vRealize Business for Cloud [EOL] Reviews

We use vRealize for automation, orchestration, and lifecycle management. Those are the three main components of version 8. The solution is deployed on premises at the local data center. I'm deploying it for licensing companies. So I have a contract with the customer before this is deployed within the customer environment.

The customer is using for example a Citrix workplace environment. So, with the pandemic, there are some situations where the customer needs all his staff in one meeting. All of the team must be working remotely online in the customer environment, which increases the data center's resource requirements. 

So we have scheduled automation to allow the customer to set up the meeting. Let's say on Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., we will have a meeting with 1,000 colleagues. The system will automatically deploy Citrix systems and list them on the central Citrix server. And after the meeting, the system will delete the Citrix servers, then free up the resources for standard applications.

Integration is straightforward, but it's a lot of work. First, you have to implement scripts to communicate with the Citrix environment, but that's relatively easy. And then, the customer can do it with one or two clicks. For example, say we need a Citrix server for an additional 1,000 users on Friday at 10 a.m. The resources on the Citrix server will be deployed and be there on Friday at 10. No problem. And when the meeting stops at noon or 2 p.m., the resources will be freed up for other things.

The most valuable feature is automation. With the automation, you can easily and quickly implement it by deploying gnashing on virtual environments. It doesn't take long to develop an automation blueprint. You need about half an hour, and then you can install or deploy it on several systems. That was our first great advantage in the project because we urgently needed to deploy across many different systems. So automation helps us to do our work quickly and easily.

VMware vRealize has standardized systems for doing work after the deployment. First, you have to set up the language on the system itself. Then there are vRealize's orchestration features. You can implement code in your deployment script to do this configuration automatically. So the orchestrator is a beneficial component. With this, you can implement automatic language selection and automated integration. In other systems, you can implement a multi-blueprint or multi-system environment to deploy the entire database environment and applications on this database with one click.

The lifecycle manager is also essential. In version 7.5, you must provide a dir example username and password to access the Citrix server and controller.  What's more, you have to include this in your script or your code. But in version 8, you can provide the username and password or store them in the lifecycle manager. So then you can pick it up from there. And that's the only location where you have to change the password. You don't have to change it in every script. That's a massive improvement in version 8.

It's not always easy to find the information you need. You must have a lot of technical experience to find the right location for what you're implementing within the program. 

I've been using vRealize for two years.

Generally, vRealize is stable. We had one or two problems accessing a component, but they were solved, and we haven't had the same issues since. So I think it's stable.

VMware vRealize is highly scalable. You can integrate a lot of other cloud solutions with the automation path or configuration path. You can set up tons of servers, and that can be a huge environment.

Needs vary from system to system, and if we run into problems, we need VM support. If you have the right guys on the phone and you give the correct information, we get the right solutions and workarounds. etc. They've handled each problem we had in one or two business days. No problem.

There was no cloud solution in production before vRealize. But I'm aware of one other cloud solution because I formerly worked for a huge Hardware and software Company and this has a cloud solution. We had some major IT provider as a customer when we first started using cloud solutions. It wasn't easy to integrate 3rd party solutions. I was on the steering committee meetings and we had a discussion with that customer about for example integrating Citrix in this cloud solution. It was unbelievable. And here, we realized it was so easy. But maybe we had the right staff now in the project. It depends on your personnel. 

VMware vRealize is a cloud solution that you can implement with a list of rudimentary paths in one day. So it's effortless. It's specially programmed there, but you can only also include Hyper-V from Windows. There are a lot of parts where you will have to configure things. We implemented the blueprints for the automation part of the solution very quickly. That was like prototyping the deployment. So, we installed the solution and made the first blueprint. The blueprint is the name of the machine template. You can quickly build your first machine templates to deploy the system. That was the prototyping part. And in the second part, we improved the behavior of this blueprint with more orchestrator functionality. So, it was an agile prototyping-based deployment.

It takes two or three staff members to deploy. There was a convergence of different teams who deployed the solution. Another person can deploy the server if necessary, and I deployed on-premise if the customer required that. And after the deployment, the IT staff should manage and maintain the solution. They should transition from vendor deployment of systems. They were working on that when I left the project — to integrate the whole IT infrastructure in the cloud solution.

We had one external consultant from ITQ. I think ITQ is one of the leading companies for vRealize and cloud applications. My experience with ITQ was good. I would take advantage of their services every time I could. They were experienced and prepared for each setup meeting. It was very straightforward. They presented more than one solution to us. Then we chose the right path. We also had some options to upgrade, and with help from the ITQ consultant, it was quick and easy. 

We've seen an increased ROI. Say the customer is growing from 20 hardware-based servers to 150, and they're doing this within a short time. We wouldn't be able to implement all the virtual systems in this environment if we didn't have the cloud solution in place. So implementing Windows works quickly and shortly. 

But the task was to integrate the word IT in this solution. Let's say a customer had two IT environments, and we had a new server all integrated into the vRealize environment with all the possibilities of the vRealize suite. And in the other environment, we had to extend the customer's critical applications in an old-fashioned way — we implemented a virtual device server by heading, let's say.

VMWare vRealize is price-intensive. But we have had good meetings with VMware and have set up an enterprise agreement for the customers with VMware. At the same time, the pricing is per CPU, and it's price intensive.

We have evaluated an open-source option called OpenStack. However, we decided not to use OpenStack because staffing demands were too high. It's currently hard to find the right staff on the market. So we decided to use a complete solution and not an OpenStack solution.

I rate VMware vRealize nine out of 10. For anyone thinking about adopting vRealize, I suggest that you get the right team for the project. You need professional, experienced people. That's my advice. In my personal experience, I needed somebody on the project to translate the CIO requirements into the vRealize techniques. That's the most important thing. 

So I have project teams where the technical guys ask the customers what to implement, and the customers aren't familiar with the solution. Then we had a deadlock. Many software components are bought but never implemented because this situation cannot be resolved. So you need somebody who could translate the requirements, and you need the right staff for implementation.

Automation and obviously the commercial aspects of the product are our primary use cases.   

Traditionally, we were mostly using an on-premise infrastructure, but in the last few years, we have done more with hybrid deployments. So we are generally traditional on-premise deployments but combined with cloud technology. Our model has significantly changed in the last few years as per the needs of the market and advancements in technology.  

The flexibility of the solution is the most valuable feature.  

I think that the service could be improved by simplifying the pricing model. It does not seem to need to be so complex. It should be easier to interpret so that costs are more predictable.  

As far as actual functionality or additional features, integration with the other VMware toolsets would be beneficial.  

In total, I have been using vRealize for probably 12 years. Obviously it was not the cloud version for that entire time. I have been using the cloud version for the past few years.  

The stability of vRealize has not been in question to this point from anybody at our organization.  

vRealize Business is easy to scale, for sure. That is especially the case for those using the cloud solution.  

The technical support team is normally very good. It depends on which team you are talking to. If you have to work with particular product groups or different teams, the support people are not always the same caliber. But normally and in general they are very good.  

We are a service provider and we mostly provide infrastructure services. We have got some expertise with VMware. A specific customer that we are dealing with asked us to deliver VMware services. They also requested that the specific service that we implement for them was vCloud Director. We do not have those services in house, so we actually went to a third-party to acquire those services for the client.  

We sell all of the VMware services including ESXi (Elastic Sky X Integrated), VSAM (Virtual Storage Access Method), and all the VMware products. We are a VMware platinum partner, so we sell all their services including VMware on AWS.  

We also deal with Business for Cloud Orchestration and vCenter Orchestrator.  

The setup and installation have all been straightforward. The deployment usually takes about two weeks.  

We are working with VMware Stack and we have got a customer that is deploying Cloud Director. Because they are a service provider, we are providing services to them and they are requesting services from us. But the reason we were looking at comparisons between vCloud Director and vRealize Automation is just to compare why the client would not want to go with a completely automated solution. We were subsequently able to clarify the situation and differences for them because of the product evaluations.  

I would definitely recommend vRealize Business for the right situations. I think it works well especially for customers who are already on the VMware platform. Just to moving over to the cloud on VMware is much more simple than changing the platform. Switching platforms is not really worth the migration that is involved.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Business for Cloud as an eight-out-of-ten. It would not be any higher because there are always improvements that can still be made to any product and, of course, I find the pricing to be an unresolved issue.  

We are a solution integrator and this is one of the products that we implement for our customers.

This product is used by cloud providers to help manage their private and hybrid clouds. It is essentially a metering solution for VMware.

vRealize Business for Cloud integrates with the infrastructure and reports costs on resource usage.

The most valuable feature is the metering capability. It helps to bill clients on their usage of resources in the infrastructure.

The knowledge base is not available for the engineers, which is something that needs to be improved. The documentation can be improved, as well.

Stability-wise, this is a very good solution and we haven't heard about any problems with it from our customers.

Scalability has been good enough for our customers.

I have been in touch with technical support and find that they are good. We are satisfied with them.

Installation and integration are simple. However, the configuration and setting up the schema is something that has to be discussed in-depth with the customer. In more complex cases, it takes a good understanding and longer to design a correct schema.

The deployment, once it is designed, only takes a couple of hours.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to get as much information as possible from the vendor. It is important to understand it properly, in advance. If it is designed properly then you will get the best value because the scheme will be optimized.

Overall, this is a good solution and we have not had any problems, but I can't say that it is perfect because of the issues with the documentation and knowledge base.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for our internal cloud or private cloud as well as for the external clouds. I also use it at home for my private cloud.

In terms of budgeting, we were able to better understand the cost to budget the yearly financials better. We could understand what we were using so we could eliminate what we didn't need or decommission it from the public cloud.

The solution's cost management is very good.

The product provides excellent daily reports. 

They give you real value for how much you spent on the public cloud. 

The solution is simple and easy to understand.

The solution's private cloud is much too expensive.

There should be an integration with the V center. They don't offer that yet, but they should.

I've been using the solution for about eight months.

It's running on the VMware cloud so it's stable. I don't see a problem there. I haven't experienced bugs or glitches and haven't had any crashes. It's been reliable.

The scaling out is based on the number of computers that a company has. I don't find a problem in the scaling out, the software does it for you. I don't know if there might be issues in a private cloud, but I don't think that would be the case.

We have about five administrators on the solution currently. Three of them are simply using the solution for reporting purposes.

I'd love to increase usage, but it's a bit expensive. We may stop using it in the future due to the pricing.

I did try other options including Nutanix Beam. They are all similar solutions, although I did like Beam the best. The graphical user interface was easy to understand. There were more reporting tools. I liked the emails and the reporting and monitoring. I like that it was accurate with the prices on the public cloud.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We found it to be quite easy.

I did the deployment with VMware resources and it took me about two hours to get everything up and running.

You only need one person for deployment and maintenance. In my company, that happens to be me.

I called the company and they were able to walk me through everything over the phone. For the most part, I handled the implementation myself.

The cost is a bit much, especially if a company wants to scale it up.

We're just customers. We aren't sellers or partners.

I'm not sure of which version of the solution we are currently using.

I'd advise other companies if they decide to implement the solution, to make sure they are using the right sizes. 

It would be nice if they changed their pricing model, but I don't think that is going to happen.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's very good.

We are service cloud providers. 

Our company has approximately 150 employees, and in our cloud, we manage approximately 6,000 users.

I like the openness of the solution. The hybrid feature to combine different types of cloud providers is useful, and it can be orchestrated in one central point.

The way the dashboard works with the main orchestrator to combine different types of cloud providers is helpful.

The problem with VMware is the price.

Most of our customers don't use the user interface to create and orchestrate resources. I think that in most cases the customer would like to use third-party automatization tools. It would be a good idea for VMware to be compatible with the most popular orchestration tools in the market.

I don't know exactly how long I have been using this solution.

This solution is stable.

This is a very strong and scalable solution.

With vRealize Business the automation is great, and it's been nice to have so far, but we think that the product is not available now. We are looking and testing POC's similar to this kind of product. We believe that automation and orchestration is the real key for the future.

We have a project to launch a new public cloud in Luxemburg which is the reason that we are looking for this type of solution. We think that we have to migrate to this type of solution because if we wait a few more months it may be too late.

It's expensive, which is one of the problems with this solution.

Except for the price, this product is excellent and I am content.

Because of the pricing, I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is to build a free communication environment for our customers and to validate the services of all organizations connected to the customer in different locations. Each location has its own IT, IT staff and IT infrastructure and we go to each of these to set up for them. The first step is implementing native ERS, IS, IAAS services, followed by PAAF or a similar solution. I'm a solution architect and project manager and we're a customer of vRealize.

The most valuable feature is that it has a very easy and adaptive look and feel, compared with some other cloud solutions. So it's very easy to set up the first IAAS services for a cloud-aware consultant. If you have to set up very complex services with dependencies between the parameters, you have to do this programmatically in the Orchestrator Space of the Solution (in our used 7.6 version only JavaScript is available, but it is a well-known programming language.

It's not so easy to come up with improvements, there are some architectural rules and in HPE Cloud solutions they are very difficult to implement because you have an open spec. There are some things in the blueprint development that could be easier but that's my experience on using the 7.6 solution, not on the 8.0 solution.
For additional features, I will only be able to answer this once the solution is in production. For now we only have a POV in place but we will be switching that in the coming weeks. 

I've been using the solution for about half a year. 

At the moment, in the POC, we have a very huge issue because you definitely have to implement a vSphere cluster. In other cases, if you haven't established a vSphere cluster and you only have a single server to integrate in the vRealize environment, you will not be able to deploy any service. That's a big issue with the solution but if you're aware of the issue then it's easy to implement because you can establish a cluster with one server. It's not the best solution but it works. 

We have no scalability limitations in our current project. We have about seven different locations, some of which are very small, in the WAN environment. We setup satellites from the vRealize location so that we can test implement what we all like to have.

We are currently negotiating our VMware enterprise license agreement so it's unclear what the licensing costs will be. 

It's a very, very good solution and comparing it to others, it's definitely a solution that works. From our point of view, we are in a native VMware environment and that works fine for us.

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. If it were an optimal solution and more simple to use, I would give it a 10, but it's not. 

We have the complete VMware suite, including vRealize. We are using this solution as a chargeback tool for billing the respective business groups and project teams for our VM solutions.

Our interaction with clients begins with planning. We meet with the client to discuss project requirements, expectations, and use cases. We collate the information and use this to recommend how much compute, storage, and neutral bandwidth they will need.  Once we have those numbers in hand, we can easily size and bill the customers based on what was discussed. For example, a customer may want 100TB of storage with 2TB of memory, and vRealize will help us to bill these resources.

The most valuable feature is that it allows us to compare the billing between the clouds. It gives us a graphical representation of the difference between clouds like AWS, Azure, and other private or public cloud providers. This gives us a ballpark figure and it makes it easy for our clients to decide whether to go with a public or private cloud. Furthermore, we are the trusted advisors inside the organization and this tool enables us to decide whether to spin the virtual machines on-premises or off-site.

In terms of security and manageability, we have not had any difficulties.

I would like to have an easy way of modifying the reference data that is used for the purposes of estimating the total billing. All of the data is stored by VMware, and it contains information such as the price for 1GB or 1TB from each of the cloud providers. Sometimes the information does not match our commercial rates and we need this to be in line with our budget, or our investment in infrastructure.

This solution integrates well with vCenter but we would like better integration with multiple solutions like Hyper-V. We need a cloud-agnostic platform because this is a costing tool, and we do not want to have a gap between the costing of public versus private, or on-premises clouds. As an example, for the same client, I may spin VMs on-premises, and also spin VMs on the cloud. They are for the same client but are on different platforms, and there should be a uniform price.

We have been using vRealize Business for Cloud for the past four years.

This is a stable solution. Most of the VMware networks are a service and they are reliable and very trustworthy.

We have had no difficulty with scalability. We have almost 8,000 end-users working on-premises. This is being used as a costing tool for almost 200 projects, and it helps the IT the team have visibility with respect to pricing.

We do not have plans to increase usage at this time, but next year, after the billing happens and we see what our position is, we may decide on a new vision.

Technical support for vRealize is good. I would rate them an eight or nine out of ten.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup is easy and the deployment is very straightforward.

It takes perhaps five to ten minutes to deploy. It has everything in place.

We have a team of 40 engineers across the globe for managing this VM infrastructure. I don't think that we have a dedicated resource for managing vRealize Business for Cloud, so the people who manage the infrastructure use their own diligence to manage it. When they need special expertise or they need technical service, my advice is that anyone who has a basic knowledge of virtual machines can usually handle it.

We did not consider many other options when we evaluated this solution. The PoC was straightforward and it worked well in all of the scenarios. After that, it was deployed.

For anybody who is implementing this solution, my only advice is to learn the tool and then use it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The primary case use of this solution is to learn about the provisioning of the virtual machine and for asset management of our hardware.

The deployment model we are using is on-premises.

This solution made us aware that we are over-provisioning virtual machines. 

We are satisfied with the functionality of this solution. Although there are not many areas that need improvement, perhaps, they could provide a better hardware database and the pricing of it. 

It is understood that you can't equalize the price of hardware for each country.

There are some kinks to resolve with the Web GUI user interface, as it freezes at times.

I would like to see some optimization of the user interface in the next release.

This solution is stable, it's pretty good.

There are currently five to ten people testing this solution.

This solution is scalable. It is made for both small and extra-large deployments.

I haven't had the need to contact technical support for this solution, but I have had technical support for other products and in the past and it's great!

We have not used another solution previous to this one.

The initial setup was easy and straightforward.

I deployed this solution myself, I did not use a vendor.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The features I find most valuable about this solution is it helps us to automate all the provisioning activities on the platform. I like the integration with other applications or vendors. 

I think it is a very good solution because the technology is very consolidated with third parties. VMware is a top solution for virtualizing infrastructure. If I have to suggest to someone to use a cloud platform technologies, I would suggest VMware or OpenStack for infrastructure, because with VMware you have a perfect way to have support for your issues. You also have a consolidated technology. With OpenStack, you have a cloud public platform like Amazon Web Services, because OpenStack is based on AWS philosophy. It is open so you're sure that in the future you can use the platform without problems and without locking.

The technical team is quite capable of resolving issues. I would, however like it if they could provide their customers with more qualified support, like some training videos. 

I used vCloud before, which is another cloud solution of VMware. It is most useful for public cloud, because it works better in multi-tenant infrastructure, while vRealize is better for mono-tenant infrastructure. For instance, when you have a private cloud and you want to manage various virtual machines, a lot of infrastructure for only a customer, this is the better solution. If you are a cloud provider and want to use VMware technologies for your platform it's better to use vCloud.

The initial setup was complex because they are a very important platform, but it wasn't so complex with respect to the community solutions. We used a consultant for the installation and deployment. 

We did evaluate other options, but vRealize Business for Cloud turned out to be the best.

I rate this solution a ten out of ten and I will highly recommend it to others.

The tool helps us to monitor the services provided to customers as a cloud provider. The product is a monitoring solution that helps customers pay for their utilization of services. 

The product needs some investment in configuration. I would like to see better and more optimized configuration in the tool's future releases.

I have been working with the product for three years. 

I would rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten. 

The product's support is good 

Positive

The tool's deployment is easy. The deployment speed depends on the network's speed and the target environment. The tool's maintenance can be handled by a single person. 

We did the product's deployment in-house. 

The product is a cost-effective solution. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten.