Item: VMware ESXi
Rating: 10
Author: Dan Lepinski

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use VMware ESXi across our global organization. It's managed by our System Administrators and leveraged by our DevOps teams to help automate business processes. It gives us flexibility and stability for testing. We have multi-ESXi host clusters for high availability. VMware ESXi has allowed us to virtualize most of our physical server infrastructure which has allowed us to work remotely from our data centers. It removes the need to lifecycle 100's of physical servers in favor of a simple lifecycle of a few VMware ESXi hosts.

Pros and Cons

High availability. Clustered VMware ESXi hosts make it easy to take a host out of production.
Storage DRS helps balance virtual disks across the cluster.

The Flash and HTML5 web interfaces are missing simple sorting features for some lists.
Errors messages can be vague at times, which requires searching the community for answers.

Return on Investment

We're able to build 100's of servers in our environments as needed instead of waiting for physical hardware.
VMware ESXi has allowed us to allocate access to different teams so they can build and test servers as needed.

Alternatives Considered

Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer)

VMware ESXi has always felt more like an industry standard. VMware ESXi comes with great support through their contact methods, their knowledge base articles, and the massive online community of users who have been using and experimenting with VMware ESXi for years. VMware's PowerCLI has a strong community backing to help you automate many of your tasks, which makes administrating VMware ESXi even simpler.

Support Rating

VMware ESXi is a large organization. You can expect to go through the typical support channels starting from the bottom and working your way up the chain. This can be frustrating at times if you have an annoying issue you'd like solved. However, if your environment is complete down, they can be relatively quick to respond and resolve the issue.

Key Insights

Do you think VMware ESXi delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with VMware ESXi's feature set?

Yes

Did VMware ESXi live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of VMware ESXi go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy VMware ESXi again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, Komprise

Likelihood to Recommend

VMware ESXi is well suited where you don't have the physical space needed for the number servers you require. If you have applications that require little to no downtime, VMware ESXi can help provide that when clustered with other hosts. VMware ESXi will allow you to snapshot servers prior to major upgrades and changes. This provides a relatively safe fallback option if the upgrade doesn't go well. You can also leverage this to quickly go back to a clean state when testing new software or code.

VMware gives you flexibility and stability

Overall Satisfaction with VMware ESXi