Item: VMware vCenter
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with VMware vCenter Server

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

VMware vCenter Server is being used by IT and dev to control environments and get reporting on the overall status of the environment. We are not using any of the add-on features, such as Orchestrator or SRM. It is extremely functional and easy to use - between the enterprise and features in 6.0 - it is leaps and bounds ahead of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), XenCenter, etc.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ease of management of the actual VCenter server. Deploying and upgrading has become trivial since the release of VCA.
Built-in ESXi monitoring and pre-determined alarms keep us ahead of issues- especially with integration into the HP onboard sensors.
There are several failsafe features built-in - example: when moving ports to a distributed switch, if connectivity fails, it moves them back automatically.

Cons

Very expensive - especially considering that with standard and above it is not optional. I think they should bundle it in with some ESXi levels.
The lack of a good mobile web UI is disappointing.
Leverages flash... support for various browsers for the client integration tools after flash/browser upgrades is spotty.

Return on Investment

Vcenter makes uptime for environments and some workloads much easier. Fault tolerance, vmotion and s-vmotion make host maintenance very simple.
We can spin up entire environments in hours and not days.

Alternatives Considered

I've used Xen, KVM, Hyper-V, OracleVM and few others - most in money making production environments. All of them have their own management toolsets which offer the same core functionality as ESXi with vCenter; however pass that core set of functionality, vCenter really stands up on its own - if only for ease of use.

Creating DRS rules, host clusters, storage clusters and some basic automation tasks are all significantly easier than with any other toolset - as well just seeing overall virtual environment health.

Other Software Used

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, SolarWinds IPAM, Splunk, Microsoft Exchange, Windows Server, Duo Security, Tenable Unified Security, Skype for Business

Likelihood to Recommend

Anywhere ESX is used, this is a no brainer. Other than the licensing cost, I can not think of any scenario in which this should not be used with ESXi. They do support third party hypervisors, but I have not tried this. From what I've read, SCVMM may be better suited for multi-hypervisor environments

Comments

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vCenter or bust