an AD server and vCenter.

2. Network and Storage: centralized data server software and user virtualization using ThinApp or installed into the Catalog on VDI, to help increase the security of its IT systems therefore saving time operating workstations.

3. VDI: help focus resource systems, build systems, and workstations with specific software for each organization within the company to ensure effective use, such as:

• Labs Dept.
• Demos for Marketing Dept.
• 3D web design, office applications provide access via web browsers or mobile devices.

Also, we have a CRM system and helpdesk support portal to help record information and interact with customers. Additionally, customers will be directed to the support of technical assistance from experts of VMware and Microsoft. (Redhat and Citrix Xen we do not know how this will work yet).

We use the standard system Helpdesk Support TOR, SOW and ISO 27005 information security for customers in order to put an automated customer feedback for the ticket or marked escalation answered to ensure support complete time appointments.

I have used Virtual Machine clients for about 14 years and VDI for about 4 years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No we didn't previously use a different solution.

We set up a simple way first and then gradually more complex.  This makes it easy to control the process of expanding the system.

We implemented it in this way:

1. Server Virtualization Infrastructure, Configuring vSphere Hypervisor and VMware vCenter settings.
2. Convert physical servers to virtual servers running VMware ESXi 5.5 platform
3. Virtualization software with ThinApp, Portable tested on a few virtual machine desktop OS as promiscuity: 12:10 Ubuntu, Suse Linux 11, Windows 7 x64bit, Win 8.1 x64bit, summarizing the results of compatibility testing or debugging.
4. Estimates of the amount of resources needed and planned VDI deployment phase 2.

• Phase 1: only provide virtualized applications running on Web, Mobile
• Phase 2: Creating the Desktop templates and analyze the user has specifically been using remote desktop protocol RDP/PCoIP.

We must study and deploy a project in-house, then take it to the project Pilot/POC to introduce it  to customers.

We do additional case studies and gradually adjusted to suit each areas of business customers.

Original setup cost Including: hardware infrastructure costs, software licenses, cost deployment training and technology transfer management and operation.  Also 12 month warranty costs and consulting solutions if you rent.

Day to day: Rental assistance, monthly administration, and hiring a full-service PaaS/SaaS system.

Yes, we did. vSphere 5.5, RHEV 3.3, HyperV 2012R2 and XenServer 6.2 and a comparison table is below.  All are scored on a scale of 1-10.

• VMware vSphere 5.5 should be invested in for virtualization infrastructure as it is cheap, effective, and stable.  It also meets more requirements than other products.
• Investment decisions VDI technology did its review on the actual needs for each person/group/ department needs and had professional software for it and they decided to use VDI.
• In the process of deploying VDI, the application should be virtualized, shared services should be enhanced, and limited desktop virtual machines for the particular user.s (e.g. design engineers need 3D GPU rendering, chief accountant, architect, system administration).
• The following should be studied and then implemented -  SSO configuration, GPO, security methods, ACL permissions, firewall, anti-virus for servers and virtual desktops in a consistent manner, all in accordance with ISO 27000.

We can customize everything from UI of cloud to the supply of integration vApp

vMotion, Storage vMotion, Distributed Resources Schedule (DRS), NIOC, SIOC, Storage Profiles.

Our business has been able to consolidate fleets of physical servers to virtual servers, and is able to respond to changing business needs quickly.

Needs improvements to the Fault Tolerance feature, focus more on the performance and quality of the hypervisor. I'd like for them to add more vCPU capability.

5 years

I haven't seen any issues with deployment.

Lately I have seen some bugs coming up.

I haven't seen any issues with scalability.

Good, but could be better. Lately I have seen VMware dropping the ball on customer service.

3 out of 5

Yes. Hypervisor setup and setup of High Availability clustering in a jiffy.

In-house

There is no setup cost. Its only the administration cost.

Yes. Hyper-V, Xen.

From my personal experiences I've found that it’s still the leading hypervisor on the market.

Software Define Data Center (SDDC), easily manage couple hundred servers within one console, deploy multiple servers within an hour, capable of monitoring server’s CPU, RAM, Disk, Network activities, High availability (HA) and Cluster (DRS), vMotion and DataStore vMotion, and more.

We condensed our whole Data Center into three 42U racks, one rack for switches and 32 blade servers, one rack for UPS, one rack for the SAN. It uses less power consumption, less space, less network switches, Less UPS battery.

IOPs monitoring. We now monitor IOPs from SAN array. But, SAN array IOPs monitoring is based on virtual volume (vLun) not the VM. If VMware can provide VMDK IOPS information, it can help us catch performance issues.

Over 5 years.

No, everything works fine during deployment.

We did experience purple of death in our esxi host (HP BL685c G7) twice in the past two years after we upgraded to ESXi5.0. We are not sure if its HP’s problem or VMware’s problem.

Yes, multiple VM within one vLUN sometime cause random IOslead to performance issue. Although it is fixable, but still, when you are using large vLUN, you need to understand if that vLUN can provide sufficient IOPs for VMs that use that vLUN.

Although, I do not call them frequently, from my three calls, I would say the customer service is great. They call back and even remote-in to assist with the issue.

1 to 5 scale, I rate their technical support 4.

No, we did not.

It is somewhat straightforward except for the vCenter server and SQL database ODBC. You need to use SQL ODMC client v10. Windows server 2008 R2 did not come with an older version. You need to download sqlncli driver v10.

We did the implementation by ourselves.

We did not assess the ROI. But, as a system engineer, it is huge.

• SAN array with 40TB FC and 40TB NL -450K
• 4x HP BL465c, 2x16, 256GB, 2x 10Gb FiberSwitch, 16x vSpere License, ESXi enterprise License - 200K
• Planning to hold 300 virtual servers
• This is based on an a quotation. I do not know the actual purchase price. The day to day cost is not much. There is no need to go to the data center unless we need to upgrade the hardware. I can power off and power on any server from my desk in case the server freezes.

No.

VMware is a great virtualization solution. But, if your servers are very performance-demanded, my suggestion is you must also study the shared vLUN, SAN VV and VM’s IOPs requirement. Don’t just create vLUN and dump any VM into the vLUN. Some programmers and DBAs do not have ideas of how much IOPs their applications or database servers are needed. You will experience performance issues. This is not a problem when you use physical server because physical server resources are not shared.

• High Availability
• Fault Tolerance
• Live migration
• Reduced the overall cost of the infrastructure
• Centralizing the management.

We were able to centralize the server farm, thus able to focus administrators on their immediate tasks, reduce response time to incidents, concentrate the informational flows, facilitate the task of data protection.

2 years.

The deployment was really easy, migration to the virtualization infrastructure was transparent to the main business.

None encountered for now.

No. If you would plan an infrastructure from the beginning, you would not encounter any issues.

We have never asked for any kind of customer service.

We have never needed any kind of technical support from the vendor.

No, but, in future, we plan to use a Microsoft Hyper-V.

Initial setup was quite straightforward.

The implementation was made by our own team.

Before choosing we didn't evaluate any other options. It was planned to use the VMware as the first queue and the MS Hyper-V as the second one. The reason is in the migration plan of the servers - in the second phase it would be the MS SQL server's, so the MS Hyper-V is more suitable.

Always have a plan for the work document everything.

vSphere Replication, Storage APIs, vSphere HA, vSphere vMotion.

With VMWare virtualization environment; deploying servers; backing, replication and restoration are done in a matter of minutes.

Mounting ISO's ( You have to copy it onto the server and point to it and perform your installation); Citrix on the other hand allows you to easily mount iso files.

4.5 Years

None that were insurmountable.

VMWare in my experience has proven to be very stable; systems usually run unattended.

With the right amount of resources, additional host and servers can be added within minutes.

5 out of 5

5 out of 5

We also have in production Citrix Xenserver; Xenserver does not seem to be friendly with third party integration.

With the right amount of training initial installation is usually straightforward; even in the absence of that it's pretty much straightforward.

Implemented in-house

We evaluated Xenserver.

Its the most production ready virtual platform.

Scalability and Efficiency of your environment.

• On a basic level you can have one server perform the functions for a whole small business
• On a scalability level, you can simply setup with the right hardware effective failover functionality

• Honestly it’s the leader of the pack so it just needs to keep innovating while the competition catches up
• Maybe the only thing to improve is the compatibility with non-standard devices. In particular we have issues with SAS Tape drives

5 years

No issues encountered.

vSphere has no issue with software stability, if there is issues it’s because of faulty hardware.

No issues encountered.

Excellent, we have a good relationship and they are happy to demo other products with us.

Excellent

No we didn't.

Straightforward, the key to this working is to ensure you use compatible hardware.

In-house

For clients, they can purchase less hardware than what they would require if they did not take advantage of vSphere. Even a small company would have 4 or 5 required servers for applications (Authentication, Email, SQL/Application, and File & Print). Purchasing a single copy of vSphere Essentials or Essentials Plus is less than a server.

There is licensing cost and there is maintenance cost. Both compared to buying more servers are negligible.

No but we have compared it to Hyper-V and XenServer as they have come out with new versions. Hyper-V we play close attention to but XenServer we no longer follow.

• For companies comparing this to Hyper-V, this is still the gold VM solution. While Hyper-V is catching up, it’s still has a way to go.
• For small companies, I really advise to go for Essentials Plus. This gives you proper small scale HA capabilities and it gives you tech support. Essentials provides no technical support.

• Scripted installation.
• Host Profiles.
• Web Client.
• Windows Client

Previously we used one server per application, this product has increased our hardware utilization.

For managing many ESXi's at once vCenter is required. when the number of ESXi is smaller, it is not practical to have a vCenter server. This should at least be solved especially for a test/development environment. This may be solved using a Application installed on the end user system like a windows machine where the credentials of the ESXi servers are then pre-configured and a double click is sufficient to open the console. (I am talking of the use case where advanced features of vcenter is not used.)

One Year, qe are not using it in our organization. It is being used in out Lab environment for R&D purposes.

I have not found a way to automatically do console redirection to the COM port after scripted installation.

Very stable system.

Scalable to any level.

In house team using the official guides available.

Robust, functional, reliable, ease of use, good value.

Exponentially easier to manage servers.

Since 2009.

None

None

None

Excellent.

Excellent.

No - prior was physical one up servers.

Straightforward.

In-house plus one consultant.

Considered Hyper V.

Plan for more storage than you think, use flash, use 10gbE SFP+ to SANs - well worth it.