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Alternative

November 20, 2023 by George Crump

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.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: Alternative, ROI, VMware

November 14, 2023 by Aaron Richman

Ann Arbor, Mich, November 14, 2023 — Today, VergeIO, a top-tier VMware alternative, unveils its risk-free VMware conversion services. Powered by IOmigrate , VergeIO ensures a frictionless transition of VMware virtual machines to VergeOS with just a few clicks. In light of Broadcom’s pending acquisition of VMware and growing user concerns about the state of the virtualization software and the company behind it – ranging from rising licensing costs, ransomware vulnerabilities, and diminishing quality of support, VergeIO is stepping up, offering complimentary professional services for VMware customers seeking an exit.

VergeOS’ IOmigrate is the epitome of user-friendly. It allows IT professionals to log into the VMware ecosystem swiftly, view available VMs, select desired VMs for migration, and within moments, these VMs are able to operate under VergeOS. The transition is almost invisible to users in daily operations, yet they enjoy enhanced performance and improved data resiliency, even when leveraging existing hardware.

The VergeIO Customer Success team complements IOmigrate. They offer a comprehensive migration plan encompassing application sequencing, meticulous testing, optimization, and final deployment. Furthermore, they arm customers with VergeOS’ robust data protection, readying them against potential threats, be it disasters or ransomware attacks.

VergeIO’s training module ensures a quick learning curve for VMware administrators. Typically, IT administrators become proficient with VergeOS in merely a few hours. Additionally, the team assists clients in phasing out superfluous applications now integrated into VergeOS.

Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO, commented, “VergeOS isn’t just about cost-saving, though it’s notably 50% less expensive than VMware and slashes infrastructure costs by 75% or more. VergeOS streamlines IT Operations, simplifies compliance, provides superior ransomware protection, simplifies moving workloads, rapidly scales, and more. Our devoted Customer Success team consistently assists VMware clients through the entire conversion journey, from strategizing to implementing. With the looming changes at Broadcom, we’re waiving fees for this service, aiding customers in a smooth and timely transition.”

With IOmigrate and the added advantage of professional migration assistance, now is the opportune moment to devise your VMware Exit strategy. Watch our on-demand webinar, “How to Exit VMware Step By Step,” where VergeIO experts address the top five migration questions and demonstrate a real-time VMware to VergeOS shift. All attendees will also receive a copy of VergeIO’s State of the VMware Customer.“

About VergeIO: 

VergeIO is the Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) company. Unlike hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), it rotates the traditional IT stack (compute, storage, and networking) into an integrated data center operating system, VergeOS. Its efficiency enables greater workload density on the same hardware with high levels of data resiliency. The result is dramatically lower costs and greatly simplified IT.

Media Contact:
Judy Smith, JPR Communications
818-522-9673
[email protected]

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: Alternative, VMware

November 10, 2023 by Verge.IO

A recently conducted survey of hundreds of VMware customers sheds light on growing concerns they have about the state of the virtualization software and the company behind it – ranging from rising licensing costs, ransomware vulnerabilities and a diminishing quality of support.

Read more…

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Alternative, VMware

November 10, 2023 by Verge.IO

A recently conducted survey of hundreds of VMware, Inc.‘s customers sheds light on growing concerns they have about the state of the virtualization software and the company behind it – ranging from rising licensing costs, ransomware vulnerabilities and a diminishing quality of support.

Read More…

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Alternative, VMware

November 10, 2023 by Verge.IO

VMware customers have growing concerns about the state of the virtualization software and the company behind it – ranging from rising licensing costs, ransomware vulnerabilities and a diminishing quality of support, according to VergeIO.

Read more…

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Alternative, VMware

October 17, 2023 by George Crump

the impact of VMware's inefficiency

Licensing costs contribute to VMware’s total costs, but IT professionals almost always underestimate the impact of VMware’s inefficiency. They listed licensing costs as their primary concern in our recent survey. Still, other concerns, like required premature server and storage upgrades, lack of virtual machine density, and continual investments in backup infrastructure, highlight its inefficiency.

VMware’s inefficiency is brought on by years of plugging holes in the product through a never-ending series of bolt-on fixes, which often increases licensing costs and requires more hardware than necessary and more IT professionals to manage an increasingly complex environment. Even if VMware were to freeze its prices or even lower them, the ripple impact of its inefficiency makes a VMware exit to a more efficient alternative platform a wise strategy.

Understanding the Layers of Data Center Infrastructure

Most vendors divide the data center infrastructure into three layers. A hypervisor like VMware ESXi virtualizes the compute layer. A storage layer that in most medium to large-sized data centers is a dedicated storage array because of the shortcomings of virtualized storage products like VMware’s vSAN, and a networking layer that is built using proprietary networking hardware because of the expense of software-defined networking solutions like VMware’s NSX.

While it isn’t forgotten about, there is a fourth layer that is, for some reason, not included in the typical infrastructure discussion: backup and disaster recovery. In theory, with the right hypervisor software and storage capabilities, there should be no need for this to be a separate layer. Still, because of shortcomings, most organizations invest a large part of the IT budget into it.

The Impact of VMware’s Inefficient HCI

VMware started as a server virtualization and consolidation solution. Before VMware, each application ran on a dedicated server. VMware made it so IT could safely run multiple applications on a single server as virtual machines (VM). The idea behind hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is to extend that concept and eliminate the need for dedicated storage arrays and network appliances by moving the software that drives these dedicated appliances onto the same set of servers that VMware was using.

the impact of VMware's inefficiency

In the same way that VMware lowered costs by eliminating the need for a server for every application, HCI should lower costs by eliminating the need for a dedicated set of appliances for every aspect of storage and networking. The impact of VMware’s inefficiency means that most data centers have chosen not to use HCI and instead continue to use a legacy three-tier architecture. The problem is that most HCI vendors continue to use ESXi and run their storage or networking software as a virtual machine under ESXi, meaning they must navigate through the same VMware tax overhead as virtualized applications.

The result is HCI has not achieved the price advantages nor the operational simplicity that the original entrants into the market claimed. As a result, the legacy three-tier infrastructure is still the most common architecture in data centers.

HCI’s Inefficient Networking Problem

HCI also has an east-west inter-node network issue since storage and network operations must coordinate separately across all the cluster servers. Since each of these services is separate from the hypervisor, it triples the amount of inter-node communication, which limits scalability.

Because of the impact of VMware’s inefficiency, HCI networking limitations go beyond east-west traffic issues. In most cases, HCI vendors offer almost no additional network functionality besides what is embedded into the hypervisor. Or, in the case of VMware’s NSX, which is reasonably robust, it is not included as part of the hypervisor, and the add-on cost significantly increases the VMware license cost. In a recent blog, VMware suggested the best way to overcome its ransomware vulnerabilities was to deploy NSX, which, not coincidentally, almost triples the cost of the license.

VergeOS Eliminates the Layers

VergeIO is Ultraconverged Infrastructure; instead of re-creating the data center layers in software, VergeOS unifies them, including secure data protection, into a single code base that dramatically increases efficiency. Its efficiency lowers costs, enabling IT to do more with its existing resources while simplifying operations. Most customers can reduce physical server demand by 30% or more, which means running existing servers longer and ordering new servers less frequently.

VergeOS provides complete Layer 2 and Layer 3 network functionality, eliminating the concerns over east-west traffic contention and the need for separate network appliances. It also eases administration as network management becomes a seamless part of the data center infrastructure.

The Impact of VMware’s Inefficient Storage

Most HCI vendors are storage vendors in disguise. They make a storage software solution that can run as a VM within a hypervisor, typically VMware. These solutions, including vSAN, suffer from performance issues, partly because of vendors’ VMware performance tax and odd development choices.

Like HCI in general, storage, specifically in this architecture, should deliver rather significant cost savings and deliver better performance with the right architecture design. IT should be able to add capacity to their existing servers for a fraction of the cost of a “shelf upgrade” using a dedicated storage array. However, the impact of VMware’s inefficiency is felt most severely when HCI tries to provide storage performance and services comparable to a dedicated storage array.

In the survey above, we spoke to a customer looking to add about 300TBs of storage to their three-year-old All-Flash Array. HCI, if it had an efficient storage capability, should eliminate the AFA from consideration because the customer had several servers with twelve or more available storage expansion bays.

A 15.36TB NVMe SSD can be easily had for about $1,500. That means the customer can get 300TB of raw NVMe capacity, delivering well over one million IOPS for about $30,000, and insert them into the empty drive bays in their existing servers. When asked what it would cost to add 300TB of raw capacity to their Pure Storage array, they said at least 10X that cost.

As you can see, storage should be the area where HCI enjoys a significant price advantage, but again, like in other areas, it falls short:

  1. Since most HCI vendors are storage vendors, charging by the amount of capacity in use, the cost to add storage to HCI quickly rivals that of dedicated storage arrays.
  2. Most HCI solutions can’t add storage to available drive bays on just a few servers in the HCI instance. The capacity must be added to all the servers, or the customer must buy additional servers that match those in place.
  3. HCI inefficiencies mean the solutions can’t reach anything close to the performance potential of NVMe flash drives.
  4. Using storage services like deduplication, data protection, and snapshot retention times, further impacts storage and compute performance.

As an example of how storage services impact HCI’s efficiency, look no further than deduplication. While most HCI solutions support deduplication for capacity efficiency, in most cases, it is a bolt-on solution and not part of the original code base. VMware vSAN, for example, added deduplication years after it first appeared on the market. Nutanix’s deduplication appeared almost a decade after the product first shipped.

As a result, using deduplication from these vendors typically requires the addition of more powerful processors, additional memory, and, in some cases, changes to data protection strategies.

Limitations and compromises are the impact of implementing almost any storage feature as part of a virtualized environment:

  • Snapshots are limited to 32 total, and the best practice is not to have a snapshot that is older than a few days.
  • Data protection from media failure is complex and takes an undue toll on inter-node connectivity.
  • Replication for disaster recovery almost always requires a separate product.

VergeOS Supercharges HCI Storage Performance

Storage services are built into VergeOS and run as an equal citizen to the hypervisor instead of a subservient VM. Storage capacity can be inserted into nodes “post-facto” or storage-mostly nodes (a couple of processors and storage) can be added to the existing instance.

VergeOS provides a complete suite of storage services like deduplication, replication, and unlimited snapshots that can act as backups because they are more like clones, than traditional snapshot technology. Because storage is an equal citizen in VergeOS, our storage software is equally efficient and overcomes the challenges IT faces with VMware’s inefficient approach to storage. All these services can run without impacting performance, limiting their use, or forcing IT to make compromises elsewhere.

It is essential to highlight the VergeIO common sense licensing model. VergeOS is licensed by the physical server, not the number of processors, cores, amount of RAM, or storage capacity. In the above example, the customer can add 300TB of capacity with zero additional licensing charge.

The Impact of VMware’s Inefficient Data Protection

VMware also provides a very inefficient means of data protection, forcing all customers to create a separate backup and disaster recovery infrastructure. While it has basic protection from media failure and the ability, at an extra cost, to migrate VMs if a physical server fails, its snapshot capabilities are anemic at best. And their own best practices state, “Do not use VMware snapshots as backups.” For the most part, VMware’s snapshots are only used one at a time to provide data to a backup application and then quickly removed for fear of negative performance impact.

As a result, most customers implement separate backup software, which sends data to a separate backup storage area, which then must send it to another immutable backup storage area to protect against ransomware. These customers typically have a separate disaster recovery (DR) solution replicating data to a DR site. VMware’s inability to adequately protect itself is the cause of all of this additional investment in data protection.

The backup and recovery infrastructure becomes a separate cost and management point, often requiring specialized IT personnel. However, this additional investment does more than add to the total cost of VMware’s inefficiency. It complicates other tasks, such as patch upgrades.

For example, in our survey, we spoke to a VMware customer using HPE Zerto as a more powerful disaster recovery tool because of concerns about VMware’s ransomware vulnerabilities. There is an obvious cost concern with Zerto, but this customer’s current experience highlights a concern with the bolt-on approach caused by VMware’s inefficient approach to data protection.

In this case, the customer had a critical patch from VMware that closed a vulnerability in ESXi to a known ransomware exploit. However, they found that Zerto was not yet compatible with this latest release of VMware, and it would be at least three months before they were. The use of bolt-on technologies forces the customer into an awkward position. Do they deploy the VMware update and go without disaster recovery for three months, or do they keep disaster recovery working but put the organization at risk for a known ransomware exploit? While this situation does not increase the customer’s hard cost, the impact of VMware’s inefficiency certainly increases their mental overhead and anguish.

VergeOS is Secure and Resilient

Unlike VMware’s inefficient ransomware protection, VergeOS was built from the start to be a secure infrastructure software. The OS itself is hardened against attack. When combined with virtual data centers, immutable snapshots, and rapid alerting of encryption activity, customers can bounce back from ransomware threats in minutes with no data loss.

Conclusion

While licensing costs are a valid concern, the total cost of VMware’s inefficiency goes well beyond the surface. Inefficient HCI, storage, and data protection layers contribute significantly to operational complexity and expenses. VergeIO’s innovative approach with VergeOS offers a comprehensive solution that eliminates these inefficiencies, reducing costs, and simplifying operations. As data centers evolve, it’s essential to consider alternatives that optimize efficiency and empower IT professionals to do more with existing resources.

To learn more about how VergeOS can revolutionize your data center, watch our on-demand webinar as we discuss the results of our survey of almost 200 VMware customers and provide a live demonstration of VergeOS recovering from a ransomware attack.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: Alternative, HCI, VMware

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