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VMware AppDefense (discontinued)

Score4 out of 10

16 Reviews and Ratings

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What is VMware AppDefense (discontinued)?

VMware AppDefense was a hypervisor-native workload protection platform for enterprise virtualization and security teams, used to deliver a secure virtual infrastructure and simplify micro-segmentation planning by providing application visibility, reputation scoring, and security. The product is discontinued, and no longer available.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about VMware AppDefense (discontinued).
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Innovative Approach to Application Behavior Monitoring

Incentivized
Troy Mayes
Systems Engineer in Information Technology at NAES Corp (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Pros

  • I think that the AppDefense approach is clever and sets it apart from other products. Having a baseline of normal behavior that I can see is something I haven't seen in another product before.
  • AppDefense doesn't overload my systems with performance draining agents.
  • AppDefense integrates with VMWare products I have or plan to purchase.
  • Access to AppDefense support has been better than any other VMWare products.

Cons

  • The installation and update process is time consuming and requires too many reboots.
  • Bare metal support is very badly needed.
  • Reporting is weak. I need to pull information out that shows regulatory compliance requirements are being satisfied.
  • When I whitelist or blacklist a process there are no fields to track why that decision was made.
  • Blacklisting doesn't do what I thought it was doing.
  • Some basic AV should be included to satisfy regulatory requirements.

Return on Investment

  • Going from no visibility into this area, we have mostly gained positive impacts. So far the only security issues we have seen were on one of the few bare metal systems that we have.

Other Software Used

vCenter Site Recovery Manager

knowledge is power

Incentivized
David McDonald
Systems Administrator in Information Technology at City of Birmingham (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • More visibility into my VM environment

Cons

  • Notification: send an email or a text for any alerts

Return on Investment

  • Positive: more information. Another tool to help manage - monitor the environment

Other Software Used

vRealize Suite, Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam Backup & Replication

First year on AppDefense

Incentivized
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Understanding normalized operations and resource usage of VMs at the guest level
  • Fine grain control of of guest level operations

Cons

  • Steep learning and a lot of moving pieces
  • Very new product and Carbon Black is the only 3rd party vendor that can integrate
  • Limited information and training. We've never been to VMworld but it was barely mentioned at the VMUG UserCons we've attended

Return on Investment

  • As with everything now, automation is key. AppDefense effectively monitors the activity on all our VMs, freeing administrators to work on more projects
  • Makes it much easier to diagnose issues when system are not running as intended

Alternatives Considered

Sophos Intercept X and Trend Micro Deep Discovery Analyzer

Other Software Used

VMware NSX, Lansweeper, Veeam Availability Suite

VMware AppDefense makes sense and is easy to deploy

Incentivized
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Configuration and deployment were simple.
  • Consuming the data from the OS and presenting it to the user with simplicity.
  • AppDefense Manager has built in Online Chat Support, so it is easy to reach a representative for assistance.

Cons

  • PowerShell functionality.
  • Sorting results in some areas are not applicable.
  • Email alerting through AppDefense Manager does not exist, but support has said it is a feature to come.

Return on Investment

  • For the cost of the upgrade to vSphere Platinum compared to the costs we were already paying for vSphere Enterprise Plus with Operations Management was comparable. It made sense to upgrade and with that, we received the added features of AppDefense.

Thoughts and Insights about VMware AppDefense

Incentivized
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Easy to install and maintain.
  • Easy to interpret GUI to access status.
  • Very good support.

Cons

  • New product had some growing pains.
  • Email notifications need to be added.
  • Upgrade process needs to be more automatic.

Return on Investment

  • It's had a positive impact of an added layer in our multi layer approach to security.
  • Positive in its visibility that it creates into running server processes.
  • No negative impacts that I've seen.

Other Software Used

Fortinet FortiGate