VMware: The Foundation of Private Cloud Infrastructure
Another blog post about VMware. Is it even relevant anymore to talk about all the buzz in the market? Yes, absolutely. Because the shockwave hasn't even really started yet; for now, it's just rumbling beneath the surface.
How did we end up here? Let me break it down into a few simple steps:
- A technology with roots dating back to the 1960s, extremely effective in production environments
- Make it a commercial success
- Wait until the industry starts working higher up the stack, for example with containerization.
- Don't be too vocal about containerization not being a replacement for virtualization.
- Increasing prices because it is a core component within modern data center stacks
- Observe what is happening (at this moment)
The situation the industry currently finds itself in regarding VMware is reminiscent of a well-known XKCD comic that’s been circulating for years. It’s often cited when an open-source project finds itself in trouble due to a critical vulnerability or a lack of maintenance and ownership—and everyone suddenly realizes: “This component is everywhere… how did this happen?”
Well, news for you: in theory, anyone can solve a problem with open-source tooling—provided they have sufficient willpower and the right knowledge and resources are available. With proprietary products, it's fundamentally different. You simply don't have that freedom.
In such cases, there is little else to do but engage in commercial arm-wrestling and/or carry out a complex migration of core layers to open-source alternatives. Often, those alternatives are part of products that are specifically designed to allow you to quickly and relatively easily disconnect from the original offering.
This makes the strategic choice between open and closed technology not only a technical consideration, but above all a business-critical decision for the long term.
An alternative to VMware?
SUE provides a fully feature-parity alternative to the VMware product suite, without the stifling commercial lock-in. We do this using our open-source virtualization technology stack: Enterprise CloudStack. This is a SUE-supported distribution based on the open-source CloudStack, as shown in Table 1.
SUE actively contributes to this open-source project, including through functionality that allows custom resources to be flexibly injected into Kubernetes clusters. These clusters can be deployed and managed using Cloud Stack. In this way, we combine open-source virtualization with " cloud native " principles, without being dependent on a single vendor.
ECSS provides an enterprise-grade, supported installation and management environment that organizations need to reliably run and manage their business-critical workloads.
| VMware | Enterprise CloudStack |
|---|---|
| ESX | KVM |
| vCenter | ECSS Administration Portal |
| vSphere | ECSS VM Portal |
| vApp | ECSS Service Offerings |
| Virtual Data Center | ECSS Clusters & Projects |
| DRS | ECSS DRS |
| Storage DRS | ECSS DRS |
| vMotion | ECSS Live Migration |
| vRealize | Multistax (SaaS) API & Portal |
| Tanzu | Multistax (SaaS) API & Portal |
Table 1. Comparison of Functionality
In addition, ECSS integrates with Multistax, our application delivery platform, providing you with a supported installation and management layer for Cloud Stack.
Why choose ECSS? SUE has a large support organization of open-source engineers. They manage and operate the open-source technology stack as a managed service through Managed Infrastructure or via a support contract. This way, you aren’t dependent on a vendor you can’t do without but that operates independently, and you reduce the risk to your business-critical workloads. Due to the significant price increases associated with (contract renewals), the benefits of a migration far outweigh the costs: less risk, greater freedom in choosing vendors in the long term, and an active open-source community that continues to develop Cloud Stack.
With ECSS, you can migrate to Cloud Stack step by step, because:
- Cloud Stack can manage existing VMware hypervisors, as well as other hypervisors
- Cloud Stack can import VMs from VMware vSphere
Conclusion
Build on open source technology and products and take advantage of commercial support from professional support organizations. This allows you to move freely, flexibly, and confidently within the increasingly complex IT multiverse.
Would you like to see ECSS in action?
Contact us and let our experts help you migrate your legacy VMs to ECSS, so you can start saving time and money right away. Be sure to check out our Enterprise Support packages for CloudStack and our flexible pricing options.
To learn how SUE moves applications and data in waves, visit the page Cloud Migration. The guide “ Cloud Migration ” outlines the strategies and pitfalls.
Are you still running vSphere 8? Find out what to do when vSphere 8 is discontinued.
