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vCenter Server from VMware is a virtualization management solution for vSphere.https://dudodiprj2sv7.cloudfront.net/product-logos/GD/F9/TSV87TTCSLG9.pngVMware vCenter Server, The Virtual Machine EpicenterVMware vCenter Server is being utilized to virtualize our entire server infrastructure. It addressed the need for our company to grow its IT server resources quickly and effectively. Originally, we started out with a 1U rack server running the free version of VMware and 5 VM's and that was scary having all those eggs in one basket. With VMware vCenter Server managing 3 hosts and 17+ virtual servers, we were able to roll out resources and scale our data stores as business requirements dictated. One significant business problem that VMware vCenter Server solves is the scalability and migration. We are currently planning an upgrade/rollout to HCI coupled with VMware vCenter Server, which will provide our company with a more powerful set of tools in data migration and datastore expansions.,First and foremost, it provides a platform for us to virtualize our servers and it does it very well. Having the ability to spin up a new server from a template in a matter of seconds is amazing and saves precious time and resources. VMware vCenter Server also provides the ability to view performance & statistical data that assists my team in balancing our host environment. Leveraging the vMotion functionality, we can quickly move VMs from one host to another for maintenance purposes, etc... VMware vCenter Server also make it easy to add / modify hardware configurations within the VMs setup. Adding RAM, hard drive space, processor cores, etc...is as easy as it gets. VMware vCenter Server makes it easy to backup and restore a VM from the console. You can quickly create a backup of any VM and store it during upgrades, etc...for easy roll backs.,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),10,Positive: Prior to our growth, we had 5 physical servers in a rack performing various tasks. The implementation of VMware vCenter Server allowed us to consolidate all 5 servers into a virtual environment and build upon VMware vCenter Server. We quickly grew to over 17 servers in less than 6 months and we able to provide resources in less time and money over purchasing 17 physical servers and having to buy additional racks, battery back ups, etc... Positive / Negative: (Only if you don't keep up with maintenance & licensing) We are a relatively small business but we have enterprise class needs for both performance and scalability. VMware vCenter Server is an excellent product in my opinion and having the peace of mind in having technical support, and maintenance upgrades from VMware adds to leveraging the most ROI out of the product. In the 5 years I have been using VMware vCenter Server, I have not really found any real negatives that are significant enough to report. I like the fact that we can perform maintenance on the system when needed without my users ever knowing that we are working on it. When you work for a company that runs pretty much 24/7, it's like changing a tire on a moving vehicle and VMware makes it possible.,WatchGuard NGFW, Cisco Meraki Wireless Access Point, Veeam ONEVMware vCenter is the only Virtual Infrastructure You Need!Our department uses vCenter to provide VMs within the unit to host our infrastructure and critical applications. It solves issues in terms of cost, rack space, energy costs, and the list goes on. In addition, our university as a whole uses vCenter to supply VMs for security initiatives and run critical applications with their VMware environment as well.,Ease of use in creating new virtual machines Easily update ESXi hosts and VMware tools across the environment Works will with storage plugins, and other metric plugins that are useful for our department.,Easier upgrade paths to the newest versions More integration with other sister products (SRM, vSphere Replication, etc.),10,Saved tons of money on consolidating rack space by virtualizing physical servers to virtual machines Saved money on electrical bills with less power consumption since there is a less physical footprint inside the rack space Saved money on not having to have more employees to manage more hardware.,Microsoft Application Virtualization,SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, VMware Site Recovery Manager, Pure Storage FlashArrayThe best way to manage your VMware vSphere Hosts/EnvironmentMy company is about 95% virtualized using VMware vSphere. Because of this, we use VMware vCenter Server to manage our environments. We currently have 4 VMware vCenter Server deployments that I support/manage. Each one is for a specific site and we use it to manage the VMware vSphere Hosts at that site/function. With this tool, we can add new vSphere Hosts, deploy virtual machines, manage the host virtual switches, add/remove storage, etc.,Centralized Management of your VMware vSphere Hosts Centralized Management of your Distributed Network Switches Deployment and management of VMware vSAN Clusters Creation and management of Storage Clusters,vCenter High Availability can be a challenge The learning curve can be high with all the features and functionality. Securing your virtualization environment can be very challenging.,10,vCenter has enabled my company to be able to do more with less. The features such as Virtual Distributed Switches, VMware vSAN, etc have enabled us to centrally manage the networking of our Virtualization Environment as well as save money on our remote office implementations. Training someone with little to know experience with vCenter can be a big task for small teams.,XenApp,Veeam Backup & ReplicationVMware vCenter Server- Great Virtual Server Solution!As the IT Manager of the company we use VMware vCenter Server to consolidate our main core ERP systems, also several virtual servers running from Oracle to MS SQL Servers are deploy, managed and backed up using the VMware vCenter solution, for us is a relieve of scheduled tasks to roll out backups, increase resources on demand, and also to provide more disk space to our server live, the only issue foreseeing is that we need to invest in the hardware to be head to head with all the tools and get the most from the VMware vCenter Server.,I can manage as many as 1000 and more machines in the virtual world. A unit vCenter Server can easily manage 1,000 host profiles without reducing the user experience. With the linked mode in operations, you can link together up to 10 VCenter Servers and manage 30,000 machines across remote locations. Currently I have vCenter Servers up and linked doing an awesome job and keeping safe my ERP core. It is super simple to deploy a structure. This software is particularly designed for Linux based systems and it just takes one step to migrate all of your information from a Windows vCenter Server to the Linux platform, I strongly recommend this for VMware vCenter Admins or IT Administrators. The Linked Mode allows you to replicate permissions, licenses and roles. So you may be able to access your infrastructure simultaneously from different platforms.,UIX can always be more intuitive for basic to mid level admins. Analyzing many systems simultaneously can impact vCenter Server performance but this comes up when the hardware performance gets overwhelmed It's almost 90% dedicated for Linux based platforms.,9,The budget can turn into a mess if you don't have a strong design to fulfill all of the business requirements, you can fall into a deep dive of over rated purchases. VMware vCenter Server will take you to the next level of business investment over private virtual server solutions, and will protect and manage all of your virtual assets with great ease. For the small size company the initial investment can be overwhelming but if you're expecting to grow faster and develop more solutions and integrate more software and services VMware vCenter Server has your back.,,Hyper-V, XenServer, Proxmox VE,2vCenter - If you run ESX, you should definitely have it!Our whole environment, upwards of 800 servers across multiple sites is 99.9% virtualized on VMware and we use a vCenter server to manage it all. It allows you to manage multiple hosts, storage, sites and recovery from a single management console. VMware vCenter Server as a management tool for our environment is used by the specific teams that require access to manage virtual machines, ESX hosts, storage or backups.,VMware vCenter Server is particularly good at Distributed Resource Scheduling or DRS. vCenter server is also great in terms of providing High Availability across virtualization hosts in a cluster configuration, providing reassurance and resilience in case of failure. vCenter's VSAN capability allows smaller organizations to have a resilient shared storage infrastructure without having to pay for a large SAN environment.,The worst thing about the server is the flash based web console. VMware really needs to put some development time into a proper HTML5 console.,9,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.,Hyper-V,Remote Desktop Manager, Cohesity
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VMware vCenter Server
130 Ratings
Score 9.2 out of 101
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vCenter Server Reviews

vCenter Server
130 Ratings
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Score 9.2 out of 101
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Joe Spradlin profile photo
August 28, 2018

Review: "VMware vCenter Server, The Virtual Machine Epicenter"

Joe Spradlin
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
VMware vCenter Server is being utilized to virtualize our entire server infrastructure. It addressed the need for our company to grow its IT server resources quickly and effectively. Originally, we started out with a 1U rack server running the free version of VMware and 5 VM's and that was scary having all those eggs in one basket. With VMware vCenter Server managing 3 hosts and 17+ virtual servers, we were able to roll out resources and scale our data stores as business requirements dictated.

One significant business problem that VMware vCenter Server solves is the scalability and migration. We are currently planning an upgrade/rollout to HCI coupled with VMware vCenter Server, which will provide our company with a more powerful set of tools in data migration and datastore expansions.
  • First and foremost, it provides a platform for us to virtualize our servers and it does it very well. Having the ability to spin up a new server from a template in a matter of seconds is amazing and saves precious time and resources.
  • VMware vCenter Server also provides the ability to view performance & statistical data that assists my team in balancing our host environment. Leveraging the vMotion functionality, we can quickly move VMs from one host to another for maintenance purposes, etc...
  • VMware vCenter Server also make it easy to add / modify hardware configurations within the VMs setup. Adding RAM, hard drive space, processor cores, etc...is as easy as it gets.
  • VMware vCenter Server makes it easy to backup and restore a VM from the console. You can quickly create a backup of any VM and store it during upgrades, etc...for easy roll backs.
  • 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)
I believe that for many companies that need to virtualize their server environment, VMware vCenter Server would be very well suited. There are still some instances where virtualization is not an option, however those are few and far between. In our case, we have 995 of all our servers virtualized, however one of our servers (physical) is a license server for a particular product, and the licensing does not allow for virtualization at this time. Not having to manage so many physical servers plus the associated hardware makes the ROI easy to re-coup.
Read Joe Spradlin's full review
Chris Gomez profile photo
November 13, 2018

vCenter Server Review: "VMware vCenter is the only Virtual Infrastructure You Need!"

Chris Gomez
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Our department uses vCenter to provide VMs within the unit to host our infrastructure and critical applications. It solves issues in terms of cost, rack space, energy costs, and the list goes on. In addition, our university as a whole uses vCenter to supply VMs for security initiatives and run critical applications with their VMware environment as well.
  • Ease of use in creating new virtual machines
  • Easily update ESXi hosts and VMware tools across the environment
  • Works will with storage plugins, and other metric plugins that are useful for our department.
  • Easier upgrade paths to the newest versions
  • More integration with other sister products (SRM, vSphere Replication, etc.)
vCenter is a critical component when managing multiple hosts to initiate DRS and HA. In addition vCenter is the command center to also implement other helpful products for disaster recovery like SRM and vSphere Replication.
Read Chris Gomez's full review
Ben Liebowitz profile photo
August 06, 2018

vCenter Server Review: "The best way to manage your VMware vSphere Hosts/Environment"

Ben Liebowitz
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
My company is about 95% virtualized using VMware vSphere. Because of this, we use VMware vCenter Server to manage our environments. We currently have 4 VMware vCenter Server deployments that I support/manage. Each one is for a specific site and we use it to manage the VMware vSphere Hosts at that site/function. With this tool, we can add new vSphere Hosts, deploy virtual machines, manage the host virtual switches, add/remove storage, etc.
  • Centralized Management of your VMware vSphere Hosts
  • Centralized Management of your Distributed Network Switches
  • Deployment and management of VMware vSAN Clusters
  • Creation and management of Storage Clusters
  • vCenter High Availability can be a challenge
  • The learning curve can be high with all the features and functionality.
  • Securing your virtualization environment can be very challenging.
As someone that's been using vCenter for about 10 years now, I find it very easy to use to manage my virtualization environment(s). I'm able to see everything from one interface as well as manage my virtual servers.
Read Ben Liebowitz's full review
Victor Arana profile photo
May 11, 2018

Review: "VMware vCenter Server- Great Virtual Server Solution!"

Victor Arana
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
As the IT Manager of the company we use VMware vCenter Server to consolidate our main core ERP systems, also several virtual servers running from Oracle to MS SQL Servers are deploy, managed and backed up using the VMware vCenter solution, for us is a relieve of scheduled tasks to roll out backups, increase resources on demand, and also to provide more disk space to our server live, the only issue foreseeing is that we need to invest in the hardware to be head to head with all the tools and get the most from the VMware vCenter Server.
  • I can manage as many as 1000 and more machines in the virtual world. A unit vCenter Server can easily manage 1,000 host profiles without reducing the user experience.
  • With the linked mode in operations, you can link together up to 10 VCenter Servers and manage 30,000 machines across remote locations. Currently I have vCenter Servers up and linked doing an awesome job and keeping safe my ERP core.
  • It is super simple to deploy a structure. This software is particularly designed for Linux based systems and it just takes one step to migrate all of your information from a Windows vCenter Server to the Linux platform, I strongly recommend this for VMware vCenter Admins or IT Administrators.
  • The Linked Mode allows you to replicate permissions, licenses and roles. So you may be able to access your infrastructure simultaneously from different platforms.
  • UIX can always be more intuitive for basic to mid level admins.
  • Analyzing many systems simultaneously can impact vCenter Server performance but this comes up when the hardware performance gets overwhelmed
  • It's almost 90% dedicated for Linux based platforms.
VMware VCenter Server is great for companies that will invest in a decent server to run as many services as they're willing to manage and do an a decent kick start deployment of Domain Services, File Server and also is great for virtual Data Base instances. I would strongly recommend this for Linux Server Base solutions it will give you 1000% and more from the very beginning for Windows Server solutions particularly I'll choose MS Hyper V vCenter but this is only my humble opinion.
Read Victor Arana's full review
Muhammad Mulla profile photo
March 28, 2018

vCenter Server Review: "vCenter - If you run ESX, you should definitely have it!"

Muhammad Mulla
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Our whole environment, upwards of 800 servers across multiple sites is 99.9% virtualized on VMware and we use a vCenter server to manage it all. It allows you to manage multiple hosts, storage, sites and recovery from a single management console. VMware vCenter Server as a management tool for our environment is used by the specific teams that require access to manage virtual machines, ESX hosts, storage or backups.
  • VMware vCenter Server is particularly good at Distributed Resource Scheduling or DRS.
  • vCenter server is also great in terms of providing High Availability across virtualization hosts in a cluster configuration, providing reassurance and resilience in case of failure.
  • vCenter's VSAN capability allows smaller organizations to have a resilient shared storage infrastructure without having to pay for a large SAN environment.
  • The worst thing about the server is the flash based web console. VMware really needs to put some development time into a proper HTML5 console.
vCenter is well suited if you need to virtualize servers across 3 or more physical hosts. If you have fewer than 3 hosts there are too many features that you will not be able to take advantage of. Always ensure, for best support, that any physical hardware you purchase is present on VMware's comprehensive support matrices.
Read Muhammad Mulla's full review
Greg Goss profile photo
March 09, 2018

Review: "vCenter Server is a purchase we don't regret"

Greg Goss
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
The IT team uses vCenter server to manage our virtual environment. We have 8 hosts that contain a few hundred servers ranging from domain controllers, to file servers, to database servers. Our entire infrastructure is virtual so a solid hypervisor and accompanying tools are key. With vCenter, we are able to provide a stable environment with vMotion and manage all of our servers no matter where they float to in the cluster. We are tasked with responding quickly to requests for more storage space, servers for applications, and database growth. vCenter allows us to perform these tasks in minutes without having to worry about which host we're on at the moment. It provides a true one-stop-shop for our VMWare environment.
  • The one thing that is does the best is provide a single place from which to view my entire virtual environment. I've dealt with environments of two hosts with a few guests and environments with 8 hosts and hundreds of guests...it both cases it saves valuable time trying to see what my guests are up to and what the host environment is behaving.
  • vCenter provides me a stable environment. vMotion not only provides protection against a single host going down, but also helps keep resource consumption down by moving busy servers to less busy hosts. All of this is done without taking the guest down. This means no more late nights of staying up to have a non-busy maintenance window. With vMotion and storage vMotion, I can do my job during business hours.
  • When I need to provision a server, it's a matter of a few minutes to deploy a template. If I need to increase RAM or drive space on a server because the drive filled up, I can do that in seconds. It let me have a single place where I can very quickly respond to many different types of challenges I face.
  • I still am not happy with the web interface. While convenient in that I can access vCenter from anywhere I have a browser connection, It feels slower than the thick client and if I'm doing anything that takes longer than a few minutes, I'll always opt for the thick client.
If you have more than one host and your company can support the cost of vCenter Server, then you should seriously consider the purchase. It is the best (really only) way to scale your VMware environment. If you only have one host, then this is not for you as the benefits would not outweigh the cost.
Read Greg Goss's full review
Michael Ellerbeck profile photo
April 12, 2018

vCenter Server Review: "VMotion is the bomb"

Michael Ellerbeck
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Vmware vCenter Server is the bulletproof standard for managing our VM environment. It's extremely powerful, providing features like vMotion, VMware High Availability, Update Manager and DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler). You haven't lived until you have vmotioned a VM from one ESXi host to another! It moves magically, hardly dropping a ping.
  • Centralized management of your VMs
  • One pane of glass
  • Virtual appliance vCenter is easy to install and update
  • I'm not a big fan of the push towards HTML5 only vSpehere client
  • Sometimes you have crashing or timeouts
  • As with all complex software you can get complex errors and bugs can be interesting to get to the root of
If you need a great hypervisor manager then VMware vCenter Server is the one for you. Easy to install, easy to use, powerful. It really is good stuff. With plugin extensibility you are able to manage various things like your storage area network (nimble, equallogic etc...) you can also install plugins for backup (veeam) or site recovery (zerto). It really is very powerful
Read Michael Ellerbeck's full review
No photo available
March 15, 2018

vCenter Server Review: "The best of... virtualization."

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use vCenter to house our 30+ VMs spread across 9 different hosts. It addresses many different problems for us. It gives us great failover, flexibility, and allows us to maximize the potential of our hardware.
  • vMotion is incredible to allow us to migrate to new clusters/hosts while minimizing downtime.
  • The simple, easy to use centralized management capabilities of the new web interface makes it easy to get up and going, as well as managing and making changes anytime you need to.
  • It's very versatile and allows us to spin up, test, and deploy new types of VMs easily and efficiently.
  • I would like to see it be as simple to add the vCenter Server to a Windows Domain as it is a Windows desktop OS.
Any environment that requires utilization of multiple servers across multiple hosts and wants minimum downtime through the use of high availability and fail over alongside simple, centralized management will benefit from vCenter Server.
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No photo available
January 25, 2018

Review: "VMware vCenter Server - The right Virtualization Management Solution"

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
The product is being used by my clients as well as my organization to quickly deploy, test and manage virtualized environments to support business applications. The critical focus for this solution is the ability to support a primarily-mobile workforce, and meet requirements for quickly implementing computing environments used in application/product development, distribution center deployments, and product testing activities. Of interest, is its ability to enable monitoring of DRS, HA, clustering and vMotion components, at a competitive price point.
  • Centralized control for multiple VM hosts simultaneously, including inventory management. This provides easy and effective platform that maximizes support resource time and costs.
  • Scalability/capacity management and reporting, which provides organizations with a flexible and powerful function for meeting the dynamic nature of their businesses.
  • Plug-in extensibility, which enables technology groups to deploy, manage and monitor server security, backup, and network control features within a single console, further-increasing platform support activities.
  • Nothing that applies to the customer base I have supported, other than I have seen and heard from colleagues about problems with ESXi intermittent connection issues, and perhaps the complex nature of plug-in integration.
VMware vCenter Server is the right choice for organizations deploying primarily, virtual environments. For those companies where physical servers are the primary deployment strategy, perhaps the appliance solution is a better option.
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Ashley Davis profile photo
June 29, 2017

vCenter Server Review: "VMware vCenter leads the pack in hypervisor technology"

Ashley Davis
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
As an IT firm, we deploy VMware both in-house and for many clients to consolidate hardware and reduce costs. Virtual servers on one more powerful host is far more cost efficient than multiple smaller servers. It takes up less space on premises and the hardware you purchase for a VMware host is far more reliable than what you would buy for smaller individual servers. Larger servers as VMware host also have the advantage of redundancy in hardware so you almost never have everything go down.
  • Consolidation of hardware resources.
  • Hardware redundancy.
  • Cost effective deployment of new servers.
  • The web UI leaves something to be desired, but this is being addressed in vCenter 6.5 and beyond.
  • Some hardware settings can be a bit obtuse.
vCenter server is useful in almost all scenarios. Its function as a hypervisor that gives you the ability to run multiple servers on one host means that you can easily organize the functions of the virtual machines. No more MySQL running on the domain controller and causing issues when a reboot is necessary. On the other hand, it may not be necessary for very small deployments where only one or two servers are necessary.
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John Dopson profile photo
October 16, 2017

vCenter Server Review: "Vcenter center."

John Dopson
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It is being used for my whole virtual environment. It consolidates all virtual workloads into one pane of glass. Both development and production workloads are managed.
  • Consolidates all hosts by your groupings.
  • Performance metrics.
  • Integrated tools.
  • Built in performance tools instead of having to use vcops.
It is the go to tool for esx management very easy to use and most day to day features built in.
Read John Dopson's full review
No photo available
September 12, 2017

vCenter Server Review: "shrink your datacenter, grow your efficiency with vCenter"

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We currently use VMware vCenter to manage our 250 virtualized servers. We have eliminated all but a couple physical servers. vCenter has allowed us to reduce costs across the board, from power consumption to datacenter space. We have also benefited from having one tool to manage all of our servers, instead of having to use multiple web portals and rdp connections.
  • It integrates with our storage products and easily helps us both deploy and adjust our disk usage on the fly. You can easily see now only the space available, but also which servers are using what storage at any given time through one relatively simple interface.
  • vCenter vmotion works well to migrate servers between hypervisors. This comes in handy both when balancing resource usage, but also when a hypervisor needs some maintenance or repairs. We can easily and quickly vacate a hypervisor and get work done with no downtime on the servers.
  • vCenter's server console runs smoothly with minimal resources. This allows us to have access to, sometimes, many servers simultaneously without tasking the client resources.
  • VMware vCenter allows us to quickly and easily add memory and other virtual hardware to servers very quickly to fix performance issues.
  • Not all applications fully support virtualization. vCenter isn't aware of those applications at all, so you need to be careful to configure your settings so that servers that don't like being moved aren't moved during production times. You don't want a SQL server getting migrated during your work day.
  • vCenter has moved away from the desktop client in the newer versions in favor of the web version. The desktop, in my opinion, is superior. They have begun making some features web only, so they have been very passive aggressive in trying to slowly move people over to the web client.
  • We have had issues where granular permissions created problems. The error logs as a general error and doesn't recognized that a task failed because of permissions, you need to review and figure that out. It would be nicer if a permissions problem referenced that in the event log to simplify troubleshooting.
If you are doing more than a few servers virtualized, vCenter is the way to go. It allows you to manage a lot of servers and resources pretty easily and cleanly. You will need some training or hire a good consultant to help with the initial setup. If you are only planning on virtualizing a small group of servers, it will be a lot of effort to get configured on set up with little chance to realize a real ROI.
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No photo available
August 07, 2017

Review: "Virtualize the pain away with vCenter Server!"

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
vCenter server helped us modernize our testing infrastructure from being a fully bare-metal shop to utilizing virtual machines for any and all use cases that make sense. Specifically, our evaluation department benefited most directly from this change, as they were previously constrained by available physical machines. Now, with vCenter Server, and the ability to templatize common machine requirements. Providing an easy way for evaluators to easily create and destroy machines as needed for their testing efforts simplifies the complex management of physical machines. We've also deployed an in-house framework that leverages the comprehensive vCenter API for performing automation of our nightly tests.
  • vCenter API/Power CLI. These tools provide an easy way to interface and automate interactions with vCenter, and expand its functionality nearly to the limits of your imagination. We've dramatically improved the quality of our software by integrating our automation with vCenter for easily reused or destroyed testing environments.
  • Templates and customization specifications. Together, these two features provide users a very easy way to create multiple instances of known machine configurations, and have them configured specific to your application, need, or development team. This is a powerful feature that saves a substantial amount of time in set up, especially if you prefer short-term virtual machines, rather than long-term maintenance.
  • Snapshots. Ok, I might get crucified by the IT guys who manage vCenter and hate snapshots with a passion, but they are an incredibly useful tool for doing exploratory testing. They enable developers and evaluators alike to perform the iterate / test cycle in a much quicker manner than ever before. Moreover, it enables that same group to limit down time after a failed attempt by being able to revert back to a known good state in mere seconds. This feature should be strongly considered for any deployment.
  • Clients. vCenter has long been trying to abandon the locally installed thick client in favor of a web client. The problem is, the web client still isn't a good user experience. Installing plugins, having poor performance, etc, makes users continue to use the thick client for a majority of tasks.
  • Virtual Machine management could improve. I understand there are specific ways of managing Windows updates, etc, but it seems too complex to attempt. I'm not sure if its feasible, but I'd love one-button management across all my virtual machines AND their snapshots.
  • Customization Specifications could be more robust. When they fail, it is often frustrating to figure out why. At this point, its a vague middle ground in between vCenter and Windows, but providing easier methods of diagnosing the failure would be well received.
If you've never used vCenter Server before, you can use it to dramatically modernize your infrastructure. If you're tackling evaluation in a physical environment still, stop reading this and go buy a vCenter. Your resource contention will vaporize, and you'll find yourself more able to respond to testing needs quicker than ever before.

If, however, you're looking for push-button deployments for non-technical users, vCenter is not the self-serve portal you're looking for. VMWare offers other products that will be better suited for your needs, like vCloud.
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No photo available
August 03, 2017

Review: "vCenter Server makes managing enterprise vSphere environments easy!"

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use vCenter server to manage our on-premises VMWare VSphere environment. We currently have two instances of vCenter installed at our university - one for managing our main vSphere clusters, and a separate one at a remote campus for managing the vSphere cluster in our DR data center. Users are typically from within the technology services department.
  • vCenter is, in my opinion, the only way to go for managing vSphere clusters - it centralizes management for all of the ESX hosts as well as all of the VMs themselves.
  • vCenter is extremely good at consolidating all of the information you need to know about your ESX hosts and your VMs in to one easily referable location.
  • vCenter makes it easy to allocate all of the compute and storage resources in your vSphere clusters in the most efficient way possible.
  • The vSphere web client is sub-par. The interface is slow and difficult to navigate. The old standalone client was/is better to use, but for some functionality, you are forced to use the web client.
vCenter is well suited to managing large enterprise deployments of ESX/vSphere. For smaller, less automated installations, it's probably overkill, but I can't imagine trying to manage an enterprise deployment of vSphere without it. More specifically - if you have large, integrated vSphere environments (multiple clusters or data centers, SAN storage, many hosts, etc.) it's a great tool. If you don't have those things, you can probably get along without it.
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October 24, 2017

vCenter Server Review: "VMware still the King"

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
vCenter was used as our primary virtualization hyper visor before we migrated to Hyper-V. We hosted about 500 VMs of different operating systems. Depending on how it is implemented, it can have tremendous ROI and can consolidate datacenter infrastructure.
  • Virtualize Servers
  • Virtualize networking
  • Consolidate infrastructure
  • The licensing can be confusing, especially when you don't necessarily know what functionality you might need.
  • Pricing can be prohibitive. Other vendors (Microsoft) are increasing market share with a lower price point.
  • Integrate cloud functionality so that workloads can seamlessly be deployed wherever you want.
In a devops environment where self provisioning is needed, VMware can shine. In smaller installations, it can be very, very easy to get up and running (the same can not be said for Hyper-V and other competitors). The days of buying servers for single use are over, and VMWare is the top choice to virtualize.
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September 25, 2017

Review: "vCenter Server - the VMware management tool"

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use vCenter to manage more than 2,000 ESXi servers across the world. Our server administrators use vCenter to manage more than 10,000 virtual servers.
  • vMotion, Storage VMotion, DRS and HA are vCenter features that I really like that work very, very well.
  • vCenter server strengths - stability and great GUI
  • VMware needs to improve the web client. For some tasks, the old VI client is much faster.
  • They need to find the way to manage VDS if you have a vCenter outage.
vCenter is the management tool for any VMware environment, it is always well suited.
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April 10, 2017

Review: "Why you need vCenter Server and can't live without it"

Stefan Semo
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Managing multiple ESXi Hosts is no easy task, especially if you wish to take advantage of the VMware automation features. Once you have 2 or more hosts vCenter Server becomes a necessity. While it used to be that you needed Windows Server to deploy and run vCenter, VMware has been steadily improving the Linux appliance (vCSA), to the point where almost all functionality is now included.

From a business standpoint it is a winner because:

  • There is no need to pay for a Windows OS license for vCenter Server
  • There is no need to upgrade the Windows OS or maintain third-party tools on the server running vCenter
  • Because there is no Windows OS or vCenter application to install in windows, the deployment is very fast.
  • Multiple hosts management
  • Allows for Cloning, Host and Datastore Migrations
  • Allows for power management across multiple hosts
  • The HTML5 Web interface of vCenter (VCSA) install not inclusive of all functionality.
  • Auto-Updates of the appliance are still lacking
  • Deployment wizard is a bit buggy and cumbersome
When managing multiple hosts VCS is mandatory, however in environments where hosts are running separately and independently, it is not needed.
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April 04, 2017

Review: "VMware vCenter Server: An invaluable tool"

Michael Kerzner
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
I work for a managed services IT provider. All of our clients utilize VMware vCenter Server. vCenter Server makes our lives very easy when it comes to managing Virtual Servers and Workstations. vCenter Server keeps all of our virtual machines in a central location making them very easy to manage. If we have a host that needs maintenance, vCenter Server allows us to live migrate the virtual machines to another host so we can perform the maintenance with no downtime.
  • VMware vCenter Server takes all of my Virtual Machines a from multiple hosts and makes centralized management a reality. I need to access only one interface and can make changes or access all of my hosts, datastores, and virtual machines.
  • VMware vCenter Server offers vMotion a service that is extremely important in all of the environments I manage. I am able to migrate virtual machines from one host to another without shutting down the virtual machine. This allows me to free up resources on a host or empty a host completely so maintenance or a reboot can be performed.
  • VMware vCenter Server allows me to access it via a web browser. I can then console into any of my virtual machines using only the web browser. My VMs open in a seperate tab and I am able to control it just as if I were in front of the physical console.
  • There is definitely a learning curve when using vCenter Server. You can't just jump right in, you need to do your research first and possibly acquire some training.
  • Migrating VMware vCenter Server from either the Windows version to the Linux Appliance or upgrading the Linux Appliance to the newest version of the Linux Appliance isn't always the easiest experience.
If you are in an environment that utilizes multiple ESXi hosts with multiple virtual machines on each, VMware vCenter Server is an invaluable tool that will not only make your life easier, it will greatly improve your productivity. Centrally managing hosts and virtual machines is a no-brainer when it comes to saving valuable time that none of us really have in today's IT world.
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Flavio Mancini profile photo
April 13, 2017

vCenter Server Review: "The Past, maybe the present, but not the future"

Flavio Mancini
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use vCenter across the whole organization. We have two sites with VMware 6.0 in stretched cluster to have a redundant and geographically distributed environment to ensure the provision of services even in the event of a fault and also to have a recovery time near-zero data loss. With this configuration, we decided to abandon the VMware SRM feature.

The implementation and management is not so difficult and is a good solution but with elevated costs.
  • Analysis
  • Management of VMs
  • Easy to use
  • The elevated licensing costs have a big impact. We are finding different solution to escaoe from a lock-in infrastructure
  • Centralized view
Well suited in environment that need specific features that only VMware solution can offer in the better way, like the use of NSX.
But if you need the general benefit of virtualization you can choose a different solution.
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March 14, 2017

Review: "VMware vCenter Server - Essential for sharing compute resources across an enterprise"

Andrew Salinger
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It is used by our IT department and across the whole IT organization globally. It addresses the ability to deploy servers at remote and local sites without the lag time of purchasing additional hardware resources as well as flexibility and high availability capabilities.
  • High availability across different physical servers and storage for virtualized server compute.
  • Multiple network configurations/management
  • Flexible resource management/memory/storage
  • Hardware passthrough sometimes an issue
  • Network configuration can sometimes be challenging
  • ESX firewall management features somewhat hidden
VMware suits our organization for easily managing computing resources across multiple physical servers. It functions great with vMotion and upgrading servers with little to no downtime necessary when properly executing migrations. End users are left completely unaware of the server resource migrations that occur behind the scenes. Physical hardware failure resulting in a complete server rebuild became a thing of the past with VCenter Server.
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Steven Hiersche, Jr. profile photo
February 24, 2017

vCenter Server Review: "vCenter is the Best!"

Steven Hiersche, Jr.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We currently have vCenter server installed on its own Windows 2012 VM. We did not go with the virtual appliance. It is managing our 8 host, HA, vSphere 6.0 cluster. This cluster houses 100+ VMs. vCenter Server allows us to manage all of the hosts from one pane of glass.
  • One pane of glass management allows us to control all of our hosts from the same portal.
  • Host profile setup allows us to basically clone an existing host to a new host and make sure the cluster requirements are met.
  • Ease of use. Very easy to template a VM, Clone a VM, set up HA, network the hosts.
  • Lack of good reporting. VMware strips out quality reporting tools and packages them up in other licensed software. Makes it more expensive.
  • Expensive. All VMware licensing is expensive in comparison to their competitors.
VMware server is well suited for businesses that have more than one vSphere host in their environment.
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December 15, 2016

vCenter Server Review: "Single place to manage servers"

karan singh
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
As a support engineer I support more than 1000 servers for a well known Telecom operator in India, running on ESXi 5.5 and managed by vCenter Server 5.5. Managing currently running VNF on these servers using vCould director and vCenter. These servers are designed to support IMS and TAS applications related to Telecommunication.
  • All servers at one place
  • Management at ease
  • Fast accessibility to server nodes
  • In 5.5, networking requires some improvement.
  • In 5.5, one dashboard is required to see health/performance of all the servers.
[VMware vCenter Server is well suited for] saving the cost of additional hardware by efficient utilization of hardware resources and ease application management.
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March 24, 2017

vCenter Server Review: "The best way to manage a virtual infrastructure"

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
Review Source
vCenter is at use both at the company I work for as well as other companies that use our software. It is great for centralized management of a virtual infrastructure.
  • Infrastructure Management
  • Virtual Machine Management
  • Reporting
  • The web interface normally gets mixed reviews
  • It is resource intensive at 4vCPU and 16GB of ram
  • Could be less complex
[VMware vCenter is well suited for] Any environment where VMware ESXi is being used.
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Kashif Iqbal profile photo
October 11, 2016

vCenter Server Review: "One stop to manage servers"

Kashif Iqbal
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
I have deployed vCenter server 5.5 for one of the leading Indian Telecom operators to virtualise a telecom application server (VNF). This vCenter Server is licensed with the enterprise plus edition. It manages more than 1000 HPGen8 blade servers installed with Esxi 5.5
  • Single platform to monitor, manage and configure many servers
  • SSO feature for authenticity
  • Enhaced linked mode for mutisite vcenter intergeration
  • Ease of use
  • In 5.5 all improvements were done
  • In 6.0 there are some new features in the HA module
It is best for a virtualized environment to be managed running on an ESXi Hypervisor.
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February 02, 2016

Review: "VMware vCenter Server is the way to go!"

Aaron Hartzler
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

VMware vCenter Server is being used heavily by my organization. We rely on it daily for supporting the numerous applications that run our core business. From deploying web servers to database servers to application servers, VMware vCenter Server handles nearly all cases where a new server is needed.

VMware vCenter server is mainly managed by the group I am a part of (infrastructure), but what VMware supports and what runs on the servers deployed therein is used across the entire organization. Some of the main business problems it addresses are:

  • Data center size. With vCenter server, we were able to drastically reduce our data center footprint.

  • Data center power consumption. With vCenter server, we were able to drastically reduce our power consumption footprint.

  • Ease of server management. VMware vCenter server makes managing large numbers of servers easy.

  • Speed and efficiency. Our team is able to quickly deploy servers through vCenter.

  • Ease of server/application support. Features like snapshots, memory hot-add, and HA (high availability) make supporting servers, applications, and databases a breeze.

  • Ease of server backups. Server backups are easier with virtual servers.

  • The list goes on and on!!

  • Speed and efficiency. Our team is able to quickly deploy servers through vCenter. Things like cloning servers, deploying servers from templates, and even creating a VM from scratch is just a few clicks. You have a new VM up and running in a matter of minutes!
  • Ease of server/application support. Features like snapshots, memory hot-add, and HA (high availability) make supporting servers, applications, and databases a breeze. Taking a snapshot before a patch or upgrade can save hours if not days worth of time in the event of an issue or problem caused by said patch/upgrade. The ability to add "hardware" like RAM or hard drive space on the fly while the VM is running is like a server admin's dream. HA is a life saver! You can lose an entire physical host and your VM will be "magically" brought back online on another available host in the cluster. Though you have a short outage, your VM is back up and running before you can say "downtime".
  • Ease of server backups. Server backups are easier with virtual servers. There are many options as far as choices go for backing up VMs and with VMware vCenter server, it makes backing them up a breeze no matter your choice of backup flavor!
  • Ease of server management. VMware vCenter server makes managing large numbers of servers easy. Features like DRS (distributed resource scheduler) can allow you to balance your workloads for optimized performance. It can also allow you to give your resource intensive servers higher priority to those resources. Also, the ability to adjust many many many features on the fly with minimal to no service disruption is huge!
  • Pricing. However, you do get what you pay for, enterprise world class software. Alternatives (if you can call them that) like Hyper-V and Virtual Box are a sad comparison.
  • Learning curve. Disclaimer: any typical I.T. professional will be able to pick up VMware vCenter Server fairly quickly. However, there is just a wealth of features and configuration options that can be overwhelming to a newcomer.
  • Not many other cons. There is a reason VMware is the market leader in virtualization.
VMware vCenter Server is well suited for nearly all server infrastructures. It is potentially not well suited for environments where physical servers are a must, like in plant environments with special hardware. Also, very small environments may not see the benefit like bigger environments do. Regardless, the benefits and features would benefit even an environment as small as five servers!
Read Aaron Hartzler's full review

vCenter Server Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (130)
9.2
Usability (1)
8.0

About vCenter Server

vCenter Server from VMware is a virtualization management solution for vSphere.
Categories:  Virtualization Management

vCenter Server Integrations

vCenter Server Technical Details

Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No