A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.
VMware ESXi, along with being free, was easy to setup and get started with. Compared to the Windows Server environment, I found VMware tools more intuitive. Also, we were able to use VMware ESXi on lower powered servers with little overhead cost compared to the Microsoft …
We moved to VMWare ESXi from an all-physical environment. I know that VMWare VSphere is an even more advanced solution for managing numerous VMHosts under a single GUI - but we have not invested any time into VShere as of yet. We have too few employees at the moment to …
I haven't had confidence in Hyper-V since they had issues with hosts losing access to storage in a cluster. I understand that issue is resolved now but it's difficult to build trust in a product when you have been impacted by downtime in the past.
VMware ESXi offers more features and functions then Microsoft Hyper-V does, especially for an enterprise customer. The two biggest features that Hyper-V has are cost and integration of the OS. Other than that, ESXi offers more enterprise-grade features like HA, DRS, vSphere …
VMware has been in the business a long time, and makes a very reliable virtualization platform. Hyper-V had matured exponentially, since it's been released and is a viable alternative to ESXi. However, it is not as reliable as ESXi at least at this time. ESXi also accommodates …
I actually used Hyper-V at my previous company, and am now using it at my current company so I'm actually much more familiar and comfortable with it. In fact, it's what I use at home as well. It's just really easy to use.
We were comparing Windows Server with Hyper-V to VMware ESXi, and decided on Windows Server as we are primarily a Windows server/workstation shop, and the familiarity allowed us to spin up new Hyper-V servers quickly without much additional training required. We also have a …
We've utilized docker and debian for very specific applications and they have been useful - overall Windows Server provides a better package. I would choose VMware ESXi over Windows Server for virtualization as it's far more reliable in our experience. I can't imagine using a …
Windows Server blows any of the Linux flavors I've used out of the water. Even after gaining experience with Linux, I'm able to achieve the same results in Windows Server from a command line much quicker than in Linux simply because Windows Server, especially with the …
Windows Server is more cost-effective and skills are easier to find to support the products. The deployment and management of the product can be automated with Microsoft SCCM. In my opinion, Linux seems to be more secured but takes more time and effort to learn than Windows …
Windows Server is by far the easiest server option to get started with because they offer the same kind of interface with windows that most users are already familiar with. Plus, it's the most graphically friendly option, so it is easy to navigate. Lastly, it is the most …
We have used various flavors of Linux as it is the only other real competitor in the small to large business world. In most cases it is harder to find technical expertise in the Linux server world verse Windows Server. For this reason Windows has remained our go to operating …
If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
Windows Server and Active Directory is very robust and stable, it has been a staple in every IT environment I have worked in during my career. Junior to Intermediate admins can learn Windows Server easily, the user interfaces make administration tasks very easy as well as the documentation available through a vast amount of resources. There are other Operating Systems available with no GUI which has a smaller attack surface, faster update installation and reboot time. Windows Server does have the ability to remove the desktop experience, however it is not something I have had experience with and I believe most administrators choose not to remove it.
Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
Microsoft needs to minimize the update frequency by making the product more secure. It can become very exhausting trying to keep updated if you don't have a dedicated support team. It can become challenging where the business is unable to allow downtime for reboots as part of the update process.
Prone to security and audit vulnerabilities.
The operating system needs more CPU and memory resources compared to other options such as Linux.
Understanding the licensing model can be abit confusing.
Comes with a standard firewall, but not the most secured one available. Would suggest using a more secured firewall as part of your antivirus software.
Due to the number of vulnerabilities and the operating system being a target for hackers, anti-virus software is a must.
It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
I've carefully reviewed the servers and services currently running on Windows Server 2012, and given the opportunity would renew them as is going forward. There are two systems I currently have in place, one is a very large Linux implementation for a large ecommerce site, and one is a very large backup solution front ended by FTP servers running Linux. Neither are well suited for Windows, but the overall network infrastructure is and will be Windows Server for the foreseeable future.
The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
Anyone new to IT could easily use the familiar Desktop Experience (GUI) version because we all know how to use Windows, whether a client or server version. Once an IT user is more comfortable with the operating system, they can move on to the Core version, which is the way to go in almost all situations.
Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
Microsoft's support is hugely wide-ranging from articles online to having to contact them directly for the more serious issues. In recent years when I have contacted them directly, I have found the support o be excellent as I have found myself connected to very knowledgeable people in the field in which I needed the support. The online support available is vast and I tend to find most of the time that there is always someone out there who has had the same issue as me in the past and knows something about how to resolve it! This is the advantage of using industry standard and long-established systems such as Windows Server.
Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
Make sure that you have detailed processes in place for every server instance you plan to install/upgrade, if possible get the base OS loaded and Windows Updates applied ahead of time, and if using a VM take a snapshot prior to installing each role, as well as along the way.
As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
They are different experiences, and while the other solutions offer enterprise-grade stability and, in some cases, address Windows server shortcomings (such as patching), they all do the trick, but the other solutions require a deeper technical background/configuration of items at the command line, which some people are not fully comfortable with.
it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
