--- title: VMware vSphere Reviews meta_title: 'VMware vSphere Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 771 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how VMware vSphere works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 771 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-12' parent_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure --- # VMware vSphere Reviews **Vendor:** Broadcom **Category:** [Server Virtualization Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/server-virtualization) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 771 ## About VMware vSphere VMware vSphere with VCF 9.1 is the enterprise workload engine that modernizes compute infrastructure with a future-ready, scalable infrastructure and simplified management that enables organizations to extract maximum value from their current server investments and hardware footprint, rather than requiring a total refresh. vSphere provides a powerful foundation for modern, AI and traditional workloads, while enabling intrinsic security out-of-the-box. ## VMware vSphere Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users praise the **intuitive setup and ease of use** , making VMware vSphere a reliable choice for virtual environments. (69 reviews) - Users value the **robust features and high uptime** of VMware vSphere, enhancing their virtual infrastructure experience. (57 reviews) - Users value the **intuitive interface and robust features** of VMware vSphere, enhancing enterprise virtualization management significantly. (30 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of management** with VMware vSphere, enabling efficient administration and seamless integration. (24 reviews) - Users commend the **reliability** of VMware vSphere, ensuring highly available and efficiently managed infrastructure for IT teams. (19 reviews) - Resource Management (18 reviews) - Stability (18 reviews) - Setup Ease (15 reviews) - User Interface (14 reviews) - Integrations (13 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **cost of VMware vSphere** to be a significant drawback despite its many advantages and features. (56 reviews) - Users are concerned about **high licensing costs** and complex management, which may push them to consider alternatives. (31 reviews) - Users find the **high licensing costs** of VMware vSphere challenging, particularly for smaller organizations with limited budgets. (29 reviews) - Users express concerns over the **cost increase** , finding it difficult to justify long-term use of VMware vSphere. (12 reviews) - Users often express concern over **pricing issues** , citing frequent increases and high annual renewal costs as major drawbacks. (12 reviews) - Update Issues (12 reviews) - Upgrade Issues (11 reviews) - Pricing Complexity (10 reviews) - UX Improvement (10 reviews) - Users are frustrated with the **poor customer support** from VMware vSphere, impacting their experience and satisfaction. (9 reviews) ## VMware vSphere Reviews ### 1. Empowering Enterprise Infrastructure: A Vendor’s Perspective on VMware vSphere **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shinos M. | Network Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** VMware vSphere stands out for its exceptional reliability, enterprise-grade scalability, and powerful resource management. Features like vSphere HA and vMotion ensure mission-critical workloads stay online with minimal disruption, while deep storage integration and centralized lifecycle management streamline administrative overhead across complex data center environments. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** While VMware vSphere remains a powerful enterprise platform, administrators and organizations often dislike its aggressive move toward high-cost, subscription-only licensing models and restrictive per-core packaging following Broadcom's acquisition. Additionally, concerns over vendor lock-in, reduced flexibility, and disruptions to the partner support ecosystem have driven many businesses to explore alternative hypervisors. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a VMware vendor, selling vSphere helps us address our customers’ biggest infrastructure challenges—such as hardware sprawl, downtime, and operational complexity—by providing consolidated, reliable, high-availability virtualization environments. ### 2. Robust, Scalable Virtualization with a Clean, Unified vSphere Console **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 07, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** The biggest advantage of vSphere is that it pulls infrastructure management into a single, unified console that’s easy to navigate. Performance remains consistently strong, uptime feels dependable, and vMotion makes it possible to move live workloads around without interrupting service. Resource allocation is handled intelligently across the cluster, which helps keep things balanced. The admin console is clean and straightforward to learn, the initial setup doesn’t come with a steep ramp-up, and it integrates smoothly with the rest of the VMware stack—vSAN in particular—without any friction. With the automation tools and the way it scales, it works just as well for a lean IT team as it does for a large enterprise deployment. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** That said, a few pain points stand out. Licensing and subscription costs have crept up noticeably, and getting comfortable with the deeper features takes real time—the learning curve is definitely there. When something breaks in a non-obvious way, you often need niche expertise that isn’t always available on the team. Compatibility issues during upgrades across different VMware products can also slow down rollout timelines. Even so, none of this really takes away from what vSphere delivers overall. It remains a robust, scalable platform built for serious enterprise virtualization work. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Fundamentally, vSphere solves the headache of managing servers one by one by letting you consolidate multiple workloads onto virtual machines instead. This improves resource utilization, simplifies infrastructure oversight, and reduces both hardware spend and operational overhead. Capabilities like HA, vMotion, and centralized management help minimize downtime and support business continuity. For our team, the payoff has been tangible: smoother day-to-day operations, an infrastructure footprint that’s easier to manage, and a scalable foundation we can keep building on as the business grows. ### 3. Rock-Solid vSphere for Mixed Production Workloads and Seamless DR **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 06, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** VMware vSphere’s biggest strength is how effectively it consolidates infrastructure management into a single, centralized platform. It provides strong performance, high availability, and non-disruptive workload migration via vMotion, along with intelligent resource allocation across the environment. The administrative interface feels polished and intuitive, the initial deployment process is straightforward, and integration with the broader VMware ecosystem—especially vSAN—is smooth and seamless. With its scalability and built-in automation capabilities, it remains a dependable option whether you’re supporting a small IT footprint or operating in a large-scale enterprise environment. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Despite its strengths, vSphere does have a few notable drawbacks. Licensing and subscription costs have become significant, and getting comfortable with the more advanced features takes a real investment of time—the learning curve isn’t always straightforward. When complex problems arise, diagnosing them often requires specialized expertise that not every team has in-house. On top of that, upgrade compatibility across different VMware products can add friction and slow things down. Even with these limitations, they don’t outweigh vSphere’s overall reliability. It remains a feature-rich, scalable platform for enterprise virtualization. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** At its core, vSphere tackles the inefficiency of managing physical servers one by one by consolidating multiple workloads into virtual machines. This improves overall resource utilization, streamlines infrastructure oversight, and helps reduce both hardware and day-to-day operational costs. Features such as high availability, vMotion, and centralized administration help keep downtime to a minimum and reinforce business continuity. In our organization, this has translated into clear gains in operational efficiency, a server environment that’s easier to manage, and a scalable, dependable foundation that supports ongoing business growth. ### 4. Robust Virtualization with Centralized Management **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sanjeev S. | Cybersecurity Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** I like VMware vSphere's stability and how it simplifies managing virtual infrastructure through a centralized console. I find features like live migration, resource allocation, and high availability very effective in daily operations. It makes provisioning and managing virtual machines much easier compared to dealing with physical servers individually. Once the environment is properly set up, it's generally reliable and doesn't require constant intervention. I also appreciate how the centralized console facilitates easier administration by allowing monitoring, provisioning, and managing multiple systems from one place, unlike managing individual physical servers. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** One area where VMware vSphere could improve is licensing and overall cost, especially for small environments. The centralized console is useful, but troubleshooting certain issues can sometimes feel complex and take time. Also, upgrades and compatibility checks between different VMware components need careful planning to avoid unexpected issues during maintenance. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use VMware vSphere for virtualization, consolidating workloads into VMs, improving resource utilization, simplifying server management, and facilitating faster system provisioning. It reduces dependency on physical hardware and enhances uptime with minimal disruption during upgrades. ### 5. Reliable, Complete Virtualization with vMotion, HA/DRS, and Scalable vCenter Management **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nayan G. | Linux Administrator, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 31, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** What I like most about VMware vSphere is its reliability and overall completeness. It stays very stable even under heavy workloads, and vMotion makes it possible to migrate VMs with zero downtime. I also appreciate how HA and DRS automate failover and load balancing, which reduces manual effort. On top of that, vCenter keeps management straightforward, even when you’re operating at scale. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The licensing cost is high. I also worry about vendor lock-in, and the setup can feel complex—especially when trying to understand and choose between the different licensing tiers. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** VMware vSphere helps solve several key infrastructure problems. It reduces server sprawl by consolidating multiple VMs onto fewer hosts. It also minimizes downtime, since HA and vMotion help keep services running. For day-to-day operations, it cuts down on manual management through centralized control via vCenter. Finally, it addresses resource imbalance by using DRS to automatically balance workloads across the environment. ### 6. Stable, Mature Hypervisor with Powerful Ops Tooling and Real Visibility **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** The foundation everything else builds on—stable, mature hypervisor with strong operational tooling (vROps, DRS, HA) that lets us manage CPU/memory contention and rightsizing across a large multi-tenant fleet with real visibility, not guesswork. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Broadcom's licensing changes have made cost planning less predictable, and some legacy operational quirks—like AD authentication issues from stale SIDs or GPU driver friction with newer hardware (H200/GPU Operator)—still require manual troubleshooting rather than being resolved natively. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** vSphere gives us a stable, mature virtualization layer to run a large multi-tenant fleet, with tooling (vROps) that turns CPU/memory contention data into concrete rightsizing decisions. This benefits us by avoiding both over-provisioning and performance risk across client workloads, backed by real metrics rather than assumptions. ### 7. vSphere is the most comprehensive and easiest to use management for hyper-visors. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ben S. | Senior Systems Engineer / Infrastructure Architect, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 20, 2019 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** The interface is 100% web based so it is easy accessible from anywhere. Integrates directly into Active Directory for easy role based access and authentication. All management was moved from the client to the web interface. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The management interface can be slow to load and takes a while to find some of the settings. Overall they did a good job making it self explanatory. **Recommendations to others considering VMware vSphere:** In comparing hyper-V to vSphere look at the total cost of management, support, licensing, as well as downtime and the complexity of management. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are now able to add and manage all hyper-visors in a single management interface. We have now gained the ability to vMotion and storage vMotion all of our virtual machines. ### 8. Reliable Virtualization, High Cost Barrier **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jasvinder S. | Sr. Technical Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** I use VMware vSphere to run and manage all our virtual machines, and it makes virtualization easy to handle. The platform is very stable and reliable, allowing us to adjust VM configurations whenever we need without any hassle. I appreciate how vSphere lets us manage our entire virtual environment, including virtual networks, VMs, and physical hosts, all from a single console. This makes day-to-day operations much easier and more efficient. The initial setup was straightforward, and following the documentation made installing, connecting the ESXi hosts, setting up vCenter, and starting VM management easy. Managing our environment has been smooth, and I didn't face major challenges during the setup. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** VMware vSphere is great, but it can still improve in a few areas. The licensing and pricing are on the higher side, which makes upgrades expensive. Some advanced features also feel a bit complex for new users. In some cases, updates and compatibility checks take time, so simplifying that experience would make it even better. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use VMware vSphere to manage our virtual machines, solving hardware dependency issues, reducing server downtime and physical load. It simplifies virtualization, allowing easy resource scaling and system maintenance from a single console, making operations efficient and reliable. ### 9. The best virtualisation in the world **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Peter D. | CIO and System engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 07, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Its very easy, all has integrated, or is possible to integrate to have it complete running ecosystem for virtualisation will all other needs. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Only what I dont dislike is that each extras is needed to install manualy that there isnt more integration automatisation and more user friendly interface with better overviews. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its solve all our problem and needes for our privat datacenter. ### 10. vSphere Centralizes VMware Administration Seamlessly **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Milton E. | Senior Director, Information Services and Strategy, Non-Profit Organization Management, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 10, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** vSphere places all VMWare administration in one place. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The current sales policy of Broadcom makes continuing with VMWare an impossibility. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** vSphere reduces the labor needed to maintain our VMWare installation. ### 11. Centralized VMware Management **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dave C. | Senior Technical Operations Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Manage and view all your existing VMware hosts and clients from a single portal **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** At times, it’s difficult to understand how certain configuration options work, such as how VM clustering is set up for a site. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need on-premise virtualisation for several sites that can’t be cloud-based, and vSphere is meeting that requirement. ### 12. Reliable Virtualization Platform for Scalable Infrastructure **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Muhammad A. | System & DevOps Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 21, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** What I like best about VMware vSphere is its stability, performance, and centralized management through vCenter. It makes it incredibly easy to manage multiple virtual machines, allocate resources efficiently, and monitor performance across the infrastructure. Features like vMotion and HA (High Availability) significantly reduce downtime and help maintain service continuity. The interface is intuitive once you're familiar with it, and the flexibility it offers for scaling workloads is a major plus. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** One of the main drawbacks of VMware vSphere is its licensing and cost structure, which can be quite high for small to mid-sized businesses. Additionally, some parts of the web-based interface (especially in older versions) can feel sluggish or unintuitive at times. The learning curve for new administrators is also a bit steep, especially when dealing with advanced features like DRS or configuring networking and storage clusters. Better documentation or in-tool guidance could improve the onboarding experience. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** VMware vSphere helps us consolidate physical servers into virtual machines, reducing hardware costs, space, and power consumption. It enables efficient resource utilization, high availability, and easier disaster recovery planning. With features like vMotion and snapshots, we can perform maintenance with minimal downtime and quickly revert systems if needed. Overall, it gives us a stable, scalable environment to manage workloads efficiently and respond faster to business needs. ### 13. Robust Virtualization Pioneer, but the High Cost Stings **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aaron G. | IT Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Robust features Pioneer in virtualization High uptime **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** High cost of the virtualization platform **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Provides high uptime due to its redundant hardware and network connections. Top performance for business users ### 14. vSphere in on-premises **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Hardware | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** I like VMware vSphere for the easy integration with Terraform, easy deployment and easy implementation. It is isntuitive use.VMware customer support is really helpful. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** New liciensing model can be expensive. Web Client could work better. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** VMware vSphere helped with having high available servers. ### 15. From the eyes of an Admin **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** I have been a VMware admin for many years, and my experience has shown me that VMware vSphere's greatest strength is its robust and comprehensive virtualization platform. Tools like vMotion and High Availability (to name a couple) are essential for ensuring business continuity. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** However, recent changes by Broadcom have introduced significant concerns. The shift to a more expensive, subscription-only licensing model has drastically increased costs for many customers. Broadcom has also alienated a segment of the customer base by cutting many smaller, long-standing partners. The future direction is a strong push toward VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), which is now the company's flagship product. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cost Savings & Efficiency: Save money on hardware and energy while making IT management simpler and faster. Business Continuity: Critical applications stay available and running, even during unexpected hardware failures. Flexibility: Easily scale IT resources up or down to meet changing business needs. ### 16. A certainty in system virtualization **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Giovanni C. | SysAdm, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 07, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** A very efficient system for creating virtual machines and maintaining them with excellent performance over time **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The change of ownership of VMware has led to increased difficulty in managing licenses **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** It gives me the opportunity to set up systems on which to test new services in a very short time. ### 17. VMware Explore 2025 impressions **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 01, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** The history and progression of products has been notable and Explore in Las Vegas last week was no exception. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** While stating "fewer SKU # with more encompassing features" and minimizing partner levels to the big providers it seems there is some confusion on how VMware will work out in the future. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** It provides a lot of the compute environment in one package. If designed and implemented well, it can cover the centralized infrastructure with compute, storage, network and operational oversight from a "single pane" environment. Some of the current and future AI efforts will help with managing the solution if they come to fruition. ### 18. VMware: still the best option out **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sam W. | Network Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** VMware does a good job about rolling in new product updates and features without needing to overhaul their UI a ton. They keep the interface the same over time so I don't have to relearn how to do things in my data center. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** I think because the product is so big, there's always another feature to learn and stuff that I've been doing the long way in my environment when there's been a built in short way the entire time. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Space in our small datacenter. We don't have the room for bare metal so a hypervisor is the way to go. ### 19. An excellent home for your VMs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian B. | IT Systems Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 07, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** vSphere serves as a comprehensive platform for managing virtual machines, offering impressive flexibility when it comes to creating VMs. Whenever I encounter an issue, I find that the support provided is excellent. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The main drawback I’ve noticed is the learning curve, which can be a bit challenging at first. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** vSphere assists us in managing our virtual machines for thin clients. After we create an image in vSphere, it becomes available to all our thin clients across the organization. ### 20. Innovation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Accounting | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** The platform is what we run our virtual infrastructure on both for servers and vdi. It has been a very sound structured product that we thoroughly enjoy and continually expand. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Cost seems to continue to rise with newer competitors which basically brings you back to what am I getting for the price versus others m **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our entire and virtual environment runs in VMware it allows us to sleep at night because it just runs smoothly with all of the tools and monitoring that it provides us. ### 21. Effortless Virtualization, But Costs Are Climbing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick P. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Virtualizing infastructure made easy. You are able to manage your entire enviornment from one single pane of glass. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Rising costs to keep the product. Broadcom has priced many small groups out of keeping the product long term. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** easy to maintain an entire virtual environment. This lowers your physical footprint in racks, power, and time to update. ### 22. Great management **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric R. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** vCenter makes the product - the hypervisor is the thing that gets you running (vSphere) but vCenter is what keeps it running, gives data, and allows management of the farm. Standing up vsphere can almost be done by a kid - very simple and straight forward **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Their pricing has gone insane. When the finance people ask more questions than the customer consuming the service, it's not good. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows running of dozens of servers on one piece of hardware. ### 23. Easiest Hypervisor Around, But Pricey **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** jon s. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Its the easiest hypervisor available. it is clean **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** the price of the software is our biggest issue. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** VMware provides a ton of testing machines and production servers in our environment' ### 24. Like vSphere Concerned about New Licensing **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pamela B. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 18, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Ease of Use, Broad use/support, vSphere is integrated with many other products **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Implementation not a easy as it could be. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Fast implementation of new servers - we are asked for new servers "yesterday". This helped us spin them up quickly. Makes our lives so much better. ### 25. Efficient Environment Management, But Offline Patching Is Challenging **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick L. | System Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** I enjoy the condensing of the environment. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Patching can be a difficult endeavor when working in environments not connected to the network **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Multiple servers in on location ### 26. Process made easy **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** As industry progresses in technology, sometimes systems can get left behind without a steady upgrade path. Being able to virtualize old or dying machines can allow systems to remain reliable for longer with safety in backups and recovery. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Learning curve can be a chore for some. As we take on a more tech focused support team, getting new individuals that are unfamiliar with VMware up to speed can take some time. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Backups and recovery. It helps our aging systems stay online longer until we can acquire necessary capital to upgrade. ### 27. Excellent Administrative experience for managing vms **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** will k. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** vSphere is still the best on the market for VM mananagement **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** I wish NSX was more integrated. I would be nice to configure segments from the vSphere pages **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** it keeps our datacenter footprint small and managable with fewer staff ### 28. VP of IT opinion **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Larry F. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Gold Standard for virtualization of physical servers to virtual servers. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** licensing costs (all or nothing). You are losing a lot of customers and integrators. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Less hardware costs and higher utilization of hardware. ### 29. It just works **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Steve M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Easy to set up new hosts and move vm around **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** It's all about the prices going up all the time **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Moving workloads to better servers quickly so the business can stay up ### 30. Vsphere review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael V. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Stable with easy access to all my virtual servers. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Sometimes hard to find the correct settings for what you are trying to do. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Access to all my servers from one location. ### 31. Remote VM Access Made Easy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Being able to access the VMs live and remotely **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** I sometimes have difficulty using the client. The web client works though **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** We save backups to a DR site and spin them up for testing. ### 32. Strong and Mature Platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Craig T. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Stable, reliable and easy to use. Large knowledgebase. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Support struggles to meet expectations.. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Less physical hardware and time to deliver reliable services. ### 33. vSphere **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Neil S. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Very intuitive and easy to manage. Effective Virtualization solution **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The pricing now, after Broadcom purchase **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easily manage our 1000's of VMs ### 34. User friendly **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Saad K. | Linux System Administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** The thing I mostly like about VMware VSphere is that his advance features like vMotions, HA, DHA what minimize the downtime **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Closed source not more flexible license are expensive **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Running many servers on one machine (saves cost) Reducing downtime with auto-failover and live migration ### 35. Powerful virtualization platform, costs going up **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Easy creation, deployment, and management of workloads; powerful balancing of resources among physical hosts, virtual storage management. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Locked in to physical host CPU architecture **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows balancing of workloads across multiple hosts with vCPU over commitment. Allows for quickly provisioning, updating, and deprovisioning workloads as needed. Single pane of glass management of all workloads across multiple clusters and datacenter. ### 36. Easy to Use with Great Support, But Pricey **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Ease of use and good support. I'm have been using it a long time **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Price!! It may become unaffordable for us in the future **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Saves time for management purposes ### 37. Best hypervisor **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian K. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** storage drs, motion and all the different features **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** moving away from early licensing up to VCF **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Needing server yesterday ### 38. User-Friendly Interface, But Pricey **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Easy to use and implement new VMs and sharing resources **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The licensing is a little on the expensive side. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allowing us to better utilize the hardware we purchase. ### 39. Easy to Use, But VCF Requirement Limits Flexibility **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Legal Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** It has been easy to install and configure since I started working with in v3. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** VCF requirement to stay with them into the future. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Minimizing hardware sprawl. ### 40. Effortless Server Management, But Pricey **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Easy to manage and maintained servers and resources. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** very expensive licensing for mid large sized business. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps to manage clusters of of servers ### 41. Effortless VM Administration Made Simple **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** ease of access for VM administration.... **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** updates,patching and support in an airgapped environment **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** infrastructure ### 42. Solid Utlitity **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** I appreciate that every panel tends to link to another panel, such that you can easily navigate through rather than needing to navigate back and forth. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Occasionally the pathing for navigation can be less intuitive than you would expect. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy management of hundreds of virtual machines. ### 43. VMware vSphere **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abdul Bassit S. | DevOps Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 10, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** It's features, such as snapshotting, backup are quite useful. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Some of the important features are limited due to license. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maintaining local datacenter servers in an efficient manner. ### 44. Long time administrator **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert S. | Senior IT Infrastructure specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 28, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Very stable product considering so many variables (different HW vendors, architecture design, quantity of settings etc). Also since ages - still easy to use and quite easy to implement, even we are getting more and more options/features in every new release version. It's easy to integrate with current software and hardware. Can say much about customer support as I didn't have many occassions to work with then, as there were only few cases that required additional support. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** I would expect some better integration with current devops/automation tools (Ansible, Chef etc) or even with PowerCLI. Maybe also some of the recent changes related with Broadcom aquisition like there was problem with licensing changes or KB links didn't worked/pointed out to wrong places (still there are few not fixed). **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Availabilty and better use of resources. Also easy of use and quite low entry threshold for new, fresh admins (at least for doing the basic tasks). ### 45. Good product, pricing and support could improve **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Utilities | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Easy to use and manage assets, simple UI for most tasks **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Not a lot of support when working in specific cases **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use all our hardware for a lot of VMs with a small amount of resources ### 46. The best platform to run virtual machines, although it is expensive. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Easy to use, powerful, hardware independent although VSAN has some requirements, **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Licensing, perpetual licenses were discontinued. Also, patching is a lengthy process with VxRail. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Running multiple virtual machines, able to deploy them quickly using templates. ### 47. VMware vSphere good old reliable **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Oil & Energy | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** The product has been around for a long time, leader in the hypervisor, huge community support. More features than the competition. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The product itself, must be purchased as a bundle. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Consolidating server workload ### 48. Good virtual management platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 18, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** Ease of use. API intergration with other products. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** Don't like the update technology. VSAN and NSX . **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reduced physical inventory. ### 49. The reliable virtualization **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 31, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** easy of use on production in a few time lot of documentation and case **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** new licensing model selective hardware support **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business continuity (fault tolerance of server without down) Hardware and resource optimization ### 50. VMware vSphere is the best virtualization platform currently on the market **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jesse F. | Senior System Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere?** VMware vSphere is easy to deploy, use, and manage. I've been working with it since version 4.0 and have several certifications. The installation is very easy if you follow the hardware support guide and make sure to use supported hardware. Customer support is generally pretty good, but can be hit or miss depending on the engineering support you get assigned. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere?** The biggest downside of VMware vSphere is Broadcom's purchase of the company. The support has gotten both worse and much more expensive. **What problems is VMware vSphere solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are utilizing VMware vSphere to not have an entire datacenter full of physical servers. They have been the industry standard for virtualization for years for a good reason. ## VMware vSphere Discussions - [Is ESXi software free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-esxi-software-free) - 4 comments, 1 upvote - [What is ESXi used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-esxi-used-for) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is VMware vSphere Hypervisor used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-vmware-vsphere-hypervisor-used-for) - 2 comments - [What is VMware vSphere standard?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-vmware-vsphere-standard) - 2 comments - [What is ESXi operating system?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-esxi-operating-system) - 1 comment - [View VMware vSphere pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-vsphere/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=4§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-12+20%3A45%3A21+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=2acaca38-081f-41ed-9cd5-aeec484d1239&secure%5Btoken%5D=c9d8ed35fda77f0277e8f01006c5fa1265927ca407a64a403f9b84a062b8d663&format=llm_user) ## VMware vSphere Integrations - [Acronis Cyber Protect](https://www.g2.com/products/acronis-acronis-cyber-protect/reviews) - [Veeam Data Platform](https://www.g2.com/products/veeam-data-platform/reviews) - [VMware NSX](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-nsx/reviews) - [VMware vSAN](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-vsan/reviews) - [Zabbix](https://www.g2.com/products/zabbix/reviews) ## VMware vSphere Features **Core Functions** - Server Virtualization - Storage Virtualization - Network Virtualization **Infrastructure Provision** - Public Cloud - Private Cloud - Hybrid Cloud - Bare Metal - High-Performance Computing (HPC) - Virtual Machines (VMs) - Edge Computing - Virtual Networks - Cloud Computing **Performance** - Scalability - Portability - Data Recovery - Disaster Recovery **General Functionality** - Dynamic Scaling - High Availability - Data Security - Backup and Recovery **Management** - Pay by Usage - Usage Tracking - Performance Tracking - Activity Tracking **Functionality** - OS Integration - Resource Saving - Performance Management - Security - Third-Party Integrations - User Management - Compliance Management - Task Management **Configuration** - Appliance Independence - Hardware Integration **Functionality** - Resource Auto-Scaling **Agentic AI - Server Virtualization** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making - File Transfer **Additional Functionality** - Cloud Computing - Archiving & Retention - Issue Tracking - Virtual Machine Migration - Server Monitoring - Status Tracking - Secure Login - Activity Dashboard - API - Graphical User Interface - Secure Data Storage - Alerts/Escalation - Generative AI - Virtual Server - Remote Update/Installation - Data Verification - AI Copilot - Reporting & Statistics - VDI - Database Support - Data Synchronization - Data Replication - Virtual Machine Monitoring **Additional Functionality** - Version Control - Database Support - Real-Time Monitoring - Monitoring - Activity Dashboard - SSL Security - Configurable Workflow - Performance Metrics - Performance Management - Server Monitoring - Data Security - Reporting/Analytics - API - Compliance Management - Access Controls/Permissions - Authentication - Real-Time Analytics - Audit Management - Single Sign On - Generative AI - Third-Party Integrations - Alerts/Escalation - Data Storage Management - AI Copilot - Resource Management - Activity Management - Scheduling - Load Balancing - Backup and Recovery - User Management - Role-Based Permissions - Secure Login - Reporting & Statistics - Network Monitoring - Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management - Task Scheduling - Application Management - Resource Allocation & Planning - Real-Time Notifications - Data Migration - Configuration Management - Log Access - Data Visualization - Real-Time Data - Audit Trail - Secure Data Storage - Data Capture and Transfer - Workflow Management - Performance Monitoring - Search/Filter **Agentic AI - Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Solutions** - Autonomous Task Execution - Adaptive Learning - Decision Making ## Top VMware vSphere Alternatives - [Azure Virtual Machines](https://www.g2.com/products/azure-virtual-machines/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (377 reviews) - [Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)](https://www.g2.com/products/nutanix-cloud-infrastructure-nci/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (293 reviews) - [SC// HyperCore Virtualization Suite](https://www.g2.com/products/sc-hypercore-virtualization-suite/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (327 reviews)