VMware

Evaluating new technology solutions is a crucial but often daunting task for IT professionals, especially when considering the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. As organizations seek more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable alternatives, testing VMware alternatives often presents significant obstacles, particularly when IT teams are limited by time and lack the necessary hardware resources to test new platforms properly.

At VergeIO, we understand these challenges, so we’ve introduced self-paced, hands-on labs that enable IT professionals to explore VergeOS without the typical barriers. These labs give users a practical, real-world experience with our ultraconverged infrastructure, helping them understand how it can simplify their operations and provide a robust alternative to VMware.

Key Challenge 1: Lack of Time

One of the biggest challenges of testing VMware alternatives is finding the time to evaluate new platforms thoroughly. IT teams are already stretched too thin, managing existing infrastructure, troubleshooting day-to-day issues, and running systems smoothly. Adding a product evaluation to their to-do list can seem impossible. Many IT professionals that we speak to have renewed VMware for one year in the hopes that they will have time to vet the growing cast of alternatives properly.

VergeIO’s Solution

Our hands-on labs are designed to fit into the busiest schedules. Each lab takes just 15 to 20 minutes to complete, giving IT professionals a focused, detailed look at VergeOS without demanding significant time. During a break or after hours, you can explore VergeOS on your terms, gaining valuable insights without sacrificing your daily responsibilities.

Key Challenge 2: Lack of Available Test Hardware

Another common hurdle in testing VMware alternatives is the need for dedicated test hardware. Setting up a lab environment with multiple servers, storage devices, and networking equipment to mirror a VMware setup is costly and time-consuming, and many organizations simply don’t have the budget or resources to create this kind of environment.

VergeIO’s Solution

With VergeIO’s hands-on labs, you don’t need any additional hardware. Our labs provide an environment that mirrors real-world conditions, allowing you to experience VergeOS without needing physical infrastructure. This eliminates the financial and logistical barriers to testing VMware alternatives and lets you evaluate our solution wherever and whenever you’re ready.

How VergeIO’s Hands-On Labs Help Overcome These Challenges

VergeIO’s self-paced, hands-on labs are specifically designed to overcome the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. These labs provide a seamless, immersive experience without complex setups or additional hardware. Here’s what you can explore:

• VMware Migration Lab: This lab walks you through connecting to a VMware environment, migrating virtual machines into VergeOS, using ioMigrate, and launching them. You’ll learn how VergeOS simplifies the migration process, making it clear what to expect when transitioning from VMware.
• Data Protection and Recovery Lab: Learn how VergeOS’ ioClone-powered snapshot technology helps protect virtual machines and recover even to a single file. You’ll create VMs, take snapshots, and recover lost data, giving you firsthand experience with just one of VergeOS’ advanced data protection features.
• Virtual Data Centers Lab: In this lab, you will learn how to build multi-tenant virtual data centers, deploy multiple virtual machines, and isolate workloads for enhanced security. This lab demonstrates VergeOS’ secure multi-tenant capabilities, which are crucial for businesses managing diverse workloads and requiring workload isolation.
• More Labs Coming Soon: We’re continually expanding our lab offerings. Upcoming labs will cover the following:
  • Networking deep dive: exploring micro-segmentation, firewalls, and routers
  • NAS lab: learn how to use VergeOS’ built-in NAS capabilities
  • Ransomware Protection and Recovery Lab: to teach you how to configure VergeOS to defend against and recover from ransomware attacks with an infrastructure-wide approach

Why These Labs Matter

VergeIO’s hands-on labs remove the typical roadblocks that IT professionals face, by addressing the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. These labs offer a real-world look at VergeOS’ ultraconverged infrastructure, which integrates virtualization, storage, and networking into a single piece of software. You’ll quickly see how VergeOS is the future of virtualization that can optimize your operations, lower costs, and improve data resiliency—without additional hardware or extensive setup.

As you progress through the labs, you’ll gain practical experience that will give you a head start when you’re ready to conduct a full Proof of Concept (PoC) with your virtual machines in your data center. The hands-on labs provide the confidence to confirm that VergeOS is the right solution for your environment. By the time you begin the PoC, you’ll already be familiar with the platform, which can significantly reduce your testing time and help you move forward with VergeOS more efficiently.

Start Exploring Today

If the challenges of testing VMware alternatives have held you back, VergeIO’s hands-on labs are your solution. These labs allow you to explore VergeOS at your own pace without requiring complex setup or additional equipment.

Ready to see for yourself? Register now to access VergeIO’s hands-on labs and explore how easy it is to migrate, protect, and manage your virtual infrastructure with VergeOS.

As IT Professionals review the latest DCIG report, “TOP 5 Enterprise VMware vSphere Alternatives,” they may ask themselves, “Are all VMware alternatives the same?”. Many are very similar. The only real difference between most alternatives and VMware, especially in the post-Broadcom era, is that they are less expensive, from a licensing perspective.

Like VMware, however, they all take a similar path to creating a complete infrastructure solution. They use multiple and separate software applications to build the IT stack. Unlike VMware, most alternatives are not directly responsible for all the components of their infrastructure bundle. This modular approach to infrastructure will leave most organizations with an IT stack that is just as complex, brittle, and ultimately as expensive as VMware.

Are VMware Alternative Hypervisors The Same?

Vendors whose “value add” is a GUI lose the opportunity for optimizations and typically have limited source-code-level expertise. Suppose an issue arises between KVM and other components within their solution stack, which they also don’t have direct control over. In these situations, they often cannot resolve the issue without the community’s help, forcing customers to tolerate the problem longer than if they had a vendor with deep code-level experience.

VergeOS’ Highly Optimized Hypervisor

VergeIO also uses KVM and QEMU inside of VergeOS. However, the VergeIO development team focuses on making storage, memory, networking, and other virtual devices more efficient in minimizing overhead and maximizing performance. Most importantly, instead of separate programs for all of these functions, they have all been integrated as services within VergeOS, work that no other hypervisor vendor has undertaken.

VergeIO has done deep code optimization into KVM/QEMU to integrate its storage services (VergeFS) and network services (VergeFabric), flattening the IT stack into a single piece of infrastructure software. The goal is to maximize efficiency and unlock the hardware’s performance potential. Unlike other VMware alternative vendors, VergeIO has control of and expertise over all the infrastructure services. As a result, the VergeIO development team has a deep understanding, at a source code level, of both KVM and QEMU.

Are All VMware Alternative Storage Services the Same?

The storage component of VMware alternatives is a little more confusing. Some provide almost no storage services, requiring a standalone storage system. Most traditional KVM-based VMware alternatives will incorporate another open-source software solution like CEPH or ZFS into their package. Again, they typically don’t have a deep understanding of the CEPH or ZFS source code and don’t have direct control over it. These vendors only “integration” is adding support for managing the separate storage software through their GUI.

Several recent entries into the VMware alternative market are companies that used to provide storage services under VMware but are now looking to position themselves for the alternative market. These new VMware alternatives are typically software-defined storage solutions that have created a way to run as a VM under KVM instead of VMware. These vendors have even less knowledge of the KVM source code and have made little or no optimizations to that code. Many vendors can not scale with the hypervisor and must dedicate storage functions to two nodes. Other vendors can’t support external storage and don’t provide a bridge to more affordable hyperconverged storage.

VergeOS’ Optimized Storage Services

VergeIO wrote our storage software from the ground up to be optimized to work in a virtualized environment, something that an object store (CEPH) or file system (ZFS) is not. Second, we wrote VergeFS to integrate into a hypervisor, not be a VM of one. We integrated into VergeOS.

Combining these two design goals creates a highly efficient storage service providing enterprise-class features and performance. VergeFS’ performance often exceeds that of standalone storage arrays and delivers features like:

• ioClone: Unlimited, independent snapshots with no performance impact.
• Global Inline Data Deduplication: Infrastructure-wide data efficiency.
• ioGuardian: maintaining data access even after multiple drive and server failures.
• Fibre Channel Arrays: VergeOS provides a bridge to hyperconverged infrastructure.
• Mixed Nodes: Storage-only, Compute-only, and Blade servers are all supported.

Are All VMware Alternative Network Services the Same?

The networking components of VMware alternatives are as confusing as the storage. Most vendors have no additional networking functionality other than what is built into the core hypervisor. Those that rely heavily on third parties. Most customers will continue to use networking appliances instead of counting on any of the hypervisor capabilities, which means they are paying extra for something that should be built into the infrastructure software.

The VMware alternative vendor may or may not be able to manage these network capabilities from the GUI. Problem resolution is a problem for them, as they do not have direct control over the software.

VergeOS Integrates Network Services

VergeOS provides complete Layer 2 / Layer 3 network services, including firewall, routing, and other services. These services are integrated into the VergeOS GUI, simplifying network management. Customers can use their existing network appliances and then gradually transition to VergeOS’ services when ready.

Are All VMWare Alternatives Able to Offer Private Cloud

Take advantage of this part. Every data center, no matter how small or what industry, can benefit by using secure multi-tenancy. Most IT professionals assume that a private cloud is essential only to organizations providing infrastructure (IaaS). IaaS providers have the use case to justify the high cost of private cloud software. However, most organizations can benefit if the private cloud capability is affordable. Unfortunately, with only a few exceptions, most VMware alternatives do not integrate multi-tenancy into their offering. If it is available, it is only as an expensive add-on.

VergeOS Virtual Data Centers Bring Multi-Tenancy to Every Data Center

Virtual Data Centers (VDC) are VergeIO’s take on multi-tenancy integrated into VergeOS. There is no additional charge for their use. A VDC encapsulates the physical data center like a VM encapsulates a physical server. Once encapsulated, you can manipulate it like a VM. They can also be snapshotted using our ioClone technology, making them ideal for patch testing and other virtual lab functionality.

The most universal use case is using VDCs for disaster recovery. By leveraging our built-in replication and global inline deduplication, you can copy a VDC to a remote site and keep that site up to date. When you make this copy, you make a perfectly consistent copy of the data center. Because of the encapsulation, you capture all the VM settings, network configuration, and, of course, all the data. Check out this chalk-talk video to learn more about VDCs.

Are All VMware Alternative Migration Services the Same?

Most VMware Alternatives have some functionality to help you migrate your VMware VMs to the target hypervisor. Usually, these migration services are separate programs that run externally from the core infrastructure software applications. Depending on the vendor migration tool, jobs can take ten minutes or more per VM. As we cover in our article “Minimizing VMware Migration Downtime,”, migration speed is critical for various reasons.

VergeOS Integrated, Fast VMware Migrations

VergeIO VMware migration capability, ioMigrate, is integrated into VergeOS, enabling fast, seamless migration. The first step in the migration process is to “back up” the VMware VM to a VergeOS host. ioMigrate uses VMware’s backup API set to get a complete copy of the entire VM, including its network settings. It is stored on VergeOS and can function as a backup/DR option.

The second step is to import the VM into VergeOS. Before importing the VM, you can take a snapshot of it if something goes wrong in testing. The import process takes seconds, no matter how many VMs are being migrated. The demonstration below shows 10 VMs being converted in less than ten seconds.

Conclusion

While it may seem that all VMware alternatives are essentially the same, significant differences exist in how these alternatives provide a complete infrastructure solution, particularly in handling hypervisors, storage, networking, and migration services. Most alternatives replicate VMware’s modular and complex architecture, providing little beyond a different price tag and a customized GUI. In contrast, VergeIO offers a unique and optimized solution that integrates and refines each component, from its deeply optimized hypervisor and storage services to its comprehensive network capabilities and efficient migration tools.

VergeIO’s approach to creating a cohesive infrastructure operating system sets us apart. By controlling and understanding every aspect of the IT stack at the source code level, VergeIO ensures higher performance, greater reliability, and a smoother user experience. This integrated, efficient, and highly optimized solution not only simplifies IT management but goes far beyond a lower upfront licensing cost, continually reducing the long-term cost of infrastructure.