VMware vSphere Reviews and Pricing

Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 26, 2012

Comparison of VMware, Citrix and MS Hyper-V

Disclosure: My company is a VMware reseller.
What I have found is as follows:
VMware:
- Easier to setup, established product, works with most OSs
- Is owned by EMC (1 storage vendor) and has plenty of development resources
- Constantly improves, has an established upgrade process
- Just works, seems to be very flexible and is ready for production environment
- Has relationships with many organizations where they continue to improve (features and benefits) especially when it comes to networking (virtual networking - able to control the packets ability to traverse the network using an application)
- Storage virtualization has improved along with giving vendors the ability to develop API's to work with their solution
- Has integrated with Powershell to allow for automated VM management
- Does not work with Nvidia GPUs, but they are in the works
- Faster ESXi server setup, integrated LDAP (AD) tools, VC management interface, very easy to install

Citrix:
- Easy to setup, continues to establish capabilities, works with most OSs
- Found that it is easy to setup an ISO file from a CIFS share, no need to upload into datastore (like that of Vmware)
- Has an established upgrade policy
- Complex powershell automation configuration
- Faster VDI implementation, but for large organizations, costs seem to be the an issue because of the much needed hardware
- Works with Nvidia GPUs
- Easier Network bonding and implementation
- Status view of the XenServer gives real-time stats, none really found on Vmware ESXi server (they have the capability found on VMware Operations Manager but not on the ESXi server itself)

Hyper-V
- Easy to install and configure
- Not really an established technology, found some glitches with Windows 2008 but they have worked out a lot of the problems with 2012
- Does not work with all OS, had problems with Linux and Unix (Mint, Solaris, Xubuntu, etc)
- Cluster configuration, complex
- Network configuration needs more development work, they need to work at bonding the NICs
- Cluster configuration only works with ISCSI protocols

Just some things I have found.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3405Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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Aug 15, 2016

Hello, I have not been on the site in a while but I would like to start with my findings using VMware 6.0 (U 2), it seems that VMware has made numerous changes to the compatibility matrix as it relates to hardware. One of the changes we have found is the onboard NIC cards are not supported any longer by a number of vendors. We have found a workaround from online groups that has helped us to address the issue - www.v-front.de For the most part, this is a good write up. We were able to enable the onboard network cards that are Broadcom and/or intel based.

Also, vSAN is a wonderful tool that gives us the ability to create a pool of disks from various VMware ESXi servers, we have reduced the amount of storage by using external SAN/Storage Array devices. Hyper-V gives the user the same ability where the user creates pools of disk volumes.

Also, as far as security goes, there are some nice features that have always been part of VMware, if the user goes into the configuration tab of the ESXi server, they can add IP address ranges to lock down the VMware Infrastructure, they have been doing this for a while but worth mentioning (ACLs at the ESXi Host layer).

Also, there are a number of remote monitoring tools that are in the cloud (CloudPhysics.com, OpsView.com, LogicMonitor.com).

Have a great day.

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it_user3264

IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2012

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Used to be a very good product but now is being replaced by some other of its types.

Valuable Features:

Easy to use and provides centralized management. With that, it is free and provides a very simple and easy web and also remote interface to interact with the product.

Room for Improvement:

The only problem with it is that it is now in the category of obsolete products. Though its still very good, but its support and updates won't be available.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user7665Network Engineer at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Jul 11, 2013

I've been managing various virtual machines based off of Oracle Virtualbox and I found it to be much better performing and better supported. VMWare products are not at par with Virtualbox applications which are also open source.

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it_user3264

IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2012

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Despite its minor issues, it's still the choice of most of the System Admins.

Valuable Features:

It is os-independent having a very thin architecture with which it can offer unparalleled security and reliability. Unlike most other hypervisors in the market, this don't need a general purpose operating system clearing the hazards of processor overhead, Antivirus and other OS processor consumption. Its this feature makes it prominent in the market of hypervisors.

Room for Improvement:

Well, not much drawbacks actually. It serves the purpose it is designed for but still a very few little things that i have notices that can be called its drawbacks can be 1. Fault tolerance limits features available to virtual machines. 2. Automatic fallback of VMs currently not supported. This can be crucial in some environments.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3264

IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees

Dec 21, 2012

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Fast and Reliable Virtualization Solution

Valuable Features:

It is one easy to install and manage vitualization technique. Its pretty fast also, compared to some other vitualization techniques. And that is because its has a very small amout of resource overhead. It lacks the server console which decreases its booting time.

Room for Improvement:

We can say its free but it's not. Free versions has limited capabilities and misses some very strong features. So in my opinion its not free. Other then that, it misses the console, which may be good from booting point of view, but from troubleshooting point of view, its bad. As it takes a lot more administrations skills to tackle problem without the proper control panes in the form of the console panel.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Nov 3, 2013

ESXi is certainly the best!

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it_user2814

Head of Infrastructure at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Nov 21, 2012

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Highly usable but cannot be managed from Linux.

Valuable Features:

Most usable hypervisor in the industry. It's well documented, really simple and quick to setup.

Room for Improvement:

You can not manage it from Linux.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Sep 22, 2013

vSPhere version 5.1 and other later releases enable for access from different platforms and not just Windows-based systems only,

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it_user2721

IT Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 15, 2012

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VMware Server: Still one of the best virtualization tool

Valuable Features:

VMware Server is a free, easy-to-use Windows and Linux application that provides a superior introductory experience to server virtualization for businesses to optimize utilization of their technology assets. Below mentioned standout features explains why VMware is so popular among all virtualization software's: •You don’t need to configure your hardware: VMware installs on top of existing OS, you don't really have to worry about configuring hardware to work with it. • Simple and basic Installation: VMware has done a great job making it easy to install. • Web-based management interface: Manage your VMWare installation via Web browser. • Large support for guest operating systems: Every version of Windows and many Linux distributions are supported.

Room for Improvement:

1. In January 2010, VMware announced the End of Support for VMware Server with support ending on June 30, 2011. Users are free to continue using VMware Server but are recommended to migrate to another VMware offering to gain the benefits of newer technologies. 2. Additional Layer affect performance: Machine's own operating system sits between the hardware and virtualization software- meaning it isn't one of those bare‐metal virtualization products that you install directly on the server. The result is that a portion of machines capability isn't available to your VMware server because it’s devoted to running the underlying operating system.VMware is also known for the below given features : • Supports two-processor SMP systems and enables single virtual machine to span multiple processors: Allows you to take advantage of multiprocessing. • Virtual state capture : Capture your virtual machine’s state so if a problem arises you can roll back to a previous state. • Easy migration path to other VMWare products : upgrading to a different product is easy.

Other Advice:

All these features mean that VMware Server is a great platform for personal experimentation or light business use. I've personally had a VMware Server host with a couple guest machines running continuously since 2009.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user113166Engineer at a tech services company

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Sep 16, 2014

Alin

kb.vmware.com

OVF is a full VM so there is a number of links so check them all OVF work with ESX the kb goes into how to work with ESXI

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it_user1728

CIO at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Aug 27, 2012

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DR/BCP friendly, but hard to justify annual maintenance vs. HyperV

Valuable Features:

Greatly consolidated my server infrastructure; DR/BCP friendly

Room for Improvement:

Hard to justify annual maintenance vs. HyperV

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

sumodirjo

Senior Site Infrastructure Engineer at Kurungsiku

Aug 7, 2012

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Old, almost dead, but still great software to play with, but not for your production environment

Valuable Features:

Unlike VMware workstation where we have to log in to desktop to run VM(s), with VMware Server we can run VM on the background. It also have a web based management interface so you don't have to install a software on your desktop to manage VMware server. It’s still quite useful virtualization software that you can use for free if you want to spend extra mile patching some files before you can compile support for your kernel.

Room for Improvement:

VMware server already reaches its end of support on June 30, 2011. Since it’s not supported anymore, and new support for newer OS, if you use a new Linux distro, you have to patch some files before you can compile support for you running kernel.VMware itself suggest its users to move to VMware Player if you only need to run small number of VMs on your desktop, or VMware vSphere Hypervisor if you want to run on dedicated machine.

Other Advice:

Not the best choice if you want to start learning virtualization. You better choose VMware Player, or VirtualBox if you want to run virtualization software on your desktop or VMware vSphere Hypervisor and XenServer Free edition if you want a free virtualization software on a dedicated machine.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.