VMware - who's changing to an alternative platform?
Discussion
If you're a cloud provider - even just for your own SaaS products, you can't have failed to notice that VMware cost April onwards is going to be in the region of 5x what you're paying now.
One issue is we've built our platform with excess cores and memory because they're cheap and under the current license model, we pay for consumed memory which we can control. New model is cores - so if you've got 800 cores in your site that's what you have to pay for. Even worse is you now have to include your DR site in the core count where currently it's as much memory as you need to run monitoring and a handful of minor services for replication etc.
We've built a XCP-NG test system, running well in test at the moment, looks to be a viable alternative. Even has backup and replication built in to save cost of Veeam.
Anybody else testing alternatives ? We looked at Nutanix and it might be one frying pan into another, smaller, frying pan but could very likely have the same issue later on.
One issue is we've built our platform with excess cores and memory because they're cheap and under the current license model, we pay for consumed memory which we can control. New model is cores - so if you've got 800 cores in your site that's what you have to pay for. Even worse is you now have to include your DR site in the core count where currently it's as much memory as you need to run monitoring and a handful of minor services for replication etc.
We've built a XCP-NG test system, running well in test at the moment, looks to be a viable alternative. Even has backup and replication built in to save cost of Veeam.
Anybody else testing alternatives ? We looked at Nutanix and it might be one frying pan into another, smaller, frying pan but could very likely have the same issue later on.
I'm interested to see if people do jump and where to.
Doesn't impact us too much internally, but we do (did?) build small vSphere deployments when we're putting managed services into customer environments. The hike in new licensing prices just gets lumped into the bill to the customer.
ESXi free has also been withdrawn. I can't help but feel that is short sighted. How many IT people have picked up VMware skills from tinkering with home-labs and carried them into / across jobs? Then vSphere (etc) becomes their go to choice for projects.
Doesn't impact us too much internally, but we do (did?) build small vSphere deployments when we're putting managed services into customer environments. The hike in new licensing prices just gets lumped into the bill to the customer.
ESXi free has also been withdrawn. I can't help but feel that is short sighted. How many IT people have picked up VMware skills from tinkering with home-labs and carried them into / across jobs? Then vSphere (etc) becomes their go to choice for projects.
We run Scale Computing Clusters (4 modes in each) in our prod and DR sites and use in built snapshots (for ransomware defenses as the snapshots are immutable)
We also use the in-built replication to update the DR Sites (alongside SQL Merge replication for our trading system)
We looked at Nutanix, but on a cost vs features Scale won hands down.
https://www.scalecomputing.com/
We also use the in-built replication to update the DR Sites (alongside SQL Merge replication for our trading system)
We looked at Nutanix, but on a cost vs features Scale won hands down.
https://www.scalecomputing.com/
seveb said:
I'd not heard of Scale Computing, thanks for that. Looks interesting.
Its great quite honestly. Cloning a VM takes seconds, as does adding disk space (which you can do on the fly). We decommissioned our VMWare env quite a while ago due to cost of licensing and hardware and also the huge amount of vulnerabilities in it that took up resources to mitigate. We moved everything onto Scale.
A year or so ago, I would have recommended oVirt (https://ovirt.org/) as being worth a look (upstream RHEV) but sadly, it seems its future is uncertain, which is a shame as its really very good (somehow xcp-ng and Proxmox got/get all the attention).
Other options that might be worth looking at, depending on exactly what you're after:
Other options that might be worth looking at, depending on exactly what you're after:
- Apache CloudStack (https://cloudstack.apache.org/)
- OpenNebula (https://opennebula.io/)
seveb said:
We've built a XCP-NG test system, running well in test at the moment, looks to be a viable alternative. Even has backup and replication built in to save cost of Veeam.
Anybody else testing alternatives ? We looked at Nutanix and it might be one frying pan into another, smaller, frying pan but could very likely have the same issue later on.
Interesting, what's the backup system like? We have a much (much) smaller setup than you, currently approx 200VMs. Currently we use vSphere and Backup Exec and aren't impressed with the reliability.Anybody else testing alternatives ? We looked at Nutanix and it might be one frying pan into another, smaller, frying pan but could very likely have the same issue later on.
TBH I'd written of Xen based solutions as we had some serious performance and reliability issues with it last time we tested.
It's not so much the licensing price change, it's how Broadcom have gone about it that's made it untenable for us. We're a pretty normal sized corporate customer, 30 hosts, 600 VMs, but because our licensing is purchased through our worldwide parent company, we're being forced by VMWare to purchase the full Cloud Foundation licence, when the smaller licence levels would suit each group company perfectly while still providing Broadcom with a good old bump in revenue.
Combine this with very public layoffs of what seems like pretty much everyone who's ever contributed anything of note at VMWare and we're rapidly losing confidence that the product quality will be maintained as well.
We're most likely to go to Nutanix for general VMs and Xen for our Citrix clusters.
Combine this with very public layoffs of what seems like pretty much everyone who's ever contributed anything of note at VMWare and we're rapidly losing confidence that the product quality will be maintained as well.
We're most likely to go to Nutanix for general VMs and Xen for our Citrix clusters.
I spent 4 years at a cloud provider helping customers with $1bn tech budgets. I spent a lot of time working with the people from VMWare. They were all incredibly nice but knew they had a dying product and were grateful for any extension they could get. A lot of the work they were doing for me was designed around getting out of VMware but had 2 year time lines and they figured that was 2 years of revenue.
On the flip side, the pivotal team treated me like the enemy. The VMware team got 2 years of revenue. The cloud foundry team got to the end of the existing contract and they were done.
On the flip side, the pivotal team treated me like the enemy. The VMware team got 2 years of revenue. The cloud foundry team got to the end of the existing contract and they were done.
That's the thing though. it's not a dying product. Yes it's not what it once was, it's cool and new and shiny, and the DevOps team will sneer at you but so many companies still have rooms full of hosts and VMs that everyone is desperate to just quietly keep running.
In vSphere Broadcom have a rock solid product that if they just keep it supported will give them revenues for decades. Nothing fancy, just bugfixes, hardware support updates and keep raking in the cash.
In vSphere Broadcom have a rock solid product that if they just keep it supported will give them revenues for decades. Nothing fancy, just bugfixes, hardware support updates and keep raking in the cash.
I work for an IT VAR and we're having so many conversations with customers wanting to move from VMware; if anyone wants a chat I'd be happy to do so.
I think the biggest problem is the way Broadcom have handled it and mandating everyone move to core-based subscription immediately and the perpetual licences can't have support renewed; for some customers their costs will rocket as a result. It wouldn't be so bad if they'd done some sort of 'soft-migration' path for existing customers.
I think the biggest problem is the way Broadcom have handled it and mandating everyone move to core-based subscription immediately and the perpetual licences can't have support renewed; for some customers their costs will rocket as a result. It wouldn't be so bad if they'd done some sort of 'soft-migration' path for existing customers.
agent006 said:
That's the thing though. it's not a dying product. Yes it's not what it once was, it's cool and new and shiny, and the DevOps team will sneer at you but so many companies still have rooms full of hosts and VMs that everyone is desperate to just quietly keep running.
In vSphere Broadcom have a rock solid product that if they just keep it supported will give them revenues for decades. Nothing fancy, just bugfixes, hardware support updates and keep raking in the cash.
It could be dying in the sector I worked in and flourishing in yours. Different customers have different perspectives. In vSphere Broadcom have a rock solid product that if they just keep it supported will give them revenues for decades. Nothing fancy, just bugfixes, hardware support updates and keep raking in the cash.
My focus is global financial services including insurance. These customers had committed to going 100% cloud and VMware didn’t make long term sense to them. However, it’s the easiest platform to migrate from data center to cloud via VMC. But, VMC is just a stepping stone.
It comes down to priorities though and $6M infra costs supporting $6B business (real example) means the risk of change isn’t worth the reward.
Also, while my customers have all put VMware on the none strategic side of the line, mainframe continues to be all the way at the extreme of none strategic. I had a customer that published an article in 1987 on the reasons why getting off the mainframe was their priority. They now have 3.
Yeah we provide a whole hosted platform/DR etc. and will be moving.
We went through decommissioning all our own and clients on-prem Citrix/XenApp environments in whatever guise about 2 years ago because everyone hates it. Doubt we'll do a 180 on that.
We're cheap so it's going to be Hyper-V.
We went through decommissioning all our own and clients on-prem Citrix/XenApp environments in whatever guise about 2 years ago because everyone hates it. Doubt we'll do a 180 on that.
We're cheap so it's going to be Hyper-V.
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