Item: VMware ESXi
Rating: 10
Author: Tim Enders

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use VMWare ESXi as the virtualization platform for our entire production environment across the University. This includes all on-premises production, test, and development servers, as well as our remote application delivery and VDI environments. It allows us to design and rapidly deploy environments that are flexible, redundant, and efficient. We have used VMware ESXi for over ten years and are quite happy with the product. It is essential to everything that we do.

Pros and Cons

Virtualization - it allows you to take full advantage of your hardware investments
Flexibility - it allows you to run services across disparate hardware types
Scalability - it allows you to expand and deploy new services rapidly

Complexity - if you're not familiar with the product there is a learning curve.
It does require other licensed VMWare products (vCenter Server, etc.) for full functionality.

Return on Investment

VMware ESXi has had a huge positive impact and good ROI.
It fundamentally changed how we operate for the better.
It has allowed us to make full use of capital investments in server and storage infrastructure.

Alternatives Considered

Hyper-V and Nutanix AOS

When we bought VMware ESXi ten or so years ago, there weren't a lot of other competitors in the market. Nutanix didn't exist yet, and Hyper-V was in its infancy. Since then, Hyper-V has matured, and other products like Nutanix have come on the market as more fully developed competitors. We purchased Nutanix last year so that we could move to a hyper-converged hardware infrastructure. Still, we opted to continue using VMware ESXi for our Hypervisor instead of AOS because of the maturity and feature set offered by VMware ESXi.

Support Rating

VMWare support has always been quite excellent over the years. They are generally prompt to respond, and when they do, their support engineers are knowledgeable and are usually able to resolve our problems quite quickly. On several occasions, they have gone above and beyond to make themselves available in off-hours to assist us.

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?

Yes

Did implementation of VMware ESXi go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy VMware ESXi again?

Yes

Other Software Used

VMware Horizon (formerly VMware View), VMware vCenter Server

Likelihood to Recommend

VMware ESXi is one of the two or three best products I've used in my career. It revolutionized IT infrastructure when it was released, and it continues to be an essential underpinning to our entire environment now. It is the segment leader for on-premises server virtualization. It does carry some significant licensing costs, but we have found that those easily pay for themselves over time for an institution of our size.

VMWare ESXi is still the king of Hypervisors

Overall Satisfaction with VMware ESXi