Item: VMware vSphere
Rating: 9
Author: Chris Saenz

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

vSphere is our primary hypervisor being used at our organization. We run a wide variety of technologies and workloads on vSphere-backed VMs; including large Oracle databases, VDI, Active Directory, OpenShift clusters, student information systems, finance systems, and more. vSphere has saved our organization spending money on bare-metal hardware. It has also allowed us to be much more flexible and efficient with our hardware resources.

Pros and Cons

vMotion and svMotion are seamless and efficient.
Storage, Compute, and Memory thin provision.
Snapshots are extremely helpful in times where a quick point in time recovery is needed.

Licensing is expensive.
Datastore management can have a high administrative cost.
Web interface can be a bit slower than their client used to be.

Return on Investment

vSphere has allowed us to be extremely efficient with our hardware resources.
vSphere has allowed us to be agile and effective at provisioning for our customers.
vSphere has given us the ability to be very proactive in maintaining our VMs and virtual infrastructure.

Alternatives Considered

Hyper-V and Oracle VM Server

vSphere simply is best-in-class for its features and functionality. It does guest OS management, thin provisioning, deployment, management, networking, vMotion, and automation better than all the rest. vSphere is always the first to implement new and advanced features and push the limits of their virtualization software. Because they are best-in-class, third-party integration and adoption always starts with vSphere.

Support Rating

My experience with VMware support is that they run a very good support center. For small incidents or configuration questions, while they may take a little while to get back to you, they are typically knowledgeable and helpful. For major and business-critical issues, they are responsive and very effective at getting resolutions in a timely manner. I've had many calls with their engineers, and it is not very often that it takes them long to figure out root causes.

Key Insights

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

Yes

Are you happy with VMware vSphere's feature set?

Yes

Did VMware vSphere live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of VMware vSphere go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy VMware vSphere again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Nagios Core, MariaDB, Centreon

Likelihood to Recommend

Without vCenter (VMware management software), vSphere is suited for small businesses that have disparate storage and networking. vSphere is an enterprise-class hypervisor that can run a diverse variety of workloads. Technically, it is best-in-class for all functions and features, and can be implemented on a variety of workloads (database, VDI, etc.). According to white-papers, third-party tests, and my experience, virtual technologies add only negligible performance differences versus bare-metal systems.

vSphere is simply best-in-class

Overall Satisfaction with vSphere