Disaster Recovery

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Once ransomware breaks through an organization’s defenses, time is of the essence, and IT must execute 5 steps to rapid ransomware recovery. The need for rapid recovery and minimal data loss was the top concern of 75% of the IT professionals responding to the survey we conducted during our recent webinar, “Creating a Holistic Ransomware Recovery Strategy,” now available on-demand.

There are 5 steps to rapid ransomware recovery with minimal data loss:

StepReason
Frequent ProtectionRansomware can strike at any moment, protection copies should be made, at least every few hours.
Long RetentionSome ransomware variants strike slowly to avoid detection. Recovery may require pulling data from multiple backup copies.
Rapid AlertingThe sooner you can detect you are under attack, the sooner you can stop the attack at its source and limit the damage
Mount Don’t RestoreTraditional restoration means copying data from an alternate storage medium, which takes time.
Practice, Practice, PracticeRansomware recovery is unlike any other. Find a safe way to “infect” your data center and practice.

Rapid Ransomware Recovery Step 1: Frequent Protection

While it may seem the most obvious of the 5 steps to ransomware recovery, it is missing from most response strategies. In an ideal ransomware protection scheme, protection events should occur every hour but at least every three hours. This necessary frequency of protection creates a challenge for many data protection approaches.

For example, most snapshot technologies, especially VMware’s built-in snapshots, will degrade performance significantly if the number of managed snapshots grows beyond a handful. However, even dedicated storage systems like all-flash arrays struggle when managing many snapshots. They may perform acceptably but can’t manage a sophisticated retention schedule. The intricacies of the snapshot metadata make deleting a snapshot, which is what a retention schedule does, egregiously slow. Because of its high metadata overhead, it takes the storage system time to “unwind” an intermixed snapshot, and its deletion means updating the metadata for all other snapshots. One result of this is that snapshots consume far more capacity than they should because they are so slow to give back the space used by old snapshots.

For these reasons, most organizations can’t tap into the full theoretical potential of ideal snapshot technology and, as a result, must count on backup and recovery solutions that significantly increase costs and slow recovery efforts.

Frequent Protection with VergeOS

VergeOS is different. At the core of VergeOS is global inline deduplication. Because VergeIO started with deduplication instead of bolting it on years after shipping a product, it delivers maximum data efficiency without impacting performance. Our IOclone capability leverages global deduplication to enable the creation of full clones of virtual machine data or even entire data centers in milliseconds. These clones are space efficient and independent of each other. You can have thousands of them without impacting performance. More importantly, you can delete them, even via a sophisticated retention schedule, in seconds, meaning any space they consume is instantly returned to the environment.

Rapid Ransomware Recovery Step 2: Long-Term Retention

Ransomware can take two attack vectors. The most common is, it will try to encrypt every file it can get to as soon as it breaks into the environment. The second attack vector is more sophisticated, slowly encrypting data to avoid detection. While the second vector is more sinister, most Bad Actors don’t have the patience to let the malware sit and slowly encrypt for months. They want the money now! Frankly, given the success rate of attacks once landing their malware payload, they don’t have to be sophisticated.

While the second attack vector is not as expected, it is wise to prepare for it. Long-term and granular data retention is the key to recovering from a slow-crawl ransomware attack. Again, because of performance concerns, snapshots are unsuitable for long-term retention in most cases. Backup software is excellent at the long-term recovery aspect but, because of the infrequency mentioned above, cannot provide a lot of granularity.

Solving the Retention Problem with VergeOS

Once again, VergeOS’ IOclone provides an ideal solution for long-term data retention, providing complete clones which are independent of each other. Retaining thousands of them doesn’t impact performance, and you can maintain as granular a history as you feel necessary. Getting rid of old files is another important step in limiting ransomware damage.

As mentioned, you can develop a sophisticated retention schedule to meet these requirements. For example, you can execute hourly clones and retain each for 24 hours. You can then execute a daily clone and retain that for seven days and a weekly clone that you retain for two months, and a monthly clone for a year. This type of schedule means a lot of deletion of older copies to reclaim space. It would cause significant performance problems for traditional snapshot techniques and take weeks to return the capacity reserved by those snapshots. IOclone has no performance impact, and reserved capacity is returned almost instantly.

Rapid Ransomware Recovery Step 3: Rapid Alerting

Knowing you are under attack is a critical part of 5 Steps to Rapid Ransomware Recovery because it addresses the other part of IT concerns, “with minimal data loss.” The sooner you know your environment is under attack, the sooner you can shut down the virtual machine under attack and limit the spread. The early warning also enables IT to better identify which protected copy they should turn to when starting their data recovery.

A few storage systems will provide an alert of a potential ransomware attack. Most of these will monitor for an increase in capacity utilization. The problem is that these alerting methods often miss an attack because capacity doesn’t necessarily grow. When malware works through your environment, it typically encrypts one file at a time, and during encrypting, those files will increase in size. After encryption, the file will be almost the same size as the unencrypted file. In other words, these methods will miss the attack. You’d much rather have a false positive than a missed attack.

IOfortify Delivers Reliable Attack Alerting

5 Steps to Rapid Ransomware Recovery

VergeOS’ IOfortify capability delivers reliable attack alerting by monitoring a change in deduplication ratios instead of changes in capacity utilization which is far more accurate. Encryption may not increase capacity utilization, but those files will look like new files to a deduplication algorithm. During our “Creating a Holistic Ransomware Recovery Strategy”, we demonstrated IOfortify, first identifying and alerting, then recovering a virtual machine whose data was actively being encrypted, in real time.

Rapid Ransomware Recovery Step 4: Mount, Don’t Restore

Mounting your recovery means pointing directly to your protected copy without having to move data. Restoring means copying the data from where it is back to the production volume, which can take dozens of minutes, if not hours, depending on the size of the volume and bandwidth of the network.

Again historically, the problem with directly mounting your recovery volume is how you maintain those copies. A traditional complete clone will consume too much capacity and take too long to create to be practical and violate the other above steps. A traditional snapshot still depends on the original volume; promoting it to production may mean a complete copy/restore.

Some backup solutions have an “instant recovery” solution. The problem with this method is that while you are mounting a volume, you are mounting it from a backup storage target which typically doesn’t have the performance or availability capabilities of production storage.

IOclone instant recovery with no performance impact

IOclone enables IT to point directly at a version of the virtual machine or data center before the ransomware attack. It is online instantly, and because of its independence, it does not need to be “rolled back” to production.

Rapid Ransomware Recovery Step 5: Practice

Ransomware recovery is unlike any other, so IT must practice the recovery process. The problem with practice is risking a “leak” of the practice into production.

Virtual Data Centers Make for Perfect Practice

5 Steps to Rapid Ransomware Recovery

VergeOS’ Virtual Data Center (VDC) capabilities enable IT to create a complete, secure copy of their entire data center and “infect” it with a ransomware simulator or an encryption program. Their isolation ensures the practice attack doesn’t “leak” into production. Verge.IO even has some customers that put their VDC, with anonymized data, out as a publicly addressable honeypot so they can test their attack response against a real foe.

Conclusion

The 5 Steps to Rapid Ransomware Recovery require preplanning, and they also require better infrastructure software. Because of the “bolt-on” approach to all features and protection capabilities, platforms like VMware can’t provide the same level of protection as VergeOS. The good news is you can transition from VMware to VergeOS seamlessly and at your own pace. You’ll have a more resilient environment and reduced costs by 50% or more. To learn more about using VergeOS as a VMware exit ramp, read our VMware Alternative page. You can also start using VergeOS as a Disaster Recovery solution, including for ransomware recovery, for VMware without migration using our IOprotect capability.

Watch Creating a Ransomware Response Strategy

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Filed Under: Ransomware Tagged With: ,

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The best time for IT Professionals to start building a ransomware response checklist is now, before an attack occurs. There are several reasons for creating a checklist:

√ Successful Ransomware Response requires preparation.

√ Stress levels are high during an attack. You might forget a critical element in a rush to get everything back online.

√ A checklist will expose areas where you must practice and test.

√ A checklist provides a framework for comprehensive auditing.

Section One: Build a Ransomware Resilient Foundation

▢ Implement a Prevention Solution
The first step in building a ransomware response checklist is to have the foundational elements covered. The best response is the one you don’t have to conduct because the attack doesn’t get through. While no prevention solution is perfect, and you still need a response strategy, they are effective at preventing many types of attacks.

▢ Simplify Patching
Most patch releases sent to IT professionals today involve closing down potential security exploits. These patches should be applied upon release. The problem is most IT professionals are hesitant to apply patches to the environment because of downtime and the potential for unexpected impact of the patch. This is especially true of infrastructure software since an errant patch or downtime because of a patch can impact dozens of servers instead of just one.

Simplifying patching is a critical item when Building a Ransomware Response Checklist.

Another challenge is that most IT infrastructures are comprised of multiple pieces of software. Instead of a single, cohesive data center operating system (DCOS), IT must run layers of incompatible infrastructure software components, including networking software, virtualization software, storage software, and data protection software. Patches are applied to these layers when the respective vendor for each layer releases a service pack, which rarely coincides with when the vendors of the other layers release their patches.

Look for a vendor that takes a DCOS approach to infrastructure, which is not only critical to simplifying patching but also simplifies the entire ransomware response effort.

A DCOS should provide two deliverables in terms of patching. First, it should be able to simplify the foundational DCOS patching process by integrating the legacy IT stack into a single software element. Second, it should make the patching of guest operating systems and applications running inside VMs simpler by enabling zero-capacity and zero-performance impact clones so that IT can test the released patch for conflicts with other elements within the data center. If there is a problem with the patch, IT can roll back to the prior version, or if the patch works, roll the patched version into production.

▢ Harden the Operating Environment
An essential but often overlooked step is to harden the infrastructure software as much as possible. Suppose the ransomware can infect a part of the core infrastructure, like the hypervisor, the storage software, or the data protection software. The impact is widespread in that case, and recovery is far more complex.

Hardening the Data Center is a critical item when Building a Ransomware Response Checklist

While most mainstream OSs are not resilient to attack, you should ensure your core infrastructure software, like the hypervisor, storage, and networking software, are hardened. Look for infrastructure software that takes special developmental steps to make it act like firmware, loaded into RAM, and can be replaced easily from an unalterable good copy. Again, a DCOS makes these processes easier since only one software component needs to be hardened instead of three or four.

Section Two: Build a Ransomware Resilient Protection Strategy

▢ Increase Protection Frequency and Retention
Protecting data is an obvious inclusion in any attempt at building a ransomware response checklist. Most data centers run into three challenges when creating a ransomware-resilient data protection strategy:

  1. Protection events occur too infrequently to be meaningful.
  2. Protected copies aren’t retained long enough to outlive a prolonged attack.
  3. Too many protection solutions are used, making the process complex and expensive.
    A best practice for a successful ransomware response is to make sure you are capturing all data hourly. Snapshots, on paper, look ideal for this use case, but most solutions experience significant performance problems as the number of snapshots increases, limiting how long those snapshots can be retained.

▢ Consolidate Protection Tools
To get around the limitation of traditional snapshots, most organizations use at least four data protection tools to protect their environment. They may use a combination of hypervisor snapshots, storage system snapshots, replication software, application-level backup utilities (dumps), and enterprise backup software. Using all these applications makes the data protection process more expensive and complex, especially during a ransomware recovery effort. IT may be unsure which part of the process has the best known good copy.

Look for an infrastructure DCOS that enables you to consolidate, preferably down to one, the number of tools used for data protection. In essence, the DCOS will protect itself. It should provide the ability to protect data frequently and retain those protection events indefinitely without suffering performance degradation. It should enable you to restore the entire data center footprint, if need be, including network and storage configurations, with a single click. Lastly, it should enable affordable, high availability so data can be moved off-site and adhere to all aspects of the 3-2-1 rule.

Finding an alternative to traditional snapshots is a critical item when Building a Ransomware Response Checklist

▢ Consider a Snapshot Alternative
Traditional snapshot technology, standard in most storage systems and hypervisors, is ill-suited to meet these requirements. The metadata requirements to maintain a high frequency, long retention snapshot schedule is too great. It impacts performance and makes deleting old snapshots to free up capacity too time-consuming. Clones are a better option for performance and retention because they are independent copies, but without global inline deduplication, frequent clones and long retention will consume too much storage capacity and degrade performance too much to be practical.

Look for an infrastructure that combines the best benefits of both clones and snapshots by implementing DCOS-wide deduplication. If the deduplication technology is built into the core of the DCOS, then it will eliminate concerns about algorithmic performance overhead and capacity consumption while enabling the cloning of PBs of data in milliseconds.

Section Three: Build a Ransomware Resilient Detection Strategy

Alerting to a potential attack is a critical item when Building a Ransomware Response Checklist

▢ Detect Data Anomalies
Detection is a critical component of building a ransomware-resilient checklist. The sooner the DCOS can alert IT to an attack, the faster IT can stop and remedy the situation. Most ransomware attacks take two vectors after the malware finds its way into the environment. First, they start encrypting files as fast as possible, and second, the malware starts replicating itself to encrypt more files in parallel.

Again multiple detection tools are problematic. Look for a DCOS that can deliver in near real-time, a single source of alerting based on data change rates. In a globally deduplicated environment, the DCOS builds an alert off of an unexpected increase in capacity consumption.

▢ Preserve Forensic Data
When ransomware attacks, most IT professionals’ first reaction is to start the recovery response as quickly as possible. The problem with jumping right into recovery is that the process will likely destroy any forensic data available to determine how the attack entered the environment and how it spread. Both data points are crucial to future prevention efforts.

Instead, look for a DCOS that enables quick isolation of the current state. Again using a cloning type of technology powered by global inline deduplication enables these clones to be made in milliseconds without consuming too much capacity. It is also critical that this clone be independent and isolated.

▢ Create Ransomware Honeypots
Another detection strategy is to create Honeypots of the environment and expose them to attack, obviously anonymizing data in them. These honeypots can alert you of a potential wider threat and provide excellent practice for further hardening your data center. Honeypots typically have a lower false positive rate, when compared to most traditional intrusion-detection systems.

Look for a DCOS that can virtualize entire data centers in the same way that virtual machines virtualize servers. Then the DCOS can easily create honeypot data centers that are securely isolated from the production virtual data centers.

Section Four: Build a Rapid Recovery Strategy

▢ Mount the Recovery, Don’t Copy

When ransomware strikes, rapid recovery is critical. Depending on the severity of the attack, IT may need to recover a few VMs or an entire data center. Copying data from another snapshot or a backup process takes too much time. Again, clone the current state for forensic reasons, then start recovery. The key is to be able to mount, in place, the last known good copy of data. That mount still needs isolation so IT can scan it for any malware trigger files before returning it to production.

Look for a DCOS that can in-place mount a previous VM version or an entire data center. An in-place mount provides instant access to the data so IT can scan it to ensure there are no malware remnants and then provide user access.

How’s Your Checklist?

Building a Ransomware Response Checklist is only effective if you tick all the boxes. If your evaluation is missing a couple of marks, then consider attending VergeIO’s next TechTalk, “Creating a Ransomware Response Strategy,” with our CEO, Yan Ness, and SE Director, Aaron Reid. They will dive deep into the elements of this checklist and show you a live demo of our IOfortify solution for recovering from a ransomware attack.

Filed Under: Ransomware Tagged With: , , ,

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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.

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: , , ,

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Most of the questions in a recent event we did with Truth In IT were about comparing VMware to VergeOS. There were so many we couldn’t answer them all during the session. Since we think these are questions that even IT professionals who didn’t attend the event will ask, we’ve assembled a blog answering them. If you missed the event, you can watch the on-demand version here.

In addition to comparing VMware to VergeOS questions, there were plenty of questions related to resiliency, ransomware protection, and scalability. We will get to all those questions in a future blog.

The top comparing VMware to VergeOS questions were:

comparing VMware to VergeOS
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  1. Is VergeOS a complete replacement for VMware?
  2. How do you migrate from VMware to VergeOS?
  3. Is using VergeOS easier than using VMware?
  4. Is VergeOS better for smaller organizations than VMware?
  5. Is VergeOS suitable for large data centers?
  6. How does VergeOS’ performance compare to VMware’s?
  7. How does VergeIO’s support compare to VMware’s?

Before we answer the questions, let’s see how VergeOS compares to VMware.

Comparing VMware to VergeOS as a Data Center Platform

About five years ago, VMware’s VMworld event theme was “Software Defined Data Center. (SDDC)” The company wanted to move beyond software-defining a server with their hypervisor toward software-defining storage (vSAN) and the network (NSX). Organizations that embrace an SDDC concept can use whatever hardware they wish to meet their needs. If they become dissatisfied with a software vendor, like VMware, they can switch without being forced to replace hardware. The customer is in control.

At VergeIO, we agree with the premise of SDDC but disagree with VMware’s execution. Instead of creating a tightly integrated data center operating system, they, through acquisition, created a stack of software packages that IT must manage separately. They were building a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). The problem with HCI is that while the architecture bundles the data center’s three primary components (compute, network, storage), they, are still three separate entities. Where the old three-tier stack (Network-Hypervisor-SAN) was physically separated, HCI is logically separated. This physical or logical separation leads to continued complexity and lack of efficiency. It doesn’t solve anything.

VergeOS integrates into a single code base, networking, server virtualization, and storage. We call it Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI). One data center operating system is easier to manage and is far more efficient than one that operates as a series of interconnected parts. As a result, customers get better performance and scalability from the existing hardware.

Comparing VMware to VergeOS highlights the core difference is how the development teams craft their solutions. Do you stack a bunch of separate software packages together and try to hide their separation through a common interface, or do you provide all the functionality through a single interface? One leads to inefficient use of hardware and expensive, complicated licensing agreements. The other leads to very efficient hardware use and a simple, inexpensive licensing model.

To learn more about the VergeOS architecture, watch this deep-dive LightBoard video of with CTO and founder, Greg Campbell.

Is VergeOS a Complete Replacement for VMware?

Yes, but you don’t have to flip the switch on day one and throw out VMware. Most customers move to VergeOS gradually. They start with a proof of concept, which is usually up and running in less than an hour, then move to use our IOprotect solution to reduce their disaster recovery costs. After that, VergeOS now has a copy of all the data, so they may start using VergeOS for test-dev, QA, or reporting. Next, they may start putting new workloads into the environment and then finally start moving production workloads. The result is a seamless transition that goes at a pace you define.

If you want to learn how to enhance your VMware DR strategy while lowering costs, register for our interactive virtual whiteboard session, live on April 12th.

How do You Migrate from VMware to VergeOS

comparing VMware to VergeOS

Comparing VMware to VergeOS requires migration, and our IOmigrate capability makes that seamless. Once you install VergeOS on a couple of nodes, you can point it at the VMware cluster, and you’ll see all the virtual machines (VM) in our interface. At that point, you can select some or all of the virtual machines and import them into the VergeOS environment. Once the VMs are running under VergeOS, take a snapshot of them, which protects the original copy, then you can stress-test it to your heart’s content without fear of data loss. Our snapshots are space efficient, immutable, and don’t impact performance, so you can take as many as you want and retain them indefinitely.

comparing VMware to VergeOS

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Comparing VMware to VergeOS Ease of Use

It is easy for any vendor to claim that their solution is easier to use than another solution. To compare VMware to VergeOS regarding ease of use, I’ll relay what our customers tell us. Most tell us they can get the proof of concept going in an hour. The move to using us as a DR target and the move to production is seamless because it is all the same software.

Operationally the common theme is “it just works” and “I go for weeks without even touching it.” They all rave about the ease of implementing patches and software updates. That is the value of one software to drive the entire data center. The user interface is very easy to interact with while still enabling very advanced capabilities.

Is VergeOS Suitable for Small Organizations

Small Organizations, or what we call the server room use case, embrace the idea of VergeOS for several reasons. First, you can easily start with two nodes, loaded with storage, and, in many cases, address all your needs for virtualization, storage, and networking. Small data centers or server rooms often also mean small IT teams. One data center operating system that controls all functions makes day-to-day operations easy. VergeOS is also inexpensive. We don’t charge by cores, memory, or even storage capacity. The software is priced per node, so two or three licenses are all you need for a typical server room deployment.

Is VergeOS Suitable for Large Data Centers

VergeOS’ suitability for small organizations doesn’t mean it isn’t suitable for large organizations. We have customers with over one hundred nodes in a single instance of VergeOS. Those customers typically manage thousands of virtual machines and multiple petabytes of capacity. They also enjoy and benefit from the ease of use and cost savings of VergeOS.

Comparing VMware to VergeOS Performance

The efficiency of VergeOS helps both large and small data center customers. We are often installed on the same hardware that used to run VMware. Customers find the VergeOS environment performs much better than VMware. The improvement in performance means they can virtualize more workloads on fewer servers, delay the planned purchase of new servers, and run servers for years longer than expected. They can also virtualize some workloads that they thought must run on bare metal.

Comparing VMware to VergeOS Support

It is hard to compare support between the two companies. We hear from customers switching to VergeOS that the quality of VMware support is declining, especially for smaller customers. I speak to customers every week who are astounded by the quality of our technical support and amazed at how far the team will go to help them fix problems that don’t have anything to do with VergeOS.

Conclusion

Comparing VMware to VergeOS shines a light on the efficiency of our software. Our developers continue to invest in ensuring the software runs at its most optimal level, gets the most out of the available hardware resources, and presents its power in the simplest form possible. The result is a drastic reduction in infrastructure costs and dramatic increases in operational efficiency. This craftsmanship is immediately apparent when you install the software and is why so many customers are switching from VMware and Hyper-V to VergeOS.

Next Steps

Try It: Register to download an evaluation copy of the software.

Watch: A LightBoard Video of our CTO discussing the VergeOS architecture.

Learn: How to Create a VMware Exit Strategy with our Digital Learning Guide

Register: For our next Whiteboard Wednesday, VMware Disaster and Ransomware Recovery—The Three NEW Best Practices

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