Virtualization

VMware’s Licensing Paywall

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At Verge.IO, we speak with two or three VMware customers daily, and they are all surprised when we expose VMware’s licensing paywall. Sure, they know the obvious upfront costs of VMware. Still, when they see the potential of VergeOS’s complete and fully integrated operating environment, they begin to understand that it is not just the cost of the license fee; it is also the cost associated with all the other modules or hardware you must buy because of the “modularity” of VMware’s offering.

VMware's Licensing Paywall

In our upcoming webinar, “The 4 Hidden Costs of VMware,” we dive deep into ways that, from a technical standpoint, VMware’s technology uses a paywall that effectively keeps your organization from being competitive. In this article, we will focus specifically on how VMware’s modular licensing model costs you money.

The Expensive Nature of the Three-Tier Architecture

The data center has three tiers; networking, computing, and storage. The legacy three-tier architecture consists of the following:

  1. A network built from proprietary network hardware from companies like Cisco.
  2. A server tier virtualized by something like VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V.
  3. A storage tier built from proprietary hardware from companies like Pure Storage or Dell/EMC.

The problem with this approach is it is costly and complex to manage. It typically requires experts for each tier, raising operational costs. It also requires continuous fine-tuning to ensure each workload gets the correct performance level.

Failed HCI Created a VMware Paywall

A few years ago, VMware had the idea of expanding what it did to the server tier, and virtualizing the other two tiers. They brought to market vSAN, purchased what would become NSX, and ushered in the Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) era. The promise was that life would be so much simpler for overburdened IT professionals.

Fast forward to today, and most organizations continue to run a traditional three-tier architecture, and IT pros are still beleaguered with IT tasks. What went wrong with HCI nirvana?

The first problem is that from a technology standpoint, the software-defined versions of networking and storage that VMware and others have brought to market pale in comparison to the specialized versions. There is also a challenge because each of these three software components is a separate code base, each representing double-digit millions of lines of code. Jamming them into a single server and attempting to scale out with multiple servers creates performance and scale issues. These technical issues require you to increase your hardware investment or stay with the legacy three-tier architecture. We explore them in our webinar.

VMware's Licensing Paywall


The second problem is from a business standpoint. VMware charges a lot for these licenses, so the tried and true hardware approach remains more appealing. Then there are also the challenges of all of the different versions of VMware, each with its own set of limitations.

vSphere Essentials is a VMware Paywall

VMware Essentials and Essentials Plus are designed to provide small to medium-sized data centers with a cost-effective way to acquire VMWare. Essentials is limited to no more than three physical nodes and they are licensed to no more than six total processors. The typical configuration is a two or three-node cluster with two processors in each server. A processor with more than 32 cores consumes two of the processor licenses.

These solutions are priced aggressively but have the most expensive paywall to get through in order to get the features you need. Essentials features are as bare as you can get and, for the most part, provide only the virtualization layer. Essentials Plus adds the basics of what you hope to get by virtualizing servers like vMotion, Cross Switch vMotion, High Availability, and vSphere Replication. The upcharge to Essentials is significant, more than 10X the price!

Another example of VMware’s licensing paywall is that neither Essentials nor Essentials Plus includes vSAN. To get vSAN, customers need to purchase VMware HCI Kit Essentials, which is 3X the cost of Essentials Plus. The result is that most customers we speak to, use VMware Essentials Plus with a dedicated SAN, skyrocketing the infrastructure cost. As we discussed in our last article, “The High Cost of Dedicated Storage,” the delta of adding server class flash drives to a server instead of buying a dedicated array is significant. It is also important to note that neither of the two Essentials editions support Storage vMotion.

Remember networking? None of the three flavors of Essentials does much with networking beyond a virtual switch. If you want to use commodity switches instead of more expensive proprietary switches, VMware will offer you NSX. It also has more advanced capabilities like routing, firewalling, and virtual private networking. All of these capabilities can dramatically reduce data center costs, but the cost of NSX more than doubles the cost of the implementations.

VMware Essentials is a perfect example of why understanding the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is critical. VMware’s licensing paywall makes the TCO of your infrastructure increase with each upgrade. While the entry price may be very attractive, the total cost is not. The cost of forcing small to medium-sized businesses to use the proprietary network and storage hardware to avoid additional software licensing is significant. Each component is potentially 25X or more the cost of the Essentials software.

It doesn’t have to be this way! Both storage and networking components have long since been commoditized, with very reliable off-the-shelf alternatives available at a fraction of the cost. Yes, the software driving this hardware must be at least on par with the proprietary solutions. Again in our webinar, we will dive deep into that comparison.

Finally, there is the success penalty when your organization grows to the point that it needs more than three nodes or six processors in a cluster. The uplift from Essentials more than doubles, again, the price of your Essentials installation. Then you get to deal with a whole new level of modularity and feature compromise as VMware presents you with Standard Editions, Advanced Editions, Enterprise Editions, and Professional Editions, each with limitations and cost increases as you move to the next level.

vSphere Standard is a VMware Paywall

VMware’s licensing paywall doesn’t stop with Essentials. The story is the same for larger organizations already having vSphere Standard or vSphere Enterprise, except they are starting at a much higher price point. Pricing is still per CPU with limitations on the number of supported cores. As with Essentials adding vSAN or NSX doubles or triples the cost to license each CPU.

There are also upgrade options for “standard” users. For example, to get deduplication, you must upgrade from standard to advanced. You may be able to deduplicate data, but you inflate your price by almost 2X to get it. Do you want data-at-rest encryption? That is not in vSAN Advanced. You need to upgrade to Enterprise, almost doubling the price again!

Have you had enough?

VMware's Licensing Paywall

The Paywall-Free TCO of VergeOS

VergeOS integrates the networking, hypervisor, and storage into a single cohesive code base. It is one piece of software, not three separate modules whose only integration is that the logos match. From a technology perspective, the common code base means VergeOS can deliver better performance and greater machine density, even using your existing hardware. From a TCO perspective, it means you can get your sanity back.

VergeOS is priced per Node. You are free to put as many processors, cores, as much RAM, and storage as you want in that node. There is no additional charge. VergeOS comes with complete Layer 2 and Layer 3 network functionality, enabling you to use commodity off-the-shelf switches when you are ready, and eliminate purchasing purpose-built hardware like firewalls. To experience all the power of VergeOS’ networking capabilities, watch our latest LightBoard video, “The Advantages of VergeOS Networking.”

VergeOS also includes powerful and efficient storage functionality, including the industry’s most advanced global inline deduplication, data protection, disaster recovery, and ransomware resiliency. It leverages flash drives and hard disk drives inside the nodes to deliver the highest performance levels at a fraction of the cost of traditional storage systems.

Operational costs plummet with VergeOS. Our single code base means an IT Generalist can administer the entire environment. Our intelligent learning algorithm eliminates the need to fine-tune and manage redundancy settings. It provides complete self-optimization and self-healing.

As you transition more of your infrastructure to VergeOS, your TCO continues to improve. Our most frequent type of customer is a VMware convert, followed closely by Hyper-V customers. In most cases, they start with an upfront cost reduction of 35% to 50% and drive toward a TCO of well over 70%.

Conclusion

If you have had enough of VMware’s licensing paywall limiting how your organization can fully leverage innovations in technology to lower costs and drive innovation, then it is time to take a look at VergeOS. Reach out to us to schedule a short technical overview of the difference VergeOS can make.

VMware’s Cost of Doing Nothing

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As part of considering an alternative, IT professionals should consider VMware’s cost of doing nothing. In other words, what is the cost of staying with VMware instead of exploring an alternative solution? This analysis goes beyond pricing, which is already increasing and changing to charging by core. We’ll assume, for now, that the cost will remain the same and explore other aspects of staying with VMware.

VMware’s Cost of Doing Nothing About Efficiency

Even before you examine the complexity of the VMware stack, ESXi, vSAN, and NSX, you’ll see that ESXi is inefficient. It creates a measurable virtualization tax that forces data centers to buy more powerful servers than they should have to, and even decide not to virtualize some workloads, relegating them to bare metal only. VMware’s inefficiency also forces IT professionals to refresh servers sooner than they should have to, even though the current servers have years of serviceable life.

This requirement for ever increasingly more powerful servers raises the cost of the physical assets as well as VMware licensing costs. Not one to miss out on an opportunity, VMware is switching to core-based licensing so that as you buy those more powerful servers with more cores, you will be forced to pay more for your software. VMware benefits from its inefficiency.

VMware’s Cost of Doing Nothing About Flexibility

VMware has a stringent hardware compatibility list (HCL) which limits your options as you expand your use of the solution in the future. While you can create multiple clusters within the data center to support different types of processors, enabling a VM to share assets across those clusters is difficult.

The rigid HCL and the difficulty in mixing a few servers from different manufacturers into the same VMware instance increase the cost of staying with VMware. Many customers buy their servers all at once and don’t intermix them. The problem is that after three or four years of use, the customer needs to add one or two more servers to keep up with growth. Those same servers may not be available. The customer needs to buy enough additional servers to create a new cluster. Then they must migrate and dedicate specific virtual machines to that cluster and its resources, since it can’t borrow resources from another cluster.

VMware’s Cost of Doing Nothing About Snapshots

VMware’s limitations on snapshots are legendary. They can only support 32 snapshots per virtual disk, but they only recommend two or three for performance reasons. They also recommend not maintaining a snapshot for more than 72 hours.

VMware does have excellent integration with third-party backup applications, but if three snapshots impact performance, that backup application needs to complete its backup very quickly and execute the housekeeping necessary to delete the snapshot. The problem is that now IT must count on the backup application for almost every recovery effort, which means a time-consuming process of restoring data instead of an instant “pointing” to data.

Customers now have an increased cost of a secondary backup application plus they need to spend extra money on a high-performance backup storage target. They could also buy a dedicated storage array to benefit from snapshot technology, which is yet another expensive option and typically has snapshot limitations of its own.

VMware Cost of Doing Nothing About Deduplication

VMware deduplication is a two-stage process and is not inline. The ingest tier should comprise high-performance and highly durable flash drives. As the data destages from this tier, it is deduplicated. There is a cost associated with these drives, a performance overhead in moving data a second time, and the obvious impact of running the deduplication algorithm. The two-stage approach also means that reading deduplication is done from slower drives as that data goes through the same deduplication algorithm during the read, impacting read performance.

The Cost of Doing Nothing Adds up

Whether the Broadcom acquisition happens or not, staying with VMware is expensive. VMware is already moving customers to a new per-core licensing model. You need to buy more server hardware than you should, and inflexibility makes it challenging to maximize the server investment and gradually add to it. Lastly, features like snapshots and deduplication, which are supposed to save money, force IT to spend more.

Most VMware Alternatives Can’t Solve the Problem

It seems like the door for VMware alternatives to start grabbing VMware customers is wide open, but most are not very successful at it. First, most alternative solutions force customers to replace their current server offering with new servers certified to run their hypervisor. Unless IT is ready to replace the servers and VMware, this makes the cost of a VMware alternative far more expensive than they were initially planning.

The second problem is most VMware alternative solutions aren’t any more efficient or flexible than VMware; they’re just cheaper. While saving money is essential, it is often just one of the priorities when an organization considers a platform switch.

Lastly, most VMware alternative solutions don’t have anything close to feature parity with VMware, or their features have the same shortcomings as VMware. A good example is found in networking. Most VMware alternatives have nothing that compares to VMware’s NSX, and if the organization needs that functionality, they have to go out and buy another application.

VergeOS Less Expensive, Flexible, and Feature Superiority

VMware Exit - VMware's Cost of Doing Nothing

When compared to VMware, VergeOS will cut your infrastructure software costs in half, at least. It also runs on your existing server hardware. Not only will it run on that hardware it will run more efficiently. You will see better per-virtual machine performance and improved virtual machine density. Most customers can delay or even cancel their next round of server purchases. VergeOS provides superior features to VMware, including:

  • IOclone – a powerful alternative to snapshots
  • IOfortify – redefined ransomware resiliency
  • IOprotect – WAN-aware replication that enables you to first migrate to VergeOS by creating a disaster recovery solution for VMware.

We also provide native global inline deduplication and robust software-defined networking, including complete layer 2 and 3 functionality. Most importantly, all of these capabilities are integrated into the same efficient code base and included in the product’s price. Watch our “VergeOS Networking Fundamentals” video for a deep dive into VergeOS’ networking capabilities.

Lastly, we charge by node, not by processor or core. We enable you to buy powerful servers with as many cores and storage capacity as needed. You can then add them seamlessly to the existing VergeOS environment and use them to their full potential.

Next Steps

  • Take a Test Drive – Take VergeOS for a spin. We’ll use our virtual data center technology to create your own instance of VergeOS. You can create virtual machines, learn the GUI, and test applications in it.
  • Get a Personalized Demo – Sign up for a live demonstration and see the flexibility of VergeOS in action.
  • Watch our One-Slide Webinar and learn how to break free from VMware. See a live migration from VMware to VergeOS.

The Public Cloud as a VMware Alternative

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If you are frustrated with VMware’s high prices, exorbitant renewal fees, stalled innovation, and declining support, you may be looking at the Public Cloud as a VMware alternative. Public Cloud providers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have their use cases. Still, as we’ve seen in the recent rash of cloud repatriation moves, the Cloud is not necessarily the ideal solution for all use cases.

The first question is, “Does the Public Cloud meet the requirements of a VMware Alternative?”

Requirements for a VMware Alternative:

  • Have a lower upfront cost
  • Lower long-term costs
  • Provide superior performance and capabilities
  • Offer world-class support

This blog will explore how the Public Cloud stands up to these requirements.

The Upfront Costs of the Public Cloud

Upfront costs are an area where most analysts suggest that the Public Cloud has an advantage over VMware and other VMware alternative solutions. But does it? In the VMware alternative use case, you already have the hardware! The bigger question is, can the potential VMware alternative use your hardware? In most cases, the answer is “no” or “not very well,” so in those cases, the Public Cloud has an upfront cost advantage because you only have to pay the first month’s “rent” for the hardware and software you need.

VergeOS is an Ultraconverged Infrastructure that rotates the traditional IT stack (hypervisor, storage, and network) into a linear plane and a single software code base. This integration is essential because it creates a data center operating system that is 50% or more efficient than legacy, fragmented solutions. Unlike traditional Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), VergeOS can run on existing hardware and deliver more capacity and performance. See our HCI to UCI comparison page for more details.

The Long-Term Costs of the Public Cloud

An area where the Public Cloud as a VMware alternative does not fare well is in the long-term cost calculation. The repeated monthly rental of the same infrastructure adds up quickly, which is why we see a rash in Public Cloud departures. The Public Cloud is ideal for short-term projects that you will spin up quickly and then tear down after getting the answers you need or validating a concept. It is not ideal for long-term, relatively static environments that will run for years, even decades.

Most customers we speak to looking for a VMware replacement have been running their VMware infrastructure for five years or more. The servers that support that environment are typically three to five years old. Even if you are very judicious about cloud resource utilization (which most people don’t have the time for), over five years, you will spend significantly more for the cost of renting that compute from the Public Cloud versus owning it outright, especially in the VMware or VMware alternative use case.

VergeIO has a long-term cost advantage over the Public Cloud, VMware, and VMware alternatives, thanks again to the extreme efficiency of VergeOS. Our software allows you to extend the life of IT infrastructure further than you ever thought possible. Many VergeOS customers are running on servers and storage that are over six years old.

The Performance of the Public Cloud

In theory, the performance of the Public Cloud should be an advantage when IT Professionals consider it a VMware alternative. If you need more processing power, rent more processors; if you don’t, deactivate them. This theory may hold if your application is scalable across multiple processors and cores. Most applications are not that threaded, and throwing more processing power at them doesn’t help. Additionally, performance isn’t just about processor performance. In most cases, the bottleneck is either poor application code or storage I/O performance.

Storage performance is an area where the Public Cloud struggles. High performance is costly and often far more challenging to configure. The built-in capabilities of the Public Cloud, especially in terms of storage, are so weak that there are dozens of products from third-party software developers that organizations need to sift through to try to fill the gaps.

VergeIO’s approach directly integrates a complete suite of storage services into VergeOS. Storage is an equal citizen alongside the hypervisor and network capabilities. The storage capabilities of VergeOS are so powerful that many companies begin their VMware Exit Strategy by selecting VergeOS instead of going through yet another SAN replacement.

World Class Support

The Public Cloud as a VMware Alternative

The quality of support from both VMware and the Public Cloud varies wildly. With VergeIO, all customers, regardless of size, experience high-quality support with quick resolution to your questions. VergeIO also provides customers with a world-class support experience. We know that VergeOS doesn’t live in a vacuum, and we go above and beyond, even helping customers resolve issues with non-VergeOS-related challenges. Quality support is easy to claim but harder to deliver. Take our product for a test drive, experience our support firsthand, or speak with our customers.

How to Start Your VMware Exit

VergeOS is usually 50% less than the price of VMware, and it leverages your existing hardware so you can benefit from those savings almost immediately. Our efficiency will extend the life of your current hardware, further increasing your savings. Finally, the operating system delivers better performance, data protection, and greatly simplified operations.

You can start by scheduling a test drive. Using our Virtual Data Center technology, we create a virtual environment. Within minutes you’ll be up and running without having to deploy hardware.

Your next step might be using VergeOS as a disaster recovery copy of your VMware environment. If you have a few different servers, you can load our software on them and create a complete VMware disaster recovery plan without a substantial financial outlay. This option allows you to take an inexpensive extended use of our solution while adding value to and reducing the cost of your current infrastructure.

While using VergeOS as a VMware DR solution, you might also want to use your VergeOS infrastructure for new workloads. Then when you’re ready, you can use our DR technology to move your VMware environment to VergeOS seamlessly. Again, transition at your pace, knowing we will be there every step of the way.

VMware Scale Comparisons

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VMware Scale Comparisons to VergeOS

During our “InBrief” Event with Truth In IT, one of the most frequently asked questions was about VMware scale comparisons. This series of questions moved beyond the more general Comparing VMware to VergeOS and focused specifically on how VergeOS handles the demands of scale compared to VMware.

To learn more about VergeOS’ scaling capabilities, watch our on-demand webinar “How to Eliminate the Data Center Scale Problem.”

Understanding VMware Scale Methods

Before making any VMware scale comparisons, you must understand its scaling methodology. How VMware scales depends mainly on the infrastructure on which it resides. Most VMware environments use the classic three-tier architecture with physical network switches, servers, and a separate storage system. Most organizations have one primary switch and server vendor, although a few alternate brands may be in use. However, the storage tier, especially as the environment scales, typically has multiple storage systems for different virtual machine (VM) types or use cases.

A less popular alternative is the classic hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) which loads software-defined networking (SDN) and software-defined storage (SDS) software onto the same nodes as VMware ESXi. In most cases, the SDN and SDS software run as VMs and are subject to ESXi capabilities. As a result, the organization still has a three-tier architecture. It is just that those tiers are now logical instead of physical. This logical representation of the three-tier architecture is why the classic three-tier architecture remains so prevalent.

These two infrastructures impact the scalability of VMware. VMware claims to support 96 nodes per ESXi cluster in the classic three-tier architecture, but only 64 nodes within its HCI cluster because of limitations within the vSAN cluster.

Understanding VergeOS Scale Methods

VergeOS is an ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI). Similar to HCI, it does not use an external storage array. Unlike HCI’s use of separate SDN and SDS software inside the hypervisor, UCI integrates the networking and storage functionality into the hypervisor. This critical difference significantly improves the ability to scale the infrastructure, especially when you compare UCI to HCI. There is no technical limit on the number of nodes VergeOS support, and there is no case of “diminishing returns” as you scale. We have customers in production with over 60 active nodes in a single VergeOS instance.

VMware Scale Comparisons to VergeOS means explaining ultraconverged infrastructure
Comparing three-tier architecture to ultraconverged infrastructure

Subscribe to our Digital Learning Guide (DLG), “Understanding the VergeOS Architecture,” for a deep dive into our ultraconverged infrastructure. Our DLGs are white papers delivered in weekly bite-sized chunks.

Comparing VergeOS to VMware Scale

When making VMware scale comparisons, there are two aspects to remember. First, what are the technical limitations of scalability, and second, what are the ramifications of scaling the cluster on resource utilization and organizational flexibility?

VergeOS’ Technical Scale is Better Than VMware Scale

VergeOS is superior in raw node count versus VMware, enabling large enterprises to meet even the most demanding processing and storage performance requirements. Again, we have production customers with over 60 nodes, hundreds of virtual data centers, and thousands of virtual machines. These customers have been running VergeOS at this level of scale for years. VergeOS customers also don’t need to worry about scaling complexity. With VergeOS, there is only one software package, not three or more.

VergeOS’ Efficient Scale is Better Than VMware Scale

VMware scale comparisons to VergeOS should also include how efficiently the infrastructure scales. While raw node count may be critical for some data centers, most organizations seek more efficiency and flexibility in how the VMware alternative scales. Efficient scale means only adding additional nodes after the existing nodes’ resources have been used to their full potential. An efficient infrastructure can deliver more performance from fewer nodes, which lowers both capital and operational costs.

The comparison of efficient scale is where VergeOS has a clear and more practical advantage. We repeatedly have VMware customers moving to our platform and are seeing better performance from their applications even though it runs on the same hardware. The lack of efficiency is why many customers who originally consider HCI end up selecting a classic three-tier architecture. UCI delivers the efficiency they need.

As a result, customers can add even more workloads to the environment without purchasing additional hardware. In some cases, they have been able to delay new server purchases for years, thanks to the implementation of VergeOS. The efficiency results from integrating the networking and storage components and, frankly, just better execution of the code. Our efficiency means that while customers can scale further with VergeOS, they won’t have to scale as often.

VMware Scale Comparisons to VergeOS must include range of scale
VergeOS can scale small for the Edge and large for the Enterprise. Each node is used to its full potential.

VergeOS’ Flexible Scale is Better Than VMware Scale

VMware scale comparisons to VergeOS must also include how flexible it is to scale the cluster. Most customers will want to start small and add nodes as workloads and organizational growth demand it. Instead, most customers will grow their environment over time. During that time, their needs will change, and so will technology. The first dozen or so nodes they start with may only be available after the time they add their fiftieth node.

With VMware, you must create an entirely separate cluster if you add different servers with different configurations, like an AMD processor instead of an Intel processor. While there is a common management interface, plenty of functions need to be set separately. HCI Storage is a good example. It is locked to the cluster and can’t be shared across clusters.

With VergeOS, IT can bring in servers of vastly different configurations, different processors, different storage media types, and even with GPUs. They are all managed by a single VergeOS environment. Resources can be isolated to a single virtual data center or distributed across multiple virtual data centers.

VergeOS’ flexibility means that the software can adapt to the organization’s needs and integrate new hardware innovations. IT can use VergeOS for mainstream applications with modest performance requirements, then add high-performance nodes with GPUs and NVMe flash or high-capacity nodes for file sharing and backup. Each of these different hardware configuration types is still managed within the same VergeOS instance.

VMware Scale Comparisons to VergeOS must include flexible scale
Flexible Scale – A Single VergeOS instance can manage nodes of vastly different types

Conclusion

VMware scale comparisons to VergeOS will show how superior VergeOS is in all the ways IT measures scalability. It is affordable for small data centers and enables them to deliver more performance on less hardware while also providing robust networking functionality. Enterprises can support various workloads thanks to VergeOS’ ability to mix nodes and use Virtual Data Centers. There is no technical limit on how many nodes, VergeOS supports, but its efficiency means you will require less than VMware.

It is also important to remember that VergeOS is a complete offering and requires no compromises versus VMware. It provides robust data protection, massive capacity scalability, and almost bare-metal performance of virtualized applications. VergeOS’ storage capabilities are so powerful that many customers switch to VergeOS as part of a SAN replacement project.

VMware Scale Comparisons to VergeOS must include enterprise storage features
VergeOS provides a complete enterprise feature set like global inline deduplication, immutable snapshots, and WAN-optimized replication

Understanding VMware DR Components

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Understanding VMware DR components allows IT professionals to dramatically reduce spending without compromising recoverability. There are four main components to a VMware disaster recovery (DR) strategy:

Understanding VMware DR Components
  1. Storage
  2. Compute
  3. Network
  4. Replication Software

The products you select for each of these components impact how much that component will cost and has a ripple effect on the other components in terms of cost and choices. The total of these parts impacts the complexity of your DR strategy and the likelihood of a successful recovery.

To learn more about VMware DR, join us for tomorrow’s Whiteboard Wednesday session, “VMware Disaster and Ransomware Recovery—The Three NEW Best Practices,” at 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT.

Understanding VMware DR Storage

Understanding VMware DR components requires knowing what type of storage will be in place at the DR site. It represents one of the best opportunities to reduce DR costs. To copy data to the remote DR site, customers often use array-based replication, which typically requires another storage system from the same vendor at the DR site. Customers are forced to pay a premium for a rarely used storage system. Furthermore, since most storage vendors have given up on auto-tiering, the customer cannot use lower-cost hard disk drives at the DR site and then move the workloads to flash storage when a disaster occurs.

Reducing the cost of DR storage requires two capabilities. First, the ability to replicate directly from the VMware environment instead of using the array. Second it must support multiple types of media. Replicating directly from the VMware environment instead of using the array provides a much tighter integration into VMware, enabling a complete copy of data at the DR site. It also enables replicating to a commodity server with drives installed instead of a dedicated storage array. The ability to support multiple types of storage media, flash drives, and hard disk drives, for example, enables IT to take advantage of the fact that hard drive capacity is 8X less expensive than the equivalent flash capacity. The storage system must provide the ability to quickly move the most performance-dependent workloads to a flash tier during disaster recovery testing or an actual disaster.

Understanding VMware DR Compute

Understanding VMware DR components requires knowing the compute requirements at the DR site during a disaster. IT must ensure the DR site can support operations during a disaster. IT no longer has the luxury of ordering hardware on demand because supply chain issues continue to plague the industry. Your DR plan can’t be held up because servers are on backorder for three weeks or more. As a result, the server performance at the DR site must match the server performance at production, at least for the workloads that will be recovered at the DR site.

Reducing the cost of DR Compute requires running more virtual machines on less hardware without impacting performance. VMware is too weighed down by all its add-ons and lack of integration between them. IT needs to eliminate as much of the virtualization tax as possible by using a more efficient hypervisor at the DR site. An alternative VMware hypervisor that is 50% more efficient means a 50% reduction in server costs at the DR site.

Understanding VMware DR Networking

Buying a second set of network hardware for the DR site has the same problem as buying a second storage system; it is expensive. An alternative is to use “dumb switches” and software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities. The issue is the SDN software is often so expensive that its costs all but eliminates the savings of buying “dumb switches.” This high cost is especially true with VMware’s NSX. VMware’s SDN software can add $10,000 or more to the cost of each node in the DR site. Lastly, SDN creates another layer, similar to managing a separate physical network layer. Understanding VMware DR components includes knowing the operational implications of each component selected.

What about Replication Software?

As stated above, many VMware DR strategies depend on array-based replication. While it is sometimes included “free” with the array, it also has the added cost of a second storage system from the same vendor. In most cases, array-based replication is “blind” to the fact that VMware is running on top of it and may not capture all the configuration data. It certainly will not capture all the networking configuration information.

Customers may also use a dedicated replication solution that integrates with VMware. While these solutions capture the VMware environment well, they are costly and don’t help reduce DR storage or network costs.

A Holistic Approach to VMware DR

The fact that there are four components to a VMware DR strategy is the problem. IT must purchase each component and manually stitch them together to work. The coordination between all the components, ensuring all the data and configurations are captured, is critical to the strategy’s success.

VergeIO’s IOprotect simplifies and reduces VMware DR costs. It makes understanding VMware DR components easy because it reduces the “components” to one. IOprotect is part of VergeOS, an ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) that integrates networking, compute, storage, and data protection into a single operating environment. It is one piece of software, not four or five.

Understanding VMware DR Components

With IOprotect, you can replicate your existing three-tier or hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) to a single VergeOS environment. It seamlessly connects to your VMware environment and captures all the information you need for a successful disaster recovery strategy. You can also consolidate all your DR computing, storage, and networking requirements into as few as two servers plus a few “dumb switches” at your DR site. If you require more capacity or compute resources, add more nodes, but you won’t need to add many nodes because our customers consistently find they can run more workloads on less hardware. VergeOS is more efficient than VMware. They also require less storage capacity thanks to our high-performance global inline deduplication.

Testing your DR strategy is easy with VergeOS. Our Virtual Data Center (VDC) technology allows you to create a space-efficient, isolated clone of your replicated site. You can test and practice your DR skills while protecting your production VMware environment.

A DR Strategy with a Production Future

Understanding VMware DR Components

IOprotect is just the beginning. Using IOprotect for VMware DR extensively tests all VergeOS capabilities while your VMware environment is under license. You will likely reduce your VMware expenses by more than 60% during that time. Then when it is time to renew VMware in production, and you have to deal with the new, more expensive VMware pricing policies, you have an exit strategy, tested and ready for deployment. Now your cost savings increase even more, as does your operational simplicity.

Preparing VMware for Minor Disasters

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preparing VMware for minor disasters

IT professionals often plan for major disasters like floods, fires, and hurricanes, impacting their VMware environment, but they also need to spend time preparing VMware for minor disasters. Unlike a major disaster, a minor disaster typically doesn’t require the organization to resume data center operations at a remote disaster recovery (DR) site. Minor disasters include a VMware node failure, storage system failure, a ransomware attack, or an application bug that causes an application outage or data corruption. From the perspective of the IT team, minor disasters are just as painful to work through.

During next week’s Whiteboard Wednesday session, one of our agenda items is preparing for and recovering from minor and major disasters. Our panel of experts will take you through real-world examples of how customers have dealt with these situations.

Users Have No Patience for Minor Disasters

Part of preparing VMware for minor disasters is understanding user expectations. During a major disaster, users tend to be more patient since they can see that the building is underwater, on fire, or shut down for some reason. They also may be dealing with regional issues that are impacting them personally.

During a minor disaster, the IT team does not get the same benefit of user patience. Users are at work or unaware of why they can’t access their data, so they complain quickly and loudly. Even during a ransomware attack, all the lights are on in the data center, so users demand to be up and running. As a result, minor disasters need a particular type of attention. IT needs to restore operations quickly, without much, if any, data loss.

Options for Dealing with Minor VMware Disasters

If a minor disaster occurs, there are typically three available options:

  1. Fail operations at the DR site and treat the minor disaster like a major disaster. They will then fail that application or data set to the remote site.
  2. Resolving the disaster using traditional data protection techniques like backup or snapshots.
  3. Have an on-premises mirror of your entire infrastructure, storage, networking, and compute available for failover.

Treating Minor VMware Disasters as major Disasters

Moving operations to the remote disaster recovery site is the first option when preparing VMware for minor disasters. The remote DR site should have all the components needed to support the application or data set you need to shift to it. IT is treating the minor disaster as if it were major. However, it also creates some additional challenges. First, you must calculate the time it will take to transfer operations and account for any additional outage while the transfer occurs. The chances of data loss are also higher since most organizations don’t update their DR site as frequently as they may protect their primary site.

Second, you must account for enabling your users to connect to the remote site. Unlike a major disaster, some of their applications and data are still available in the core data center. Is the network set up correctly to support this hybrid access?

Third, you need to account for transferring back to the primary site once the problem has been resolved. It will take at least the same time to move an application back into production as it did to move it out. For the most part, this shift was unnecessary since the primary data center was still operational. The data center didn’t have the resources and planning to rapidly recover through a minor VMware disaster.

Treating Minor VMware Disasters as Backup Events

The next option for preparing VMware for minor disasters is to treat it as something the backup process can work through. While all organizations should do backups as frequently as possible, the reality is that organizations only perform backups once daily. The lack of frequency often stems from backup software or hardware limitations. Some organizations may perform two or three backups daily, but there are usually hours of gaps between protection events. Even backups every three to four hours will result in too much data loss for a minor VMware disaster.

Some organizations will supplement the backup process with storage system snapshots. These snapshots enable more granular data protection. Still, most organizations don’t execute snapshots frequently enough to provide any real value in recovery for fear of the performance impact of retaining more than a dozen snapshots. Moreover, with a deep catalog of snapshots, customers frequently have problems finding a suitable snapshot for recovery.

The issue with using the backup process to prepare VMware for minor disasters is the time it takes to recover the data and the amount of data likely to be lost. Even so-called “instant-recovery” options available from some backup software vendors take more than 30 minutes to execute and, because of backup infrequency, result in hours of data loss. Also, if the minor disaster is a storage system failure, all the snapshots are lost, and there is no destination for backup recovery.

Treating minor Disaster as an HA Problem

Many data centers have a small group of applications designated as mission-critical. These applications will often have a mirrored set of resources to ensure high availability (HA) and complete invulnerability to a minor disaster. The difficulty of using HA when preparing VMware for a minor disaster is its extremely high cost, which makes it almost impossible to include a broad section of the organization’s data and applications. Not only does IT have to double the server, network, and storage hardware investment, but it also has to pay for additional software licenses like VMware or storage software. Most organizations provide no discount for the secondary installation, even though it will sit idle most of the time.

The real-time protection of most HA solutions leaves the protected copy vulnerable to the same failure, like a ransomware attack. In addition, the HA solution typically doesn’t translate into a viable off-site solution for major disasters. The result is extra cost and operations effort.

Another Option: Solving the VMware Minor Disaster Problem with IOprotect

VergeIO’s IOprotect capability provides much of the functionality of the HA option at a price lower than the backup option. It can also be the foundation of your remote DR site, consolidating all disaster recovery within a single piece of software. With IOprotect, preparing for and recovering from major and minor disasters is much more straightforward and cost-effective.

preparing VMware for minor disasters with IOprotect

Since IOprotect is built-in to VergeOS, it gains the same software efficiencies, which means it can run more workloads on less hardware. That means your secondary minor can run on fewer nodes and use commodity storage internal to the server, avoiding the cost of a second SAN. Many customers use older-generation servers, enabling them to establish a standby environment for a fraction of the production price. IOprotect is priced for the use case and is up to 80% less expensive than VMware.

Once the minor disaster recovery environment is established, customers can use IOprotect to replicate an instance to the DR site, which also benefits from the same efficiency and lowers the cost of preparing for a major disaster. Organizations can use IOprotect just for protection from major disasters, but its cost-effectiveness makes protecting against minor disasters simple and affordable. It executes near-realtime data protection, making immutable, space-efficient snapshot copies of production data locally and then replicating it to a remote DR site.

No matter the failure, VergeOS with IOprotect enables rapid recovery. It is a complete disaster recovery solution, not just storage. All capabilities, storage, networking, and computing are available on the second minor and third remote DR instances. It also lays the groundwork for a VMware Exit if you decide to reduce costs further and increase the capabilities of the production environment. With VergeOS, you can lower your infrastructure costs by more than 70% and extend its life by years.