vSphere

The HTML5 UI is clean and easy to work with and manage the entire Data Center with. VMs are neatly shown on the left side menu. VM options for each VM are displayed on the right. You can easily view the VM Status, I/O or network information in the summary. Most frequently used tools such as Start/Stop (shutdown), launch Console, edit Settings, and take snapshot are listed front and center for quick management. You can view all the VM performance by navigating to Monitor > Performance Overview. If a VM is abusing too many resources, vSphere indicates the issue with a notification icon to easily spot the VMs causing resource problems.

The product itself is still best of breed in the virtualization landscape. It is feature-rich with virtualization technologies that just work, such as snapshots, vMotion (Live Migration), rapid cloning of virtual machines, and High Availability. vSphere also offers advanced features that many other virtualization technologies do not such as vSAN for hyperconverged storage and NSX, their advanced networking technology that allows the creation of firewalls and network segmentation within the virtual environment itself. Finally, vSphere is quite stable and is able to manage a large number of VMs without significant performance issues. My team rarely has to open a support ticket for this product.

I like most about vSphere is how reliable and stable it is. It gives me confidence that workloads will run smoothly without unexpected downtime. Another thing is its scalability and flexibility, which makes it easy to allocate resources or expand environments. Lastly, I really value the centralized management through vCenter, since it simplifies administration across multiple hosts.

vSphere operates independently as just another VM in your ESXi cluster. If for whatever reason the VM freezes, or stops, or slows down due to resource limitations then users won't be able to manage their environment. Typically, this means needing to reset the VM on the ESXi host that hosts it. Administrators need to be aware of what this host it runs on and be actively maintaining the VM for it to continue to be an effective tool for VM administration.

The primary issue with this product is the pricing. Since Broadcom purchased this software, the cost has increased substantially. Many organizations were not prepared for the significant price increases that were quoted to them when they were looking to renew their support. If you are looking to add advanced features like vSan or NSX, the pricing increases even more substantially. The second issue is the licensing bundles that they offer. In my experience, Broadcom has several pre-packaged licensing bundles, but only the more expensive ones give any sort of financial flexibility. For example, the least expensive bundles require a three-year commitment, which must be purchased up front, rather than billed annually. If an organization is looking to make annual payments, they must choose one of the more expensive bundles. Finally, the movement toward multi-year agreements makes it difficult to move away from this product. Many organizations have already experienced vendor lock in with this product, but the lack of feasible year to year contracts makes it more difficult to move away from this technology.

One area that could be improved is pricing and licensing, since it can feel a bit high compared to some alternatives, especially for smaller teams. I've also noticed that the learning curve can be steep at 1st, so more streamlined onboarding or simplified docs would be really helpful. Lastly, updates and integrations occasionally bring challenges, particularly with 3rd-party tools, but these are usually manageable once identified.