George Crump

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Many IT Professionals disqualify Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) as a VMware Alternative because they feel that overcoming HCI shortcomings is more expensive than continuing to use legacy three-tier architectures. These shortcomings are in areas where HCI was initially intended to excel: price, performance, scalability, and simplicity.

Overcoming HCI shortcomings led the VergeIO team to start from a clean slate and create the industry’s first UltraConverged Infrastructure (UCI) solution, VergeOS. It provides a superior, cost-effective alternative to HCI and the traditional three-tier infrastructure. Watch our on-demand webinar, “Beyond HCI” for a comparison of VergeOS’ UCI to the VMware and Nutanix HCI solutions.

In this article, we will explore the critical shortcomings of HCI, which lead IT planners to continue to leverage dedicated infrastructure, and how UCI overcomes them.

Can HCI Deliver Better CPU Performance?

The short answer is no. HCI can’t outperform the traditional three-tier architecture, which has dedicated hardware powering each tier. The reason is that HCI uses shared hardware to power at least four separate software packages, to deliver:


1) A package that contains the core operating system and the hypervisor.
2) A package that contains the storage software.
3) A package that contains the network software.
4) A package that contains the management software.

Each of these packages consumes CPU resources, and HCI’s lack of integration between them means it discards the potential gains in efficiency that combining them into a single code base would deliver. IT must install these packages as separate entities, making installation more complex. Then, once they are all installed and running and IT is ready to create a VM for the organization instead of for infrastructure, they’ve already lost as much as 20% of the CPU resources. To compensate, HCI requires the purchase of more powerful (and expensive) servers.

Another challenge is that as your application executes within the VM, it is probably running through much of the above stack. It uses the CPU to process requests from users. It is using storage IO to read and write data. It is using network resources to receive that input and deliver results. Finally, the VM’s health is reported to a management console in order to report on its health. Each transaction that the application executes is mired down in overhead.

The inefficiency of the code base forces HCI vendors into a predictable pattern of making customers buy turnkey hardware and software solutions from them, or buy new hardware using a strict hardware compatibility matrix. The required hardware must also be overpowered to compensate for the inefficiency, increasing costs.

UCI Delivers Near Bare Metal Performance

Can HCI Deliver Better CPU Performance

The fundamental difference between UCI and HCI is that UCI goes the extra step and eliminates the four separate software modules listed above. Instead, it integrates them into a cohesive code base, increasing resource efficiency. VergeIO typically uses less than 3-5% of CPU resources. The efficiency of resources also improves each VM transaction since no layers of code are involved in each request.

VergeIO customers consistently report measurable improvement in performance-demanding VMs and increased VM density while using existing hardware. Many VergeIO customers even report virtualizing formerly bare metal workloads and seeing a performance improvement.

Can HCI Deliver Better Storage Performance?

Concerns over storage performance are the number one reason customers will disqualify HCI in favor of dedicated three-tier architectures. Storage performance and storage scalability are very legitimate concerns for HCI vendors. First, most HCI vendors don’t use their own storage software. Often, they use an open-source solution like ZFS or CEPH, which were not designed for the unique requirements of providing storage services to a virtualized infrastructure. The solution remains convoluted even if they have their storage code.

Because of the lack of integration, HCI vendors have stumbled through implementing advanced drive failure protection and storage efficiency algorithms like deduplication. Adding these capabilities post-facto adds another layer to an already complex combination of software. For this reason, most vendors force customers to choose between storage efficiency and advanced drive redundancy.

Can HCI Deliver Better Storage Performance

UCI Delivers Better Storage Performance

The storage performance delivered by a UCI solution like VergeOS can outperform an HCI solution and a dedicated storage array while significantly reducing the storage cost. VergeOS correctly balances storage efficiency and storage performance. Its deep integration into the core software enables features like drive failure protection and global inline deduplication to work without adversely impacting performance.

Can HCI Deliver Better Scale?

By its very nature, HCI is scale-out, so scale should be an advantage, but once again, it falls short. Most HCI solutions require three servers (nodes) to start. It forces many small data centers to use two servers and a SAN or NAS. Many of these customers would benefit from a simple two-node solution that includes all the storage and networking functionality within those nodes.

HCI also doesn’t meet the scaling demands of enterprises. Most HCI solutions can only scale to eight nodes per instance before network traffic becomes challenging. They also have to buy similar nodes with each upgrade. If their needs change, they have to start an entirely separate instance of the HCI environment. As a result, many customers opt for the legacy three-tier architecture because each tier can be scaled independently of the other.

UCI Delivers Better Scale

Overcoming HCI shortcomings requires an infrastructure that is flexible and can adapt to the changing demands of the organization.

As we explain in our article “The Full Value of Scale”, a UCI solution like VergeOS delivers a three-dimensional scale. It can start with as few as two nodes, making it ideal for small data centers and remote offices, but it can also scale to hundreds of nodes to meet the needs of the most demanding enterprise. Nodes within the VergeOS instance can be different from each other. Customers can use nodes that provide balanced compute and storage, or mainly compute, or mostly storage, have GPUs installed, or any combination of the above.

Why is HCI More Expensive than Legacy Three Tier?

HCI should have a significant price advantage over legacy three-tier infrastructure. By definition, it is supposed to use off-the-shelf commodity servers, storage, and network hardware. However, this is seldom the case. Under the guise of “making it easy to install and support,” these vendors either require you to buy a turnkey hardware and software solution from them, require you to buy a specific configuration from one of their “certified” hardware vendors, or have a rigorous hardware compatibility list.

The inefficiency of layering virtualization software, storage software, and networking software as three separate software packages also drives up the cost of HCI. Customers must buy much more powerful nodes to support the additional overhead.

UCI Delivers Better TCO and ROI

Overcoming HCI shortcomings requires an infrastructure that can deliver the promise of reduced cost and simplified operations.

VergeOS’ tight integration of the hypervisor, storage, and networking software means customers can actually use off-the-shelf storage from whichever vendor they choose. This flexibility means there is no need to pay a premium for a so-called turnkey solution. Additionally, because VergeOS is licensed by the physical server, not the contents of that server, as you scale your environment, you can use quad-socket servers with massive core counts and not get crushed in licensing costs.

As we discuss in our article “The High Cost of Dedicated Storage”, VergeOS also dramatically lowers the cost of storage. You can use off-the-shelf server-class flash and hard disk drives, eliminating the 5X to 10X markup levied by dedicated storage array vendors.

The savings even follow through to the network. With VergeOS, you can use off-the-shelf commodity switches. When ready, you can replace dedicated network appliances like firewalls with VergeOS’ built-in L2 and L3 networking capabilities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) makes a poor foundation for an alternative to VMware, particularly in CPU performance, storage efficiency, scalability, and cost. Despite HCI’s initial promises of simplifying operations and reducing costs, it typically fails to meet these objectives due to its inherent inefficiencies.

Yet the cost and complexities of three-tier architectures remain. This has led to the development of VergeIO’s UltraConverged Infrastructure (UCI), which addresses HCI’s shortcomings as well as the three-tier challenges. VergeOS integrates infrastructure software modules into a single, cohesive codebase, enhancing performance and scalability while reducing costs. As such, it presents itself as a more viable solution for customers seeking a VMware alternative as well as for those seeking a simpler, more scalable data center infrastructure.

Learn More

Filed Under: HCI Tagged With: , ,

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In the wake of Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, IT professionals are searching for more than just cost-effective options; they are also looking for a simpler VMware alternative that can seamlessly align with their evolving needs. Looking for simplicity does not mean sacrificing capability or data resiliency. It means finding a product that can strike the right balance of all three.

A Simpler VMware Alternative

Most alternatives start by leveraging open-source code for some or all of its offerings. Vendors try to hide the complexity of open-source by providing a new Graphical User Interface (GUI) and forcing the purchase of specific pre-configured hardware. These approaches attempt to hide the complexity that typically plagues open-source software and the wide variety of components required to assemble a complete infrastructure solution.

Simplifying VMware Alternatives: The GUI Problem

Creating an interface that attempts to hide the underlying complexity of a solution creates a myriad of challenges in execution. Like VMware, almost all VMware alternatives are a series of separate applications that must be managed to deliver something that appears to be a complete solution. Switching between these different applications to ensure the infrastructure is configured correctly is challenging and time-consuming. Updating or changing a workload already set up is even more challenging.

The VMware alternative vendors use their GUI in the same way VMware uses vCenter to bring a sense of simplification. The reality is that even the best GUI can only hide so much, and complexity is bound to sneak its way into the day-to-day management of the infrastructure.

There are ramifications for trying to hide the complexity of VMware and its alternatives. The first consequence is performance. In most cases, when the core components of VMware are set up, the customer sacrifices 15% to 20% of CPU resources before they create any virtual machines (VMs) for their needs. The second consequence is a degradation in the responsiveness of that GUI, especially if it needs to display the status of dozens of VMs. Finally, despite all this effort, the environments remain complex.

Simplifying VMware Alternatives: The Appliance Problem

Another method that vendors use to try to provide a simpler alternative to VMware is they either deliver their solution as a turnkey appliance or require that the customers buy from a very restrictive list of certified vendors. This approach may simplify initial installation, but only if the customer is willing to replace their existing server infrastructure, which most are not.

It also adds complexity when the time comes to grow the environment. The customer must continue buying servers very similar to the initial set of servers. As a result, they may eventually be forced into a premature infrastructure refresh because their existing servers are no longer compatible with the servers the vendor is now providing/certifying.

Finally, there is the obvious problem of vendor lock-in. The vendor knows that you must buy your hardware from them, and there is limited motivation for them to continue to provide aggressive pricing.

Simplifying VMware Alternatives: The Storage Problem

The storage that supports VMware and VMware alternatives is always the source of complexity. A simpler VMware Alternative must provide a solution to the high cost and complexity of storage.

Vendors that require external storage inherit all the complexity and high cost of dedicated storage arrays. Vendors that can aggregate internal server-attached storage and serve that capacity up to VMs should be able to lower storage costs. However, this approach doesn’t eliminate storage complexities or lower prices because most VMware alternatives use open-source storage software as a separate module. In most cases, these storage applications were never designed to run across multiple nodes within a cluster, and getting them to support these architectures causes problems in terms of performance, data protection, and scalability. Customers are forced to overcompensate with additional hardware and processing power, raising costs again. Most of the alternatives’ storage features are add-ons, implemented years and, in some cases, decades after the original code was written.

The VMware Alternative Licensing Problem

Finally, these VMware alternatives often share the same licensing complexities as the solution they are trying to replace. Most license their software by the number of CPUs unless that CPU has a lot of cores. If it does, the customer must purchase two licenses on that CPU. For example, for most vendors, a dual-processor server with 36 cores per processor will consume four licenses.

There is also a growing contingent of vendors, VMware among them, switching to per-core licensing, which promises to be even more expensive.

VergeOS – Simplification By The Power of ONE

Over a decade ago, VergeIO started with a single vision: simplify IT. The manifestation of the vision is found in VergeOS. An infrastructure software solution that is simple to learn and operate, but also very powerful.

Simplicity Beyond the GUI

A Single Code base lays the foundation for A Simpler VMware Alternative

The simplicity of VergeOS starts well before the GUI with a single software codebase that cohesively integrates networking, virtualization, and storage services. With VergeIO, there is one package to install to get all the functionality of VMware’s ESXi, vSphere, vCloud Director, vSAN, and NSX. With that unified codebase comes efficiency. VergeOS only consumes about 3-5% of the CPU resources compared to 15%-20% of VMware and its alternatives.

Regarding the GUI, you find an ultra-intuitive interface that is responsive and easy to navigate. Most VMware experts can adapt within hours, and VergeIO customers consistently report accomplishing tasks much more quickly than they used to with VMware.

The Simplicity of Flexibility

A simpler VMware Alternative must provide flexibility. VergeIO is a software company in its purest form. VergeIO does not sell hardware, has no certified vendors, and doesn’t even have a hardware compatibility list. Instead, we rely on a relatively modest set of minimum requirements.

Simplification is also found in its hardware flexibility. VergeOS instances can start with as few as two nodes and scale to hundreds of nodes. Within that instance, various server types with different brands, processors, and storage configurations can exist. VergeOS can be installed onto your existing hardware, and its efficiency can breathe new life into it. The nodes used within the VergeOS instance can evolve, just as your data center must evolve to meet the organization’s ever-changing needs.

Virtualized Storage Made Simple

VergeOS includes its own storage services capability written from scratch, specifically with virtual environments in mind. It includes enterprise-class storage capabilities, including highly efficient global inline deduplication, integrated high availability, data at rest encryption, better-than-backup quality data protection, seamless disaster recovery, and the industry’s only infrastructure-wide ransomware resiliency capabilities.

These capabilities are integrated into the core code, so storage is not subservient to the hypervisor. The result is incredibly high performance and stability.

The Simplification of Support

The rock-solid stability of VergeOS means that the need for technical support is rare, but when you need support, you’ll talk to an actual human. These skilled technicians are passionate about staying with you to solve your infrastructure problems, even if they aren’t related to VergeOS.

Common-Sense Server-Based Licensing

Simplified Licensing is the icing on the cake for A Simpler VMware Alternative

A simpler VMware Alternative must provide simplified pricing. Unlike VMware, which is raising prices and shifting to per-core licensing, the VergeIO licensing model places an exclamation point on its “Simplify IT” vision. Licensing is based on the physical server, not the contents of that server. At VergeIO, we believe that software should not influence hardware purchasing decisions. With VergeOS, you can buy the hardware configuration you need to solve your challenges. The cost of your software won’t double or triple as a result. In most cases, VergeOS is 30% to 50% less expensive than VMware. As you add more robust features and use the VergeOS networking and storage capabilities that VMware charges extra for, those savings quickly increase to 75% or more.

Simple Migration

A simpler VMware Alternative must also provide seamless migration. Migrating from VMware to VergeOS is as simple as it gets: point VergeOS to your vCenter console, select the VMs to migrate, and click import. Within moments, the VM will be running in the VergeOS environment. Our customers constantly tell us that migration took less than 1/3 of the time they initially allocated.

A Simpler VMware Alternative must provide seamless migration

Next Steps

1) Get Pricing and a Plan – Schedule a technical whiteboard session to get pricing, a VISIO diagram of your environment running under VergeOS, and a complete plan to exit VMware.
2) Watch a Migration – Watch a live migration from VMware to VergeOS to see how simple and fast it is.
3) Continue Research – Explore our Blog to learn more about VergeOS as an Alternative to VMware

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: , , ,

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the true cost of VMware Essentials

Despite its attractive price point, the true cost of VMware Essentials is a significant issue for IT professionals managing small to mid-sized data centers. It’s critical that IT professionals understand the cost of overcoming the restrictions that VMware places on the product. These limitations may be acceptable for home labs, but the limitations of VMware Essentials force organizations to either compromise on application and data availability or invest in other products as stop-gap measures to overcome Essentials’ shortcomings.

Join us this week for our live webinar “Is There an Alternative for VMware Essentials?”

Desecting VMware Essentials

VMware Essentials comes in three versions: Essentials, Essentials Plus, and HCI Kit Essentials. While VMware Essentials is affordable, it can’t do much. Ironically, it lacks “essential” capabilities like vMotion, cross-switch vMotion, high availability, vSphere, and replication. It may be suitable for home labs, but since most home labs aim to practice and test operations in a data center, it still seems to miss the mark.

VMware Essentials Plus

Essentials Plus is more ready for the organization. However, the cost increases considerably to ~$7,700 for a three-year license. That license will support up to three physical servers and six CPUs. In other words, it is a three-node cluster with no more than two processors per node. If one of your servers has over 32 cores, you must allocate two licenses to that effort.

The overhead of VMware is also an issue, especially in small- to mid-sized data centers, and factors into the true cost of VMware Essentials. The customer must also go through the extra steps of setting up and configuring vCenter, which adds to the overhead requirements. In most cases, 20%+ of available CPU resources are consumed before a single customer virtual machine (VM) is created. As a result, the true cost of VMware Essentials requires that customers account for overbuying on their servers to compensate for this unnecessary overhead.

While VMware Essentials Plus adds the items missing features from “standard” Essentials, it still lacks an actual storage software capability, which most of these formally missing features require to operate. This missing storage service is harrowing for small to medium-sized data centers since they are the organizations that could benefit the most from the cost savings of server-based shared storage. However, its shortcoming means that IT must acquire a shared storage solution while paying substantially more for the Essentials Plus license to leverage capabilities like live VM migration and high availability.

Because of tight budgets, IT professionals in small to medium-sized data centers often buy entry-level SANs or NAS solutions that lack robust data protection and availability features. Even these so-called entry-level SAN or NAS solutions are significantly more expensive than adequately implemented server-based shared storage.

the true cost of VMware Essentials

Finally, there is the cost of data protection, which is anemic with VMware Essentials Plus but all the more vital because of the limitations of entry-level storage systems. VMware’s documentation clearly says that their snapshot technology should not be used for data protection, and their protection from server or drive failure is redundant at best. As a result, customers must also invest in backup software and backup storage, further compounding the cost of VMware Essentials Plus.

While VMware Essentials seems to have the right boxes checked, the limitations hidden behind those boxes are significant. Customers must overcome these shortcomings by paying for more powerful servers, RAM, shared storage, and a robust data protection solution. Not only do all these additional components increase costs, but they also increase complexity as the add point of management, further stretching the already stretched-thin IT staff.

If you hit the per node or CPU limitations of VMware Essentials, you must go through what can be best described as a very confusing upgrade process, which seems to vary depending on whom you speak to at VMware. At a minimum, you will need a new vSphere license that supports more than three physical servers, and if you want deduplication, encryption, or stretched cluster support, you will need to upgrade/buy vSAN.

In summary, VMware Essentials Plus, although offering enhanced features, incurs significant hidden costs and operational complexities. Its overhead necessitates expensive server hardware. Additionally, the lack of integrated storage software requires further investment in external storage solutions. These factors and inadequate data protection features compel additional spending on backup systems. When expanding beyond fundamental limitations, the upgrade process is confusing and costly, involving extra licensing for expanded capabilities. This combination of high costs and operational challenges makes VMware Essentials Plus particularly burdensome for its intended market: small to medium-sized data centers with limited budgets and resources.

VMware Essentials Minus?

Any discussion about the the true cost of VMware Essentials must acknowledge that the bundle’s future may be very much in jeopardy because of the completion of Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. Broadcom has publically stated that it will focus on its largest 600 customers.

If you are an Essentials customer, you must assume that its special pricing may soon increase or the bundle may even be removed.

Compare The True Cost of VMware Essentials to VergeOS SDC

the true cost of VMware Essentials

VergeIO recently announced the VergeOS Small Data Center (SDC) edition, specifically designed to simplify VMware Essentials customers’ lives. Because VergeOS is a single data center operating environment that cohesively integrates networking, virtualization, and storage services into a single software package, VergeOS includes all the capabilities of VergeOS Enterprise. With IOmigrate, VMware VMs can seamlessly be converted to VergeOS VMs. The edition’s only limitation is the number of nodes (4) you can scale to before purchasing the Enterprise license, which can scale to hundreds of nodes.

It is targeted exclusively at Essentials customers, but if you operate a small to mid-sized data center and have had to move beyond VMware Essentials to access some of the above missing features, then more than likely, you will still save about 50% in licensing costs. Like other VergeOS Editions, SDC is licensed by the physical server. It doesn’t matter how many CPUs or cores you have or your required storage capacity. One license per server. Period.

More than a Low Price

VergeOS SDC is more than just a low-cost alternative to VMware Essentials; it provides all the above-mentioned “essential” capabilities and more. Unlike the the true cost of VMware Essentials which must be carefully uncovered, VergeOS SDC includes all of the “essentials” features and more. With VergeOS SDC, you get live VM migration, cross-switch vMotion, high availability, vSphere, and replication.

You also get a full complement of storage services that exceed the vSAN standard edition, eliminating the need for external shared storage. Server class 15.3TB NVMe SSDs are available for less than $1,500 today. You can purchase 183TBs of very high-performance flash for less than $18,000. Remember, because the server licenses VergeOS, there is no additional charge for the storage capacity. Also included is VergeOS global inline data deduplication, which should make 183TBs of capacity act more like 700TBs, depending on your dataset.

Lowering Total Cost of Infrastructure Ownership

VergeOS can reduce the Total Cost of Infrastructure Ownership in additional ways. First, the entire environment provides complete high availability. Virtual machines are automatically moved to other nodes in the VergeOS instance if a node fails. Our Virtual Data Center technology makes disaster recovery and patch application simple.

Our snapshots act like clones, making them more suitable for data protection and ransomware resiliency. Snapshots can be taken quickly and frequently and are immutable by default. While most other data protection solutions struggle with weeks of recovery post-ransomware-attack, IOfortify, our ransomware notification alerting system, reduces recovery times to less than 30 minutes. Schedule a 22-minute whiteboard session to dive deep into VergeOS’ data protection and data resiliency capabilities to learn how to eliminate or reduce your backup licensing and storage costs.

VergeOS also includes complete Layer 2 and 3 networking services, which means that when you are ready, you can eliminate the expense of dedicated appliances acting as firewalls, VPNs, etc… Watch this video to learn more about VergeOS’ networking capabilities

VergeOS’ integration of network, virtualization, and storage services into a cohesive software package simplifies operations and dramatically improves hardware efficiencies. Most of our customers report that they have migrated from VMware to VergeOS and have 40% or more computing resources available to them than before. As a result, they can virtualize more workloads and reduce or delay future orders.

Conclusion

VMware Essentials, with its various versions, offers a range of options for small to medium-sized data centers. However, each version comes with significant limitations and escalating costs. The Essentials version is too basic, lacking “essential” capabilities for serious data center operations. Essentials Plus offers more features but still lacks comprehensive storage solutions. The seldom mentioned HCI Kit version adds vSAN, but it is expensive, lacks deduplication, and retains node limitations. Additionally, the future of the entire VMware Essentials product line is uncertain due to Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.

By comparison, VergeIO’s VergeOS Small Data Center (SDC) edition is a robust alternative for VMware Essentials customers. It provides:

  • Seamless Migration
  • Integrates networking, virtualization, and storage services into a single software package,
  • Offers all the capabilities of VergeOS Enterprise Edition, limited only by scalability to four node.

VergeOS SDC is cost-effective, not only in terms of licensing but also in reducing the Total Cost of Infrastructure Ownership. It includes advanced features like live VM migration, high availability, and efficient storage services with global inline data deduplication. Moreover, VergeOS enhances data protection, disaster recovery, and network services, leading to greater hardware efficiency and further reduced costs.

Overall, for small to medium-sized data centers, especially those currently using VMware Essentials, VergeOS SDC emerges as the choice. It offers a more integrated, efficient, and cost-effective solution compared to the segmented and increasingly expensive options provided by VMware Essentials.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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Ann Arbor, Mich, December 5, 2023 — VergeIO, the leading VMware alternative, announced the immediate availability of VergeOS Small Data Center (SDC) Edition. The VergeOS SDC edition is more than a competitive swap out of VMware Essentials. It is a significant capability upgrade while lowering costs.  

Ironically, VMware Essentials is missing the essential capabilities that small data centers need most. With VergeOS SDC, customers get everything included in VMware Essentials plus advanced storage services, live virtual machine migration, advanced layer two and layer three networking capabilities, and ransomware protection. Finally, unlike VMware Essentials, the VergeOS SDC Edition isn’t limited to three servers. 

“VMware Essential customers especially are finding they are the “odd-man-out” as Broadcom slashes sales, support, training, and development resources while it absorbs VMware. Today, with VergeOS SDC, Essential customers can switch to a more affordable, easier-to-use platform that uses their existing hardware while improving capabilities and data resilience,” said VergeIO CEO Yan Ness.

Two Nodes Free

VergeIO doesn’t adhere to the complex and expensive practices of charging per CPU, per core, or the amount of storage capacity. VergeOS is priced per physical server, regardless of resources. 

With the launch of VergeOS, SDC organizations have the opportunity to improve cost savings even further. Any customer who participates in a demonstration of the VergeOS before December 15th will receive an offer to buy one node license and get the second free, or buy two node licenses and get two node licenses free (matching the term of their subscriptions).  

Seamless, Managed Migration

The IT team that manages a small data center is often a team of one. To assist these overworked IT professionals, VergeIO is including a white-glove migration service as part of VergeOS SDC. The VergeIO customer success team will migrate the organization’s VMs, work with them to verify compatibility, and provide training on how to take full advantage of all the capabilities of VergeOS. The training includes enabling its ransomware-resilient, IOfortify capabilities. Customers can migrate in less than a day, fully enable data protection, and be fully certified for VergeOS operations. 

The Power to Grow

Unlike VMware Essentials, VergeOS SDC can seamlessly scale well beyond three nodes to VergeOS Enterprise, which supports an unlimited of nodes and advanced virtualization capabilities like GPU virtualization support, multi-site management, and a cloud-like recipe engine that can deploy complete workloads with a click of a button. 

To learn more, go to VergeOS for Small Data Centers or register for our upcoming live webinar to learn more.

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.

Media Contact:

Judy Smith, JPR Communications

[email protected]

818-522-9673

Filed Under: Press Release

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developing a VMware exit plan

The recent acquisition of VMware by Broadcom and the cold reality of this week’s layoffs make developing a VMware exit plan the new top priority for IT professionals. However, transitioning to a new virtualization platform can be a daunting task. With careful planning and execution and working with vendors with a long track record of helping organizations make this transition, the risks of conversion can be minimized.

A VMware Exit Migration Plan

Below is a quick overview of how to migrate from VMware to an alternative virtualization platform. For a more detailed plan, please download our definitive guide to exiting VMware, “A Step-By-Step VMware Migration Process.”

  1. Evaluate Alternatives: The first step in developing a VMware exit plan is to research the business and technological aspects of potential alternatives. Consider licensing models. Does the vendor’s practice of charging by CPU, core, or storage capacity punish you for using advanced hardware? Also, make sure you have at least feature parity in terms of performance, data protection, and resilience. Read our article “Comparing VMware to VergeOS,” to learn how VergeOS compares to VMware.
  2. Cost-Benefit Analysis: Undertake a thorough analysis of costs versus benefits, including licensing, maintenance, operational costs, and potential savings. Explore the potential to eliminate other software applications like backup, replication, and ransomware recovery. At a minimum, you should be looking for a 50% savings on licensing, decreasing the need for future hardware purchases and simplifying operations. Read our article “VMware Alternative Cost-Benefit Analysis,” to learn how VergeOS can reduce infrastructure costs now and in the future.
  3. Plan the Migration: Another imporant aspect of developing a VMware exit plan is creating a detailed migration plan encompassing timelines, resources, risk management, and stakeholder involvement. You are busy. Is the vendor willing to provide assistance and manage the migration for you? To watch a migration in real-time, watch our on-demand webinar.
  4. Prepare the Infrastructure: Ensure hardware and networking compatibility with the new software. Does the vendor have a strict hardware compatibility list that will force you to buy new hardware instead of leveraging your current investment? VergeOS doesn’t require new hardware, or even a restrictive hardware compatability list (HCL). Instead, we have a modest set of minimum requirements.
  5. Conduct Training: Training the IT staff on the new software and updating operational documentation is also a key step in developing a VMware exit plan. How long will it take to learn the new software and be comfortable performing day-to-day operations? Want to see how easy it is to learn VergeOS? Register for a virtual self-guided test drive.
  6. Test Migration Process: Start with a pilot migration and monitor performance. Can you migrate everything and keep the migrated virtual machines (VM) in sync as you start a pilot test of a few VMs? Continuously updating migration targets enables you to expand the test environment as you verify compatibility.
  7. Test Failure Scenarios: An often overlooked part of developing a VMware exit plan is making sure, as part of the testing, you test failure conditions, including failed network connections, servers, and storage media. Can the alternative self-heal? Does it provide adequate, built-in, data protection and recovery capabilities?
  8. Full-Scale Migration: A full-scale migration shouldn’t be necessary if the alternative can continually update migrated VMs from the VMware environment. Migration should be gradual and risk-free, testing one step at a time.
  9. Post-Migration Testing: Post-migration testing should also be unnecessary if the solution enables the gradual migration process as described in steps 6 and 7. You will want to confirm functionality and performance under full load in the new environment. A more efficient alternative should free up resources and enable you to cancel your next hardware refresh.
  10. Transition Support and Maintenance: Establish new support arrangements and maintenance procedures. Make sure the vendor is able to provide 24/7 support and allows for human-to-human communication.
  11. Decommission Old Environment: Decommission VMware and cancel any related licenses or contracts. The moment you’ve been waiting for, lower those licensing costs and free yourself from the acquisition chaos. You should save 50% or more on licensing and increase your total return on investment (ROI) by as much as 80% thanks to more efficient resource utilization.
  12. Review and Optimize: Conduct a post-migration review and continually monitor for optimization opportunities. A robust infrastructure solution should eliminate the need for most of the VMware ecosystem. Gradually replace these components to further improve ROI.
  13. Document and Communicate Changes: The final piece of developing a VMware exit plan is to update all documentation and inform impacted parties. Users should see no change in day-to-day, except for performance improvements and better data protection.

Conclusion

developing a VMware exit plan

The acquisition of VMware by Broadcom and the resulting organizational changes have brought to the forefront the necessity for IT professionals to develop a comprehensive VMware exit plan. Transitioning to a new virtualization platform can be streamlined with planning, analysis, and collaboration with experienced vendors.

The outlined steps, ranging from evaluating alternatives to documenting and communicating changes, provide a structured pathway for a smooth transition. By leveraging platforms like VergeOS, organizations can look forward to significant cost savings, enhanced performance, and simplified operations. Remember, the ultimate goal is not just to replace VMware, but to elevate your organization’s virtualization capabilities to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness.

Free, Personalized VMware Migration Strategy

Schedule a 15-minute call with one of our experts so we can capture the information we need to create a free, customized VMware Exit plan for your organization.

You’ll get a professional report detailing a customized process by which you can exit VMware. It will also provide a cost-benefit analysis showing how much you can reduce upfront and long-term data center costs by exiting VMware.

Do you think the ensuing chaos of Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware is overrated? Check out this article.

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a VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis

One of the more critical steps when exiting VMware is performing a VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis. Every VMware alternative should have a lower license cost, but they should also have additional benefits that lower the total cost of ownership upfront and in the future. You can download our step-by-step guide to a risk-free VMware migration here.

VMware Cost-Benefit Analysis – The Cost of Inefficiency

Licensing is at the heart of a VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis. Today, VMware charges by the number of CPUs; if your CPU has more than 32 cores, you’ll need multiple licenses per CPU. It is widely assumed that VMware licensing will shift to a per-core subscription model after the Broadcom acquisition.

a VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis

By charging extra for high-core count CPUs or per core, VMware penalizes you for investing in Intel’s next-generation CPU, which can reduce data center footprint and cooling costs. As a result, many customers will purposely select less capable servers to keep VMware licensing costs in check.


Most VMware alternatives don’t fare much better in terms of licensing. While they may be less expensive than VMware, they also tend to charge per physical CPU, core, or the amount of RAM. Others charge by storage capacity because they are really storage software, not an alternative infrastructure software solution.

Another component of VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis is the cost of server replacement. VMware, especially in the latest release, is requiring decommissioning of servers that are less than five years old, forcing server refreshes before the server has reached the end of its life. There is a cost associated with VMware’s lack of efficient server utilization. Some organizations have bare-metal workloads that they don’t feel confident virtualizing because of the overhead of the VMware hypervisor. Many organizations, because of VMware’s inefficient code base, can’t stack as many virtual machines (VM) per ESXi host as they would like.

Once again, most VMware alternatives don’t fare much better. While many are KVM-based, they haven’t done the optimization work required to operate smoothly. In most cases, these solutions have tried to hide KVM’s complexity behind a pretty GUI; they’ve actually done little optimization of KVM itself, if any. These VMWare alternatives suffer from similar performance inefficiencies and can’t help customers virtualize bare metal workloads or increase VM densities.

The other challenge with most VMware alternatives is that they require that you buy new hardware, either from them directly or from a “certified vendor.” In either case, you can’t leverage the hardware you already have, which is unfortunate because, with an efficient infrastructure software solution, customers can get years of additional life expectancy from their existing servers.

VergeOS Savings Go Beyond Licensing

VergeOS licenses are about 30% to 60% less expensive than the VMware offering. It is licensed by the physical server, not the number of CPUs, cores, amount of RAM, or storage capacity. A VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis must be about more than licensing costs. VergeOS, because it is Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI), includes a full complement of virtualization, networking, and storage capabilities in a single unified code base highly optimized for performance and scale.

The efficiency of the UCI architecture enables customers to increase VM density and virtualize formerly bare-metal workloads while using existing hardware. VergeIO is a pure software company; we don’t sell hardware, have a certified vendor list, or even have a hardware compatibility list (HCL). Instead, we have a modest set of minimum requirements. Most customers use their existing servers, freeing up compute resources by 35% to 40% while still seeing performance improvements. As a result, they can delay the next round of server purchases, which increases the potential cost savings to 75% or more.

When the time does come to invest in new server hardware, the VergeIO licensing model empowers customers to invest in multi-processor, massive core-count servers with as much storage capacity as they want. Investing in more powerful servers means more VMs per host, a reduction in data center footprint, and a reduction in power and cooling costs.

VMware Cost-Benefit Analysis – Storage

One of the great mysteries of the data center is “Why does storage cost so much?” The storage cost was one of the top concerns expressed by VMware Customers in our recent survey (licensing was number one). You can access all of the report details here. As a result, storage is a key component of a VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis. Dedicated storage arrays are 10X to 20X the cost per TB of server-based capacity. They also require a separate management process and often a separate team to manage them.

a VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis

Simple math indicates that this should not be the case. A 15.3TB NVMe Flash Drive is less than $1,500, meaning it should cost about $30,000 for 300TBs of high-performance flash storage capable of delivering hundreds of thousands of IOPS, but the cost of a dedicated storage array is many times that.

Vendors will tell you that it is so you can enjoy data services like deduplication, drive failure protection, snapshots, and data replication. But these services, as they offer them, are also full of compromise and raise the cost of the physical hardware required to deliver the performance and capacity the organization needs.

For example, the deduplication algorithm many storage solutions use requires significant processing power and RAM. Advanced RAID algorithms like Erasure Coding are complex to implement in a scale-out design and also suffer from slow drive recovery times. Most snapshot technologies are limited to the number that can be active and depend on each other, making them ill-suited for backup, disaster recovery, and ransomware protection.

The shortcomings of data services only add to the cost of a typical storage system and do not provide the full potential of any of its alleged, costly capabilities.

Hyperconverged infrastructure was supposed to resolve the issues creating high storage costs but has fallen woefully short. These solutions are not much less expensive than dedicated storage arrays and require more performance compromises. They suffer from the overhead associated with data services, and customers must overcompensate by investing in additional processing power, RAM, and storage performance/capacity.

Most VMware alternatives don’t invest much development time in optimizing the storage software. In most cases, they use ZFS or something similar. The problem is that these storage solutions aren’t optimized for running in a virtual environment, and as such, don’t deliver the performance or data services that customers need. They also suffer from the same, and in some cases, worse overhead than the HCI solutions mentioned above.

VergeOS Lowers Storage Costs Without Compromises

VergeOS’ Ultraconverged Infrastructure approach means that storage and networking execute as equal citizens to the hypervisor. As a result, VergeOS delivers high-performance, efficient capacity utilization thanks to global inline deduplication and enterprise-class data services that don’t impact performance. VergeOS’ storage services enable you to use server-class SSDs and HDDs without compromise.

Eliminating the additional cost associated with dedicated storage arrays or HCI storage can move your infrastructure savings to 75% or more. For example, we recently worked with a customer who purchased a 30TB Dell/EMC AFA system for $60k. With VergeOS, they could purchase 600TBs of capacity for that $60K and expect significantly better performance. That’s 20X the capacity for the same purchase price. Using the optimized VergeOS environment, all reads are serviced by locally attached NVMe SSDs. Instead of going across a storage network, data is read directly from the NVMe interface.

The storage components within the VergeOS code provide complete data services. Its global inline deduplication delivers an average 5:1 or better data efficiencies without requiring massive processing power or RAM capacities. Our IOclone powered snapshots behave more like complete clones, but thanks to global inline deduplication, they take milliseconds to create, are space efficient, and don’t impact performance. Each snapshot is independent. Snapshots taken before it or even the primary dataset itself can be removed, and their removal won’t impact the current snapshot.

The independence of VergeOS snapshots makes them viable backup copies. Combined with WAN-aware replication, most customers find the data protection capabilities within VergeOS to be superior to the capabilities of their current backup software. While most customers will initially leverage VergeOS’ capability to support third-party backup solutions, many customers eventually let their backup software license expire and decommission their backup storage, confidently relying solely on VergeOS, increasing the cost savings to 85% or more.

Conclusion: A New Horizon in Cost-Effective Virtualization

In conclusion, a VMware alternative cost-benefit analysis shows that VergeOS makes a compelling case for organizations seeking to optimize their virtualization strategies. Traditional VMware environments come with significant costs and limitations, especially concerning licensing, server utilization, and storage expenses. These constraints strain budgets and hinder operational efficiency and technological advancement.

Most VMware alternatives are built from open-source software without much additional development investment besides a GUI. The limitations of unoptimized hypervisor software, virtualization ignorant storage software, and limited networking capabilities make any potential cost savings irrelevant. These solutions follow the same tired licensing models of VMware, charging by processor, core, amount of RAM, or storage capacity. Further, they require the purchase of new hardware.

Alternatives like VergeOS offer a refreshing contrast, addressing key pain points in licensing, server utilization, and storage management. With its single unified code base, the Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) model of VergeOS presents a more cost-effective and performance-optimized solution. Its licensing structure, focused on the physical server rather than individual components, provides substantial cost savings. At the same time, the ability to increase VM density and leverage existing hardware further enhances its value proposition.

Storage costs, often a significant concern in data centers, are notably reduced with VergeOS. VergeOS eliminates the need for dedicated storage arrays or complex HCI solutions by integrating storage and networking as equal components alongside the hypervisor. Its innovative approach to data services, including global inline deduplication and efficient snapshot management, ensures high performance without the usual compromises.

VergeOS stands out as a viable and highly beneficial alternative for organizations looking to move away from VMware’s costly and restrictive model. By embracing this new horizon in virtualization, businesses can expect immediate cost reductions and long-term operational efficiencies, laying a solid foundation for future growth and technological innovation.

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