Item: VMware ESXi
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize VMware across our entire organization including our production data center locations as well as our corporate office locations. VMware ESXi has changed our business practices positively in every way. It has allowed us to break the strings attached between the hardware layer and OSE layer and has allowed us significant flexibility in regards to update time of our products and services.

Pros and Cons

Better uptime
Easier scheduled maintenance windows when an outage is needed
Consolidation of server hardware
Flexibility

License Costs
Better email notification support of host hardware usage or failure
Better email notification support of guest OSE disk usage / system resources / thresholds

Return on Investment

Turn around times to spin up new OSE is 100 times faster
Centralized management with vCenter makes everything faster to manage multiple host servers
VMware ESXi has allowed us to expand our hosted solution offerings for customers

Alternatives Considered

Hyper-V

At the time, MS Hyper-V was new and wasn't very mature. Hyper-V classification as a hypervisor is questionable in my opinion as it does require a more over head than VMware ESXi does. We wanted a mature product that was going to be very reliable and not require much "babysitting."

Other Software Used

Microsoft Exchange, CodeTwo Email Signatures, Desk.com

Likelihood to Recommend

VMware ESXi will dramatically help any business consolidate their existing physical server environments by utilizing better usage of host system resources which will, in turn, save on rack space costs, server costs, and energy / heat by combining those server OSEs into virtualized environments that can allow the usage of multiple OSEs on each host server.

The standard when it comes to virtualizing servers

Overall Satisfaction with VMware ESXi