VMware vCenter is the heart and soul of our virtualized infrastructure. This simple but expansive management tool allows us to manage our infrastructure throughout the full lifecycle (deploy, maintain, decommission). It provides powerful clustering features which allow for load balancing across compute, memory, and storage. Robust alerting capabilities allow administrators to move from a reactive approach to proactive.
Pros
Manage large sets of complex infrastructure components
Stay up to date with latest security patches through integrated vsphere update manager
Cons
Management of multiple vCenter instances can be challenging at times
HTML5 client is missing a lot of features from the flash client
Likelihood to Recommend
Powerful feature set with a simple deployment model. Administrators will be in heaven with the number of available monitoring and alerting points. Programmable API allows unlocks unlimited automation potential.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Computer Networking company, 10,001+ employees)
vCenter is at use both at the company I work for as well as other companies that use our software. It is great for centralized management of a virtual infrastructure.
Pros
Infrastructure Management
Virtual Machine Management
Reporting
Cons
The web interface normally gets mixed reviews
It is resource intensive at 4vCPU and 16GB of ram
Could be less complex
Likelihood to Recommend
[VMware vCenter is well suited for] Any environment where VMware ESXi is being used.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Social Media (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)
As a support engineer I support more than 1000 servers for a well known Telecom operator in India, running on ESXi 5.5 and managed by vCenter Server 5.5. Managing currently running VNF on these servers using vCould director and vCenter. These servers are designed to support IMS and TAS applications related to Telecommunication.
Pros
All servers at one place
Management at ease
Fast accessibility to server nodes
Cons
In 5.5, networking requires some improvement.
In 5.5, one dashboard is required to see health/performance of all the servers.
Likelihood to Recommend
[VMware vCenter Server is well suited for] saving the cost of additional hardware by efficient utilization of hardware resources and ease application management.
I have deployed vCenter server 5.5 for one of the leading Indian Telecom operators to virtualise a telecom application server (VNF). This vCenter Server is licensed with the enterprise plus edition. It manages more than 1000 HPGen8 blade servers installed with Esxi 5.5
Pros
Single platform to monitor, manage and configure many servers
SSO feature for authenticity
Enhaced linked mode for mutisite vcenter intergeration
Ease of use
Cons
In 5.5 all improvements were done
In 6.0 there are some new features in the HA module
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best for a virtualized environment to be managed running on an ESXi Hypervisor.
