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VMTurbo, the employee that is always on the job.
October 20, 2015

VMTurbo, the employee that is always on the job.

Tom Walker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Cloud Edition,Enterprise Edition

Overall Satisfaction with VMTurbo Operations Manager

The product is being used between two groups at the Office of Physical Plant at Penn State University. The product eases the strain of little resources to manage two large VMware infrastructures. We currently have several tasks automated to maintain performance and efficiency. We are beginning to utilize the Capacity/Planning functions to address our current growth rate of the storage system. As the supervisor, the reports help me make decisions on where we need to be in the next year, including budgeting.
  • Dashboards - The dashboards allow you to get quick glances at key aspects you are looking for. Being able to customize your our dashboards allows you to pull the information that matters to you.
  • Automation - The automation of tasks reduces the time my staff has to spend manually moving or adding Memory/CPU to VMs. This has allowed our system to be setup more dynamically and not wasting resources on VMs that don't need them.
  • Historic Data - Being able to compare how the system performed last month to this month has enabled us to evaluate upgrades and priorities. It also allows us to gain insight to growth and potential issues.
  • Training - We have had multiple training sessions with engineers and there are still functions in the system we do not fully understand that may be of value to how we do business.
  • SRM Support - The system seems to lack the ability to understand a hot DR site and makes recommendations to suspend underutilized systems.
  • DRS Rule Updates - There seem to be delays in reading new or changed DRS Rules, this sometimes causes vCenter and VMTurbo Operations Manager to compete and make multiple moves to a VM.
  • HA Conflicts - We had a scenario where HA was trying move VMs because of a network failure but VMTurbo Operations Manager was trying to move the VMs at the same time for performance. It created a storm of vMotion traffic that brought the hosts to a crawl. This wasn't a direct problem with VMTurbo Operations Manager but can be a gotcha when automating tasks.
  • For the cost of the software, we have not had to hire another employee.
  • Customers have reported better performance of applications and less downtime than previously.
I believe there is a specific tool for every job. Most vendors are trying to cram everything in to a single pane of glass which is beneficial to smaller shops. While in the ideal world it would be nice, in the real world there are things that get overlooked in such a large broad product. Others chose to give you a taste of their full blown products but each module costs more than your budget. VMTurbo Operations Manager fit the situation for us and relived some of the workload. We are looking at other products to dig in to the other key areas of interest to my staff.
It really depends on the issues you are trying to resolve within your environment. We don't just utilize VMTurbo Operations Manager for all our needs with managing/maintaining a VMware infrastructure. For us we needed to reduce some of the daily/routine tasks that could be automated and not require constant attention. With a limited staff, we don't have a person that we can dedicate to watching our VMware Infrastructure. VMTurbo Operations is that extra employee looking at VMware and making proactive decisions to keep the system running in a healthy state. It can also notify us of potential situations that will require human intervention or escalation.

Evaluating VMTurbo Operations Manager and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Third-party Reviews
I had used the product at a previous company and valued what the product could do for automating tasks.
Get more time with an engineer level tech to gain better insight on what more we can do with the product.

VMTurbo Operations Manager Implementation

Use your evaluation time to its fullest. Implement automation and see what other functions can better your environment.
  • Implemented in-house
Change management was minimal - 

To utilize the products automation functionality fully

  1. OSs that support hot/swap Memory and CPU
  2. Host with Light-On capability
  • Connecting a primary server to view sub servers on different networks

Using VMTurbo Operations Manager

Getting started is easy and quick. When you start getting past the basics it becomes less intuitive as to what you need to do to make the system work for you better.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Setting target to vCenter
  • Automating basic tasks
  • Reporting
  • Planning
  • Workloads
  • Un-focusing windows/tabs