VMware vCenter

Score8.8 out of 10

351 Reviews and Ratings

What is VMware vCenter?

VMware vCenter is an advanced server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling vSphere environments for visibility across hybrid clouds. VMware vCenter is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud Foundation.

Categories & Use Cases

Server Management

Veli-Matti Mäkelä View profile

System Administrator in Information Technology at SeAMK (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use vCenter to manage our VMware ESXi hypervisors in our onpremise datacenter. The product helps to centrally manage our whole virtualization environment. We also use automation to reduce workload for our IT-admins. Features like vMotion help reduce downtime. Additionally, we leverage VMware’s Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) to optimize resource allocation across our clusters. This ensures that our workloads are always running efficiently and helps prevent any potential performance bottlenecks.

Pros

Central management of VMware environment
Automated management

Cons

The builtin MFA is limited to two options
Integration with Third-Party Tools

Return on Investment

Has reduced number of IT-admins needed for server management by about half. This has freed up IT-admins to other tasks
IT-admins need less time as centralized tasks can be implemented to all servers VMware environment
Less downtime to services impacting end-user productivity

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Proxmox VE, Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365, Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup, JitBit Help Desk

Verified User

Employee in Engineering (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use VMware vCenter to manage a VMware cluster hosting virtual machines in a development lab. We were able to downsize the rack space and lower the count of physical machines by virtualizing. Which lowered costs.

Pros

hosts virtual machines
load balances across multiple servers

Cons

I wasn't impressed with VMware's kubernetes (Tanzu grid)
I wish DRS was included in the lower pricing tier

Return on Investment

Shrank footprint from previous infrastructure

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Red Hat Virtualization and Proxmox VE

Other Software Used

macOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use vCenter for our own Private Cloud Platform. This is the key feature for using Dynamic Resource Scheduling and High Availability. This is de orchestrator for deploying new VMs and distributing them across multiple ESXi nodes and clusters. Managing hundreds or thousands VMs from 1 interface and making sure everything runs as smooth as possible. I could not do my Job properly without it..

Pros

Resource Scheduling
High Availability across multiple nodes
Easy to use and maintain

Cons

With transition to Broadcom the support could be a bit better
Documentation is a bit hard to find with the Broadcom transition
maybe builtin Helpsystem could be enhanced

Return on Investment

Licensing has gone up
Licensing has become harder to get (even for Cloud Partners)
With the public cloud, it has a lot of competition

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Proxmox VE and Hyper-V

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use VMware vCenter to host all 500+ of our on-prem virtual machines. It dramatically improves efficiency vs. hosting physical servers as we did 15+ years ago. We now run our entire primary datacenter on 21 hosts vs. 500+ physical servers that we ran previously.

Pros

Managing virtual resources
Seamlessly migrating VMs to hosts as needed
Seamless patching and upgrade process

Cons

Several confusing menu options
PtoV tools have not been kept up to date
Error messages could be more descriptive

Return on Investment

It has dramatically reduced power requirements for our server room.
It has dramatically reduced the cost of purchasing new server equipment.
It has been remarkably stable, producing years of activity with no downtime.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Hyper-V

Other Software Used

NetApp ONTAP Data Management Software, NetApp SnapCenter Backup Management, Veeam Data Platform

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use VMware vCenter as in two clusters as our VDI solution and another cluster as our server virtualization solution. The VDI part provides virtual machines to our students and employees and is managed in conjunction with Horizon. The server virtualization portion hosts our server infrastructure.

Pros

Server virtualization
Host management (Updates, patches, etc.)

Cons

Technical Support
Overall UI

Return on Investment

It's enabled us to replace our end users' physical PCs on a less regular basis

Usability

Alternatives Considered

XenServer