Likelihood to Recommend VMware is well suited to a business where there will be many remote users needing to connect to the companies desktop. The installation on a remote computer is simple and is easy to use remotely but can be complicated to set up on the back end on the office system. It may not be worth the effort for a company that has few people who need remote access.
Read full review vSphere is well suited for multiple VMWare hosts and can be very useful in larger enterprises where vMotion is used to load balance and failover running virtual machines. In smaller businesses with one or two hosts then the features can be overkill. The addition of virtual TPM support is a very nice addition to provide vm security in a more Microsoft supported methodology.
Read full review Pros It provides a robust, secure, rich desktop environment that is able to access all internal network resources. Addresses security and compliance concerns as all data resides within the internal network. All data accessed stays within the internal network and does not need to traverse a VPN to the local desktop where it may be cached, etc. The connection is thin client that does not require large amount of bandwidth. Client application is available for all common devices and O/S’s. No need to install, configure and maintain applications on local desktop. Read full review vMotion that provides seamless movement of Virtual Machines between physical hosts and datastores. Ease of Manage: vCenter provides very good management experience to the users. It provides hassle free upgrade of versions, which requires good planning. Easy to manage datastore, networks, CPU and memory resources. It also allows to convert the physical machine and bring it to vSphere Environment with minimum effort. Read full review Cons Move away from Adobe Flash version in UI, currently on the path but they need to hurry up Speed up the boot process of the environment when servers need maintenance Provide clear steps on what should be upgrade path in terms of components, the order price! A bit too much Read full review Allow enable EVC without requiring host shutdown More detail in recent tasks. Instead of just showing a task called "Reconfigure virtual machine" also have a link to more detailed information as to what was reconfigured, changed or removed. Allow searching tasks or events Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are committed to VMware Horizon and we plan to stick with it for the future unless something drastically changes.
Read full review We are constantly looking for change that will benefit our company. We are not ones to stick with a product simply because it is what we know, but rather looking for what fits us best. We can't imagine another product on the market today doing a better job of handling our infrastructure than vSphere.
Read full review Usability VMware Horizon is very easy to use. It is very easy and quick to log in remotely. It is very easy to install remotely. It is usable easily on many different operating systems. It is easy to set up which tools are available to each remote user so that each user has just what they need to perform their work without any extra tools cluttering up their space or bogging down the system.
Read full review It is a highly documented suite. If you are unsure of how to do something, a simple search will yield hundreds of results showing you how to do it. Support is also available if you need to talk to an expert.
Read full review Performance Performance is excellent of you provide the needed hardware to support the sessions/connections. Pages load very quickly at the client end as the thin client application does a very good job and requires very little bandwidth. All applications function well, as they are running on a session on an internal server that is accessing data directly on the network
Read full review Support Rating It is surely way better than Citrix, but it could improve a bit. Usually, they send us the solution without saying what was the root cause so we can avoid breaking something in the future. Besides that, VMWare support answers in an OK time-frame and even speaks our language (Portuguese).
Read full review I rarely ever have to contact support and when I do need to resolve an issue, there is always an abundance of kb articles and research information available that can help quickly resolve the issue. Depending on the type of support contract you have, you may get support from some offshore group in another country and this could be a little challenging because of the language barrier.
Read full review Implementation Rating Just make sure that when you implement, that the person implementing truly knows what they are doing and has a plan of action coming in. Since our initial implementation using a consulting service, I have implemented a few vSphere just from what I learned at the initial implementation and use over time, and the person implementing really needs to know what they are doing or you will miss out on features that may help you down the line
Read full review Alternatives Considered Although I really prefer Microsoft Remote Desktop for accessing Windows servers (from Windows machines especially), and this can be done from off-site with a VPN, this entails much more effort, namely getting everyone's Active Directory in the correct group to have access. VMWare Horizon is a much simpler solution in terms of granting access.
Chrome Remote Desktop and
TeamViewer are really not viable solutions for remotely accessing servers in business settings, although they work alright for home servers and such, especially from off-site.
Read full review vSphere has a lot more feature sets than
Hyper-V but at a much higher cost of entry versus MS
Hyper-V . I have not been able to play with
Hyper-V as much as I would have liked, but the setup and ongoing maintenance seems to be easier in vSphere than with
Hyper-V Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model The contract terms are very clear and can be updated as per the project requirement. Customer support is also included in the contract which help us to troubleshoot critical issues very easily. Training included in contract will really help the client team to empower and hands-on on the latest updates and enhancements
Read full review Professional Services As I said earlier, they're always ready to understand our issues and propose the best and most appropriate solution for issues all the time. The security patches solution is accordingly to the business needs. Another scenario is their Knowledge Base where they're many articles that help you in order to solve something which is wrong.
Read full review Return on Investment Saved money on PC purchases. Save a lot of man hours by not having to image new PCs. We just create one Template VM and clone the others from that. Bit of a learning curve to get the deployment right for the environment. Ability to make sure VMs always turn back on once they are shutdown. This speeds up load times for users. Less management for our PCs. If one gets a virus or something corrupts we just refresh it and within 5 minutes the user is back to work. Read full review Having vSphere helped my business quickly recover from a ransomware attack which would have crippled us for weeks if we were not virtualized. I think the ROI on something like that is immeasurable. vSphere has allowed my company to purchase bigger server hardware to host 3 or 4 virtual servers, which was at a cost much lower than buying 3 or 4 server hardware boxes, saving us thousands each time we need to upgrade hardware. Read full review ScreenShots