George Crump

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When considering a VMware alternative, addressing vSAN performance issues and data protection shortcomings is paramount. Incorporating a vSAN into a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a common practice for alternative solutions. However, despite the theoretical price advantages of vSANs, many IT professionals disqualify HCI due to performance, reliability, and hardware inflexibility. Improving vSAN by addressing these issues is critical so organizations can lower licensing costs and storage hardware costs.

Addressing vSAN performance issues requires innovations found in ultraconverged infrastructure, not the bolt-on workarounds common with HCI. In our previous article, we prioritized addressing data protection issues in the context of HCI and VMware alternatives, as any performance improvement would be futile without robust data protection measures. This article covers the I/O performance issues of the vSAN approach, why it limits VMware alternative selection, and how to address them.

vSAN Refresher

addressing vSAN performance issues

vSAN is a category of storage software that operates in virtual environments, scaling capacity and performance with added nodes. It should allow off-the-shelf, server-class storage in servers that are also running the hypervisor. The original goal of a vSAN is to reduce storage costs and simplify architecture and operations, eliminating the need for expensive storage controllers and high markups on storage media. However, concern over data availability and performance, plus cost savings that never actually materialized has stunted the growth of what should be a dominant architecture.

Improving vSAN Core

One key challenge of most vSAN technology is that it operates as a virtual machine of the hypervisor, relegating storage to a secondary role. This lack of tight integration means that the vSAN does not directly understand the resources, such as CPU and memory, which it will share with the hypervisor. This technical limitation poses a significant hurdle in optimizing vSAN performance.

This lack of cooperation in resource sharing and allocation between the two processes poses a significant challenge. Vendors have attempted to overcome this by creating vSAN-Ready nodes, which loosely translated, means overpowered nodes that compensate for the overhead caused by running storage as a separate VM. The problem with these vSAN-Ready nodes is that they break the original promise of less expensive storage costs.

VergeOS vSAN integrates into the Core

VergeOS takes a different approach from other HCI vendors. It is an ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI), meaning the storage functionality and network services are tightly integrated into the hypervisor. With VergeOS, there is one efficient piece of software to install, and the integration means that each of the services; storage, hypervisor, and network are aware of each other and can more accurately allocate resources. The efficiency and more accurate resource allocation means our vSAN, VergeFS, does not require a particular vSAN-Ready node; standard off-the-shelf server hardware, including in most cases, the hardware you already own, will deliver excellent performance.

Improving vSAN Connect

addressing vSAN performance issues

Any scale-out environment will require robust internode connectivity and communication to sustain performance at scale. This requirement is magnified in an HCI environment as the hypervisor and the network software will also need to coordinate between nodes, creating a heavy amount of east-west communication. Because HCI solutions run these three components separately, the separate processes require a unique communication lane, effectively tripling the network load. Lastly, most HCI vendors try to leverage legacy protocols that are not optimized for this type of traffic, which increases the “chatiness” of the communication.

The node interconnect’s lack of integration and dependence on legacy protocols significantly burden it. This burden limits scale both technically and practically while also complicating network design. The workaround, once again, is to throw hardware at the problem. Some solutions recommend 25GbE as a minimum interconnect, while others suggest NVMe connectivity.

While not directly related to performance, another aspect of the vSAN connect is supporting external arrays, specifically FC-SAN arrays. Most HCI solutions do not support these systems. Even if the VMware alternative can address all the performance issues of its vSAN, customers are unwilling to replace the existing FC-SAN array prematurely.

VergeOS vSAN Optimized Fabric

Thanks to its integration, the VergeOS vSAN, VergeFS can leverage all the attributes of VergeFabric, our software-defined networking. The integration also reduces the communication lanes to one, increasing efficiency. Additionally, VergeFS utilizes a custom network protocol that enables it to provide an active-active port utilization technique that automatically loads and balances traffic during internode communications, providing near port speed performance. The protocol is also scalable beyond two ports; for example, customers can use quad-port network interface cards (NIC), and the protocol will appropriately use all four ports for maximum performance and resiliency.

VergeOS vSAN also supports external FC-SANs so customers can leverage their existing investments. In the future, these customers can move to a vSAN to lower storage costs, continue to invest in their FC-SAN or run in a hybrid configuration.

Improving vSAN Data Optimization

addressing vSAN performance issues

Virtualized environments often contain a significant amount of redundant data. Each VM uses one of two operating systems, which means similar operating system files that consume a lot of capacity. There is often redundancy across applications and at least some redundancy within user data. As a result, most vSANs have a data deduplication capability that delivers a 3:1 to 5:1 gain in effective capacity. The problem is that the way various vSAN technologies implement deduplication extracts a noticeable impact on storage IO performance.

The reason for the negative performance impact is twofold, but the source is the same: lack of efficiency. vSANs don’t have the “luxury” of dedicated resources as do storage arrays; resources must be shared between the storage, virtualization, and network functions. Once again, because the storage software is a separate application with unique VM(s), the deduplication process runs externally to the network software and hypervisor, meaning that redundant data is handled multiple times. Second, the vendor-added deduplication capability is often added years after introducing the vSAN software. The result is that the deduplication process must run against the data being processed, updating the vSAN software, which in turn must update the hypervisor; essentially, metadata is constantly updating metadata, creating significant overhead. Solving the overhead problem, again, requires overbuying on the processor and RAM resources.

VergeOS vSAN Hypervisor-Aware Deduplication

Not all deduplication is created equal, and addressing vSAN performance issues requires building an algorithm designed specifically for converged infrastructure. For example, VergeOS’ global inline deduplication has been integrated into the product from day one, and it runs seamlessly within the same code as the hypervisor and the fabric, making both deduplication aware. The result is deduplication efficiency multiplied across storage, processing, and network connections. The tight “from day one” integration also means that a single process updates all metadata and avoids “metadata updating metadata” overhead.

Improving vSAN Data Distribution Performance

Most vSAN architectures will try to distribute data across nodes within the infrastructure which should give them a performance advantage over traditional storage arrays. However, most HCI solutions are not as scalable as traditional SANs, nor do they deliver greater network performance.

As mentioned above, part of the performance shortcoming is due to the lack of fabric optimization. Another problem is that most vSAN solutions often burden this distribution process with erasure coding for data protection. The overhead of creating parity for each block of data written and then distributing that parity takes its toll on performance. It also forces more data across the network. As a result, what should be an obvious advantage of a scale-out vSAN architecture, leveraging multiple network segments and processors, is lost.

Parity-based protection schemes like RAID or Erasure coding also significantly impact performance when trying to maintain operations in a failed state, like a drive or server failure. With both techniques, a single drive failure means the organization is just one drive away from data loss. Any data access while in the failed state must be responded to by recalculating the data through parity in real-time. Finally, when the drive is replaced, customers face a performance impact while the replaced drives are rebuilt.

VergeOS vSAN Optimizes Data Distribution

VergeOS vSAN also distributes data across all the storage contributing nodes in an instance. Again, redundant data, once identified and metadata is updated, does not travel across a network or bother another processor. Unique data is simultaneously written to two separate drives on two different nodes.

VergeOS is unique because it understands the exact location of every data segment in the environment, including redundant segments. Also, all drives are active; any drive can respond to an existing IO request. No mathematical formula needs to be executed to store redundant data, nor is a formula required to respond to a read request during a failed state.

Thanks to ioGuardian, a capability built into VergeOS, the instance can survive multiple simultaneous drive failures without impacting data availability. Drive rebuilds are performed via the ioGuardian server, further ensuring the consistency of the production instance.

Improving vSAN RAM utilization

Because the VMware alternatives’ vSANs run as a subordinate process to the hypervisor, they have a limited understanding of the total RAM resources available. The storage VMs can’t be aggressive in their use of RAM as a cache, for example. Also, because deduplication is a separate process, data in the cache isn’t necessarily deduplicated, making RAM utilization even less efficient.

VergeOS vSAN Storage Aware RAM allocation

addressing vSAN performance issues

VergeOS’ storage service completely understands the available RAM used for caching. As a result, it can aggressively use this RAM without risking VM performance. Also, since the cache algorithms run alongside the deduplication algorithm, only unique data is stored in the cache, further optimizing available RAM by 3 to 4X or more.

Improve vSAN with VergeOS Ultraconverged Infrastructure

VergeOS is an ultra-performant vSAN capable of delivering performance similar to, if not better than, any externally attached storage array. Unlike many other storage systems whose original intent was file serving, it was designed from the ground up to run virtual workloads. VergeOS is a single piece of software that controls the life of an I/O from the hardware to the virtual drive, not layers of software, often from different vendors, stitched together into a management interface.

Next Steps

Filed Under: Storage

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Transitioning from VMware to an alternative hypervisor is a significant decision that requires the careful consideration of several factors, especially when protecting a VMware alternative. Data protection and application availability shouldn’t be sacrificed to lower licensing costs. Here’s an overview of the essential features to look for in a VMware alternative to ensure you maintain high standards in data protection while reducing infrastructure costs.

To learn more about ensuring that your VMware Alternative doesn’t take you backward regarding data protection, join our live video broadcast with the team at TruthInIT on June 12th at 1:00pm ET / 10:00 AM PT. Register here.

Integrated Data Protection and Application Availability

When evaluating a VMware alternative, ensuring that the new solution offers robust data protection and application availability is crucial. Look for a solution that integrates virtualization, storage, and networking into a cohesive infrastructure, providing infrastructure-wide availability without additional costs. Also, look for a solution that can leverage your existing backup investment.

Comprehensive Data Availability

Data availability is a critical factor in protecting a VMware alternative. The solution should write data redundantly across multiple nodes and drives, ensuring continuous access even during failures. This drive failure protection should be built into the solution and not require a separate RAID card or external array (although the solution should support the external arrays you have).

However, protecting from a single drive failure is table stakes in the enterprise. Although flash drives are very reliable, when they do fail, they can fail in batches because of write thresholds. It is critical to look for a solution that can handle multiple drive or server failures without data loss or downtime. This capability should be integrated into the system to simplify the data protection process and reduce costs.

protecting a VMware alternative

VergeOS’ method of ensuring data availability involves writing data redundantly across multiple nodes and drives, ensuring continuous access even during failures. In the case of multiple drive failures, ioGuardian delivers real-time missing data segments to VMs, allowing continuous operation even during significant hardware failures. This feature is integrated into the system, simplifying the data protection process and reducing costs.

Automated Application Availability

Another aspect of protecting a VMware alternative is ensuring the solution guarantees application availability. In the event of a server failure, all virtual machines (VMs) should seamlessly migrate to other servers within the instance. In the case of planned downtime, this migration should be transparent. In the case of a hard server crash, the outage should only be for as long as it takes to reboot the VMs on the remaining hosts. Ideally, the solution should use predictive algorithms to determine the best possible server node for VM relocation, ensuring minimal disruption and optimal performance.

VergeOS ensures that in the event of a server failure, all virtual machines (VMs) seamlessly migrate to other servers within the instance. It employs an AI algorithm to determine the best possible node for relocation, ensuring minimal disruption and optimal performance.

Advanced Snapshot Technology

Protecting a VMware alternative requires advanced snapshot technology. Unlimited snapshots with minimal performance impact are a must-have. The problem is that most VMware alternatives have restrictive snapshot capabilities and can’t play a significant role in data protection. Instead, look for technology that allows frequent snapshots that act like independent, standalone clones, which is vital for compliance with backup best practices like the 3-2-1 rule. Of course, the solution must integrate deduplication so that these clones consume less disk capacity, making them impractical for long-term retention.

VergeOS provides advanced always-on global inline deduplication. Because of its integration into the core of VergeOS, our deduplication significantly reduces storage capacity requirements while maintaining high performance with minimal CPU and RAM consumption. Instead of using legacy snapshot techniques, our ioClone snapshot technology leverages our deduplication, allowing more frequent snapshots that act like independent, standalone clones, vital for compliance with backup best practices like the 3-2-1 rule.

Holistic Disaster Recovery

The most critical aspect of protecting a VMware alternative is making sure it can provide a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy. That strategy should be straightforward to implement and manage, and data replication should be integrated into the solution. However, most VMware alternatives stop there and continue to make DR complex, sewing together multiple data protection events, data, network configurations, storage configurations, and VM boot configurations.

protecting a VMware alternative

VergeOS uses multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDCs) that encapsulate the entire data center, including VMs and network settings. This allows easy replication and ensures functionality on different hardware during a disaster. Thanks to encapsulation, DR is a straightforward movement that includes all the necessary components for disaster recovery.

Flexibility with Backup Solutions

Even with integrated data protection, protecting a VMware alternative may require a third-party backup solution for various reasons, such as compliance or vendor-independent data copies. The VMware alternative must leverage your organization’s backup software and storage investment. VergeOS can enhance your data protection using the above capabilities and even augment it using the below:

Backup of Last Resort

VergeOS supports exporting the environment to a commonly accessible storage location, like an NFS mount point. This feature helps maintain an independent copy of data outside the VergeOS production instance. It also enables you to leverage the backup software’s capability to copy data to the cloud or to tape.

Browsable Single-File Restoration

While VergeOS snapshots can be browsed and single files copied out of them, some VMs will benefit from browsable, single-file restoration from backup copies. VergeOS supports installing operating-specific agents inside VMs for this purpose. Push installation of agents and resource requirements of those agents have improved significantly over the past few years. Since VergeOS is more efficient at CPU utilization than VMware, there is no perceivable application impact when using them.

Hosting Third-Party Backup Software

Hosting third-party backup software within VergeOS’ infrastructure adds another layer of flexibility. Our VDCs enable you to place the backup software and its repository in a VDC, which provides an internal firewall to add another layer of resilience for protected data copies. Also, VergeOS supports hard disk drives in addition to Flash, which may be more appropriate for the backup storage use case.

Conclusion

Selecting a VMware alternative requires looking beyond license cost savings and ensuring you do not compromise on data protection and application availability. Look for a comprehensive suite of capabilities, including automated high availability, advanced data protection, innovative snapshot technology, and holistic disaster recovery. The flexibility to integrate with existing backup solutions and host third-party software within virtual data centers further enhances the appeal of a cost-effective and resilient solution for modern IT infrastructures.

Next Steps

Filed Under: Protection

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Ann Arbor, Michigan—May 14, 2024 — VergeIO, the leading VMware alternative, today announced the addition of Jason Yaeger as its new Senior Vice President of Engineering. Yaeger joins the VergeIO leadership team to steer its engineering initiatives into new frontiers of the Infrastructure as Software marketplace.

With a 15-year distinguished career in technology and engineering leadership, Yaeger brings a wealth of experience to his new role at VergeIO. His extensive expertise and proven track record make him the ideal candidate to oversee VergeIO’s engineering operations. His responsibilities will include driving product development, ensuring robust technology governance, and fostering a culture of innovation within the engineering teams.

As Senior Vice President of Engineering, Yaeger will oversee all engineering operations, focusing on advancing product strategy, optimizing technology governance, and fostering an environment of innovation. His leadership will be instrumental as VergeIO continues to foster its move toward Infrastructure as Software.

Jason brings a tremendous track record of strategic leadership and technical expertise,” said Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO. “His addition to the team is pivotal as we continue to enhance our position as the leading VMware alternative and drive the move toward Infrastructure as Software.”

Under Yaeger’s direction, VergeIO will prioritize maintaining its world-class technical support capabilities and playing a vital role in product strategy and roadmap.

About VergeIO :
VergeIO stands out as the leading alternative to VMware. Its Ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) disrupts the IT landscape by collapsing the traditional IT stack (virtualization, storage, and networking) into a single data center operating environment, VergeOS. This innovative approach not only maximizes workload density using existing hardware but also enhances data resiliency. The result? A significant reduction in costs, improved availability, and a simplified IT environment.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Judy Smith, JPR Communications
[email protected]
818-522-9673

Filed Under: Press Release

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When IT considers a VMware alternative, calculating VMware migration costs is critical in understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO). The path to the alternative should be seamless and staged so the organization can transition at a comfortable pace, but IT should determine that pace, not the software. The longer and more complex the migration cycle, the higher the overall TCO of the alternative is. These costs include running dual systems, application outages, and extra IT staff hours. The ideal alternative should enable IT to perform the migration as fast as they are comfortable, and with as minimal an outage as possible.

Prerequisite of a VMware Migration

calculating VMware migration costs

The first step in calculating VMware migration costs is not migration planning. You can’t plan the migration until you know the requirements of the VMware alternative you are selecting. Understanding the requirements of the alternative goes beyond the migration function itself. Many VMware alternatives require that you replace your existing servers with a group of their servers as part of a “turnkey” solution or one of their “certified” vendor configurations. With other solutions, the process is so slow and disruptive that you have to have two groups of servers to sustain operations while you migrate.

These requirements mean that you must have two stacks of servers running while you transition, which could take six months or more because of the slowness of the process. These two stacks have a ripple effect, consuming double the network ports, potentially double the storage, doubling the power and cooling requirements, and doubling the data protection requirement.

The Cost of VMware Migration Time

While many VMware alternatives have a VMware migration capability, understanding the time it takes to transfer and convert virtual machines (VM) between the two platforms is the critical next step in calculating VMware migration costs. Some alternatives take 10-30 minutes per VM, while others require creating a new VM, installing the application, and copying the data over, which to get it right could take hours per VM. In most cases, these are not batch jobs that can be set to run and returned to later; IT needs to keep a careful eye on the process to ensure it completes successfully.

The Cost of VMware Migration Testing

calculating VMware migration costs

The transfer and conversion time impacts the ability to test workloads on the alternative before the final cut-over. It is also an essential aspect of calculating VMware migration costs. A common-sense process is to migrate a group of VMs to the VMware alternative, test them for a few days to ensure they work as expected, and then do a final migration. That means that the conversion time is felt twice, which now means each VM will require 30-90 minutes of conversion time in total. If the VM needs to be shut down for all of this migration time, that is a significant outage.

The Cost of VMware Migration Application Outages

The time it takes to initially test and then permanently migrate VMs to the VMware alternative also impacts when you can migrate. If there is a significant application outage, you can’t migrate during the typical workday or over a few weekday evenings. You will need to allocate multiple weekends to the process. The when migration component means you must run dual systems longer and complicates network configuration and data protection since now you must continue to protect the legacy VMware environment and protect the new hypervisor environment as each week it gains a few more production applications.

The Cost of Learning The VMware Alternative

The final component in calculating VMware migration costs is the cost of learning the new platform. If it takes you weeks or months to learn how to use the VMware alternative effectively, then it takes longer for you to test migrated VMs before moving them to production. A long learning curve consumes more time to complete the migration, increasing the time you need to run dual systems.

Slow Migration Means New Hardware

While many VMware alternatives require buying new servers, a few claim to use your existing hardware. However, a slow and complex migration process eliminates that possibility. The customer is forced to buy new hardware and run parallel systems to move through the sluggish migrate, test, and migrate cycle again. As a result, they will need to be prepared to run these parallel systems for a long time.

VergeOS – Migrate Better

Calculating VMware migration costs is easy with VergeIO. There are none. We have integrated its VMware migration functionality directly into the core of VergeOS. Log VergeOS into your vCenter to start a migration, select the VMs you want to migrate, and click the migrate button. The migration function transfers the VM data to VergeOS as fast as VMware can send it. The process stores the VMware VMs as backup files; you can even update them with change block tracking (CBT). When you need to test those VMs under VergeOS, converting them to a VergeIO VM takes a few seconds, and you are all set to begin testing.

ChalkTalk VMware to VergeOS Migration

The process is so seamless and fast that many customers will select and copy all their VMs at once, again keeping them updated with CBT. They will then use VergeOS as a robust DR solution with our ioProtect functionality. ioProtect enables the initial investment in VergeOS to add value while you are migrating. As you are performing your testing, the original VMware VMs are kept up to date, so if you need to re-test, the VMware version is always up to date. When you are ready to make the final cutover, perform one more quick data sync, shut down your VMware VM, and start your VergeOS VM. The VM is only down for the 20-30 seconds it takes to boot, minimizing any production impact.

The speed of VergeOS’s migration capabilities makes it practical to use existing hardware and do an “in-place” migration. All you have to do is clear off one physical server, load VergeOS onto it, and then begin the migration process, clearing the VMs from another host and starting them under VergeOS. As each server is freed of its VMware responsibilities, it can be added to the VergeOS instance. We’ve employed this process many times to enable customers to utilize their existing hardware without disrupting users.

VergeIO’s zero-cost migration capabilities are just one way to reduce the total cost of data center infrastructure. Thanks to VergeOS’ efficiency, you’ll be able to slow down the pace at which you buy servers, lower the cost of storage capacity, and simplify operations. At the same time, you experience the peace of mind of an infrastructure-wide approach to data protection and high availability that is the best in the industry.

Want to learn more? Use this link to arrange a time for us to conduct a technical whiteboard session on how VergeOS’ elegant architecture is uniquely positioned to deliver on all of these promises.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE [Ann Arbor, MI: April, 30th] – CenterGrid, a prominent Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Cloud Services Provider (CSP), delivering services since 2009,, has announced a major overhaul of its IT infrastructure with the implementation of VergeIO’s Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI). This strategic shift significantly advances CenterGrid’s service offerings, particularly in the demanding Media and Entertainment (M&E) sector and GPU-powered workloads such as VFX and AI.

Revolutionizing Managed IT Services

CenterGrid has evolved from providing essential infrastructure services to comprehensive, turnkey-managed IT solutions, including Cloud services. This evolution was driven by the need to respond swiftly to dynamic IT requests, including deploying new systems or scaling existing ones, while adhering to stringent timelines.

Specialization in Media and Entertainment Industry

Recognizing the unique challenges in the M&E industry, CenterGrid has developed a specialization that addresses the limitations of traditional MSP data centers, particularly those imposed by legacy infrastructure software. These challenges include restricted virtual machine density and inadequate graphics processing capabilities.

Overcoming the Legacy Virtualization Challenge

Chris Beard, COO of CenterGrid, identified restrictive hardware support and high resource consumption as significant hurdles when using legacy hypervisors that make up the core of an infrastructure software solution. “The limitations imposed by legacy infrastructure software’s support of hardware variability and its performance penalties were throttling our ability to meet our client’s needs, especially in the rapidly evolving Media and Entertainment (M&E) sector,” Beard stated.

Embracing VergeIO’s Innovative Solution

After extensive testing of various alternative hypervisors, CenterGrid discovered VergeIO. VergeIO’s UCI solution, VergeOS, stood out for its per-server licensing model, comprehensive networking, virtualization, and storage integration. CenterGrid was particularly impressed with VergeOS’s exceptional migration capabilities from legacy infrastructure software solutions.

Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO, expressed enthusiasm about this partnership: “We are thrilled to see CenterGrid leverage VergeOS to its full potential. Our vision has always been to provide a versatile and powerful platform for Mid-sized data centers, enterprises, and service providers. It provides unique benefits to service providers like CenterGrid, enabling them to excel in service delivery.”

Operational Excellence Achieved

CenterGrid’s rigorous testing proved that VergeOS matched and exceeded their previous solution’s capabilities, especially in terms of setup, operation, and GPU support. The platform’s responsiveness in large-scale environments was a game-changer for CenterGrid’s operations.

Significant Cost Savings and Enhanced Efficiency

The transition to VergeOS has led to considerable cost savings for CenterGrid, especially in licensing fees. “The shift to VergeOS is not just a technical upgrade; it’s a strategic move that aligns with our vision of cost-efficiency and operational excellence,” added Beard.

Future Outlook

With the successful implementation of VergeOS, CenterGrid is now well-positioned to focus on expanding its customer base and enhancing service offerings, moving away from the constraints of infrastructure management.

About CenterGrid CenterGrid has grown into a leading MSP and CSP, specializing in providing comprehensive IT services with a focus on the Media and Entertainment industry. With a commitment to innovation and customer service, CenterGrid continues to set the standard in managed IT solutions.

About VergeIO VergeIO is the leading VMware Alternative. Unlike hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), its ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) rotates the traditional IT stack (computing, storage, and networking) into an integrated data center operating environment, VergeOS. Its efficiency enables greater workload density using existing hardware while improving data resiliency. The result is dramatically lower costs, improved availability, and greatly simplified IT.

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: ,

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Understanding Data Center Multi-Tenancy

Data center multi-tenancy enables IT professionals to transcend the traditional confines of cloud service providers (CSP) and managed service providers (MSP) use cases so that enterprises and even small data centers can benefit from them. However, adding multi-tenancy functionality to these existing hypervisor solutions incurs a high licensing cost.

Because of the high cost of the multi-tenancy add-on, most organizations must dedicate hardware components to specific, standalone deployments. This approach can lead to significant resource underutilization, as each component (CPU, memory, storage) is confined to a single deployment, even if it’s not being used to its full potential. This setup inherently limits flexibility and can lead to inefficient resource allocation, where some resources may sit idle while others are overtaxed.

Comparing Data Center Multi-Tenancy to a VLAN

Understanding Data Center Multi-Tenancy

A common workaround for the lack of or high cost of multi-tenancy is using a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) for each “tenant.” It partitions a physical network at the data link layer (layer 2). VLANs segregate network traffic based on a group ID applied to each packet, thus separating the traffic of different users or departments within the same physical network.  While VLANs offer a basic level of network segmentation, they lack the robustness, security, and flexibility provided by a fully realized multi-tenant data center architecture.

A Multi-tenant data center is a single instance of physical infrastructure serving multiple logical or virtual tenant organizations. Cloud computing involves securely sharing resources like storage, networking, and computing capacity among various organizations to enhance efficiency and cut costs. 

Data center multi-tenancy enables IT to provide comprehensive resource isolation, better scalability, enhanced security features, and greater tenant autonomy in managing network configurations. This makes it ideal for complex and scalable cloud environments with highly variable and specific tenant demands. It also makes it well-suited for smaller environments that don’t have the IT team resources to manage the complexity of a more extensive VLAN configuration.

Challenges with Traditional Data Center Multi-Tenancy

The High Licensing Cost of Multi-Tenancy

The common perception is that multi-tenancy architectures are primarily beneficial for CSP/MSP use cases because they can share resources efficiently while maintaining strict separation between clients. The number of clients these organizations tend to support makes the high cost of multi-tenancy, although still a significant pain point, more tenable.

However, if the cost barriers associated with implementing multi-tenancy were removed, this technology could appeal to a broader spectrum of organizations. From small businesses to large corporations, all could leverage the enhanced resource utilization, simplified management, and improved operational flexibility that multi-tenancy offers, transforming how they approach IT infrastructure.

Traditional multi-tenancy also poses these challenges:

  1. Security Vulnerabilities: The shared nature of resources can lead to potential data leaks between tenants.
  2. Resource Contention: Overlapping demands can affect performance, where one tenant’s heavy usage diminishes resource availability for others.
  3. Management Complexity: Ensuring compliance and equitable resource distribution adds operational complexity.
  4. Customization Constraints: Standardization needs can limit tenants’ ability to tailor resources to their specific requirements.

Virtual Data Centers – Data center multi-tenancy for ALL

VergeOS’ Virtual Data Center (VDC) technology delivers multi-tenancy at no additional cost. VDCs do for the entire data center what a virtual machine does for a physical server: encapsulation. VDC encapsulates the data center into a single object that is isolated from the other virtual data centers or tenants while sharing the same hardware. While the use case for multi-tenancy is evident for our many Managed Service Provider (MSP) customers, it also has value for enterprises, educational institutions, government agencies, and small data center customers. The advantages range from simplifying disaster recovery to isolating specific workloads from other workloads or isolating specific resources from specific workloads.

Virtual Data Centers (VDCs) powered by VergeOS address many traditional multi-tenancy issues:

Complete Isolation: Each VDC is fully isolated, functioning as an independent data center. This separation ensures that one tenant’s activities do not impact others, significantly enhancing security and performance.

Simplified Management: VergeOS facilitates easy management and automation across VDCs, reducing the complexity associated with multi-tenant environments.

Enhanced Customization: Tenants can customize their VDCs extensively to meet specific operational needs, offering flexibility that traditional multi-tenant models often lack.

Economic Efficiency: By optimizing resource usage, VergeIO provides a cost-effective solution that maintains multi-tenancy benefits while minimizing its drawbacks.

VergeOS uses our VDC technology for customers who don’t have available hardware but want to test drive the solution.

Critical Use Cases of VergeIO Virtual Data Centers

Disaster Recovery (DR): VergeIO’s VDCs excel in disaster recovery scenarios. Each VDC can be configured with specific DR protocols, ensuring business continuity without impacting other tenants. This isolated environment allows organizations to seamlessly replicate a single object instead of separate tiers and implement failover processes, enhancing resilience against data loss and downtime.

Patch Testing: Patch testing ensures software updates do not disrupt operations. VergeIO’s VDCs provide an ideal environment for patch testing by allowing organizations to deploy and test updates in a controlled, isolated setting before full-scale implementation. This minimizes risks associated with deploying untested patches in a production environment.

Understanding Data Center Multi-Tenancy

Ransomware Protection: Data Centers of all sizes can benefit from better ransomware protection. VDCs are the first layer of VergeIO’s infrastructure-wide ransomware protection strategy. If ransomware gets into your organization, each VDC is isolated, and as a result, the ransomware can’t spread and is contained, shrinking the attack surface. Then, using VergeIO’s ioFortify, you can quickly recover from the attack altogether.

Service Providers: For service providers, VergeIO’s VDCs offer a scalable and secure platform to host services for multiple clients. Providers can manage separate VDCs for each client, ensuring tailored service delivery, robust security, and compliance with individual client contracts and regulatory requirements.

Resource Management: VDCs within VergeOS offer the capability for precise resource dedication. While VergeOS employs sophisticated AI to fine-tune performance consistently, certain scenarios demand designated resources for specific workloads. With VDCs, it’s possible to earmark exact amounts of processing power, memory, or storage for individual VDCs, ensuring a high level of service quality. This dedicated allocation eliminates the possibility of resource competition, providing a stable environment for applications to perform reliably at all times. Additionally, this feature empowers managed service providers (MSPs) and cloud service providers (CSPs) to assure their clients of the resources they’re entitled to, with absolute certainty.

Conclusion

Key to understanding data center multi-tenancy is learning about VergeIO’s Virtual Data Centers. They bring tenancy to all data centers and provide a state-of-the-art solution for multi-tenancy, combining traditional benefits with advanced virtualization technologies. By addressing common issues related to security, performance, and management complexity and offering tailored use cases like DR, service provision, and patch testing, VergeIO’s VDCs represent a significant evolution in data center technology, poised to meet the diverse needs of modern organizations.

Filed Under: Private Cloud