# VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Reviews **Vendor:** Broadcom **Category:** [Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/data-center-infrastructure-management-dcim) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 24 ## About VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) is the enterprise workload engine built to optimize the IT infrastructure for organizations of all sizes by boosting operational efficiency, supercharging workload performance, elevating security, and accelerating innovation. It delivers intelligent operations management, purpose-built to enable the best performance, availability and efficiency from your infrastructure, while providing comprehensive visibility and analytics in one place. ## VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **simplicity and robust design** of VMware vSphere Foundation, making it easy to use for enterprises. (8 reviews) - Users value the **cost-effective VMware entry point** providing reliable virtualization technology for small businesses' budget constraints. (4 reviews) - Users value the **customization options** of VMware vSphere Foundation, tailoring it to their specific business needs effectively. (3 reviews) - Users find **deployment ease** with VMware vSphere Foundation, appreciating its accessibility and speed for resource setup. (3 reviews) - Users praise the **easy setup** of VMware vSphere Foundation, making it accessible for newcomers and efficient for management. (3 reviews) - Users value the **versatility** of VMware vSphere Foundation, suiting small to medium organizations with tailored solutions. (3 reviews) - Users appreciate the **streamlined management of virtual infrastructure** offered by VMware vSphere Foundation, enhancing operational efficiency. (3 reviews) - Users value the **flexibility and business continuity solutions** offered by VMware vSphere Foundation for seamless operations. (2 reviews) - Cost-Effective (2 reviews) - Customer Support (2 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find VMware vSphere Foundation **too expensive** , especially with limited features and significant price jumps for upgrades. (6 reviews) - Users face **learning difficulties** with VMware vSphere Foundation due to its simplified interface and lack of advanced features. (2 reviews) - Users criticize the **limited functionality** of VMware vSphere Foundation, lacking essential features for effective cloud management. (2 reviews) - Users face **networking issues** with VMware vSphere Foundation, limiting its effectiveness in hybrid cloud environments. (2 reviews) - Users are frustrated with the **strict 4-host limitation** of VMware vSphere Foundation, hindering their ability to scale effectively. (2 reviews) - Users find the **cost prohibitive for small businesses** , limiting accessibility to VMware vSphere Foundation for small deployments. (2 reviews) - Users have faced **unexpected costs** with VMware vSphere Foundation, as licensing rates have skyrocketed significantly. (2 reviews) - Cost Management (1 reviews) - Users struggle with the **difficult setup** of VMware vSphere Foundation, facing ongoing bugs and maintenance challenges. (1 reviews) - Limited Customization (1 reviews) ## VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Reviews ### 1. vSphere Foundation Brings Order and Easy VM Management from One Central Console **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nijat I. | Full-stack Developer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** For me, the main thing was the notion that all these processes were no longer “messy”. Before my work on vSphere, I had always experienced a kind of environment where every single server seemed isolated, and any changes required additional communication efforts. When using vSphere Foundation, things started getting more structured and manageable from one center. I would check the status of VMs, resource allocation, and activities on hosts constantly, and soon, this process became routine. I especially enjoyed that I could create new virtual machines easily and change anything about them without a lot of bureaucracy. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** This is not hard due to the fact that the tool itself is bad – this is due to the fact that much more lies under the hood. During the first uses, I felt that I could comprehend only the surface level, and all the work was done at a much deeper level of the infrastructure layer. Debugging may quickly turn out to be very stressful since there are a lot of aspects to consider. On top of that, sometimes I found myself running from setting to setting in order to find out why performance differs among different hosts. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** The biggest change for me was how infrastructure management became less reactive. Previously, having to work with physical servers often resulted in slower operations, and each change involving the alteration of resources had required more effort on my part. Now, I had the freedom to be able to do changes to workload without having to waste effort on doing the same thing repeatedly with respect to infrastructure management. Moreover, capacity management also became easier as I was now thinking about the overall system, rather than focusing on individual machines. ### 2. VMware vSphere Foundation: A Complete Platform for Virtualization and VM Monitoring **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Steven R. | Infrastructure Administrator, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** VMware vSphere Foundation provides us }a complete platform for virtualization and monitoring our virtual machine solutions. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The license model implemented by Broadcom after the VMware acquisition. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** It’s an enterprise-grade virtualization platform that’s reliable, offers a huge range of functions, and comes with great documentation and support. ### 3. VMware vSphere Foundation: Real-World Performance Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kavach S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 18, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** 1. Cost-Effective VMware Entry Point Provides genuine VMware virtualization technology at a fraction of enterprise edition costs, perfect for small businesses wanting proven reliability without breaking budgets. 2. Simplified Management for Small Teams Streamlined vCenter interface eliminates overwhelming enterprise features, making it easy to deploy and manage with minimal learning curve for VMware newcomers. 3. Proven ESXi Hypervisor Foundation Built on the same mature, battle-tested ESXi hypervisor used in Fortune 500 companies, delivering enterprise-level stability for smaller environments. 4. Right-Sized Feature Set Includes exactly what small environments need - HA, vMotion, VM encryption - without feature bloat or unused capabilities driving up costs. 5. Clear Growth Path Seamless upgrade path to vSphere Standard or Enterprise as organizations expand, with familiar VMware ecosystem making scaling decisions straightforward.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Here are 5 key limitations users commonly dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation: 1. Strict 4-Host Limitation Hard ceiling of 4 ESXi hosts creates immediate scaling bottleneck, forcing expensive upgrades even for modest growth beyond this arbitrary limit. 2. Missing Advanced Features No Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), limited networking capabilities, and reduced automation features that are standard in competing solutions at similar price points. 3. Limited vMotion Capabilities Basic vMotion implementation lacks advanced features like Cross-vCenter vMotion, creating operational constraints for even small multi-site deployments. 4. Reduced Management Flexibility Simplified interface removes granular control options that experienced administrators expect, making complex configurations difficult or impossible to implement. 5. Poor Value Scaling Significant price jump to vSphere Standard creates awkward pricing gap, making Foundation feel like forced vendor lock-in rather than genuine entry-level option.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vendor Lock-in Fears with Unknown Platforms Offers trusted VMware technology with clear upgrade paths, giving small organizations confidence they won’t outgrow their virtualization investment. ### 4. Best Virtualization Platform on the market **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Architecture & Planning | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** It is very easy to setup ESXi & vCenter. After you have administered it for several years, it can become very complex with the VM & Templates folder structure, Permissions, Networks, etc. However, between the VM & Template folders and tags & notes on VMs, you can use these as a poor man's CMDB too. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Now that VMware has forced all customers to go to VCF, the licensing costs have skyrocketed, but our company is pretty entrenched with VMware, so we are going to move to VCF soon. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** We want to get the most bang for our buck when it comes to server virtualization. Depending on the environment, we are getting about a 3 to 1 consolidation ratio in Prod, while we are getting 5 to 1 in our Non-Prod environment. ### 5. Streamlining Your Data Center: A Review of VMware vSphere Foundation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** What I like best about VMware vSphere Foundation is its role as a streamlined, enterprise-grade workload platform that unifies traditional virtualization with modern cloud-native capabilities. It's the ideal choice for organizations that need a powerful, on-premises foundation for their core business applications without the full-stack complexity of VMware Cloud Foundation. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The main challenge with VMware vSphere Foundation is that it is not a complete solution for a private or hybrid cloud stack. While it provides a robust platform for compute and storage, it lacks the integrated and automated networking and full-stack lifecycle management that is central to VMware Cloud Foundation. This means that customers who require a unified, automated platform for their entire data center, including advanced networking and security, may find vSphere Foundation insufficient. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) is designed to solve the problems of infrastructure complexity and operational inefficiency for organizations that need a powerful, enterprise-grade virtualization platform without the full-stack automation of a private cloud solution. It addresses the challenges of managing disparate components for compute and storage by unifying them into a single, cohesive platform. ### 6. All in one solution for datacenter **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 09, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** This bundled license is an upgrade from vSphere Enterprise Plus. It comes with the all the recommended features for our datacenter, including vSAN & Aria. Broadcom customer support was helpful in sharing knowledge base articles & pointing out any potential issues, such as version requirements. It is easy to implement as there are less different licenses needed for your environment. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** I dont like that there is a limitation of 0.25 TiB / Core for vSAN with this license. Stretched-cluster environment not worth it if you have high latency or a poor network, this is due to vSAN having to sync disks between sites. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ease of management, ease of use, no driver issues like with other similar software products, everything integrated and working well together , it is a polished software for managing a datacenter. ### 7. Confusing product **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The upside of using VVF is it is a more limited set of the current VMware platform. You don't need to have all the bells and whistles if that's not what your company needs. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** I have a difficult time understanding how long VVF is going to be offered. Broadcom's clear message to the industry is VCF VCF VCF. I can't recommend VVF as I don't know how long the product will be in the pipeline. The messaging keeps changing and makes a purchase untenable. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is a lower cost of entry. ### 8. Great virtualization platform **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chad H. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 14, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** If you don't need all the features with VCF, this is your product. Virtualization is best of breed and the centralized management is solid. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Can't add on other features like NSX which would be nice. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Datacenter consolidation and reduced capex spend. ### 9. Comprehensive but expensive **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 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 Foundation (VVF)?** It is still the best option for a hypervisor our there. It's robust and not too hard to use. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** by using the foundation licensing, our cost of using VMware went up by 500% from last year to this year. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using vSphere in a small environment is the best hypervisor option. ### 10. Avid VCF user **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jason Y. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** I like the integration that the platform is bringing across all teams in it. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** I am still calculating the pricing and its cost of return on investment. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** The program ensures that all our infrastructure is operational and enables our success. ### 11. Vsphere **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jerod W. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Gives us a ton of flexibility and provides us a great business continuity solution. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Licensing has gotten too expensive. Conversion from legacy licensing is an issue. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Saves us a ton of datace ter space. ### 12. Foundation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** It is easy to use and implement. The system just works. The added features to the platform over just vSphere. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** There is no text in an unknown language to translate. The provided text is already in English. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Still evaluating placement ### 13. Informative Conference **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brett L. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The sessions are very informative and have a variety of topics. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** It's in Las Vegas which isn't for everyone. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's providing us a stable foundation for our servers. ### 14. ClousWave **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** larry B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Great on prem solution for small and medium size orgs **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Cost, most small and medium size organizations cannot afford the solutions from VMware. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** performance and resource management. ### 15. great **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alberto B. | System Administrator, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** we are currently exploring an upgrade from vsphere yo vcf **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** actually im not using, just in process of training to upgrade from vsphere **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** no one currently ### 16. Getting better all the time? **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** bryan C. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The holistic integration for management interface planes **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** In prior to 9 releases, difficulty with SDDC **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Difficult to facilitate upgrades ### 17. Impressive Product Range, But Overwhelming to Manage **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Large suite of products. Large suite of products **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Too much to keep up with. Too much to keep up with **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data center operations is more nmanageable. ### 18. Easy to learn and be productive quickly **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Packaging and Containers | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Training videos and hand on lab make understanding the product easy to pick up and become productive quickly when moving from Developers role to infrastructure. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Combo boxes need to default to least in alphabetical order **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy of keeping end users happy with the environment ### 19. The single most difficult way to deploy a product. More bugs than a Florida summer. **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Utilities | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Nothing. except that for the exorbitant cost, we finally have NSX **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The entire setup, the continuous amount of bugs just to install, maintain, patch, grow, upgrade. Needs serious help **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Gives us a central product to deploy vSphere, when it actually works. ### 20. I have been a vSphere Admin for a couple of decades & recently moved to vSphere Foundation. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consulting | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Easy to deploy. No VSAN or NSX requirement like VCF. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Need to piecemeal the other components if we want for example monitoring, we need Ops. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** We wanted to use the most modern server virtualization platform possible. ### 21. not much for now, but getting there **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** accessibility and speed while trying to deploy resources **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** price is wuite high and even for small deployments **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** as of now not many problems solved but the idea is to have a reliable and accessible environment ### 22. Very helpful and very useful technology! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** It's a brilliant way to manager your virtual infrastructure. **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** There aren't any major negatives from what I can tell. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's helping us manage our data center environment and the systems that are housed there. ### 23. New Experiences **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** What is most helpful is the simplicity of the software **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The least helpful is its still new. We are running on an older version. **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vsphere Foundation will assist with managing our VM environment ### 24. Full visibilrt with ops and still running existent SAN arrays **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consulting | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** The possibility to use existing infrastructure and use the magic from operations to get full visibility **What do you dislike about VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF)?** Vsan addons if needed. Not beeing able to run vDefend **What problems is VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using external storage and still using vsphere - [View VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-vsphere-foundation-vvf/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-12+14%3A54%3A06+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=6624699a-f434-4764-a729-9db0c8bfd87c&secure%5Btoken%5D=27e566fe19c3bd61bcebce2592f278f2f90c225690fad015dfb95054a7cfca48&format=llm_user) ## VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Integrations - [Veeam Data Platform](https://www.g2.com/products/veeam-data-platform/reviews) - [Zerto](https://www.g2.com/products/zerto/reviews) ## VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Features **Infrastructure Provision** - Public Cloud - Private Cloud - Hybrid Cloud - Bare Metal - High-Performance Computing (HPC) - Virtual Machines (VMs) - Edge Computing - Virtual Networks **Performance Management** - Workflow Automation - Change Management - Real Time Reporting **Performance** - Scalability - Portability - Data Recovery **Management** - Access Control - Network Isolation - File Isolation **Management** - Pay by Usage - Usage Tracking - Performance Tracking **Monitoring** - Server Performance - Energy Consumption - Space Planning **Functionality** - OS Integration - Resource Saving - Performance Management - Security **Organization** - Packaging - Container Networking - Orchestration **Functionality** - Resource Auto-Scaling **Agentic AI - Server Virtualization** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Development** - Developer Toolkit - Architecture - Datacenter - Virtualization ## Top VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Alternatives - [Google Compute Engine](https://www.g2.com/products/google-compute-engine/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (875 reviews) - [DigitalOcean](https://www.g2.com/products/digitalocean/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (738 reviews) - [Akamai Cloud Computing](https://www.g2.com/products/akamai-cloud-computing/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (387 reviews)