What are good alternatives to VMware vSphere?

Why are companies looking for alternatives to VMware vSphere?

First of all, we want to emphasise; for VanRoey and within many of our customers' environments, VMware VSphere objectively remains a very strong and valid solution.

However, it is true that VMware has made significant cuts to the base segment of their vSphere offerings. The perpetual licences have been removed. For organisations that do not immediately have all the advanced features of leveraging vSphere, such a mandatory upgrade is a tough sell. Clearly, Broadcom is targeting high-end enterprise environments.

What virtualisation platforms are there besides VMware vSphere?

When it comes to alternatives to VMware, compatibility with our portfolio is an important factor for us:

• We mainly focus on Windows Server environments;
• A dealbreaker for us is the support for Veeam, given that this backup solution is an essential part of our strategic puzzle, both for local and off-site backups, as well as Managed Services.
• Given our long-standing specialisations in Microsoft and HPE Hyper-V and Morpheus are obviously on the radar.

1. Microsoft Hyper-V

Hyper-V is not perfect (yet), but it is a very good option in Windows environments. In fact, most organisations already own the licences, given that they are included with Windows Server Standard & Datacenter licences.

However, the functionalities versus vSphere are slightly more limited, but that also makes the fact less complex in terms of set-up and management. Of course, integration with the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem is also a strength. Also, Hyper-V offers Live Migration and Storage Live Migration without an additional licence.

Fortunately, we already have a lot of experience with Microsoft Hyper-V so many customers were quickly switched over.

Attention, within Hyper-V, native disk encryption for VMs is missing. And, for those who need high-end workloads, Hyper-V supports up to 240 vCPUs and 12 TB of RAM, where VMware goes up to 768 vCPUs and 24 TB of RAM.

2. Azure cloud infrastructure

You might wonder whether certain applications are still on their own infrastructure should run. Numerous servers or specific processes can safely be run through Microsoft Azure. You then pay based on usage. Here, too, a proper assessment is needed in advance to see whether this will save (hidden) costs in the long run, because in this case you also don't need to provide your own electricity, hardware, cooling, management...!

Of course, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are also good options here. However, VanRoey prefers Azure given its seamless integrations with Microsoft 365, Entra ID, SSO... and years of specialisation. You can even get the licences through us self-service portal grant(!) In addition, Azure a broad ecosystem of services such as AI, databases, security and DevOps integrations, making your infrastructure not only scalable, but also future-proof. Unlike VMware, which focuses mainly on on-prem virtualisation, Azure offers faster time-to-market, automatic updates and global availability.

3. HPE Morpheus - VM Essentials

HPE Morpheus VM Essentials is a virtualisation and management platform aimed at hybrid environments. Importantly, it counts per socket instead of per core, which in many cases will be much cheaper than vSphere.

As a full-fledged KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) virtualisation solution, you can:

• Create, manage and migrate VMs within HPE VME clusters;
• Perform live migration of VMs without downtime;
• Set up automatic failover & workload balancing;
• Apply provisioning and automation via a built-in image library and wizard.
  VMware vCenter can be integrated, allowing you to manage both VMware and HPE hypervisors from a single platform.

Morpheus is cloud-native and platform-agnostic. Thus, from one central management platform (Morpheus UI), you can manage both private as public manage cloud environments, including those from VMware, KVM, Kubernetes... and it offers full integration with AWS, Azure, GCP...

So a good option if you want to avoid vendor lock-in!

4. Proxmox Virtual Environment

Proxmox VE is open-source and easily rivals VMware vSphere or Hyper-V. It is ideal if you are looking for a cost-efficient virtualisation platform with built-in clustering, container support (LXC), backup and replication capabilities...

As a hypervisor, Proxmox uses KVM combined with LXC containers, complemented by numerous advanced features such as live migration, web management and support for ZFS and Ceph. VMware vSphere is somewhat more powerful for enterprise environments with deep integrations and advanced features, but then also requires more licences and additional tools such as vCenter and vSAN.

We'll go into a little more detail about the pros and cons of open source below, but the annual paid version of Proxmox offers guaranteed support and stable updates. For €355 you get support for 3 tickets with 1 working day response time and for €1,060 you can submit unlimited tickets with 2h response time.

5. Are there any open-source virtualisation solutions that can replace VMware?

Today, there are many open-source alternatives you can use: OpenStack, KVM, XCP-ng, Oracle VirtualBox... Many of them are very mature. For instance, Proxmox (the free version) & oVirt offer advanced enterprise functionalities like clustering, snapshots, live migration or user-friendly web interfaces. In principle, these can replace VMware just fine, but it depends on your needs and expectations.

Unfortunately, now comes the 'but'... Cheap sometimes also means expensive in the business world. There are things to keep in mind:

• Although the underlying communities are very helpful, if you don't pay anyone, no one will either guaranteed be able to count when things go wrong;
• Setting up, managing, troubleshooting open-source solutions is often a lot more technical. The hours your IT staff or IT partner lose in this quickly add up;
• Also, sooner or later you will potentially run into limitations that commercial alternatives do not have;
• For instance, compared to VMware or Hyper-V, integrations with backup, monitoring and security tools are more limited.

What is the process of migrating from VMware to another solution?

We'll schedule a licence specialists switched gears immediately as soon as the first rumours of the price hike appeared on Reddit. Thus, we were fortunately still able to extend many customers in their old pricing formula, which took the pressure off (for them). This gave them an extra year to -if desired- evaluate and plan a thoroughly reasoned migration path.

Unfortunately, switching to a new hypervisor provider is not as easy as switching your energy supplier. It involves a real migration process where every virtual machine has to be carefully transferred.

The key question for most organisations, then, is: "Do the costs, impact and risks of this migration path outweigh the increased costs of VMware vSphere?". Broadcom naturally anticipates you choosing the path of least resistance, and that choice is certainly understandable.

Need help or advice on migrating from (or to) VMware vSphere?

What licences or hardware do you need? How do you set everything up securely? Depending on your environment, our specialists can make the right assessment. Their advice is invaluable.