VMware: the cornerstone of any robust private cloud infrastructure
Another blog post about VMware—is it still relevant 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 manufacturing
- 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 with regard to VMware is reminiscent of a well-known XKCD comic that has been circulating for years. It is often cited when an open-source project is compromised by 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 left to do but engage in commercial arm-wrestling and/or carry out a complex migration of fundamental layers to open-source alternatives. Often, these alternatives are part of products that are specifically designed with the ability to quickly and relatively easily disconnect you 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 based on our open source virtualization technology stack: Enterprise Cloud Stack. This is a SUE-supported distribution based on the open source Cloud Stack, 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 rolled out and managed with Cloud Stack. This allows us to combine open source virtualization with cloud-native principles, without being dependent on a single supplier.
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. Feature parity table
On top of that, the value of ECSS is seamless integration with our application delivery platform calledMultistaxand having a supported installation and management layer forCloud Stack.
Why should I go for ECSS? Because SUE has a large support organization of open source engineers who can maintain and run the open source technology stack as amanaged serviceand/orsupport contractwithout the risk of building on top of rebellious but crucial vendors, effectively de-risking your business workloads. Due to the significant price increases happening for contract(s) (extensions), the costs of a migration clearly outweigh the benefits regarding de-risking, (service) supplier flexibility in the long term, including a vibrant active open source community innovating Cloud Stack.
With ECSS, you can migrate Cloud Stack in a very granular manner because:
- Cloud Stack allows managing existing VMware hypervisors, amongothers
- Cloud Stack enablesthe import ofVMs 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, saving you time and money right away. Discover our Enterprise Support packages, specially developed for CloudStack, and our flexible pricing options that suit your organization.
