George Crump

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Evaluating new technology solutions is a crucial but often daunting task for IT professionals, especially when considering the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. As organizations seek more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable alternatives, testing VMware alternatives often presents significant obstacles, particularly when IT teams are limited by time and lack the necessary hardware resources to test new platforms properly.

Overcome the Challenges of Testing VMware Alternatives
Overcome the Challenges of Testing VMware Alternatives

At VergeIO, we understand these challenges, so we’ve introduced self-paced, hands-on labs that enable IT professionals to explore VergeOS without the typical barriers. These labs give users a practical, real-world experience with our ultraconverged infrastructure, helping them understand how it can simplify their operations and provide a robust alternative to VMware.

Key Challenge 1: Lack of Time

One of the biggest challenges of testing VMware alternatives is finding the time to evaluate new platforms thoroughly. IT teams are already stretched too thin, managing existing infrastructure, troubleshooting day-to-day issues, and running systems smoothly. Adding a product evaluation to their to-do list can seem impossible. Many IT professionals that we speak to have renewed VMware for one year in the hopes that they will have time to vet the growing cast of alternatives properly.

VergeIO’s Solution

Our hands-on labs are designed to fit into the busiest schedules. Each lab takes just 15 to 20 minutes to complete, giving IT professionals a focused, detailed look at VergeOS without demanding significant time. During a break or after hours, you can explore VergeOS on your terms, gaining valuable insights without sacrificing your daily responsibilities.

Key Challenge 2: Lack of Available Test Hardware

Another common hurdle in testing VMware alternatives is the need for dedicated test hardware. Setting up a lab environment with multiple servers, storage devices, and networking equipment to mirror a VMware setup is costly and time-consuming, and many organizations simply don’t have the budget or resources to create this kind of environment.

VergeIO’s Solution

Overcome the Challenges of Testing VMware Alternatives

With VergeIO’s hands-on labs, you don’t need any additional hardware. Our labs provide an environment that mirrors real-world conditions, allowing you to experience VergeOS without needing physical infrastructure. This eliminates the financial and logistical barriers to testing VMware alternatives and lets you evaluate our solution wherever and whenever you’re ready.

How VergeIO’s Hands-On Labs Help Overcome These Challenges

VergeIO’s self-paced, hands-on labs are specifically designed to overcome the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. These labs provide a seamless, immersive experience without complex setups or additional hardware. Here’s what you can explore:

  • VMware Migration Lab: This lab walks you through connecting to a VMware environment, migrating virtual machines into VergeOS, using ioMigrate, and launching them. You’ll learn how VergeOS simplifies the migration process, making it clear what to expect when transitioning from VMware.
  • Data Protection and Recovery Lab: Learn how VergeOS’ ioClone-powered snapshot technology helps protect virtual machines and recover even to a single file. You’ll create VMs, take snapshots, and recover lost data, giving you firsthand experience with just one of VergeOS’ advanced data protection features.
  • Virtual Data Centers Lab: In this lab, you will learn how to build multi-tenant virtual data centers, deploy multiple virtual machines, and isolate workloads for enhanced security. This lab demonstrates VergeOS’ secure multi-tenant capabilities, which are crucial for businesses managing diverse workloads and requiring workload isolation.
  • More Labs Coming Soon: We’re continually expanding our lab offerings. Upcoming labs will cover the following:
    • Networking deep dive: exploring micro-segmentation, firewalls, and routers
    • NAS lab: learn how to use VergeOS’ built-in NAS capabilities
    • Ransomware Protection and Recovery Lab: to teach you how to configure VergeOS to defend against and recover from ransomware attacks with an infrastructure-wide approach
[icon name=”car” prefix=”fas”] Register to Access the Hands-On-Lab

Why These Labs Matter

VergeIO’s hands-on labs remove the typical roadblocks that IT professionals face, by addressing the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. These labs offer a real-world look at VergeOS’ ultraconverged infrastructure, which integrates virtualization, storage, and networking into a single piece of software. You’ll quickly see how VergeOS is the future of virtualization that can optimize your operations, lower costs, and improve data resiliency—without additional hardware or extensive setup.

As you progress through the labs, you’ll gain practical experience that will give you a head start when you’re ready to conduct a full Proof of Concept (PoC) with your virtual machines in your data center. The hands-on labs provide the confidence to confirm that VergeOS is the right solution for your environment. By the time you begin the PoC, you’ll already be familiar with the platform, which can significantly reduce your testing time and help you move forward with VergeOS more efficiently.

Start Exploring Today

If the challenges of testing VMware alternatives have held you back, VergeIO’s hands-on labs are your solution. These labs allow you to explore VergeOS at your own pace without requiring complex setup or additional equipment.

Ready to see for yourself? Register now to access VergeIO’s hands-on labs and explore how easy it is to migrate, protect, and manage your virtual infrastructure with VergeOS.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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Seasoned IT professionals frequently advise against using snapshots to protect VMs because of the limitations in the snapshot methodology common in today’s storage systems and software solutions. However, VergeOS has a unique approach, thanks to its integrated, cohesive operating environment that redefines the role of snapshots in data protection, making them the go-to option when administrators need to recover data.

The Challenges of Using Snapshots to Protect VMs

Despite their potential to address up to 90% of non-hardware-related recovery scenarios, snapshots are one of the most underutilized features in data protection. The core issue with today’s snapshot technologies lies in the widespread use of the redirect-on-write snapshot management method. While an improvement over the outdated copy-on-write technique, redirect-on-write still has significant challenges, particularly in modern data frameworks.

Each redirected write increases storage system overhead, which leads to noticeable performance degradation as the number of active snapshots grows. To counteract this, storage systems often require additional memory and processing power, which drives up costs. Software-based solutions, such as those provided by VMware, lack this flexibility, resulting in significant performance impacts even with a few active snapshots.

Additionally, redirect-on-write snapshots heavily depend on the integrity of preceding snapshots and the original volume. If any of these elements fail, the entire snapshot becomes unusable. This limitation directly conflicts with the 3-2-1 backup rule, which mandates maintaining three separate copies of data on two storage systems, with one copy off-site.

Common Use Cases and the Untapped Potential of Snapshots

Due to traditional snapshots’ inherent limitations, organizations often limit their use, primarily utilizing them to feed backup software. Typically, a snapshot is taken, backed up, and then deleted. This restricted use prevents snapshots from reaching their full potential in data protection.

If the limitations of snapshots could be overcome, they could significantly enhance an organization’s ability to recover from minor data loss events and major disasters.
Snapshots offer several key advantages:

  1. Speed: Snapshots can be created in milliseconds.
  2. Minimal Capacity Impact: Snapshots can be retained almost indefinitely with negligible storage impact.
  3. Instant Recovery: Since data remains on the device, recovery is almost immediate.

VergeOS and ioClone Make Using Snapshots to Protect VMs a Reality

To unlock the full potential of snapshots, the technology must overcome traditional limitations and align with the 3-2-1 backup rule by providing:

  • Independence
  • Zero Performance Impact
  • Transportability
  • Long-Term Retention
  • Single File Recovery

Using snapshots to protect VMs

VergeOS has redefined snapshot technology with its innovative approach powered by IOclone. Unlike traditional snapshots that rely on the outdated redirect-on-write method, VergeOS uses IOclone technology to create complete, independent copies of selected objects (entire instances, virtual data centers, or virtual machines). VergeOS’s integrated deduplication ensures that these snapshots are instantly optimized, making the snapshot process as fast, if not faster, than traditional methods while consuming less overall capacity. VergeOS makes using snapshots to protect VMs a viable part of any data protection strategy.

This approach means VergeOS snapshots are independent of other snapshots and the original object being snapshotted. Even if the primary object is deleted, you can mount the snapshot of that object and continue operations without interruption. Additionally, you can maintain as many active snapshots as needed and keep them for years without impacting performance.

Using snapshots to protect VMs

VergeOS’s ioGuardian, known for its real-time recovery capabilities, further enhances snapshot transportability. Because ioGuardian and VergeOS share the same deduplication algorithm, they work seamlessly together, allowing snapshots to be automatically pushed to the ioGuardian server for rapid updates and storage on a secondary in-data-center device. While most data centers back up once per night, VergeIO customers leveraging ioGuardian can create a full backup every hour without full backup capacity requirements.

These advanced snapshots, combined with VergeOS’s deduplication, also power ioReplicate for off-site data transfer. Independent snapshot schedules are supported on both ioGuardian and ioReplicate storage systems.

Finally, VergeOS snapshots provide robust single-file recovery capabilities. IT can easily mount a snapshot as a drive within a VM and copy the required file back to the production VM without any downtime. It’s a fast and straightforward process, but you don’t have to take our word for it. You can register for our latest hands-on lab to experience creating a VM, taking a snapshot, and recovering a file in action.

Conclusion

VergeOS transforms how organizations use snapshots to protect VMs by overcoming the limitations of traditional redirect-on-write snapshot technology. With features like IOclone, ioGuardian, and ioReplicate, VergeOS provides an independent, high-performing, and versatile snapshot solution ideal for using snapshots to protect VMs. This allows businesses to recover quickly from data loss events and ensures that their data protection strategies are robust and cost-effective.

If you are exploring a VMware alternative or planning a storage refresh, snapshots are just one of the many powerful features offered by VergeIO’s storage capabilities. VergeOS delivers a comprehensive suite of storage services integrated into VergeOS that are not only advanced but also highly cost-effective. Its integrated approach ensures that your infrastructure remains resilient, flexible, and ready to meet the demands of modern IT environments. Set up a whiteboard deep dive with me to learn how VergeOS can be your VMware Alternative or your next storage platform.

Book a Session

By integrating VergeOS into your IT infrastructure, you can maximize the benefits of snapshots and elevate your data protection to new heights while optimizing your storage strategy with a solution designed for the future.

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: ,

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In this demo, 21 virtual machines with internal networks, NICs, and disks are created using Terraform commands, demonstrating the speed at which a workload, even dozens of VMs and intricate networking requirements, can be created and deployed.

Filed Under: Videos

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VergeIO enables you to migrate to a more efficient and cost-effective IT infrastructure. This session will provide a comprehensive overview of various VMware migration methods and a live demonstration of our capabilities.

• Watch 100 VMware VMs Migrate to VergeOS in Seconds
• Experience a 100 Server Boot that takes less than 30 seconds

Filed Under: Videos

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See how easy it is to your LACP network for external UI and LAN connectivity

Filed Under: Videos

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[Ann Arbor, MI – August 20, 2024] – VergeIO, known for streamlining IT infrastructure, announces the official release of the VergeIO Terraform Provider. This release represents a significant advance in VergeIO’s mission to make high-performing IT environments more accessible and manageable for organizations of all sizes.

What is Terraform?

Terraform is an open-source infrastructure-as-code (IaC) software tool that allows users to define and provision data center infrastructure using a high-level configuration language. It automates infrastructure deployment and management, ensuring consistency, reducing errors, and simplifying workflows. The VergeIO Terraform Provider integrates VergeOS into this tool, enabling customers to manage their VergeIO resources more simply.

The VergeIO Terraform Provider allows users to manage VergeIO resources with the simplicity that VergeOS is known for, using Terraform’s declarative language. Users can now implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) without direct access to VergeIO’s internal code base, making deploying and managing IT infrastructure easier.

Key Benefits for VergeIO Customers

  • Infrastructure as Code: Customers can now define and manage VergeIO resources using Terraform, reflecting VergeIO’s focus on reducing complexity and costs in IT environments.
  • Automation: The provider simplifies provisioning and managing VergeIO resources, minimizing manual errors and saving valuable time through streamlined processes.
  • Version Control: Integrating with Terraform allows customers to track changes to their infrastructure over time, fostering better collaboration and consistency.
  • Integration: The provider supports quickly incorporating VergeIO resources into existing Terraform workflows, enabling users to continue using familiar tools and services.
  • Consistency: Ensures reliable deployment of resources across different environments, maintaining infrastructure stability.
Watch our Terraform Provider in Action

“Our Terraform Provider reflects VergeIO’s vision of a simpler, more accessible IT future,” said Jason Yaeger, SVP of Engineering at VergeIO. “By bringing VergeOS together with Terraform, we are improving the experience for our current users and lowering the barrier to entry for new customers, making it easier than ever to adopt and benefit from our technology.”

Read our Blog “Simplifying IT Infrastructure Management” For More Details

The VergeIO Terraform Provider currently supports a wide range of resources, including VMs, drives, networks, and users and data sources for clusters, groups, and more. VergeIO is committed to continually enhancing and expanding this provider’s capabilities to meet its customers’ evolving needs.

Customers can view the code, submit update requests, and contribute to the provider through GitHub. Approved pull requests and tagged new versions will be automatically pushed to the Terraform Registry, ensuring that users can always access the latest features and updates.

Sign up for our live demonstration this Friday at 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT for more details. You can also visit the VergeIO Terraform Provider documentation and GitHub repository:

About VergeIO

VergeIO is a leader in simplifying IT infrastructure through its innovative virtualization software, VergeOS. VergeOS integrates the hypervisor, storage, and networking into a single, unified platform, replacing the traditional IT stack. Designed to run on commodity hardware. VergeOS extends hardware lifespan through AI-driven self-management and self-optimization, making IT environments more accessible and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes. By empowering IT generalists to deploy entire virtual data centers quickly and easily, VergeIO is at the forefront of the future of virtualization.

Filed Under: Press Release