vCenter Server is a purchase we don't regret
March 09, 2018
vCenter Server is a purchase we don't regret
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with VMware vCenter Server
The IT team uses vCenter server to manage our virtual environment. We have 8 hosts that contain a few hundred servers ranging from domain controllers, to file servers, to database servers. Our entire infrastructure is virtual so a solid hypervisor and accompanying tools are key. With vCenter, we are able to provide a stable environment with vMotion and manage all of our servers no matter where they float to in the cluster. We are tasked with responding quickly to requests for more storage space, servers for applications, and database growth. vCenter allows us to perform these tasks in minutes without having to worry about which host we're on at the moment. It provides a true one-stop-shop for our VMWare environment.
- The one thing that is does the best is provide a single place from which to view my entire virtual environment. I've dealt with environments of two hosts with a few guests and environments with 8 hosts and hundreds of guests...it both cases it saves valuable time trying to see what my guests are up to and what the host environment is behaving.
- vCenter provides me a stable environment. vMotion not only provides protection against a single host going down, but also helps keep resource consumption down by moving busy servers to less busy hosts. All of this is done without taking the guest down. This means no more late nights of staying up to have a non-busy maintenance window. With vMotion and storage vMotion, I can do my job during business hours.
- When I need to provision a server, it's a matter of a few minutes to deploy a template. If I need to increase RAM or drive space on a server because the drive filled up, I can do that in seconds. It let me have a single place where I can very quickly respond to many different types of challenges I face.
- I still am not happy with the web interface. While convenient in that I can access vCenter from anywhere I have a browser connection, It feels slower than the thick client and if I'm doing anything that takes longer than a few minutes, I'll always opt for the thick client.
- It has had a positive impact in that it saves our system admins a lot of time. We can do maintenance during the day and don't have to bounce between hosts to interact with different guests.
- It reduces downtime which, in turn, saves us money. When our systems are down, our users cannot do their jobs and the company suffers for it. Being able to manage snapshots and quickly revert if a patch or upgrade goes wrong is an amazing thing.
When we were selecting a hypervisor a few years ago, VMware was the clear leader at the time. Now the gap has lessened but I still like the feature set and feel of VMware. VMware is also moving in a direction I generally like, so I don't have any reason to replace what we've invested in.