George Crump

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As IT budgets tighten and infrastructure demands grow, organizations must scrutinize every technology investment, and maximizing storage refresh ROI (return on investment) while keeping the TCO (total cost of ownership) under control as a part of that process. One of the most expensive and disruptive refresh cycles in the data center is storage. IT teams have been locked into the buy, refresh, repeat model of purchasing dedicated storage arrays for decades, only to face another refresh cycle a few years later.

maximizing storage refresh ROI

Many IT leaders have explored vSAN-based architectures to eliminate the cost and complexity of traditional SANs. However, maximizing storage refresh ROI using legacy vSANs from VMware and Nutanix falls short, often introducing new challenges such as hardware compatibility restrictions, performance bottlenecks, and high licensing fees. These solutions rely on storage software running as an application within a virtual machine under control of a hypervisor. As we discuss in our white paper “Comparing vSANs” These design decisions add unnecessary layers of complexity and inefficiency.

VergeFS, the storage component of VergeOS, is fundamentally different. Instead of treating storage as a second-class citizen within a hypervisor, VergeFS is fully integrated into the core of VergeOS, alongside virtualization and networking. This deep integration creates an Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI), eliminating the overhead of running storage in a VM, and delivering superior performance, scalability, and efficiency. VergeFS provides the benefits legacy vSANs promised but never fully delivered—true enterprise-class storage with radically lower costs, better performance, and seamless scalability.

The High Cost of Traditional SAN Refreshes

Replacing a SAN is one of the most expensive IT projects an organization can undertake. It requires new hardware, software licenses and migration services. Additionally, the downtime for deployment and cutover make maximizing storage refresh ROI almost impossible.

The costs of a traditional SAN refresh typically include:

  • Expensive proprietary hardware – Dedicated storage arrays often require vendor-certified drives, controllers, and networking, significantly increasing upfront costs.
  • Complex implementation and migration – Moving from one SAN to another is rarely seamless. The migration process introduces downtime, risks data loss, and increases IT labor costs.
  • Scalability limitations – Scaling a SAN requires purchasing additional proprietary expansion units, often at a significant markup.

Despite these high costs, traditional SANs do not fundamentally change how storage is managed, meaning IT teams remain locked into high daily operation overhead and never-ending future refresh cycles.

Lowering TCO with VergeOS and VergeFS

Maximizing storage refresh ROI and lowering TCO is easy with VergeIO. VergeOS integrates storage directly into the virtualization layer using VergeFS, a high-performance, enterprise-class vSAN, unlike dedicated storage arrays. Instead of buying and deploying a separate SAN, IT teams can use existing servers to create a software-defined storage solution that eliminates the need for traditional storage arrays and provides a VMware exit at the same time, solving two IT problems with one solution.

Reducing Upfront Costs

With VergeOS, organizations can eliminate expensive SAN purchases. VergeFS allows IT teams to repurpose existing server hardware, dramatically reducing capital expenditures. Instead of purchasing new storage controllers, RAID cards, and expansion shelves, VergeOS transforms standard x86 servers, usually the ones running VMware, into a high-performance storage infrastructure without impacting application VM performance. Learn more about how VergeOS enables you to leverage your current VMware servers for both your storage refresh and VMware exit in our article “Use VMware Servers for Your Storage Refresh.”

Additionally, VergeOS supports commodity SSDs, meaning organizations can purchase storage at market prices rather than paying a premium for vendor-certified drives. For example, adding 100TB of all-flash capacity with standard SSDs costs up to 10 times less than buying an enterprise all-flash array.

Eliminating Licensing Fees

Traditional vSAN vendors charge separate fees for critical enterprise storage features, including snapshots, replication, deduplication, and high availability. VergeFS includes these capabilities natively, eliminating the need for costly add-ons, enabling IT to maximize storage refresh TCO. Organizations gain:

  • Global inline deduplication to optimize storage efficiency
  • VM-aware and Virtual Data Center aware snapshots for instant rollback and recovery
  • Single-file recovery from within a snapshot
  • Asynchronous replication for disaster recovery across sites
  • Multi-tier storage support for performance and cost optimization with live VM migration between tiers.

These capabilities are all included within VergeOS, and no additional licensing is required.

Lowering Operational Expenses

Beyond upfront savings, VergeOS significantly reduces the ongoing operational costs of managing storage.

  • No dedicated storage management – VergeFS is fully integrated into VergeOS, allowing IT teams to manage storage, compute, and networking from a single interface rather than maintaining a separate SAN.
  • Automated data resiliency – VergeOS eliminates RAID bottlenecks by using a distributed redundancy model, ensuring faster rebuild times and reducing the risk of downtime.
  • Seamless scaling – Instead of forklift upgrades, organizations can scale incrementally by adding more drives or nodes without complex migrations.
  • Granular Scaling — With VergeOS scale the resources you need when you need to. It supports storage-only, compute-only and GPU-only nodes.

By removing the administrative overhead of managing a dedicated SAN, organizations free up IT staff to focus on more strategic projects. To dive deeper into how VergeOS compares to dedicated storage arrays, download our latest whitepaper “Your Next Storage Refresh Should Be a vSAN.”

The ROI of Converging Storage and Virtualization

VergeOS’s real return on investment comes from its ability to eliminate two major IT expenses at once: SAN refreshes and VMware licensing.

  • SAN replacement savings – No need to purchase a new storage array or pay per-terabyte licensing fees.
  • VMware alternative savings – Organizations moving to VergeOS can eliminate costly VMware licensing, cutting virtualization expenses by 50 percent or more.
  • Ongoing infrastructure cost reduction – VergeOS enables organizations to consolidate infrastructure, run workloads more efficiently, and eliminate unnecessary hardware.

For IT teams looking to maximize the value of their storage refresh, investing in VergeOS delivers long-term savings that a new SAN cannot match.

Future-Proofing Your Infrastructure

One of the biggest challenges with traditional SANs is their inflexibility. Most storage arrays are built around a single type of drive (e.g., all-flash), locking IT teams into specific storage media for years. However, storage needs evolve, and workloads increasingly demand different performance characteristics.

maximizing storage refresh ROI

Moving data between drive types matters more than ever. VergeFS provides true multi-tier storage, allowing organizations to mix and match different drive types within the same infrastructure, including NVMe, TLC, QLC, and HDDs. IT teams can assign workloads to the appropriate storage tier and even live-migrate VMs between tiers as performance needs change.

This flexibility future-proofs the environment, ensuring organizations can use emerging storage technologies without another expensive forklift upgrade.

Conclusion: Don’t Buy Another SAN

Organizations planning their next storage refresh should consider alternatives to traditional SAN replacements. Instead of continuing the cycle of expensive storage arrays and licensing fees, IT teams should consider a UCI approach with VergeOS.

By replacing a dedicated SAN with VergeFS vSAN, organizations can:

  • Eliminate upfront hardware costs by using existing servers
  • Avoid high licensing fees associated with traditional SANs
  • Reduce ongoing operational costs with an integrated management model
  • Improve scalability and flexibility by mixing different drive types
  • Future-proof storage infrastructure with a unified, high-performance platform

Ultimately, the best ROI comes from eliminating unnecessary expenses. VergeOS makes it possible to replace your SAN and VMware in one streamlined transition, delivering the lowest total cost of ownership and the highest long-term value.

Before committing to another costly storage array, explore how VergeOS can help you permanently break free from the SAN refresh cycle, schedule a technical whiteboard session with one of our experts now.

maximizing storage refresh ROI

Filed Under: Storage

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What if you could use your existing VMware servers for your storage refresh? Many IT professionals are facing two big projects in 2025: a SAN refresh and the replacement of VMware. The problem is that most vendors will want you to replace all that hardware, storage servers, and virtualization servers with new hardware from them. This article will discuss how your existing VMware servers could be repurposed into a high-performance, cost-effective storage solution while simultaneously transitioning to a VMware alternative.

The Hidden Cost of Dedicated Storage Arrays

For years, IT teams have been conditioned to believe that storage must reside in a separate, dedicated storage array—whether all-flash or hybrid—even though they are very similar to the servers running the virtualization layer!

While these systems provide centralized storage, they come with significant drawbacks:

  • High cost – Enterprise storage arrays are expensive, with vendors charging a premium for hardware and software features.
  • Vendor lock-in – Many arrays require proprietary drives and support contracts that lock organizations into rigid upgrade cycles.
  • Complexity – Dedicated storage arrays require separate management, tuning, and optimization—leading to higher operational overhead.
  • Performance bottlenecks – Storage arrays introduce additional network latency and rely on RAID or erasure coding, which slows rebuild times when failures occur.

With VergeOS, organizations can avoid these limitations entirely. Instead of relying on a dedicated storage array, VergeOS enables existing, formerly VMware servers to become fully integrated, enterprise-class vSANs. Organizations gain a cost-effective, high-performance alternative by eliminating the need for separate storage hardware and expensive licensing fees.

How VMware Servers Can Become Your Storage Infrastructure and Replace VMware

The key to transforming existing VMware servers into enterprise-class storage is using a data center operating system that integrates storage directly into the virtualization layer. Instead of separating compute and storage into distinct silos, VergeOS enables storage to run alongside virtualized workloads, eliminating the inefficiencies of traditional architectures.

With VergeOS, you can use your VMware Servers for Your Storage Refresh :

  • Aggregate storage across multiple servers into a unified storage pool
  • Provide high-performance, VM-aware storage without the need for a separate array
  • Deliver beyond enterprise-class redundancy and data protection without RAID bottlenecks
  • Eliminate expensive storage licensing costs by removing the need for vSAN VMs or external SAN solutions
  • Enable a seamless transition from VMware to a modern virtualization platform without downtime
VMware servers as your storage refresh

To learn more, join our live webinar, “Break Free from the Storage Refresh Cycle,” an interactive whiteboard session.

Advantages of VMware Servers for a Storage Refresh

Immediate Cost Savings

Transitioning from VMware servers for a storage refresh, IT teams can eliminate the need to purchase a new storage array and stop paying VMware’s ever-increasing licensing fees. Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new storage system and hypervisor licensing, organizations can use their current hardware to achieve the same performance and scalability at a fraction of the cost.

VergeOS eliminates these costs by converging storage, virtualization, and networking into a single platform, allowing organizations to maximize their existing infrastructure investments. VergeOS can derive unparalleled performance from standard server-class SSDs, which are 10X less than the price of a dedicated all-flash array. Our customers frequently add 100TBs of all-flash capacity to their environment for less than $12,000. Ask your array vendor how much 100TBs of capacity, controllers, and networking will cost.

Performance Without Bottlenecks

Dedicated storage arrays often introduce performance bottlenecks due to network latency and RAID overhead. Converging storage and virtualization into the same platform eliminates these inefficiencies, allowing data to move directly between the storage and virtualized workloads without unnecessary network hops.

Because VergeOS natively integrates VM-aware storage, it optimizes performance for virtual workloads without needing separate tuning or storage hardware upgrades.

Built-in Data Protection Without RAID Complexity

Most traditional storage arrays rely on RAID or erasure coding, which increases write latency and leads to long rebuild times when a drive fails. Using a modern software-defined approach, IT teams can distribute data across multiple servers, allowing for parallelized recovery that restores data in minutes instead of hours or days.

VergeOS replaces RAID with distributed redundancy, ensuring that failures do not impact performance or availability.

Easier Management with a Unified Interface

Managing storage separately from virtualization increases administrative overhead and complexity. With VergeOS, storage is managed directly within the virtualization platform, allowing IT teams to control virtualization, storage, and networking from a single interface.

This reduces the need for specialized storage expertise and simplifies day-to-day operations, making IT infrastructure easier to scale and maintain.

Future-Proofing for Growth

Traditional storage arrays require forklift upgrades to expand capacity, forcing organizations into disruptive migrations. Organizations can scale capacity by repurposing VMware servers as a storage platform while transitioning to VergeOS by adding more drives to available drive bays or additional standard servers from almost any manufacturer—eliminating vendor lock-in and restrictive licensing.

VMware servers as your storage refresh

VergeOS enables seamless expansion by allowing IT teams to mix and match hardware without being locked into proprietary storage platforms.

Conclusion: Use VMware Servers as Your Storage Refresh

Why Buy Storage When You Already Own It?

Organizations planning to move away from VMware don’t have to scrap their existing hardware. Using VMware servers as your storage refresh enables you to repurpose them into a next-generation storage platform that is more cost-effective, easier to manage, and performs better than a traditional storage array.

Even more importantly, by adopting VergeOS, IT teams can transition away from VMware simultaneously, eliminating the need for expensive licensing while gaining a fully integrated virtualization and storage solution.

Instead of investing in another costly storage array or renewing VMware licenses, IT teams can modernize their entire infrastructure with VergeOS—leveraging the hardware they already own for better performance, lower costs, and complete control over their future IT strategy.

If you’re planning your next storage refresh or VMware migration, why not do both at once—without new hardware investments? Schedule a 30-minute meeting with us, and we can take you through a virtual whiteboard session to explain how the transition would work in your data center.

Filed Under: Storage

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Both dedicated storage arrays and vSAN are vulnerable to catastrophic failures, and using backups for storage failure recoveries may put your organization at risk. The problem is that many organizations rely solely on backups to recover from data loss, but what happens when your RAID system or entire storage infrastructure fails?

Traditional backup and disaster recovery strategies assume that storage remains operational. However, when faced with a multi-drive RAID failure or complete storage system failure, these assumptions fall apart, leaving IT scrambling for a way to restore critical applications.

The Multi-Drive RAID Failure Problem

RAID provides redundancy, but it is not immune to failure. If multiple drives fail in a RAID system, the array enters rebuild mode, which can take hours or even days, depending on the system and disk sizes. The greater the number of modern high-capacity drives used in today’s storage infrastructures is, the longer the rebuilds take. During this time, performance is severely degraded if the system remains online. In worst-case scenarios, additional failures during a rebuild can result in total data loss, requiring a full recovery from backups.

Recovering from a backup introduces another challenge: backup frequency. If backups only run once per night, the most recent recovery point may be nearly 24 hours old. That means a business day’s worth of transactions, work, and updates could be permanently lost. Even so-called instant recovery solutions provide only a temporary stopgap. These solutions run in an emulated mode on the backup storage appliance, which lacks the performance required to support production workloads. Once IT initiates recovery, data must be migrated back into production, which can only happen after the primary storage system is back online. If the failed RAID system takes days to rebuild, business operations remain at a standstill.

What Happens When an Entire Storage System Fails?

If the storage system fails due to controller failure, power supply issues, firmware corruption, or catastrophic hardware damage, the problem is significantly worse. With RAID failures, at least some storage remains intact. A total storage system failure means there is nowhere to restore the backup.

Even with a high-end storage vendor’s four-hour response time, that only guarantees a technician will arrive to diagnose the issue within four hours. The technician must still determine the failure, replace the necessary components, and return the system online. If new storage hardware is required, IT may need to procure and deploy new components, adding days or weeks to recovery time.

Traditional Recovery Strategies Are Insufficient

Using backups for storage failure, even with frequent backups, the backup interval limits the best-case recovery scenario. If the system only performs nightly backups, the most recent 24 hours of data are lost even after a complete restoration. Additionally, backups are designed for restoration and are not available continuously.

Bringing production storage back online still requires:

  • Provisioning and initializing new storage
  • Mounting and reformatting volumes
  • Transferring terabytes or petabytes of backup data back into production
  • Verifying data consistency and restoring application dependencies

Even backup solutions advertising “instant recovery” will not eliminate downtime. First, the data is still from last night’s backup, meaning any work completed throughout the day is lost. Second, “instant recovery” is not actually instant. The process still takes 30 minutes or more to complete, during which time workloads remain inaccessible.

Worse yet, most backup appliances are not designed for production workloads. These solutions run in an emulated state on the backup storage system, which lacks the performance characteristics needed to support live applications.

A critical factor often overlooked with instant recovery is migration back to production storage, which cannot occur until the primary production system is back online. If the storage system remains down or is undergoing lengthy repairs, the recovered environment remains trapped in the backup appliance, unable to transition to full production. This migration challenge significantly extends downtime and leaves IT with no viable path to restore normal operations until storage and production workloads are fully rebuilt.

VergeIO’s Inline Recovery with ioGuardian

using backups for storage failure

Instead of using backups for storage failure, VergeIO provides an inline repair capability built into the core of VergeOS, ioGuardian. Instead of relying on slow and complex backup restores, VergeOS frequently replicates to another, cost-effective storage instance, enabling instant inline recovery without requiring external backups.

Unlike RAID, which requires lengthy rebuilds and backup solutions that rely on outdated backups, VergeOS dynamically reallocates data blocks to workloads at the moment of failure, ensuring that applications remain operational. Even during multiple simultaneous drive or server failures, VergeIO can keep systems online—without waiting for RAID to rebuild or backup storage to be manually restored.

using backups for storage failure

This capability was demonstrated in our recent webinar comparing vSAN alternatives, where we successfully recovered from multiple concurrent drive failures in real time without performance degradation.

Rethinking Storage Resiliency

Using backups for storage failure is no longer the only, or even the best approach. Traditional backup and recovery models assume that storage will always be available to restore data; this includes instant recovery. That assumption no longer exists in modern IT environments, where storage failures can result in prolonged downtime. The only way to guarantee continuous operations is to integrate recovery directly into the vSAN and the hypervisor.

With VergeOS and ioGuardian, IT teams can confidently deploy commodity hardware without worrying that hardware failures—even multiple simultaneous failures—will impact production operations. This is how a VMware alternative like VergeOS can be more than just a VMware alternative—it delivers superior data resiliency that legacy hypervisors and storage systems simply cannot match.

Filed Under: Blog, Protection

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The move saves $150,000 annually and boosts IT efficiency

Ann Arbor, MI – February 18th, 2025 – Lancaster Central School District has successfully transitioned to VergeIO’s VergeOS, achieving $150,000 in annual cost savings while improving performance, data protection, and storage efficiency.

Prior to the transition, the district faced a substantial increase in licensing costs, creating budget concerns. Additionally, the previous solution fell short in storage efficiency, struggling with deduplication, snapshot performance, and resiliency. Lancaster’s IT team evaluated multiple virtualization solutions in search of a more cost-effective and high-performance alternative before selecting VergeIO’s integrated ultraconverged infrastructure platform.

“We needed a solution that wasn’t just a replacement for our existing virtualization platform, but an improvement. VergeIO delivered exactly that.”
– Eric Miller, Manager of Information Services, Lancaster Central School District

Challenges with Previous Virtualized SAN Solutions

Before transitioning, Lancaster encountered several issues with its previous virtualized SAN solution, including:

  • Rising capacity-based licensing costs, making budgeting unpredictable
  • Snapshot performance degradation, limiting recovery options
  • Inefficient deduplication, increasing storage requirements
  • Complex stretched cluster dependencies, leading to potential disruptions

Why Lancaster Chose VergeIO

After a thorough evaluation, VergeIO stood out as the preferred option due to its cost-effectiveness, storage integration, and ease of use. VergeIO directly integrates storage into the hypervisor, unlike other virtualization solutions, eliminating the need for external storage solutions.

Additional factors that influenced Lancaster’s decision included:

  • Superior support – VergeIO offers 100% US-based support with direct access to engineers
  • Inline global deduplication – VergeFS reduced storage consumption without performance penalties
  • Snapshot performance – VergeFS snapshots are instantaneous and impact-free, enabling more reliable backups and recovery
  • Resiliency improvements – Unlike Lancaster’s previous stretched clusters, VergeIO’s active-active deployment maintained uptime during ISP failures, ensuring seamless operations

“We wanted a system that did not require constant monitoring. VergeIO is so good at handling things behind the scenes that we can concentrate on improving and developing new solutions for our district leveraging the VergeIO platform.”
– Tim Johnson, Systems Administrator, Lancaster Central School District

Seamless Migration and Immediate Benefits

Lancaster deployed VergeIO in May 2024 as a proof of concept and completed its full transition to production workloads by November 2024. The move resulted in:

  • $150,000 in annual cost savings by eliminating substantial license fee increases
  • Simplified IT operations, allowing the team to focus on strategic projects
  • Improved storage efficiency with VergeFS’s global deduplication
  • Eliminated VMware’s performance bottlenecks, including snapshot and cluster dependency issues

“Lancaster Central School District’s move to VergeIO is a perfect example of how organizations can escape rising virtualization costs while improving operational efficiency. We look forward to supporting Lancaster’s journey and helping more organizations make the switch.”
– Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO

Comparing vSAN Alternatives: Free Expert Webinar

For IT professionals facing similar challenges, VergeIO is hosting a live webinar featuring storage and virtualization expert Marc Staimer and VergeIO’s Chief Marketing Officer George Crump.

This webinar will provide an in-depth comparison of VMware vSAN, Nutanix AOS Storage, and VergeIO VergeFS, helping IT teams make informed decisions on cost, performance, and data resiliency.

Webinar Details

📅 Date: February 19, 2024
⏰ Time: 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT
📧 Register: No forms, just reply to this email with “Yes”

🔗 Learn More and Register

About Lancaster Central School District

Lancaster Central School District serves the Lancaster, NY community, providing innovative educational programs and advanced technology solutions to enhance student learning. The district’s commitment to technology modernization ensures a reliable and efficient IT infrastructure that supports students, educators, and administrators.

About VergeIO

VergeIO is the future of virtualization and the leading VMware alternative. Unlike traditional hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), VergeIO’s ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) collapses the virtualization, storage, and networking stack 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 simplified IT operations.

For more information, visit www.verge.io.

Media Contact

Judy Smith, JPR Communications
📧 [email protected]
📞 818-522-9673

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: , , ,

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When evaluating the data protection capabilities of a vSAN alternative, understanding vSAN snapshots is as crucial as ensuring that it offers high performance and scalability. Although many vSAN solutions provide granular protection and recovery options, the ability to recover entire environments in one step—macro recovery—is equally significant. Without it, IT teams may struggle with hundreds of individual VM recoveries, resulting in excessive downtime and operational disruption.

Understanding vSAN Snapshot Limitations

The first step in understanding vSAN snapshots is learning what level of granularity they provide. Most vSAN platforms, such as VMware vSAN and Nutanix AOS Storage, operate at the virtual machine (VM) level concerning snapshots. In these environments, snapshots are generally managed per VM, allowing for the restoration of individual VMs and potentially even files when necessary.

Granular recovery is an essential operational feature—IT teams require the capability to recover a single deleted file or restore an application VM that was accidentally corrupted. However, when disaster strikes on a larger scale, such as:

  • A ransomware attack that encrypts workloads or dozens of VMs
  • A storage system failure affecting multiple VMs
  • A major misconfiguration or corruption event

IT teams must recover individual VMs and entire business units, departments, or data center environments. Unfortunately, neither VMware vSAN nor Nutanix AOS Storage offers macro recovery capabilities, forcing IT administrators to restore each VM individually, significantly extending downtime.

The granular structure of many vSAN alternative snapshots complicates protecting the entire environment. Although VMs can typically be grouped by “tag” for protection, the underlying software continues to operate per VM. It must manage dozens or even hundreds of individual snapshots per snapshot interval in the background.

VM-only granularity also makes it challenging to achieve consistent states across environments, not only among VMs but also in infrastructure-wide settings such as networking and other configurations. If these settings fall out of sync or go unrecorded, recovery becomes more challenging and prolongs the time needed to return to normal operations.

Lastly, VM-only granularity increases the load on metadata. Because executing a snapshot of a workload may lead to dozens of managed instances, metadata management becomes complex and bloated. This complexity is why most vSAN solutions limit the number of active snapshots per VM.

Understanding vSAN Snapshots Macro Protection Capabilities

Macro recovery allows IT teams to restore entire groups of workloads at once—whether it’s a collection of business units, dozens of branch offices, or a multi-tenant environment. Protecting and recovering these entities in a single movement is essential because it provides:

  1. Faster recovery from large-scale failures – Instead of recovering hundreds of VMs manually, macro recovery restores an entire encapsulated environment, including environmental settings, in one data-consistent step, significantly reducing downtime.
  2. Streamlined Metadata Management – Since one snapshot can now represent a dozen, a hundred, or even a thousand VMs, metadata is much less burdensome on the operating environment. Macro snapshots enable IT to execute snapshots almost continuously without any impact on performance.
  3. Stronger ransomware protection – Cyberattacks don’t just target single VMs; they encrypt entire workloads. Macro recovery enables point-in-time restoration of entire environments, allowing organizations to roll back to a known good state within minutes.
  4. Multi-tenancy protection – In environments where multiple departments or customers operate on shared infrastructure, macro recovery ensures that a single tenant’s data can be restored without impacting others.
  5. Simplified Site Recovery — Macro data protection and recovery also tackle one of the key challenges organizations encounter during a site disaster: synchronizing infrastructure configuration data, network information, and hypervisor configuration settings with the data being replicated. Without macro protection, the recovery process is manual, hindering the effort and failing to meet recovery time objectives (RTO).

How VergeIO Enables Macro Protection

Understanding vSAN Snapshots

Understanding vSAN snapshots will help you realize the advantages of VergeIO’s approach. Unlike VMware vSAN and Nutanix, VergeIO’s VergeOS includes built-in macro recovery capabilities. With infrastructure-wide and Virtual Data Center (VDC) -level snapshots, IT teams can capture entire environments—not just individual VMs. These snapshots simultaneously capture all metadata and configuration information alongside the data, ensuring consistency. As a result, VergeOS can restore the entire infrastructure or a complete workload in a single operation.

Granularity isn’t sacrificed for VergeOS’s macro recoverability. IT can drill into an instance-wide or VDC snapshot and extract an individual VM for recovery. Individual VM snapshots can be mounted as drives to the production version of the VM, enabling single-file recovery simply by copying data between drives.

At the same time, VergeOS can snapshot at the VM level, but with VergeOS, VM-level snapshots are the exception, not the rule. A VM-level snapshot can be executed for special situations where a VM needs extra protection or longer retention times.

Understanding vSAN Snapshots

VergeFS snapshots are remarkably efficient, allowing frequent snapshots without compromising performance. High frequency without any performance impact ensures that organizations can always revert to a recent, clean state, whether recovering from a ransomware attack, a catastrophic failure, or retrieving a document that a user accidentally overwrote just 15 minutes prior.

Get Macro Protection, Move Beyond VM-Only Granularity

Granular recovery is essential, but macro recovery is a powerful complement when minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity. If you’re evaluating vSAN alternatives, ensure the solutions you consider can restore entire environments quickly and efficiently—not just individual files or VMs. Check out this VMware Alternative data protection checklist.

Understanding vSAN Snapshots: Free Expert Webinar

For IT professionals encountering similar challenges, VergeIO is hosting a live webinar with storage and virtualization expert Marc Staimer and VergeIO’s Chief Marketing Officer, George Crump.

This webinar will comprehensively compare VMware vSAN, Nutanix AOS Storage, and VergeIO VergeFS, assisting IT teams in making informed decisions regarding cost, performance, and data resilience.

Webinar Details

📅 Date: February 19, 2024
⏰ Time: 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT

🔗 Learn More & Register

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: , , ,

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A double-protected VMware alternative allows organizations to lower licensing expenses and enhance their data resilience. With the rise of infrastructure threats and the need for continuity of operations, IT should leverage this infrastructure shift to boost its recovery capabilities from accidental file deletions, server or drive failures, site disasters, and long-term data retention needs.

A robust VMware alternative must provide two layers of protection: real-time infrastructure resilience and long-term data protection. VergeIO and Storware work together to create a double-protected solution, combining real-time safeguards like ioGuardian, ioClone (snapshots), and ioReplicate with long-term retention and archival capabilities provided by Storware Backup and Recovery.

This approach delivers the strongest data protection strategy and allows IT teams to leverage existing server and backup storage hardware, reducing costs and eliminating the need for rip-and-replace upgrades.

First Layer of Protection: Built-in Infrastructure Resiliency

Many VMware alternatives rely heavily on third-party backup solutions for protection, leaving gaps in immediate recovery and real-time failure resilience. A double-protected VMware alternative must first integrate infrastructure-native data protection that ensures data availability without relying on backups for everyday failures.

ioGuardian: Continuous Failure Detection and Recovery

The foundation of VergeIO’s built-in resiliency is ioGuardian, which proactively monitors infrastructure health and automatically reroutes workloads in the event of drive or node failures. Unlike traditional instant-recovery solutions that require IT intervention, ioGuardian provides real-time, automated protection that keeps applications running without delays or downtime. It also protects against multiple simultaneous drive failures, ensuring data remains accessible even in worst-case scenarios.

ioClone: Instant, Space-Efficient Snapshots

Snapshots are a critical component of an effective data resilience strategy, but most legacy HCI and VMware solutions create performance bottlenecks when snapshots accumulate. VergeIO’s ioClone snapshots eliminate this issue by providing instant, space-efficient, performance-neutral snapshots that IT can use to recover from accidental deletions and system corruption quickly. Snapshots can even be used to recover from ransomware attacks because they are read-only from inception.

ioReplicate: Multi-Site Data Resiliency

VergeIO offers ioReplicate, an efficient, WAN-optimized replication engine that enables real-time or scheduled replication to offsite locations for organizations needing geo-redundancy. This ensures that even in the event of a primary site failure, IT teams can rapidly failover and restore operations from a secondary location.

Global Inline Deduplication

VergeOS features integrated global inline deduplication, the foundation for both ioClone and ioReplicate. This technology decreases storage consumption by ensuring that unique data blocks are written, greatly enhancing efficiency. Removing redundant data globally improves storage performance and maximizes available capacity, making snapshots and replication operations even more cost-effective.

Second Layer of Protection: Long-Term Data Retention

A double-protected VMware alternative requires more than built-in resiliency and data availability in real-time. IT teams also need a long-term data protection strategy to defend against data corruption, cyber threats, and to meet compliance requirements.

Storware Backup and Recovery: Deep Integration with VergeIO

Storware extends VergeIO’s protection by offering long-term backup retention, compliance archiving, and multi-destination backup support, allowing organizations to meet regulatory and business continuity requirements. Unlike traditional backup solutions, Storware is directly integrated into VergeOS, enabling seamless backup of ioClone snapshots and leveraging VergeIO’s changed block tracking (CBT) for faster, storage-efficient backups.

To learn more about VergeIO’s and Storware’s Double Protection and to see it in action, watch our on-demand webinar, “Exit VMware, Retain Server and Backup Hardware.”

Use Existing Server and Backup Storage Hardware

VergeOS enhances flexibility by supporting a broad range of existing server hardware. With its intelligent resource allocation and ability to run on nearly any x86 hardware purchased in the last six years, IT teams can continue using their current infrastructure instead of refreshing everything simultaneously.

One of the most costly aspects of transitioning off of VMware is replacing backup infrastructure due to compatibility limitations with new platforms. Storware removes this concern by supporting a wide range of backup storage hardware, including:

  • Existing NAS/SAN backup storage
  • Object storage (on-prem and cloud-based)
  • Backup appliances from vendors like Rubrik, ExaGrid, and Dell EMC

Storware: Keep Your Existing Backup Storage

Storware enables IT teams to continue using their existing backup storage infrastructure, eliminating the need to purchase new backup appliances. Whether organizations rely on on-premises storage or cloud-based repositories, Storware provides seamless backup and archival capabilities. This flexibility helps businesses reduce costs while ensuring backup operations remain efficient and secure.

ioOptimize: Extending Hardware Lifespan

VergeOS includes ioOptimize, a technology designed to maximize the efficiency of existing hardware. By intelligently distributing workloads, optimizing storage, and reducing system overhead, ioOptimize allows organizations to extend the life of their current infrastructure while also improving performance. IT teams can repurpose aging servers and storage systems rather than retiring them early, ultimately reducing costs and making infrastructure refresh cycles more flexible.

The Most Data-Resilient VMware Alternative

VergeIO believes that data protection and resiliency is a shared responsibility. The combination of VergeIO and Storware creates the most resilient VMware alternative, delivering:

  • Real-time failure detection and recovery with ioGuardian
  • Instant, space-efficient snapshots with ioClone
  • Multi-site data replication with ioReplicate
  • Fast, storage-efficient backups with Storware’s CBT integration
  • Long-term retention and archival capabilities using existing backup storage hardware
  • Extended server lifecycle with ioOptimize

With VergeIO’s built-in resilience and Storware’s long-term data protection, IT teams can confidently transition from VMware without sacrificing security, availability, or infrastructure flexibility.

Conclusion

A VMware exit should not come at the cost of data protection or hardware flexibility. VergeIO and Storware provide a double-protected VMware alternative that delivers real-time resilience and long-term security, ensuring IT teams reduce costs, enhance uptime, and retain control over their infrastructure.

Organizations looking to exit VMware now have a cost-effective, highly available, and deeply resilient alternative that protects both today and into the future.

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