Alternative

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The performance impact of retention means that VMware snapshots have a high cost, which further means that IT professionals must compensate by investing more than they should into storage and backup infrastructure. Below are the best practices of VMware’s snapshot functionality, according to VMware’s knowledge base article:

  1. Don’t Use Snapshots As Backups
  2. While the maximum number of supported snapshots per virtual machine is 32, the best practice is not to use more than 2 or 3.
  3. Don’t retain a snapshot for more than 72 hours.
  4. Ensure that snapshots are deleted when using third-party backup software
  5. Never increase the virtual machine disk size while there are active snapshots.

The weaknesses of VMware’s Snapshots are just one of the hidden costs of using VMware in the data center. To learn all four, watch our on-demand webinar, “The 4 Hidden Costs of VMware“.

VMware Snapshots Are Not Backups

VMware states the reason VMware snapshots should not be considered backups of virtual machines (VMs) is “The snapshot file is only a change log of the original virtual disk. It creates a placeholder disk, virtual_machine-00000x-delta.vmdk, to store data changes since the snapshot was created. If the base disks are deleted, the snapshot files are insufficient to restore a virtual machine.”

The need to track changes in a separate file means that every time new data is written to a VM’s primary volume, it leads to significant overhead and dependency on the original volume. The overhead limits customers’ ability to use VMware’s snapshot technology for backup because only two or three snapshots can be active at any point in time. The dependency is the final nail in the coffin. If the primary fails, then all of your snapshots become useless.

The Impact of VMware Snapshots Not Being Backups

Most customers would still choose a separate backup software solution even if VMware could provide unlimited snapshots without performance impact. The fact that VMware snapshots are so hindered forces customers to invest more heavily in a backup solution. The weakness of VMware’s data protection capabilities has led to the creation of companies like Veeam and fueled its growth.

Backup solutions are the only products that can extract any usefulness from VMware Snapshots. They can execute one VMware snapshot, mount it to their backup application, and back it up. Then when the backup completes, the software can delete the snapshot it took so it doesn’t impact overall performance. That same knowledge base article advises IT to make sure their backup software selection can delete the snapshots it takes. (Item 4 above)

The Cost of VMware Snapshots Not Being Backups

VMware’s deficient snapshot capability is not unique. Although not as severe, many dedicated storage systems have similar limitations on how frequently you can execute a snapshot and how long you can retain those snapshots. All of the legacy snapshot technologies are plagued with this problem. Each successive snapshot depends on the snapshot before it, and all snapshots depend on the original volume. If that original volume is removed, all the snapshots are invalidated.

One of the most important priorities for IT is to protect the digital assets that the organization creates and uses to make decisions. Since that priority is paramount, IT must work around the weakness in snapshot technology and invest in a separate process, backup, and recovery, to mitigate the risk.

The investment in the backup and recovery process is not insignificant. There is the cost of the backup software and the need for and cost of a separate storage system. There is also the cost of time to transfer that data from production storage to the secondary storage device. The transfer time means significant gaps in which data is unprotected, something ransomware uses to its advantage. Finally, there is also the time involved in transferring data back into production if something goes wrong with primary storage. There is a place for separate backup and recovery, but it should not be the primary means to protect and recover production data.

IT professionals largely ignore the cost impact of these limitations because they assume that there is no alternative.

The Clone Alternative to VMware Snapshots

As discussed in our previous article, “Snapshots or Clones for Data Protection”, a Clone, i.e., a complete copy of a virtual machine or volume, except for one limitation, is a much better means to protect data:

  1. Clones are independent
  2. Clones don’t impact performance
  3. Clones can be retained indefinitely

A limitation of clones is that they are exact copies of the original, which means there is a transfer time problem and a capacity consumption issue. This limitation goes away, though, if, at an infrastructure level, global inline deduplication is integrated into the core code. Global inline deduplication enables the creation of copies of any virtual machine, or even the entire environment. The clones can be made near instantly, and they, initially, don’t consume any capacity.

The problem is that most deduplication technology is an afterthought, especially within hypervisor software. VMware introduced deduplication into vSAN years after the initial release, and Nutanix waited even longer. Adding deduplication as a bolt-on years after the initial introduction means that the algorithm adds processing overhead to the environment, dramatically impacting performance and decreasing virtual machine density.

To some extent, IT can work around the overhead of deduplication by buying more powerful servers and adding more RAM to those servers, all of which add significant costs to the infrastructure. Alternatively, IT can purchase a dedicated storage array. Still, as we explain in our article, “The High Cost of Dedicated Storage,”, that approach also increases the cost of the infrastructure.

IOclone: Eliminating Costs While Increasing Resiliency

VergeIO integrates deduplication into VergeOS, and it isn’t a bolt-on. Global Inline Deduplication has been at the core of VergeOS since day one. As a result, it operates very efficiently and with no performance impact compared to legacy solutions. This means creating a clone using VergeOS’ IOclone capability; it happens instantly with virtually no initial impact on capacity. Also, these clones are not dependent on the original copy. They are standalone and don’t impact performance, nor do they have retention limitations.

VMware snapshots have a high cost

VergeOS’ Global Inline Deduplication is also WAN aware, so IT can replicate production data and clones to remote DR sites or other data centers using minimal bandwidth and time. Moving data to a second VergeOS instance meets the “one copy off-site” requirement common in most data protection strategies.

Thanks to VergeOS’ foundational implementation of global inline deduplication, IOclone merges the best of both snapshots and clones to deliver unprecedented data protection and resilience. It is also why we refer to them as snapshots within our GUI. It is another example of the benefits of solving problems holistically at the infrastructure level instead of myopically at the data level. Watch our on-demand webinar, “Creating a Holistic Ransomware Response,” to see another example of solving problems at an infrastructure level.

While some VergeIO customers have eliminated backup as a separate process, you still may want to continue with your backup and recovery strategy, which VergeOS supports. Even if you do, the sophistication and expenses of that process are significantly reduced. While VMware snapshots have a high cost, IOclone does not. It is part of the reason customers who select VergeOS as their VMware alternative realize a reduction in the total cost of ownership by as much as 80% in addition to 30% or larger upfront licensing savings.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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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.

Filed Under: Virtualization Tagged With: ,

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Because Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) and Software Defined Storage (SDS) have failed to live up to their promises, most IT leaders assume there is nothing they can do about the high cost of dedicated storage. A recent IDC study indicated that over 50% of IT planners ready for a storage refresh consider HCI, but they rule it out the majority of the time. As a result, three-tier architectures continue to be the default architecture for most data centers.

The Problem with Dedicated Storage Architectures

Dedicated storage architectures, either a storage area network (SAN) or a network-attached storage (NAS) system, are expensive to purchase, maintain and refresh. The primary problem is the software that drives the storage products. It is laden with features that are inefficiently implemented. As the product matures, additional features are often “tacked on,” making them even more inefficient.

The High Cost of Dedicated Storage

These inefficiencies mean that vendors must configure the storage hardware that comes with their storage software in such a way that it can mask all of its inefficiencies. This compensation dramatically increases the total solution’s cost significantly as the customer must pay for the additional computing power and memory. These inefficiencies also lead to the inexplicably short life span of storage infrastructure. It forces customers to go through a costly refresh cycle every four to five years and make costly upgrades or deploy additional storage silos as new workloads come online.

Software Defined Storage is Still a Dedicated Storage Architecture

Software Defined Storage (SDS) has the same problem as dedicated storage architectures. The software is often inefficient; you must still buy hardware and dedicate it to storage. Most SDS solutions make you buy new hardware to go with their software. They can not take advantage of your existing hardware investment.

Dedicated Storage Shouldn’t Exist

Beyond compensating for the inefficiencies of dedicated storage hardware and SDS, the reality is that the storage software that drives dedicated arrays and NAS systems, runs on the same server type that you would run a hypervisor or any other application on. That server has built-in networking, and in most cases, it has 24 or more bays for storage media. The same applies to most network hardware. They are servers running a specific application.

Buying multiple servers to do different things when in actuality, one server armed with efficient software could do it all, dramatically increases CAPEX and OPEX. The cost to manage and maintain this stack of at least three different servers is untenable. The result is a complex environment that requires storage, virtualization, and networking specialists, instead of a single IT generalist, which further raises costs. Converging these three separate software stacks is the impetus behind Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI).

Why HCI Didn’t End Dedicated Storage Architectures

2010 when HCI first came to market, it seemed like it was a sign of the end for dedicated storage architectures, but that never materialized. Over a decade after the first HCI solutions appeared, dedicated storage architectures are more prevalent than ever. Industry pundits like Chris Mellor label HCI a “niche market.” How could such an obvious choice for consolidating storage, virtualization, and networking, both hardware and software, not take over the market?

The first problem with HCI solutions is they didn’t converge anything. Yes, the storage and virtualization software, and in rare cases, the network software, run on the same server hardware. However, each software package has an entirely different code base and does not know that the other packages exist. There are no gains in management efficiencies as a result.

Each of the three (at least) code bases within HCI is also very inefficient because it was initially designed to run on dedicated hardware, not share hardware resources with other modules. Finally, in most cases, the storage and network software run as virtual machines within the hypervisor construct.

These realities result in HCI being deemed a good solution for medium-sized businesses. Still, as these infrastructures scale to address the demand of larger businesses and enterprises, inefficiency is stacked on top of inefficiency, making effective utilization of the available resources a significant problem. None of the HCI vendors went to work on the core HCI challenges:

  1. Storage and network operations must be equal citizens with virtualization, not run as VMs.
  2. An HCI cluster’s east-west traffic (node-to-node communications) is significant and must be specifically optimized.
  3. Optimizing operational efficiency and simplifying administration requires a unified code base, not three code bases from three different vendors that are glued together by a management interface.
The High Cost of Dedicated Storage

There is also an economic problem with HCI infrastructures. In theory, running the entire infrastructure stack on one tier instead of three tiers should be less expensive. However, HCI is almost always the same price as or more expensive than the three-tiered architectures it attempts to replace. These HCI designs require even more powerful servers with even more memory and there are still three separate licenses (storage, virtualization, and networking) that must be paid for and bundled into the solution. The final straw is that most HCI solutions require you to purchase new hardware, and often, conveniently, from the HCI vendor, further increasing the price.

The result is that HCI has no operational savings or economic advantages over the traditional three-tier model.

Ultraconverged Infrastructure Eliminates the High Cost of Dedicated Storage

VergeIO’s Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) eliminates the high cost of dedicated storage by overcoming the shortcomings of SDS and HCI. VergeOS is written from scratch to combine virtualization, storage services, and layer 2 and layer 3 network functionality into a single unified code base. With VergeOS, storage, and networking are equal citizens to the hypervisor, not servants. The result is a solution that is a fraction of the code size as other solutions but provides superior features. VergeOS is typically 50% less expensive than the equivalent VMware licenses which usually include all the functionality of its add-on packages like vSAN, NSX, and vCloud Director.

VergeOS can run on just about any server hardware built within the last six years, and it will deliver better performance and longevity from that existing hardware. This hardware flexibility enables you to leverage your existing servers and enjoy additional cost savings instead of being forced into buying new servers and spending more money.

Regarding storage, VergeOS uses drives installed in the same servers running the virtualization and networking functions. Our efficiency ensures that all three functions run at top performance and do not require additional processing power or memory. The VergeOS license is not capacity based; it is priced per node so that IT can put as much capacity as possible in each node. Adding drives to an existing server instead of buying a dedicated storage system is an order of magnitude less expensive.

Global Inline Deduplication is built into the very core of VergeOS and has been from day one. It was not an afterthought added years later. The result is deduplication has no impact on performance. Since deduplication is integrated into the core of VergeOS, it drives many of our advanced features like IOclone, our answer to snapshots, IOprotect for disaster recovery, and IOfortify, our solution for rapid ransomware recovery. Again, all of these features are built into the core of the VergeOS software, not add-on modules.

Many potential customers are reaching out to us as a no-compromise alternative to VMware. Still, the compelling capabilities of VergeOS mean many others reach out to us as part of a NAS or SAN refresh project because the savings we can provide over the high cost of dedicated storage are even more significant than the savings we can provide versus VMware alone. Then add the operational savings of a truly converged infrastructure, and you’ll see why we have incredibly high customer satisfaction.

Filed Under: Storage Tagged With: ,

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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.

Filed Under: Virtualization Tagged With: ,

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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

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: , , ,

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Don’t Make these VMware Exit Mistakes

The industry is full of advice on things you should do when considering a VMware alternative, but did you know there are four don’ts of a VMware exit? Accepting a vendor’s excuse for why you must do these “don’ts” can lead to higher costs, unsuccessful conversion, and a premature infrastructure refresh.

The Four Don’ts of a VMware Exit are:

  1. Don’t Focus on the Price
  2. Don’t Buy or Borrow Hardware
  3. Don’t Run a Proof of Concept
  4. Don’t Validate with Creampuff Use Cases

1. Don’t Focus on the Price of a VMware Exit

Of course, you should look at the price of the potential VMware alternative. Our suggestion, though, is don’t look solely at the price but also to ensure the product will take you forward in terms of capabilities. The solution should be less expensive than VMware and deliver measurably better efficiency, performance, scalability, and data protection capabilities. Make sure you look at both the return on investment and the total cost of ownership as part of your VMware Exit.

2. Don’t Buy New Hardware when you Exit VMware

The Four Don'ts of a VMware Exit. Don't buy new hardware!
Buying New Hardware Increases
the Cost of a VMware Exit

The second don’t of a VMware exit relates to hardware. If the VMware alternative you are considering can’t run on your existing hardware, stop looking and move to the next candidate. You bought into the software-defined data center (SDDC) for this exact scenario, so you can switch software solutions while continuing to use your current hardware assets. Forcing you to buy new hardware means the potential new vendor takes shortcuts and depends on specific hardware features or capabilities. Not only does this mean a higher upfront cost it also means you are guaranteed to face future infrastructure refreshes.

3. Don’t Run a Proof of Concept when you Exit VMware

Not running a proof of concept (POC) may sound a little crazy, and we do not suggest you skip testing the potential VMware alternative. A proof of concept is not enough. The third don’t of a VMware exit acknowledges you can’t, in 30 days, test every aspect of a new platform that you hope will replace a platform you have been running for over a decade!

Run a proof of concept but then look for a use case where you can use the product for months and stress the potential solution through its paces. And look for a vendor that is patient enough for you to run just this use case for a few months.

4. Don’t Validate with a Creampuff Use Case

The workloads you will run in the environment after the proof of concept begin the validation phase of the potential VMware alternative. The fourth and final don’ts of a VMware exit is not to validate with “creampuff” use cases. These are use cases that won’t stress the new environment. Nobody cares if they fail, and creampuff use cases won’t force you to test the quality of technical support. Indeed, it is OK to have a few creampuff use cases when you start the validation phase, but as you progress into the heat of the phase, look to run a process or workload critical to the enterprise without impacting day-to-day operations.

An ideal use case is disaster recovery (DR). It is critical to the organization, but if something goes wrong, it won’t impact day-to-day operations. DR also puts a significant load on the potential alternative. It has to receive all the data from your VMware environment continuously. Then when you perform DR tests, you are running entire instances of your workloads with the latest copies of data. DR stresses each element of a potential VMware alternative, including storage and networking. If the solution can pass the DR test both in terms of functionality and usability, you’ve gone a long way toward validating it for replacing VMware in production.

VergeOS Does Enable a Seamless VMware Exit

VergeOS is less expensive than VMware and other VMware Alternatives. Most of our customers find it reduces their licensing costs by more than 50%. These cost savings do not come at the expense of capabilities. VergeOS delivers better performance and capabilities than VMware while also being more resilient and easier to manage.

VergeOS runs on your existing hardware and breathes new life into your existing hardware, enabling you to consolidate more workloads on fewer nodes. Running more workloads on the same hardware significantly reduces total ownership costs. VergeOS’ hardware flexibility makes VergeOS easy to run through a proof of concept, enabling you to move quickly into the validation phase. Provide VergeIO with two or three spare servers, install the software, migrate a few workloads, and begin testing. Most customers can start their POCs within an hour of downloading the software.

The Four Don'ts of a VMware Exit
IOmigrate provides a Seamless VMware Exit to VergeOS

The cost-effectiveness of VergeOS makes it realistic to run the validation phase for months before committing fully to it. And you don’t have to run creampuff use cases! VergeOS has integrated capabilities to enable you to use the solution as a disaster recovery site for your VMware environment. Not only does this give you the ability to run the software in a stressful environment it also enables you to experience the VergeOS cost savings almost immediately. Most of our customers find they can reduce the licensing costs of their DR site by more than 60% and include more workloads in the DR process, all without requiring additional hardware.

Next Steps

  • Watch: One-Slide Webinar and Demonstration of a VMware Migration
  • Read: Our Digital Learning Guide, “How to Develop a VMware Strategy”
  • Schedule: A technical whiteboard session personalized for your environment

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: , ,