VMware vSphere Foundation Reviews & Product Details

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.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Can't add on other features like NSX which would be nice. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is still the best option for a hypervisor our there. It's robust and not too hard to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

by using the foundation licensing, our cost of using VMware went up by 500% from last year to this year. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the integration that the platform is bringing across all teams in it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I am still calculating the pricing and its cost of return on investment. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Gives us a ton of flexibility and provides us a great business continuity solution. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Licensing has gotten too expensive. Conversion from legacy licensing is an issue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is easy to use and implement. The system just works. The added features to the platform over just vSphere. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is no text in an unknown language to translate. The provided text is already in English. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.