Use of VCenter, my great experience

To be able to share with a great audacity the experience of using the software that I use on a daily basis so that I can also get to know the experience of other end users, learn from their experiences, recommendations and experiences within the professional, technical and personal spheres. Widely recommended, the first time I use it I would recommend it 100% to other professionals, who want to share their experience and experience.

Pros

For more than 10 years I have been a VMWare VCenter user, in which I have been able to experience the great benefits of a software that allows to have centralized administration of all the resources of a virtual environment. The creation of teams is considerably simplified, since the allocation of resources is very fast, the management of the configuration of the networks and the storage elements are now easy to use and assign. With the new virtualization technology used by VMWare VCenter, the computing centers have great scalability, the remote management of data centers for disaster reoccupation is very effective. The creation, administration and configuration of Virtual Networks is also one of the best advantages of VCenter, its implementation is quick and easy. The backup of the virtual environment is also easy to perform, in this way the operation of my services will be guaranteed in case of any application or operating system failure, I no longer have to worry. I have used it with different brands of hardware in different companies and it seems to me that the product behaves equally fast and versatile. I feel more secure and confident in every moment, I recommend it tirelessly.

Cons

One of the few advantages that VMWare VCenter has is that it adapts to only medium and large companies for its cost, it is worth using, the hardware to be used must be of great potential in order to make the most of the resources and exploit them for the benefit of the company and thus have 100% utilization. Another disadvantage that it has is having a VCenter cluster, that is having two or more VCenter having access to the same database so that in case of failure it can continue the operation as if it had not roasted anything, for this modality it must be have a clone of the VCenter turned off and turn on in case of error and not recovery of the original VCenter, this generates waste of time for lack of this process is automatic.

vSphere is nothing without vCenter

I have administered and managed hundreds (maybe thousands) of VMs with vCenter. Used the last 3 major versions and they are constantly improving and adding features and increasing the hardware limitations (a VM with 1TB of RAM!!).

Pros

vCenter puts all the awesome technologies and features together in a manageable environment. vCenter is the first step in clustering resources into no longer seeing individual hardware servers as important. Virtualize compute, storage, and network so as to be one seamless datacenter resource. vCenter is compatible and integrated with so many other products and VMware's powershell library for vCenter is exhasutive.

Cons

Like vSphere, it can get pricey. And as of the most recent release, I don't think that there is a really good high availability solution for the vCenter VM itself so that if it dies, you may be left doing alot of manual work until you can bring it back up.

Great when it works but upgrade issues are abundant

Pros

This software is a huge timesaver and communication tool when the connection is working correctly. It makes it very easy to view your virtual desktop wherever you are and have read/write access to your files on the go. This is the only reason people in our company are able to work at home, which is a huge pro.

Cons

There seem to be frequent issues regaining a connection when there is a new version upgrade. The system doesn't seem to always recognize the upgrade and you end up having to delete and re-download the program to establish a connection.

Vmware VCenter

Very good

Pros

User interface. Integration with LDAP. updates for vcenter and hosts.

Cons

Interface must be simplified for users to interact with it

Most Simplified Management Interface on a Virtual Enviroment.

Pros

The installation or deployment for Vcenter is completelly simple just a few clicks with some options, once the Vcenter is deployed you can manage the entire virtual infraestructure, replication, Automated load balancing, high availability. Your server administration will be easier with a simple drag and drop to move virtual machines between host. Even is easier to manage / troubleshoot and update to newers versions, this is the goal for any IT Administrator to apply in his infraestructure.

Cons

In some older versions i dislike the usage of Flash to manage the enviromer but the most recently one uses html5 and this change my mindset.

Virtualization is the best

overall this is superb technology and interesting GUI. Using this it is very easy to manage virtual servers and manage network and storage. this is totally easy rather than using more physical servers

Pros

This is one of the best solution for virtualization. It is easy to implement the technology and easy to Manage physical ESXi hosts and virtual machines as well. There are lot of functionalities in this vcenter sever and we can make every virtual machine highly available with zero downtime. User interface is very easy and descriptive as well.

Cons

in network slowness sometimes vcenter will go to hang state. It is the one of main problem.

vCenter WEB GUI

All together great product.

Pros

Consistent layout of menu, ease of use, improved HTML5 GUI, AD login plugin.

Cons

There are still some features missing that exist in Flash WEB client; vSAN monitoring is buggy, export of listed events/tasks,inventory is not possible in HTML5 client. After upgrading or updating I must warn all users to clear web browser cache before first login to vCenter WEB GUI. Sorting of columns in active tasks (in bottom frame) is often jumping/rearranging as task finishes and making it unusable for monitoring.

The Way to Manage Multiple Hosts

This software allows me to have multiple servers on very little hardware and have redundancy so my business stays running 24/7. It is part of my enterprise no matter what company I work for.

Pros

This makes it very simple to manage multiple ESXi hosts in one pane of glass. It's fairly easy to use once you understand the basics but has the ability to be very powerful.

Cons

I don't like how the latest management is all web based. Before you can use a stand alone client but now you must access via a web console. It is not as polished as the app.

Twice the Fun!

vCenter is a must if you are using ESX for your Hypervisor.

Pros

Great way to manage your entire virtual infrastructure and integration all your favorite IT solutions for a one stop shop. Now you can have redundant vCenters!

Cons

Sizing vCenter to fit your needs is a bit of trial and error. Also, we have had to apply a handful of tweaks and workaround for issue throughout the years.

Vcentre server reduces the pain of logging

really good and

Pros

Vcentre servers developed a lot these days multiple vcentres can be accomidated in a single vcentre .reducimg system admins to login

Cons

licensing cost if you are enterprise it will be cheap

VMware's vCenter Operations Manager lightens the load

One of the downsides to virtualization is the relative complexity of system monitoring. Traditional monitoring systems are well tuned for physical servers, but they can run into issues in the virtual world. When servers move freely between physical hosts, it can be a challenge to keep track of them. Also, visibility at every layer of the stack is a tough nut to crack. Nevertheless, the ability to access trend and alert data from each layer is crucial to maintaining the overall health of the environment, and it's critical to future planning. VMware's vCenter Operations Manager was designed to address these problems -- and it does so quite well. VMware didn't develop the Operations Manager tools internally, but acquired them with Integrien back in 2010. Now at release 5.7.0, vCenter Operations Manager is available in four different editions across the VMware line. I tested the Standard edition as part of the new VMware vSphere with Operations Management (VSOM) offering. Smooth setup The framework for vCenter Operations Manager is a vApp, downloaded and deployed on a VMware vSphere cluster. It consists of two Linux VMs, and the initial installation is as simple as browsing to the OVF file and deploying it through the vSphere management tools. Once deployed, Operations Manager requires very little initial configuration. It needs to hook into one or more vCenter servers and requires credentials to access every tracked object that's visible to the vCenter server. All told, getting the solution up and running took about 15 minutes. The vApp is configured by default with two vCPUs on each of the two VMs, with 9GB of RAM presented to the Analytics VM and 7GB to the UI VM. These instances are self-tuning, so larger implementations will require more vCPUs and RAM, and the VMs will take advantage of those resources when detected. There are further configuration steps to take once Operations Manager is running, such as defining SMTP and SNMP servers, along with uploading SSL certificates (if desired). However, when linked to one or more vCenter servers, Operations Manager begins its data collection tasks and can be left alone to digest the wealth of data it collects and analyzes

Total management for your virtual infrastructure

Total management of my virtual environment

Pros

This is the management infrastructure for the Vmware virtualization environment. It brings with it a lot of features like vmotion for one and clustering and HA services all working to reduce your downtime. Using Virtual Center is leaps and bounds better than managing individual ESXi hosts on their own. You can coordinate updates and see all of your infrastructure under a single pane of glass. Organize your ESXi servers into datacenters and locations and folders or clusters. Once you try Virtual Center you will never go back to managing individual hosts again.

Cons

Currently uses Adobe Flash for the main interface but they have a mostly functional HTML5 interface available in the latest version and are moving to a fully functional HTML5 interface quickly.

The heart of the vmware virtualization platform, lets you manage your datacenter

centralized management of the virtual infrastructure, high availability, load balancing, data center automation

Pros

virtual center is the central management platform for the vsphere infrastructure and is the best product in its class since well more than a decade. All hosts, even residing in different locations are managed centrally from a single console, which lets you deploy their configuration centrally, manage upgrades, network settings, storage settings and move and balance workloads in clusters automatically

Cons

the major downside of virtual center has been vmware ditching the virtual center client for the web-based one. The legacy client was a great piece of software, fast and responsive, which offered excellent overview of the infrastructure. The web client, instead, is slow and confusing.

vCenter is the best of breed VM management soltuion available.

vCenter has been a solid workhorse, even more so since our transition form the old WIndows based install to the Linux based appliance. Itis now much simpler to manage and doesn't require Windows licensing or a SQL server.

Pros

vCenter makes managing your VM infrastructure painless. We are able to do things like swap out storage and compute with 0 downtime to our users.

Cons

I'm not thrilled about the new Kubernetes functionality being limited to the cloud offering. Hopefully they allow on-prem usage in a future release. It would make containerization easier to introduce were it to be included in our current infrastructure

The keystone of the VMware software portfolio

Excellent software that set the bar for enterprise management software in the mid 2000s.

Pros

VirtualCenter or vCenter is the primary management layer for VMware's virtualization technology. It enables all sorts of essential enterprise features such as HA, DRS, vMotion, and more. The best part about vCenter is the ease of use in managing large environments. The design is very straightforward and it includes wizards to help even beginners quickly manage their environment. vCenter also is pluggable and can support many 3rd party plugins.

Cons

Performance tends to suffer when managing larger environments. There was a C# client that has since been deprecated, I did like the speed and performance of the C# client relative to the newer Web Client. Fortunately the Web Client has been rewritten in HTML5 versus Flex which has dramatically boosted speed and reliability.

Excellent way to manage VMware environment, though could use some modernization

Great for managing and operating our VMware environment.

Pros

I like how intuitive and simple the on-boarding process is. We had little to no experience but adding a host, setting up a cluster, enabling features like HA and DRS was very easy. The UI works well and all you need is a web browser, no flash or plugin required. Our environment is pretty small for now and we can use virtualcenter for most tasks. We use govmomi to automate certain tasks, deploy and tear down of infrastructure along with maintenance operations. The community is quite large and helpful.

Cons

Some tasks require a number of clicks before you can submit them. Occasionally I will navigate myself into an unfamiliar place and I need to go back to HOME to start over again. Sporadically the UI will hang and slowdown, this might be because we need to add more CPU and memory to our VC virtual machine. VC definitely requires a lot of resources to work well. While VC provides a lot of metrics, they are not exposed in any meaningful way. You can extract them via the APIs but it looks like we might need vC Operations to better consume them.

I manage my virtual machine Vcenter.

First of all you can manage a lots of hosts and virtual machines by one web window.

Pros

It is so easy to manage all machine from web window. You can monitor all hardware status and CPU, Memory and storage usage under summary tab. Also you can migrate Virtual machine others machine which it has more resource than other machine.

Cons

Vmware Vcenter complicated my systems. I never seen any bad situation in VCenter. It depends administration of your systems.

The best way to manage multiple ESXi hosts

Pros

- every version gets better and better - easier to deploy - newest version support HA which means the possiblity of less vCenter downtime which is great - the appliance is now full featured meaning 1 less Windows Server

Cons

- complicated licensing structure that didn't used to be that way - VMware support has decreased in quality over the past 1-2 years - VMware still can't kill off the Flash UI in favor of the HTML5 version

Best of breed management

This had been a great addition and allows vSphere to be an enterprise platform and become very stable.

Pros

The best feature of vCenter is the ease of management for multiple entities. It saves a tremendous amount of time even for small deployments.

Cons

There is a discrepancy in feature sets between the HTML5 and Flex interface. This means you can use the HTML5 interface for basic stuff and use Flex for more advanced stuff. HTML5 is much faster.

Control center for virtual datacenter

Pros

Since version 6.5, when vCenter can be installed as Virtual Appliance, it's the best control center for VMware environment. Easy to configure, quick and has HTML5 support.

Cons

Price is high for version with all functionality. Not all functions are available in HTML5, there are still some which work only with Flash version. Backward compatibility only to 5.5. Since version 6.5 no support for installed vSphere client.

Getting Better Every Release

VMware VirtualCenter is a single pane of glass application to manage our server environment. It is essential to operate the VMware cluster, we could not live without it.

Pros

The software is very stable and makes it easy to perform day to day management tasks. It gives a good overview of our environment and helps us to make choices in e.g. load balancing or making changes to settings. Rolling out new servers is easy to do.

Cons

Not every feature is available in the HTML5 version of the interface. There is also a Flash interface that you may need to switch to, to make changes to e.g. permissions.

Have been using vcenter for 15 years

Pros

Ease of use and reliability. Also like how when theres an issue it is addressed in the next version update. The updates are easy to perform and never fail. Virtual appliance is virus resistant due to its using a proton operating system.

Cons

At times the virtual vcenter server appliance will freeze and has to be reset. Hoping this will get addressed with the next version update coming out in the coming weeks.

VMware VirtualCenter Review

Overall its good .

Pros

The best part of VMware is ease of use. You can manage multiple servers and machines at one place and provide best utilization of resources. It allow you to you to use shared resources when it is not in use, which help to optimal resource utilization of machine

Cons

A bit expensive for small companies . Recovery is difficult and time consuming .

VMware vCenter with new features

If you are using VMware for virtualized platform, vCenter is a must. vCenter providing ease of management, and many additional functions for standalone ESXi hosts

Pros

Awesome fully featured HTML5 web UI came with 6.7 U1 version Eased cluster configuration (Cluster Quickstart) Quick boot when update and upgrade process with update manager (For supported hardware)

Cons

After version 6.7U1 there is no cons yet.

Great product I use every day

It's the best hypervisor I have ever used. I have used KVM, VMWare, HyperV, and XEN. I never have issues with deployment when it comes to vcenter. Can't say that about the rest

Pros

VMWare has been the go to hyper visor for me for years. the Virtual Center client has always worked and never left me stranded

Cons

As of recently with the move to get away from the C# client, it has become a little more tedious doing the things I need.

vCenter is needed

Pros

you can have as many esxi host running but the only true way to actually manage all at once, is via vCenter. you can Vmotion your vm's, create different clusters for the hosts. allocating whether its storage, memory, datastores vcenter has it.

Cons

can be a bit pricy but well worth it. Depending on the amount of hosts/cores. etc.

Best tool around for HW virtualization

Pros

The ability to manage all machines HW is great, the networking and the redundancy configurations are very useful.

Cons

There are some small bugs which sometimes make life a bit difficult. In addition, in some occasions the VC is getting very slow. It is not good that the newer version require to have a separated VC and cannot be standalone with an ESX server

VMWare is an amazing product for your business

We love VMWare here and they also have an excellent support team.

Pros

With VMWare VirtualCenter we manage almost 300 virtual servers with ease.

Cons

I liked their old software installed GUI prior to them forcing us to use their new web interface. It's fine it's just not as quick to use as the old software was in my opinion.

For all your VMWare orchestration needs this is the software of choice.

Pros

It allows rapid provisioning of virtual machines, centralized performance monitoring of my cluster, and numerous other benefits.

Cons

I have yet to find a disadvantage to this software other than the first time you use it the learning curve can be a little steep, but VMWare provides a number of great learning resources.

vCenter is THE tool to manage your VMware Environment

If you have more than 2-3 VMware hosts, you NEED vCenter! There is no other tool to manage your virtual environment. And the features you get with vCenter, like Templates, Distributed Switches, etc....

Pros

As a virtualization Engineer, I've been a big fan of vCenter as you cannot manage your vCenter environment without it.

Cons

The vSphere Web Client for vCenter 5.5 and 6.0 is slow.

Hands down, the most open and feature rich hypervisor management tool in existence.

Ease of deploying additional hardware agnostic virtual machines.

Pros

vCenter is easily deployed, does not require an OS license, and takes very little resources to manage a datacenter.

Cons

The current implementation of VMRC (VMware Remote Console) has many bugs that sometimes make it difficult to work on the console of a virtual machine.

I use it on a daily basis and it works great

Easy management of physical hosts and virtual machines.

Pros

New useful features with each new version Integration with other VMware products Good documentation, both in text and videos

Cons

Web interface still using Flash Lack of a migrating tool from the Windows-based server to the Linux appliance Expensive training courses

The VMWare product is the best of the best. Don't use anything else.

Pros

The admin interface is great. You can get things setup and then forget about them. The cluster and HA is wonderful. The product lets you sleep at night.

Cons

The product can be a little costly but well worth what you are getting. Never really had to work with customer service so that is probably good.

I use vCenter to manage a worldwide install base of vSphere servers.

Pros

Fast, stable, consistent, time-proven software. Well known by existing support staff and potential new hires, very little training needed. Easy to understand UI

Cons

High license costs. I preferred the windows based thick client which is being depreciated in favor of the less capable web client.

VMWare vCenter

We use VMWare for our virtual server environment.

Pros

I like the centralized control of our virtual environment and the ability to shift systems from host to host without any noticeable lag.

Cons

Moving to the web interface only in 6.5 and 6.7 has been a pain to find the things I use the most.

Management Center for your Datacenter

I can manage my all virtual environment, with lots of capabilities.

Pros

I can use vcenter from anywhere I can connect to my network, from any browser.

Cons

Flash version is a bit slower than the html, but after 6.7 full support for html version is presented.

Vcenter is a great way to manager your vSphere environment

Pros

vCenter makes it easy to manage my VMware environment from one place. I also like the ability to live migrate a VM from one host to another with vMotion.

Cons

I can't really think of any real cons with vCenter that support wasn't able to help with.

Virtualizaion go-to

Pros

Easy o setup and use, hard to master as there is so much to it, but once you enered the rabbit hole, you may never want to go get out.

Cons

Depending on environment, it could be sometimes unstable, but nothing that you cannot solve with proper support.

Best Hypervisor We Have Used

Pros

The cost savings we have realized by not having to purchase a physical server for each application we use has been the greatest pro.

Cons

The interface can be a bit intimidating, and unless you take a training course from VMware you may be left a bit puzzled.

Single pane of glass to manage your virtual environment

Pros

Perform vmotion or storage vmotion to easily relocate virutal machines. Also like the HA and DRS features build in to VCenter

Cons

not all features being available in the vsphere web client and the vsphere client is a bit of a con for me.

Good, but not a huge fan of the web client

Good virtual server management software. There is always room for improvement, but the feature set is more than adequate.

Pros

Easy way to manage VM's. Gives you most of the admin tools you need.

Cons

The web client! Listen to customers, nobody likes the web client.

Great for managing all your vsphere servers

Pros

Easy to setup clusters, good reporting and features, nice options for upgrading and alerting. Been a good product for years.

Cons

Kind of disappointed they are phasing our Windows vcenter and moving towards appliance only support.

VMWare vCenter

Pros

1. vCenter help to maximize the resource utilization 2. Help to manage the infrastructure easily and effectively 3. High availability of VMs

Cons

Performance monitor features are very less.

SDDC

Pros

The Vmware Products its not only standalone software, if you think SDDC concept, you are right way..

Cons

if you want to VMWare products you need more money.

Best choice for centralized management

Pros

VMware VirtualCenter is few steps ahead in virtualized environments. Having a centralized management and virtualized servers and workstations can make the difference in the enterprise business.

Cons

The enterprise edition price is high for medium to small business. The support for Linux based environments could be better.

One of the few options

Pros

Industry standard. Easy to find support when problems arise. Vendors are well aware of the various versions/options.

Cons

Bugs introduced with new versions.Otherwise it's great.

I use this software as an IT Analyst to support our VDI environment.

Pros

VMware's quality and reputation are pretty apparent in all of their applications. This is not exception. The software is user friendly and robust and makes supporting our VDI environment a breeze.

Cons

Small bugs between software versions. This seems to be consistent amongst VMware's offerings. For instance, one of our locations is one version behind and you must view everything in full screen otherwise you can't see the taskbar on the virtual desktop. It's not a show stopper but it can get annoying.

Excellent software

Pros

Very easy GUI usage. Safe and easy for use for new users.

Cons

Sometimes it can`t find source file and sometimes it`s left log unnecessary files.

vCenter for School use

The system is very reliable and stable. It help you manage large number of virtual machines , that can save lots of time and resources.

Pros

The managment for multiple esxi hypervisors is the power of this software. It help managing and maintaining virtual machines, being able to back them up, or move from one hypervisor to another.

Cons

Initial setup can take some time in gathering together all your hardware. The system is pricey.

Robust centralized administration tool

Pros

- Large number of machines supported, make this tool very powerful. - It allows adding new modules, that is, it is scalable. - For the activities it performs, the minimum requirements do not seem to be a lot of resources.

Cons

- Sometimes we have presented conflicts of the ports with other present applications. - Requires more technical knowledge.