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VMware

Is VMware Losing Customers with Broadcom Buy Imminent? Surveys Say Yes

September 28, 2023 by Verge.IO Leave a Comment

  • Written by Kelly Teal
  • September 26, 2023

End users fear Broadcom will raise VMware prices. So, they’re looking to leave, say ShapeBlue and VergeIO.

Is VMware losing customers?

As the 25-year-old virtualization and cloud computing company anticipates new ownership by the end of next month, two new surveys indicate the answer is a resounding yes.

On Tuesday, cloud integrator ShapeBlue and data center software provider VergeIO released separate data citing end-user uncertainty around the imminent Broadcom–VMware combination.

Both companies’ customers fear VMware pricing will soar with Broadcom in charge, and they predict Broadcom will push VMware only to focus on large organizations.

Read more…

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Alternative, VMware

Survey Reveals VMware Customers’ Top Concerns

September 26, 2023 by Verge.IO Leave a Comment

Ann Arbor, Mich, September 26, 2023 — 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.

VergeIO, the Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) company, spent two months surveying
and conducting in-person interviews with hundreds of existing VMware customers. The
results of the research have been released in a report entitled, “State of the VMware
Customer.”

Among the key issues found were:

Pricing Concerns – 84% of respondents indicated that they were concerned
about VMware’s current and future costs, with many highlighting “per-core”
renewal quotes and licensing agreements that require a commitment to year-
over-year spending increases as additional points of distress.

Ransomware Resiliency – With a rise in ransomware attacks exploiting specific
VMware vulnerabilities, 77% of customers worried about their data resiliency. A
number of those interviewed indicated that their VMware environments had
already suffered a ransomware attack, with recovery efforts taking more than 2
weeks despite having reasonable backup procedures in place.

Technical Support – 60% of customers expressed their concern with VMware’s
ability to provide high-quality technical support, with those interviewed stating the
difficulty in receiving support via phone calls. Others lamented slow response
times to emails during outages.

These survey results also come amidst rumors of VMware focusing on major enterprise
accounts with a shift towards a more expensive pricing model post the Broadcom
acquisition. Because of these concerns, more than 87% of respondents indicated that
they are currently researching alternative infrastructure platforms to VMware.
While rising prices were a top issue among VMware customers, a vast majority
indicated that they are unwilling to sacrifice capabilities in order to save money. Top
priorities of VMware replacement from those surveyed were seamless migration (76%),
ability to use existing hardware (72%) and the desire to do more with that existing
hardware (61%).

“Even before the Broadcom acquisition, customers have had concerns about VMware’s
pricing strategy and pace of development,” said George Crump, VergeIO CMO.

“VMware has built its offering through a series of technology acquisitions, resulting in a
solution that is bloated, complex and expensive. VergeIO takes a different approach.
VergeOS’ unified codebase streamlines the infrastructure, making it more scalable,
efficient, higher performing, less complex and easier to support – the very qualities that
respondents in the survey are looking for.”

Crump and VergeIO CEO Yan Ness will discuss the results of the report in an upcoming
webinar, “The State of the VMware Customer” which analyzes the results of the survey
and shows how VergeOS overcomes them. Registrants will receive a copy of the survey
in advance of the webinar. Register Here

About VergeOS: 
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
judys@jprcom.com

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: Alternative, VMware

VMware Exit for Ransomware Resiliency

September 21, 2023 by George Crump Leave a Comment

VMware is coming under ever-increasing scrutiny for its ransomware shortcomings, and now customers are considering a VMware exit for ransomware resiliency instead of just to reduce licensing costs. The heightened concerns come from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, and recent VMware vulnerabilities have been part of the problem.

In conversations with numerous VMware users infected by a ransomware attack, they often recount tales of belated attack discoveries, followed by intensive recovery efforts that take weeks, if not months, to restore their systems entirely. VergeIO has identified key ransomware shortcomings in the VMware environment, and offers a viable means to address them effectively by exiting to VergeOS.

So, how can IT professionals break this cycle?

The Infrastructure-Wide Approach to Ransomware Resiliency

Click to Watch a Ransomware Recovery in Action

Ransomware resiliency revolves around more than backup software and hardware. If you have to count on backups to recover from a ransomware attack, you are in for a very long and painful process. Counting on a separate, third party backup process as VMware does, is why customers are considering a VMware exit for better ransomware resiliency, in addition to trying to reduce licensing costs.

A more comprehensive approach to ransomware resiliency is required, focusing on:

  1. Limiting Attack Surface: This means not all virtual machines (VMs) are exposed, creating barriers between them. The Virtual Data Center (VDC) technology by VergeOS mimics this concept, bundling VMs, storage, and network configurations within a group of applications, creating a “walled garden” to contain potential threats. By default, it is nearly impossible for a malware trigger file to move between VDCs.
  2. Prioritizing Frequent Data Protection: Regular backups won’t suffice. Ransomware can encrypt data faster than most backup schedules can accommodate. This ability to deliver rapid, frequent data protection is where VergeOS stands out with its IOclone-based snapshot technology. It ensures frequent, space-efficient, and impact-free data protection. VergeOS snapshots are independent copies rather than legacy snapshots that are a cascading tree of dependence. With VergeOS, customers can execute snapshots frequently with no disruption to performance.
  3. Immutable Data Storage: Traditional backups can still be compromised. VergeOS ensures that IOclone-based snapshots are immutable and safe from ransomware intrusions unless deliberately changed to read-write by an authenticated Administrator. Malware may launch within a single virtual data center, but it can’t spread beyond it, and it can’t infect immutable protected copies, which can easily be only a few minutes old.
  4. Timely Patch Application: VMware Administrators often need help to apply patching timely, potentially exposing vulnerabilities longer than organizations would like. VergeOS uses its VDC and snapshot technology to allow quick patch tests, ensuring smooth deployments without disruptions. IT Administrators can clone the entire VDC into a “Lab” VDC and test the patch impact against the entire data center without disruption to production.
  5. Swift Ransomware Detection: Recognizing a breach early is crucial. VergeOS’ IOfortify technology swiftly detects potential threats, often within minutes, allowing for prompt action and containment. The recovery effort increases in complexity exponentially with each minute the attack goes undetected.
  6. Efficient Attack Victim Identification: Once contained, it’s vital to pinpoint affected VMs. VergeOS’ telemetry information, coupled with IOfortify timestamps, accurately indicates compromised systems for quick recovery. It enables you to focus on the few infected VMs instead of needing to scan every VM in the environment.
  7. Zero-Data Movement Recovery: VergeOS enables a near-instant recovery process, allowing IT Administrators to restore operations promptly without lengthy data transfer processes. There is no data movement. Bring up the most recent snapshot, scan for a potential trigger file, remove it if present, and launch the clone into production. There is no data movement.
  8. Detailed Forensics: Instead of hastily erasing infected datasets, VergeOS enables you to quarantine and retain them, offering valuable insights into the attack mechanisms and aiding with future prevention strategies.
  9. Robust Operating Environment: VergeOS stands out with its hardened operating environment, ensuring that its core remains unexploited, and in case of any breach, a quick restoration is possible.

Our newest white paper, Creating an Infrastructure-Wide Ransomware Resiliency Strategy, will enable you to create a strategy to help you recover from an attack within minutes and with no data loss —Download Now. Justify a VMware exit for ransomware resiliency in addition to reducing licensing costs.

Rethinking Infrastructure Choices with VergeIO

VMware exit for ransomware resiliency

VergeIO’s focus isn’t a mere reaction to the ransomware challenges IT faces; it’s a well-thought-out strategy integrated into the core code base from day one. It ensures a fortified operating environment. When seeking a VMware alternative, cost savings are essential but not exclusive. If, during the VMware Exit, you can improve your ransomware resiliency, it makes the decision both compelling and logical.

Converting your VMware environment is painless and risk-free. Schedule a technical whiteboard session; our experts will walk you through the process.

Read about how ransomware infiltrated MGM’s infrastructure on 9/15/2023 encrypting more than 100 ESXi servers.

Watch as we protect, detect, and recover a VM that is being attacked by ransomware.

Filed Under: Blog, Ransomware, VMwareExit Tagged With: Alternative, ransomware, VMware

Mitigating VMware Migration Risks

September 12, 2023 by George Crump Leave a Comment

mitigating VMware migration risks

Many VMware customers are concerned about ever-increasing licensing costs, and are actively considering VMware alternatives. However, mitigating VMware migration risks is an even more significant concern. There are four steps that IT planners can take to ensure a seamless and risk-free migration to a new infrastructure platform:

  1. Upfront Assessment
  2. Virtual Proof of Concept
  3. On-Premises Evaluation
  4. Gradual Cut Over

Upfront Assessment of a VMware Alternative

Before diving deep into any IT project, you want to ensure the result will be significantly better than the current state. When considering a VMware alternative, reducing and simplifying licensing costs is one of the obvious areas to examine. Beyond licensing costs, IT should also evaluate long-term cost savings potential like:

  • Simplifying day-to-day operations like patching.
  • Extending the life of existing hardware and using it more efficiently.
  • Eliminating the need for a dedicated storage array.

Additionally, moving to an alternative platform should deliver more than cost savings. IT planners should consider the move to a new platform as an opportunity to improve capabilities like:

  • Improving data protection capabilities by moving beyond snapshots.
  • Improving ransomware resiliency and detection with a hardened infrastructure platform.

Finally, before moving to the next step, you should talk to some existing customers and see what they have to say about the potential alternative. Get their feedback on how easy the product is to use, how well it’s supported, and learn about their day-to-day experiences. Current customers can prove vendor claims.

Virtual Proof of Concept of a VMware Alternative

Once IT completes its initial assessment, most vendors try to rush to a proof of concept (POC). POCs are the cornerstone of mitigating VMware migration risks, but the problem is that a POC requires IT to find some hardware or make space for the vendor’s hardware. It also means that IT must find the time to go through the testing process and have a strategy for performing that test.

mitigating VMware migration risks

An alternative is a virtual proof of concept, where the vendor creates a virtual environment for you to test drive their solution. However, this virtual environment must give you full reign to perform whatever type of testing you want. You should be able to do more than “just drive the GUI.” You should be able to load up your virtual machines (VMs), test data protection capabilities, and start to think through on-premises test plans.

Your virtual instance should be 100% isolated from any other virtual POCs. Otherwise, you can’t deploy your applications and data without the risk of another organization gaining access to them. If the vendor can only deliver that isolation by dedicating specific hardware for the test, they will likely have to limit the time you can test. If the vendor can deliver that isolation, then they should be able to provide a very flexible testing timeframe.

On-Premises Evaluation of a VMware Alternative

If the potential VMware alternative still interests you after completing the virtual proof of concept, it is then time to move to an on-premises evaluation of the solution. Most vendors are happy to provide an on-premises evaluation. Still, the IT planner must pay attention to the vendor’s behavior as you move through this process.

There are red flags that will appear, even before you start testing. These red flags should give you some insight into how well the solution is going to perform for you in the coming years:

🚩 Does the vendor require a multi-hour meeting to ensure all the technical requirements are met?
🚩 Does the vendor insist on providing you with hardware even though they say they are "software-only"?
🚩 Does the vendor want to come on-site to install the evaluation?
🚩 Does the vendor push you to do a "try-and-buy" where you commit to buying the solution if critical requirements are met?
🚩 Does the vendor insist you use the local technical resource for any technical questions that might arise?

An on-premises evaluation should be a strings-free relationship. You should be able to use existing hardware. It should only require a quick call, not a three-hour workshop, to ensure the hardware you plan to use is optimal for your testing. If the vendor claims to be software-only, then as long as you can provide hardware that meets their minimum requirements, you should be given the green light for your evaluation.

Usually, having a vendor come on-site to install an evaluation, or worse, providing you with a “turnkey” hardware package for the evaluation is a sign that the vendor is trying to hide how complex their solution is to get running. If it is hard to install, it will be hard to operate.

You are testing something new, and you will run into technical questions. You should go through regular technical support channels to get those questions answered. This process lets you see what kind of support you will get years after installation.

Gradual Cut-Over to the New Platform

Once you’ve completed the evaluation, you should map out a migration strategy before you commit to purchase. Mitigating VMware migration risks requires that the cut-over to the new platform is gradual. In most cases, you won’t flip a switch and, in a single pass, move all your VMs to the new platform. You typically migrate in “lumps,” one workload at a time. This more gradual process means the migration capabilities, if there are any, should be continuous. The new platform’s migration capabilities need to keep VMs from the VMware environment in sync so that the most recent copy of data is on the new platform when IT is ready to convert the next workload.

A near-continuous sync of VMware VMs to the new platform also means that it can provide enterprise-wide value from day one while you are gradually migrating to it. Suppose the migration function is near-continuous and intelligent enough only to move changed data blocks. In that case, it can act as a disaster recovery solution (DR) for the entire VMware environment. The result is from day one; it can save you money while you migrate at your pace. Without it, you are under too much pressure to show value from the new purchase quickly, making you more likely to rush VM migrations.

If the new platform achieves the efficiency mentioned in the initial assessment, IT should be able to carve off two or three physical servers to act as the initial foundation. Those initial servers should be able to receive all the migrated VMs and the continuous updates to them. Then, as you move VMs into production on the new platform, resources will free up in the VMware environment, enabling you to add a few more servers to the new platform.

A De-Risked VMware Migration

Selecting a vendor that is patient enough to walk through the above process de-risks the migration away from VMware. Each of these steps is essentially a checkpoint in the process, and you don’t move to the next step until you are confident in the results of the prior step.

Using existing hardware and providing value while you migrate are critical. If, during the evaluation process, you discover something you don’t like about the solution, you are not saddled with a bunch of hardware that you must de-install and return. And the ability to add value while you gradually migrate, in our example acting as a DR solution, puts less pressure on you to migrate too quickly.

The VergeIO Team is happy to guide you through this process, which is why we have such high customer satisfaction. The first step is to perform the upfront assessment—schedule yours now with one of our technical experts.

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

The Cost of the VMware Tax

August 15, 2023 by George Crump Leave a Comment

IT has to factor the cost of the VMware Tax into its infrastructure planning. Where does this tax come from? It is the extra expense in hardware needed, to compensate for the overhead of VMware’s inefficient virtualization code. Adding additional components like vSAN for storage, or NSX for networking only makes the tax more severe. These components will adversely impact applications and users if IT doesn’t work around the overhead. These workarounds cost money, increase complexity and create a more brittle infrastructure that struggles to adapt to the organization’s future needs.

There are three primary effects of the VMware Tax:

  • A lower-than-possible VM Density.
  • The continued need for stand-alone bare-metal workloads.
  • A proliferation of the three-tier architecture.

To compensate, organizations are forced to:

  • Buy more or more powerful physical servers than what should be necessary.
  • Buy high-performance dedicated all-flash arrays.
  • Face a never-ending future of premature server and storage refreshes.

The Cost of the VMware Tax is one of the hidden costs of VMware. Learn about the rest of them in our on-demand webinar, “The 4 Hidden Costs of VMware.”

The Cost of VMware Tax on Server Planning

The first cost of the VMware Tax is that meeting the organization’s demands requires using either fewer virtual machines (VMs) per server and more physical servers or more powerful physical servers to support more VMs per server. As we discuss in our article, “HCI isn’t Infrastructure,” using more servers highlights the scaling issues common in Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) and leads most customers to purchase more powerful servers to reduce cluster node count.

Using more powerful servers with more CPUs, cores, and RAM increases those servers’ costs. This approach also increases VMware licensing costs since the company charges by the physical CPU installed in its nodes, and the expectation is that after the Broadcom acquisition is complete, the company will switch to a per-core licensing strategy and is expected to raise costs even further.

Overcoming the VMware Tax with Powerful Servers

Overcoming the cost of the VMware Tax by using more powerful servers exposes the lack of flexibility when scaling, the typical VMware architecture has. More powerful servers will likely be used longer before organizational growth requires IT to add another server to the cluster. When it comes time to add additional servers to the cluster, two or three years later, that exact server type may no longer be available, or a better option may be available using a different CPU vendor. Managing nodes of different types within a VMware environment is convoluted, leading many customers to establish an entirely separate cluster, further increasing costs and complexity.

There is also the challenge of, after three or four years, the hypervisor or storage vendor may upgrade its software to the point that it no longer supports the original servers. At that point, IT is faced with refreshing its entire server infrastructure to maintain compatibility with the updated software.

The Cost of the VMware Tax on Scale

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) solutions expect a “balanced scale,” where the organization adds equal amounts of computing, storage, and networking. This requirement exposes another cost of the VMware Tax. No organization always needs to scale these three components at the same time. Especially when purchasing more powerful servers, the organization will likely need more storage performance or capacity before requiring additional computing resources.

Again, legacy HCI designs like those from VMware (vSAN, vSphere, NSX) or Nutanix expect almost identical nodes to be added to the cluster. To meet capacity demand, customers are adding servers similar to their original installation, and they end up paying for and wasting a massive amount of CPU and memory that come with those servers. Although a few vendors have evolved to allow more storage-centric nodes, these are complex band-aids with many compromises and increasing complexity. Most customers choose not to use them.

The enforcement of balanced scaling forces most customers considering HCI solutions to disqualify them later. As a result, the VMware Tax indirectly proliferates the more complex and expensive three-tier architecture.

VergeOS Enables High VM Density and Imbalanced Scale

VergeOS is a highly efficient data center operating system (DCOS) that enables high per-physical server VM populations. It does this by integrating the three standard data center tiers (networking, computing, and storage) into a single code base that is a fraction of the size in terms of lines of code without sacrificing features. This effort is the foundation of Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) which moves beyond the flawed HCI model to deliver the full promise of a truly converged infrastructure.

A more compact code base means faster execution on the same hardware. Integrating the traditional data center tiers means that efficiency carries throughout the entire solution. Our typical customer can support 25 to 30% more VMs per physical server with VergeOS than their prior solution (Hyper-V, VMware, Nutanix) while running on the very same, existing hardware.

The lack of flexible scale increases The Cost of the VMware Tax

As the organization’s demands grow, VergeOS provides flexible and intelligent scaling. An optimized internal-node communication protocol ensures near-linear performance increments as IT adds nodes to the environment. VergeOS’ flexibility means that IT can add nodes of almost any type, including storage or compute-centric nodes. VergeIO has never forced the retirement of old servers to support a new version of VergeOS.

VMware Tax Encourages Bare Metal

Despite all the advantages and flexibility of virtualization, the cost of the VMware Tax means that many customers still view some applications as bare-metal only. The performance demands of these servers are just too strenuous for the virtual environment. They either starve other VMs on the same node of resources or can’t continually guarantee access to the performance these applications demand. They also tend to be certain hardware types, like GPUs, that specific applications need, which legacy solutions don’t adequately virtualize.

The result is IT must purchase and stand up dedicated silos of computing and storage for these applications, which increases costs and complexity. Additionally, these bare-metal environments don’t benefit from core virtualization capabilities like seamless VM migration.

VergeOS Delivers Near Bare Metal Performance

VergeOS’ compute efficiency also helps formerly bare-metal-only workloads to be able to realize the benefits of virtualization. Historically, many bare-metal workloads remained bare-metal because of the storage I/O demands. VergeOS integration of storage, coupled with the performance of its file system, delivers near-bare-metal performance for these workloads. The VergeOS storage component, VergeFS, ensures all reads are local to the virtual machine. Finally, VergeOS supports nodes of various CPU classes within the same instance. Our customers can and do mix Intel, AMD, and GPU-based nodes, even of different generations. They repeatedly tell us that they were able to virtualize formerly bare-metal workloads without any degradation of performance.

Conclusion

With its inefficiencies and subsequent costs, the VMware Tax represents a significant concern for IT infrastructure planning. Its impact on VM density and the push toward bare-metal workloads signifies the increased expenses and complexities organizations face. As the technology landscape continues evolving, solutions like VergeOS emerge as viable alternatives, offering enhanced VM densities and near bare-metal performance.

By merging the conventional data center tiers and focusing on efficient operation, VergeOS addresses the challenges posed by VMware’s model and presents a forward-thinking solution that adapts to an organization’s dynamic needs. As organizations strive for agility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability, transitioning to platforms prioritizing these attributes will be paramount. VergeOS makes that transition seamless thanks to our IOmigrate capability.

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

VMware Snapshots Have a High Cost

August 1, 2023 by George Crump Leave a Comment

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: Blog, VMwareExit Tagged With: Alternative, VMware

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