VMware Cloud Foundation vs. VMware vCenter

It is best suited for an on-premise cloud solution where customer can shift their entire production environment. Also, the customer has a preference for a Homogenous Infrastructure Environment where budget is not a challenge. It is not at all suited for a Heterogenous Environment, e.g., a Public cloud where integration becomes a huge issue, also in SMB sections where budget is challenging.

Incentivized

The VMware vCenter server is very useful in maintaining the CPU/RAM/datastore resources are balanced when there are multiple ESX/ESXi host servers. It is clear what resources are being used, and it is easy to migrate VMs to different ESX/ESXi hosts. Being able to remotely connect to the VM servers in vCenter when you cannot have other remote connections helps in maintenance and troubleshooting.

Incentivized

• Cloud enabled Solution.
• Support Container based Apps.
• Cost efficient.
• Supports both Public and Private Environments.

Incentivized

• VSAN storage management and redundancy - high performance IO with built in fault tolerance across the cluster, not reliant on a single hardware item
• VM fault tolerance. The ability to relocate a running VM and restart VMs from failed or isolated nodes
• Resource management and alerting. Tracking load across physical systems and allowing us to rebalance for better utilisation

Incentivized

• The Deployment is complex.
• Recommended Number of Physical Nodes is three or more; with less than 3 Nodes, it becomes difficult to install V-SAN.
• Need for better integration. If we go on the public cloud, it is a huge challenge while integrate with an open source platform.
• Cost can be marginally reduced. SMB segments still prefer a separate license instead of VCF, or they postpone their purchase plans.

Incentivized

• Currently, the HTML 5-based vSphere Client lets you manage the essential functions of vSphere from any browser, however, it would be nice if they would port all management functions over to the HTML 5-based Client.
• Performing updates and upgrades to the infrastructure is a bit challenging for someone that may not be as intimate with vSphere. I think the updates/upgrades should be more integrated into the UI and provide the ability to push to the hosts, etc...
• It would also be nice to have a more robust snapshot management tool to prevent snapshot overgrowth. It would be nice to be able to set a lifespan for the snapshot(s)

Incentivized

We are very dependent on this software, it has become a much needed tool to perform the daily tasks that are required to maintain the virtual server environment. VMware has become very pricey over the years, so we are looking for alternatives for cost savings strategy, but nothing has been found to be on par to what we are currently using

Incentivized

I work with vCenter for 10+ years and i love it. I can find my way around and can help building and expanding the platform. It is easy to use and there are a lot good communities for the extra support when needed. Even the Homelab community is of great value.

Incentivized

VMware support has always been fantastic and they have been invaluable in solving tougher issues that have been run into. Most of the time, any oddities encountered are fixed by available updates. This can be deduced by support quickly with logs within vCenter. We have not run into something yet that support was unable to help with. They either have a solution already, or they are able to find one quickly.

Incentivized

Since moving away from the Windows Server hosting the vCenter application and instead using a virtual appliance, it has become much easier to implement and deploy the new versions. We can easily create a snapshot or clone of the vCenter vApp to ensure any problems encountered during the upgrade can be mitigated with a fall back to the old version to prevent unscheduled downtime.

Incentivized

Although the public Cloud Model follows Opex Costing Model, it actually leads to very high costs also, the infra model in my organization is not suited for a Public Cloud Model. Hence We decided on an On-Premise Model, and the best suited was VMware Cloud Foundation, which is a complete Software-Defined Scale-Out Architecture. I also prefer a Homogenous environment; i.e, support and services from a Single OEM, so that I Can get faster resolutions to my tickets raised.

Incentivized

Citrix Xen Server.... Great Hypervisor but very limited in terms of functionality

MS Hyper-V... [VMware vCenter Server] is better for almost everything and appliance form makes a clear winner for security and ease of deployment

Incentivized

• My organization has a size of 1300+ employees, using multiple applications and an exchange mail server that is hosted on On-Premise Cloud, hence scalability has not been a challenge.
• Having hosted my Production environment and Mail exchange Server on VCF, there has been optimum resource utilization with very little scope downtime. Hence have been able to save a lot of funds on Hardware resources.
• Due to the size of my organization and due the data load, I have been able to save on Resource Utilization and Organization Funds

Incentivized

• The positive impact of vcenter is definitely felt in larger organisations in terms of being able to manage multiple servers all in one environment
• It will decrease the amount of time your server engineers will have to spend in the server room or datacenter.

Incentivized