ESXi is the best in class hypervisor and VM platform
January 19, 2020
ESXi is the best in class hypervisor and VM platform
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with VMware ESXi
VMware ESXi is being used to host applications and VMs that support the entire university. ESXi is the primary hypervisor in use in our organization, and has been primary for over 10 years now. It allows us to provide computer and storage resources to our users and departments in an extremely efficient way with many functions that facilitate availability and uptime.
- vMotion: the ability to move a VM from one place to another, even on disparate storage, works flawlessly and allows us to be agile and maintain performance.
- PowerCli includes a robust set of PowerShell commands to be able to automate just about anything.
- Integration with other products and vendors is sometimes complex.
- Getting the right permissions configurations to allow certain actions is difficult.
- IT can use its hardware budget efficiently by being able to overprovision and reallocate resources.
- With the ability to quickly provision and reprovision with templates and automation tools, we are able to provide customers with computing resources and VMs when they need them.
I have used many hypervisors and VM platforms (KVM, OracleVM, HyperV, etc.) and ESXi is by far the most effective, full-featured, hypervisor and VM platform available. They have always been the leader and first to deliver their most important features (vMotion, svMotion, DRS, snapshots, automation tools, etc.). ESXi is also the foundation of all the other offerings in the VMware portfolio. So if you are thinking of a full Software-Defined Datacenter, with orchestration and hybrid-cloud potential in the VMware world, it all starts with ESXi because it does the hypervisor essentials so well. ESXi becomes a valuable asset in your overall datacenter strategy.
On several urgent issues, VMware support has been fast and effective at resolving problems impacting key production services. Their developers are always introducing new features and functionality and making ESXi more and more valuable to their customers. Upgrades have been fairly easy and straightforward, and compatibility with various hardware versions and ESXi versions has been effective.
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?
Yes
Did implementation of VMware ESXi go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy VMware ESXi again?
Yes
VMware ESXi works well in large environments where lots of computing and storage resources need to be shared and constantly reallocated for virtual machines. There are full-featured versions that come at a high cost, but there are also versions that lack some features that may not be needed at a lower cost, and even a free version for small lab environments. If you just need one virtual machine to run periodically, you can use one of the more consumer-grade hypervisors like Workstation, Fusion, or just Virtual Box for free.