George Crump

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BOSTON – June 18, 2024 – IT service provider Cloud Compliance Solutions, Inc. (CCSI) has upgraded its infrastructure with technology from Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream® Remote Desktop Access Platform, and VergeIO, the leading VMware alternative, resulting in significant cost savings, optimized hardware use, and enhanced operational efficiency, the companies announced today.

Founded in 2017, CCSI provides its clients with a complete suite of cloud-related IT and compliance services. As a single provider offering both critical services, CCSI delivers more accurate and cost-effective IT and compliance solutions that significantly reduce its clients’ operational and audit costs.

CCSI opted to replace VMware due to significant challenges, including affordability, scaling and performance for its multi-tenant platform that provides its clients Desktop as a Service (DaaS)/Next-Gen DaaS (NGDaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). CCSI’s growth had surpassed VMware’s capabilities, and it needed an option that could support denser environments with more powerful servers. Strategically, CCSI had concerns about VMware’s new licensing costs and models that required substantial upfront commitments and the uncertain future of VMware Horizon.

The transition to VergeIO and Leostream has transformed CCSI’s service portfolio, enabling it to offer more robust and scalable services with superior DaaS/NGDaaS, IaaS and DRaaS. With CCSI competing with providers like AWS and Azure, the upgrade allows it to remain price-competitive and provide better service and support.

“VergeOSs multi-tenant virtual data center technology and Leostream’s virtual desktop platform have empowered CCSI to provide customers with fundamentally better performance and efficiency,” said Kelley Allen, CCSI CEO. “This project exemplifies CCSI’s commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction with high-quality, affordable, and reliable IT solutions.”

The phased upgrade began with DaaS/NGDaaS and Leostream for remote desktop services including resource allocation, access control, and policy enforcement. In addition to secure user profile management and support for nearly all end-user devices and display protocols,the combined solution delivered on its promise of increased performance: boot times have dropped to seconds instead of minutes.

Next, CCSI shifted its IaaS offerings to VergeIO to create multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDC), which allows customers to manage the VDC as if it were on-premises technology, with CCSI as backup IT support. While CCSI is a de-facto IT team for many customers with limited or no full-time IT staff, VergeIO’s VDC technology allows CCSI to attract new clients whose IT teams want more control over their infrastructure.

The third phase, also enabled by VergeIO, expanded and simplified CCSI’s DRaaS capability so customers with on-premises IT infrastructure can fail over to CCSI’s infrastructure in a disaster. VergeOS VDC technology seamlessly replicates all components to ensure a successful recovery in CCSI’s data center.

“When industry-leading IT experts like CCSI choose your product for their own internal use, and to deploy to customers, it is the highest possible endorsement,” said Karen Gondoly, Leostream CEO. “This joint infrastructure combining Leostream and VergeIO has been battle-tested in multiple enterprises and we believe it’s the strongest, most feature-rich alternative to VMware, ESXi, and Horizon available today.”

“CCSI’s new architecture will provide long-term cost savings, starting with reduced upfront license costs, maintaining its existing investment in hardware, and enabling more virtual machines and desktops per physical server,” said Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO. “More importantly, this modernized desktop, infrastructure, and disaster recovery platform has expanded what the company is able to offer its own clients, to truly do more for less.”

If you’re considering a VMware exit, we have the perfect opportunity for you to talk to someone who has made the journey. CCSI is joining VergeIO and Leostream for a live conversation with IT professionals about their switch from VMware to VergeIO/Leostream software on June 27th at 1:00pm EST. Register Here.

The Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform for hosted desktops and workstations offers a comprehensive solution for remote access to maintain productivity, control costs, and ensure security with strict authentication and authorization built on zero-trust concepts. Its connection management system eliminates clunky corporate VPNs with an ultra-efficient gateway that gives users access to only the specific resources they have permission to use, automatically, regardless of their location or device. The Leostream Platform shines even in environments that rely on complex, specialty applications like energy and science; large files such as media and entertainment; real-time performance like financial services; and bulletproof network security like government and defense.

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.

About Leostream
The Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform embodies over 20 years of Leostream research and development in supporting customers with hosted desktop environments, including VDI, hybrid cloud, and high-performance display protocols. It provides the world’s most robust desktop connection management and remote access feature set, allowing today’s enterprises to choose the best-of-breed components to satisfy their complex security, cost, and flexibility needs while working with them as they evolve into tomorrow.

Leostream is a registered trademark of Leostream Corporation in the United States. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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JPR Communications

Judy Smith

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: , , , ,

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While VMware’s increasing licensing costs and uncertainty about product direction are concerns, MSPs need more than just a VMware Alternative to remain competitive. MSP is a broad term that covers various business models ranging from providing IT services to customers who have on-premises hardware to providing infrastructure for customers to host their applications on. Still, they all need capabilities beyond those found in the enterprise versions of VMware vSphere.

Assuming the licensing cost is a universal issue, we will break down some unique requirements for each offer that a provider may deliver and how VergeIO can help. You can also register for today’s webinar, “A VMware Alternative Designed for MSPs and CSPs.”

IT as a Service Provider Requirements

There is a group of service providers who provide IT services to customers who have on-premises hardware. The service provider may also sell the customer the hardware and software, or they may take over the support of existing solutions. They may provide all the IT services or augment existing IT staff. These customers are likely complaining about the recent changes at VMware and are asking for an alternative. However, these MSPs need more than a VMware alternative that can just lower prices. They need a solution that makes supporting dozens or even hundreds of remote customers easier.

The customers of these providers are often small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with only two or three servers. These customers often have minimal, if any, space allocated to be a data center. Combining functions into a single “pod” helps conserve space, minimize the chance for error, and simplify remote administration.

They may also want a solution that enables them to move beyond IT as a Service. A logical next step for many IT as a Service providers is to offer Disaster Recovery as a Service. The problem is that when using legacy solutions, DRaaS is expensive, complex to configure, and hard to execute a recovery during a disaster.

VergeIO for IT as a Service Providers

VergeIO can assist IT service provider organizations in various ways. Firstly, VergeOS offers seamless migration from VMware to VergeOS. Secondly, in numerous instances, it can utilize their customers’ existing server hardware, making the transition to the new platform effortless.

Third, and specific to IT as a service provider, VergeOS includes an integrated site manager capability. There is no extra software to buy or virtual machines to set up. Site Manager connects to the remote sites in a mesh framework, so there is no single point of management failure. Administrators can remotely login to any provider’s customers quickly and manage the entire customer environment as if they were sitting there.

MSPs need more than a VMware Alternative

Fourth, VergeOS includes storage and network services within the core software. It eliminates the need for an external, dedicated storage array. It also provides firewall, routing, and other network services, eliminating the need for and cost of these appliances. Most businesses with small data centers can use VergeOS to meet all their infrastructure needs with two or three servers.

Fifth, VergeOS’ multi-tenant virtual data center (VDC) technology sets the stage for the provider to offer disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) capabilities. Providers can create one or multiple VDCs at their supported customer sites and then replicate those VDCs as a single object to the provider’s data center. With VDCs, it is easy to perform DR tests regularly, and successful recovery from a disaster is assured.

Infrastructure as a Service Provider Requirements

There is another group of MSPs that provide infrastructure as a service to their customers. These customers typically have little, if any, on-premises hardware and are using the provider’s data center, paying for physical resources periodically. License pricing is also a concern for these providers because it impacts the competitive pricing they can offer their customers. These MSPs also need more than a VMware alternative. First, they own the hardware, so they need infrastructure software to leverage commodity off-the-shelf hardware but outperform name-brand solutions.

These providers can also benefit from a more flexible VMware alternative. One that not only runs on existing hardware but also can mix different types of hardware so they can leverage the hardware for as long as possible. They also need an infrastructure software solution that enables them to scale quickly to onboard new customers and respond to unexpected demands from current customers.

These MSPs need more than a VMware Alternative because they are in the infrastructure business. An outage can impact dozens, if not hundreds, of customers. They need a solution that provides more than protection against a single point of failure. They need one that can provide multiple points of redundancy so that even if multiple drives or servers fail, customers do not experience extended outages.

They can benefit from having the same multi-tenancy features previously described above. Multi-tenancy enables them to share the same hardware across multiple customers while ensuring data isolation. It enables them to meet the unique needs of each customer without having to create hardware silos based on the use case.

VergeIO for Infrastructure as a Service Providers

These MSPs need more than a VMware alternative as well, and VergeIO delivers. The VergeOS software delivers greater efficiency than VMware. Using the same hardware, most customers report more than 25% better compute efficiency and storage performance. This efficiency breathes new life into the existing hardware investment, enabling the provider to support more customers without buying more hardware.

As these providers scale, they benefit from VergeOS’ hardware flexibility. They can add servers from different vendors, different generations of CPUs and different storage configurations, all within the same VergeOS instance. Our service-based licensing is particularly attractive for these providers, enabling them to expand using very dense, high CPU and core count server configurations without software licensing penalty.

MSPs need more than a VMware Alternative

For Infrastructure as a Service Providers, outages are particularly painful because of the number of customers they can impact. While most infrastructure software includes basic protection from hardware failure, resiliency is often limited to one or two drives or one or two servers. The software can automatically transition and load balance the movement of virtual machines to other nodes in the cluster to maintain the best possible performance profile. VergeOS extends beyond providing protection against a single point of failure to delivering multiple points of redundancy with ioGuardian. It provides real-time, inline data recovery even if multiple drives or servers fail. It is integrated into the product at no additional charge.

VergeOS’ snapshot technology, ioClone, protects against “soft errors” and user mistakes. Traditional snapshot technology works by manipulating inode or file allocation tables. This builds an interdependent series of pseudo-copies that don’t fulfill the requirements of the 3-2-1 rule of backup. ioClone uses VergeOS’ integrated global inline deduplication capabilities to take its snapshots. The result is an independent copy of data that takes a millisecond to create, consumes no additional capacity, can be retained indefinitely, and can be recovered instantly.

MSPs need more than a VMware Alternative

Finally, Infrastructure as a Service Providers can benefit significantly from VergeOS’ integrated multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDCs). For example, each customer can be placed in a unique VDC. Even though the hardware is shared between them, each VDC is isolated, and if something goes wrong in one, the other VDCs are secure. VDCs can also be nested. A customer could have a production environment and testing and development sub-VDCs. Each VDC can have a unique networking and storage configuration. Providers can also hard allocate specific hardware to specific tenants to meet the expectations of different customer service levels.

Conclusion

In a landscape where they face rising licensing costs and uncertainties about product direction, the reasons why MSPs need more than just a VMware alternative are clear. IT as a Service Providers and Infrastructure as a Service Providers have distinct requirements beyond basic hypervisor solutions. VergeIO emerges as a robust option that not only addresses these varied needs but also enhances service delivery and efficiency.

For IT as a Service Providers, VergeOS offers seamless migration from VMware, compatibility with existing hardware, and integrated management capabilities. These features simplify support for remote customers and pave the way for advanced services like DRaaS, making it a compelling choice for MSPs looking to expand their offerings while maintaining cost efficiency.

Infrastructure as a Service Providers benefit from VergeIO’s exceptional efficiency and flexibility. With improved compute and storage performance, hardware flexibility, and superior resilience through multiple points of redundancy, VergeOS ensures providers can deliver high availability and robust performance to their customers. The multi-tenant VDCs provide the necessary isolation and customization, enabling MSPs to cater to diverse customer needs without the complexity of siloed environments.

Ultimately, VergeIO delivers a comprehensive solution that supports the evolving demands of MSPs, helping them remain competitive in a challenging market. By offering more than just an alternative to VMware, VergeIO empowers providers to enhance their service capabilities, improve operational efficiency, and ensure customer satisfaction.

Next Steps

Filed Under: MSP

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In addition to planning for natural and man-made disasters, it’s crucial to have a secondary hypervisor ready, in preparation for potential changes in your hypervisor’s licensing model or other technical challenges. Having a secondary hypervisor ready to go, similar to having a disaster recovery (DR) site, and with the right software, it can fulfill many of the obligations of a traditional DR solution.

What to Look for in a Secondary Hypervisor

A Secondary Hypervisor for Hardware Protection

The reasons to have a secondary hypervisor ready are essential for more than just hedging against unexpected increases in licensing costs. Sometimes, hypervisor vendors remove hardware support, forcing you to upgrade servers long before they have outlived their usefulness. Look for a secondary hypervisor that can not only support the existing hardware, but one that may even be more efficient at utilizing it, breathing new life into old systems.

A Secondary Hypervisor for Increased Resiliency

Another reason to have a secondary hypervisor ready is to improve resiliency. Hardware seems to have plateaued in terms of reliability, but users’ patience with downtime has not. They want continuous access to applications and data regardless of how many hardware failures the environment is experiencing. Look for a secondary hypervisor that can provide you with resiliency beyond surviving one or two drive failures or a server failure. It should also provide better data resiliency in addition to hardware resiliency. Look for a secondary hypervisor that can execute snapshots more frequently and retain those snapshots indefinitely without impacting performance.

A Secondary Hypervisor for Improved DR Operations

DR planning and operations are two of the most challenging aspects of a DR strategy. Ensuring that everything works the first time, according to plan, requires practice. Success can also be improved by eliminating as many variables as possible. The challenge facing most IT professionals is that they have to sew together a wide variety of products to capture all the different components within their production data center. Then, they have to reassemble all these components at the DR site with the added stress of the disaster occurring around them.

It is essential to have a secondary hypervisor ready to compare DR operations side-by-side with the current hypervisor. Look for a secondary hypervisor that provides infrastructure-wide protection, which enables all the elements of infrastructure to be encapsulated into a single object. The encapsulation means there is only one component to worry about instead of half a dozen or more. It also eliminates the need to ensure consistent capture between the different components.

A Secondary Hypervisor for Better Support

Protecting against the decline in the quality of technical support is another reason to have a secondary hypervisor ready. If IT can’t get assistance in resolving issues in a timely matter, if outsourced support isn’t able to help with deep technical issues, or if you are unable to speak with a live person to help resolve an issue, then knowing you can get better, faster resolution with an alternative solution is invaluable.

Look for a secondary hypervisor that can provide live person-to-person technical support that understands that infrastructure support involves helping you get their software to work with various hardware. Also, ensure that the support team has direct access to developers if a particular thorny issue arises.

A Secondary Hypervisor Evaluation Process

Evaluate Secondary Hypervisors

Research and evaluate alternative hypervisors that can meet your organization’s needs. Consider factors such as compatibility, performance, and cost. Make sure it meets the above requirements so that you don’t give up features or capabilities. It should run on your existing hardware, not force you to buy new hardware for something that initially is part of a DR strategy. If, for example, the original hypervisor vendor has removed support for legacy servers, but the new hypervisor supports them, they become an ideal foundation for launching a secondary hypervisor.

Implement a Continuous Migration Strategy

Develop and implement a migration strategy to transition from primary hypervisor to secondary hypervisor. Utilize tools like VergeIO’s ioProtect, which allows you to back up all your virtual machines to a VergeOS instance and store them in VMware’s format. ioProtect also employs change block tracking (CBT) to keep VMs current so you can continuously update the VergeOS instance, ensuring it is always ready to go. A continuous migration strategy means the secondary hypervisor should be considered when comparing DR strategies.

Test the Secondary Hypervisor

Regularly test your secondary hypervisor environment to ensure it can seamlessly take over in case of a sudden licensing cost increase or any of the above issues arise. If the secondary hypervisor has a continuous migration capability, it can replace or augment your current DR strategy. If the solution includes global inline deduplication, then you can place the secondary hypervisor at the DR site and use it as the core of your DR strategy. Conduct simulated recovery scenarios to identify and address potential issues and gain experience with the secondary hypervisor.

Move the Secondary Hypervisor to Production

have a secondary hypervisor ready

The potential cost savings of the secondary hypervisor and improved efficiencies may motivate you to move some workloads directly to it, even before there is a disaster or licensing surprise. Sometimes, these initial use cases are for testing and developing applications running on the original hypervisor, or you can use the secondary hypervisor for new workloads.

How VergeIO Can Help

VergeIO offers a solution, VergeOS, that is more than a secondary hypervisor. It is a complete data center operating system, which includes a hypervisor, storage, and networking services. It collapses the legacy IT stack into a single software that simplifies IT and lowers the total cost of ownership.

Part of VergeOS is ioProtect, designed explicitly for VMware customers looking to improve their disaster recovery capabilities while also providing a potential offramp if challenges with ESXi arise or if there is an unexpected increase in licensing costs.

In the event of a disaster—whether natural, man-made, or business-related—ioProtect enables you to convert these VMs to VergeOS VMs with a single click, resuming operations within seconds. This solution allows you to test VergeOS against VMware over an extended period while adding value through ongoing use.

Conclusion

Having a secondary hypervisor ready is not just a safety net; it’s a strategic advantage. It ensures that you are not locked into a single hypervisor, allowing you to adapt and pivot as needed. This level of preparedness can significantly mitigate risks associated with vendor lock-in, unforeseen price hikes, or changes in service levels.

Investing in a secondary hypervisor might seem like an additional cost upfront. Still, if that secondary hypervisor can add value by lowering the cost of disaster recovery and improving the success rate, the solution may more than pay for itself. This approach enables your organization to enjoy the long-term benefits without an initial cost outlay. It empowers your IT infrastructure with redundancy, ensures business continuity, and provides the freedom to choose the best solutions for your specific needs at any given time.

The path to a VMware alternative may appear challenging, but being proactive and diversifying your hypervisor strategy will position your organization for sustained success and resilience in the ever-evolving data center landscape.

Filed Under: Protection

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VMware DR Tools Assessment

The list of threats to data center operations never stops growing, and IT professionals must periodically perform a VMware DR Tools Assessment. During these assessments, they should evaluate tools to:

  1. Address new data center threats
  2. Improve Recovery Point and Recovery Time Objectives (RPO/RTO)
  3. Simplify recovery processes
  4. Reduce costs

Generally, there are three types of tools that IT relies on to meet its organization’s requirements:

  • Backup and Recovery
  • Array-based Replication
  • Infrastructure-wide Replication

These tools lay the foundation for a disaster recovery strategy. They directly impact RPO, RTO, and affordability.

Backup And RecoveryArray-Based ReplicationInfrastructure-Wide Replication
Holistic ProtectionGoodPoorExcellent
RTO AttainmentGoodExcellentExcellent
RPO AttainmentPoorPoorExcellent
Hypervisor TransitionGoodPoorExcellent
DR OperationsPoorPoorExcellent
Cost$$$$$$$$
Comparing VMware DR Strategies

Live Webinar and Demonstration: “Comparing VMware DR Strategies” — Register Now

Meeting Classic VMware DR Threats

It is critical during a VMware DR tools assessment that IT ensures they address the classic types of threats to a VMware environment, such as floods, tornadoes, and power outages, which persist alongside the more recent threat of ransomware. IT needs to look for ways to improve RPO/RTO, simplify the recovery process, and also look for opportunities to lower DR costs.

Backup and recovery solutions are considered the least expensive option but also the least seamless in terms of recovery. While most solutions can recover a few virtual machines (VMs) on backup appliances, these appliances are not designed for the long-term hosting of many VMs. Backup and recovery tools have improved their resiliency to ransomware, with some now offering automated remote site recovery, but most still can’t detect an attack, so prolonged recoveries are commonplace, even with excellent backup strategies.

The critical challenge for backup and recovery is the time between protection events, often failing to meet increasingly strict organizational RPOs. An “aggressive” strategy of four hours may not be sufficient to meet organizational service level agreements (SLA). The time it takes to reposition data on production servers means that backup and recovery often fail to meet most organizational RTOs. Once the total cost of backup infrastructure (software licensing, dedicated storage hardware, compute server requirements at the DR site) is evaluated, the theoretical cost advantage of backup and recovery often dissipates.

Array-based replication is relatively seamless in transporting data to a DR site, but the target array at the DR site must be nearly identical to the primary site’s array. Dedicated arrays also can’t host VMs, so the customer must equip and manage server infrastructure at the DR site. Like backup and recovery, array-based replication doesn’t capture details that are not on the actual array, such as network configurations and VM settings.

Array-based replication provides a much more frequent protection event capability than a backup but is myopically focused on its data. If all data, including boot and configuration files, are on a single dedicated array, then array-based replication meets most organizations’ RTO demands. However, if data is on boot drives, network hardware, or different types of dedicated storage arrays, IT must ensure consistency between them. This often places them outside of the RPO. Another concern is the high cost of buying dual dedicated arrays, which places the strategy outside the budget of most organizations.

Infrastructure-wide replication encapsulates the entire infrastructure, capturing everything into a single object. It provides a complete, self-contained environment. The servers at the DR site can simultaneously run VMs and their data and network functionality such as firewalls and routing. Infrastructure replication, like VergeIO’s ioProtect, enables IT to create a turnkey pod easily deployed in the DR site. Since it is self-contained, there is no need to worry about consistency across networking and storage. Infrastructure replication meets and exceeds most organizations’ RPOs and RTOs. The consolidation also makes deployment extremely cost-effective.

Meeting New VMware DR Threats

VMware DR Tools Assessment

A critical part of a VMware DR tools assessment is making sure the tool can withstand new threats and use cases. While ransomware and natural disasters like fire, flood, and hurricanes remain top concerns, today, customers also want to ensure they are not locked into a particular hypervisor. Broadcom’s recent acquisition of VMware has shown IT professionals that licensing costs can increase quickly and dramatically. Broadcom’s delay tactics in providing renewal quotes only exacerbates this problem, leaving customers less time to transition. In addition to meeting the classic DR needs, modern VMware DR tools need to be able to help customers move to another hypervisor seamlessly at the click of a button.

These tools must provide proper backup and disaster recovery, continuously updating the DR environment while supporting the movement of VMs to an alternate hypervisor. Ensuring the secondary environment is current enables customers to verify VM functionality before a renewal surprise.

Backup and recovery solutions can provide some of this functionality, assuming they can restore “into” other hypervisors. However, most can’t. IT professionals must restore their VMs under the original hypervisor and manually convert them, often using a separate utility. The process is time-consuming and makes pre-disaster test verification challenging.

Array-based replication has almost no value in helping customers prepare for transitioning to other hypervisors since most alternative hypervisors can’t access VMware’s proprietary format.

Infrastructure-wide replication solutions may be the best suited for the “business” type of disaster, assuming they offer more than just one-time migration. For example, VergeIO’s ioProtect can continuously protect the VMware environment. IT logs ioProtect directly into vCenter and keeps copies updated quickly, thanks to change block tracking. Data is stored in the VMware format if IT needs it for a one-off recovery. When the “disaster” is a surprisingly more expensive renewal quote, customers can convert to the alternative hypervisor within seconds. The rapid transition makes testing DR and experimenting with a new hypervisor painless.

Conclusion

When performing a VMware DR tools assessment, backup and recovery is often considered the most cost-effective and manual of the available disaster recovery tools. IT must restore data to a new environment; that transfer takes time. Backup also may not protect all the extraneous files in the environment unless specifically pointed at them. Some solutions can help customers transition between hypervisors. Still, most can only restore a VM in its original format, requiring the customer to import the VM into the new environment manually.

Array-based replication is the most expensive option. Although it provides near-seamless replication between arrays, those arrays often must be identical. Additionally, any data or configuration files not on the array must be protected and recovered separately. Lastly, it does little to empower customers to move to or test another hypervisor.

Test Drive VergeOS Now

Infrastructure replication checks all the boxes. It provides cost-effective and simple recovery in classic disaster scenarios and, with the right migration capabilities, can assist customers when and if they need to move quickly to another hypervisor. It also provides a very high “first-try” success rate on both declared disasters and tests.

To learn more about infrastructure replication and how it compares to other disaster recovery strategies, join us for our live webinar, “Comparing VMware Disaster Recovery Strategies.”

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: , ,

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With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware complete, IT professionals who renewed their licenses prior to the transaction’s close have gained valuable time to develop a VMware license renewal strategy. For those fortunate enough to have more than a year to plan their renewal, specific steps should be taken now to ensure preparedness.

The State of VMware Licensing

a VMware license renewal strategy

VMware licensing is currently in flux. Broadcom is still integrating VMware’s financials, making it difficult for customers and partners to obtain accurate pricing or renewal quotes. Broadcom has admitted to moving too quickly post-acquisition and hinted that pricing increases may not be as steep as initially feared.

However, at VergeIO, we’ve spoken to over 500 VMware customers since December, and the overwhelming majority report significant price increases—often double or triple their current costs. Additionally, VMware is transitioning to per-core licensing and charging vSAN customers based on the amount of storage under management.

Broadcom has publicly expressed a desire to transition all customers to a subscription model for VMware’s vCloud Foundation, which includes various VMware products such as vSAN, vCenter, and VMware SDDC. While these components offer benefits, the high cost of the full vCloud suite is a deterrent for many IT professionals.

VMware Licensing Negotiations

a VMware license renewal strategy

VergeIO has witnessed numerous customer negotiations with Broadcom regarding license renewals. Most renewals are double or more the current licensing costs, with some increases as high as eightfold. Broadcom’s tendency to delay pricing announcements until the last possible moment is a troubling trend, leaving customers with little time to make informed decisions.

This puts customers in a difficult position. Many hesitate to research alternative solutions, hoping that new licensing terms won’t be excessively costly despite evidence to the contrary. Consequently, customers often scramble to renew their licenses with only a few weeks left on their current subscriptions.

A VMware Licensing Strategy

IT professionals must develop a VMware license renewal strategy to navigate the uncertainties under Broadcom’s management. This strategy should encompass both technical and business considerations.

Start Now

a VMware license renewal strategy

Whether your renewal is one year away or three, begin the process now. Explore various alternatives and allocate time to engage with different vendors. Additionally, start requesting renewal prices early and be prepared to ask multiple times before receiving a quote.

Plan for a Business Disaster

Plan for business disasters as you prepare for natural disasters like fires, floods, and tornadoes. Aim to have a “flip-a-switch” solution ready if your VMware renewal becomes unaffordable. This requires a different approach to DR that covers more than just the classic fire, flood, and tornado situations. It requires protection provided by a platform that you may need to move to permanently. VergeIO’s ioProtect is designed to cover all your disasters, to include natural, man-made, or even a license disaster.

Widen the Scope

Leverage your time to explore broader solutions beyond just a new hypervisor. Consider whether you can find a solution that also addresses aging storage systems or networking hardware, potentially lowering costs across multiple areas.

How VergeIO Can Help

VergeIO offers a solution, ioProtect, designed explicitly for VMware customers approaching renewal or awaiting pricing information. ioProtect uses VergeOS’ built-in migration feature to connect to VMware seamlessly via its backup API. It allows you to back up all your virtual machines to a VergeOS instance and store them in VMware’s format. ioProtect also employs change block tracking (CBT) to keep VMs current.

In the event of a disaster—whether natural, man-made, or business-related—ioProtect enables you to convert these VMs to VergeOS VMs with a single click, resuming operations within seconds. This solution allows you to test VergeOS against VMware over an extended period while adding value through ongoing use.

Next Steps

  • Schedule a 15-minute VMware Renewal Planning Session.
  • Register for our Live Webinar: Planning for VMware Disasters
  • Read “Understanding VMware DR Components”

Prepare now to ensure your VMware environment remains resilient and cost-effective amidst changing licensing landscapes.

Filed Under: Protection

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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