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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

VMware vCenter meets our needs but doesnt wow me

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)

vCenter is our choice for managing hypervisors

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

Everything you need to manage multiple ESXi hosts!

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

VMware vCenter Dramatically Reduces Costs

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

Expensive to License; Decent to Use

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