VMware vSphere Reviews

• VMware Server is problem solving and cost saving. • No need to buy hardware for every server required, just purchase one server and run multiple virtual machines on that single hardware. • Offers testing solutions, provisioning solutions, and makes testing and rolling out installation easier. • Easy to use technology and industry leader in virtualization technology.

• The new Graphic User Interface is not of high quality. • Web based User Interface means breaching compatibility with any principle of rich client applications, and means lots of bugs particular to every different browser

A major issue with this server is that there are several free solutions offered. These are very appealing because of the virtualization rollout that cuts costs. If your intention is to decrease costs by using the VMware Server instead of several machines for several servers, the horsepower of the VMware hardware should be very powerful or every virtual machine will experience a mess.

ESXi has one major benefit that outweighs the others; IT'S FREE!Yes, it has plenty of other benefits, like running a wide variety of different virtual operating systems in virtual machines (it supports every platform but OS X, and that can technically still be "hacked" onto it).It's incredibly robust, has excellent resource management, and is easy to set up. It allows for importing of virtual appliances, or pre-made VM's, or a creation of your own VM's.

The only issue I have with ESXi is that it is console (CLI) based. While I personally have no operational issue with this, as most of my training began with CLI based systems, some people might not want to configure a high availability virtual machine server via the Command Line.They're now marketing ESXi as VMware vSphere Hypervisor, which makes sense because that's essentially what it is. There used to be another product called ESX, which was a step between ESXi and vSphere, but they did away with that and rolled some of the features into ESXi.

All in all, it is an excellent solution that I have deployed in multiple locations and organizations.

VMWare server is an excellent virtualzation tool for the workstation. It could be used as a limited functionality version of VMWare Workstation or as a host for your virtual machines, with all of the bells and whistles that came with Workstation, such as:- Centralized Management of Virtual Machines. - Remote management of VM's and configurations. - Integration with VMware Player and Workstation, to view the machines hosted by Server.

Unfortunately, this software has reached its End-Of-Life, and has held that status for almost two years. Meaning, there are no new software updates or available downloads for it. This product has basically been replaced by ESX, ESXi and vSphere, which are functionally less resource intensive because of their design. We used this tool during my Linux classes when I was attending College for my B.A.

As of now, OracleVM (formerly known as VirtualBox), is an excellent solution that is open-source and freely available for download.

1) Easier way of segmenting the resources. 2) Host profiles - Template to build hosts in minutes. 3) Performance and Graphs - Easy to monitor the hosts 4) Vmotion - In essence, this technique helps you to move a live server between hosts without any downtime. 5) Robust Management Tools 6) Cost saving 7) Advanced memory management - The memory unused in the hosts can be reclaimed and used effectively. 8) High availability

The major disadvantage that i can think off is that we have to pay for all the features to be available. Virtualization has made datacentre operations easier. As a sysadmin, managing multiple hosts is more simpler and flexible with the vmware ESXi. Running multiple hosts, operating systems on a single host makes it more efficient and saves costs. ESXi also allows you to pool the resources of several machines effectively, thereby helping to run the application smoothly without hassles.

This gives the technology lovers an opportunity to do all the things they want or need to do at the same time.

Pros on the VMware Server are- 1) Centralized management and configuration 2) Remote management and headless operation available 3) VMotion feature helps in real time movement of virtual machines from one server to the other 4) Automated scanning and patching of hosts 5) VSphere DRS for continuous monitoring resource pool utilization 6) Can be integrated with Windows Server Active Directory 7) Easy to use high availability and fail over clustering

Few cons of VMware Server are 1) It is available for free so bug resolution and patch management takes time 2) Poor memory management 3) Requirement for supported SCSI and SATA controllers

One of the cutting edge virtualization technologies offered by VMware works on platforms like Windows, Linux, and Solaris. It facilitates an application developer to test applications on virtual machines with ease of configuration and management. It provides visibility at each and every level of virtual infrastructure.

- Free - Easy to install and configure - Very low overhead - Great management features - Enterprise Ready

- Free version limits server memory to 32GB - No central management of other ESXi servers, each one needs to be logged-in individually if you have multiple servers.My experience with VMware EXSi is that it's the fastest Virtualization platform out there. This is basically because of the very good architectural design of the underlying hypervisor, which consumes a very small amount of resource overhead and provides a rich set of features that are enterprise grade. The free version really has a great feature set plus a management software that you can use to manage individual server instances.

The downside to the free version is that you can only use it on a server with a maximum of 32GB memory. Also, you cannot manage multiple ESXi instances with the management client. You have to log-in individually to each server running the free version of EXSi. These limitations are surely a setback considering other competing products do not have these limitations and even offer features which are only available in paid versions of VMware.

We have a partnership with VMware and I'm the professional service team lead. 

VMware has many good features, is stable and reliable. 

I'd like to see the snapshot feature that Nutanix has in their product. It takes a snapshot as a backup without processing as a third-party product. I'd like to see that backup feature in VMware.

We've been using this solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable.

We're not very satisfied with the customer support. Sometimes I open a ticket and get a remote appointment with one of our customers and most of the time they're not there and I can't contact them. 

The initial setup is pretty easy and took us a couple of days. We check that the hardware is compatible, then we update the firmware and set up an IP address and then test and tune it. Most of our clients are smaller sized companies. 

This is generally a good and stable solution. It's about weighing up the cost against what the product offers for a specific use case. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

Hybrid Cloud

VMware vSphere is deployed in our data centers. We provide services to our customers by allowing them to use our infrastructure. We have lots of customers from different sectors, such as financial, educational, and retail.

VMware vSphere could improve on the automation features and the ease of use of the solution in many areas, such as the interface. However, VMware is doing lots of great things.

I have been using VMware vSphere for approximately 10 years.

The stability of VMware vSphere is very good. It has high resiliency, it is one of the best solutions on the market.

VMware vSphere is very scalable.

The technical support is good. They are a trustful company.

We have one initial setup, we are not doing the setup all the time. Since we are a service provider, we have the infrastructure already.

I rate VMware vSphere an eight out of ten.

Private Cloud