A just-published Wikibon survey of vSphere users with a focus on virtualizing storage found greater adoption rates for vSphere 5 than expected and found most respondents happy with the new version. In his summary of the results, posted on the Wikibon site, Consultant Ralph Finos, who conducted the study for Wikibon, wrote that 60% of the 158 survey respondents reported using vSphere 5 predominantly. Only 3% said they had no plans for vSphere 5 adoption, while 18% were in test phase and 20% were planning their adoption strategy.

Some 88% of survey participants reported “a high level of satisfaction with the storage value derived from the upgrade.” However, the survey found that resellers, who have been particularly aggressive in adopting the new version, are happier with it overall than were end-users, once they have completed the upgrade and have gained experience with it. Finos suggests that this might be because of poor planning or unrealistic expectations among some end-users and sees this as a warning of the importance of careful planning before virtualizing an IT environment and of planning and testing before installing a major upgrade.

Users overall and resellers in particular reported that this upgrade was much easier than the vSphere 4 upgrade.

Users reported several reasons for upgrading. The most commonly cited reasons were a policy of staying current (29%), performance (26%), and improved management (26%). Support for a mission critical application (11%) and NFS integration (6%) were cited by smaller but still significant numbers of participants.

SiliconAngle and Wikibon will be covering the VMware 2012 conference with live webcasts from The Cube on the show floor Monday August 27 through Thursday August 30. Watch the coverage on www.siliconangle.tv.