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VMware Alternatives

Majority of VMware users considering to move.
Are you among those looking for VMware alternatives?

Switch to

VMware Alternatives

Majority of VMware users considering to move.
Are you among those looking for VMware alternatives?

Open Source VMware Alternatives

20 years ago there were not so many VMware alternatives. The situation is different today.
UP TO 90% OF VMWARE CAN BE REPLACED


Projects such as OpenStack, OVN, KVM, Libvirt, Kubernetes, MAAS and Ceph altogether represent a serious competition for VMware.
Developed in open source communities over the past 10-15 years those projects matured and became the best in their segment or made it in the TOP 3.
Cloudification team has been contributing and advocating open source solutions since the very beginning. Our expertise allowed us to bring those projects together in a form of c12n.cloud – a fully automated, GitOps based cloud solution.

Open Source VMware Alternatives

20 years ago there were not so many VMware alternatives. The situation is different today.
UP TO 90% OF VMWARE CAN BE REPLACED


Projects such as OpenStack, OVN, KVM, Libvirt, Kubernetes, MAAS and Ceph altogether represent a serious competition for VMware.
Developed in open source communities over the past 10-15 years those projects matured and became the best in their segment or made it in the TOP 3.
Cloudification team has been contributing and advocating open source solutions since the very beginning. Our expertise allowed us to bring those projects together in a form of c12n.cloud – a fully automated, GitOps based cloud solution.

Introducing c12n.cloud - Open Source VMware Alternative

Control Plane
  • Highly-Available
  • VM Live Migration
  • Dynamic Scheduling
  • Easy Cluster Scaling

Network
  • Virtual Networks, VRF
  • Load Balancers (LBaaS)
  • Security Groups
  • QoS & L2 Gateway

Storage
  • Block / NFS / S3 Support
  • SSD / HDD / NVME based
  • Distributed & Redundant
  • From 6 to 100s of nodes

Features
  • GPU Support
  • (Hyper-) Converged
  • Inventory Management
  • Alerting & Monitoring

What's under the hood?

Kubernetes, Openstack, Ceph, ArgoCD, MaaS, Prometheus and more

VMware vs. c12n.cloud Comparison

Num VMware c12n.cloud
1
VMware vSphere (Hypervisor ESXi)
OpenStack (Hypervisor KVM)

Key features:
(subject to subscription type and extra costs)

  • Web console
  • VM Live migration (vMotion)
  • Volume migration (Storage vMotion)
  • Clustering/HA for Control plane
  • Backup Integrations
  • Auto-rescheduling for VMs (VMHA)
  • Hot plug and extend (Net devices/volumes)
  • Site-to-site VM migration

Comparable features:
(subject to integration of additional components)

  • Web console - yes
  • Live migration - yes
  • Volume migration - yes
  • Control plane HA - yes
  • Backup-Integrations - yes
  • VMHA - yes(1)
  • Hot plug and extend (Networks/Volumes) - yes
  • Site-to-site VM migration - yes(2)

1 OpenStack provides VMHA functionality with Masakari
2 When OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs

2
VMware NSX (VCF + VMware Firewall)
OpenStack Neutron

Key features:

  • Switching (Layer 2 networks over Layer 3)
    • Within data center
    • Across data centers
  • Routing
    • Distributed routing
    • Active-active failover with physical routers
    • Static routing
    • Dynamic routing
    • IPv6 support
  • Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF)
    • Tenant isolation
    • Separate routing tables
    • NAT
    • EDGE Firewall
  • Quality of service control (QoS)
  • Security Groups
  • NSX gateway (L2 Gateway)
  • DPU-based acceleration
  • Federation and Multi-cloud networking

(consistent networking and security across DCs,
private/public cloud boundaries)

Comparable features:

  • Switching
    • Within data center - yes
    • Across data centers - yes(1)
  • Routing
    • Distributed routing - yes
    • Active-active failover with physical routers  - yes
    • Static routing - yes
    • Dynamic routing - yes
    • IPv6 support - yes
  • Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF)
    • Tenant isolation - yes
    • Separate routing tables - yes
    • NAT - yes
    • EDGE Firewall - no(2)
  • QoS - yes
  • Security Groups - yes
  • L2 Gateway - yes
  • DPU-based acceleration - yes
  • Federation and Multi-cloud networking - yes(3)

1 if OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs
2 OpenStack has FWaaS extension
3 Partially with BGP VPN interconnection extension

3
VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (by Avi Networks)
OpenStack Octavia

Key features:

  • L4-L7 load balancing
  • Container ingress gateway
  • HA architecture
  • Global server load balancing (GSLB)
  • Web application firewall (WAF)
  • Real-time application analytics
  • Multi-cloud load balancing
  • Application performance monitoring

Comparable features:

  • L4-L7 load balancing - yes
  • Container ingress gateway - yes
  • HA architecture - yes (stand-by)
  • Global server load balancing (GSLB) - no
  • Web application firewall (WAF) - no
  • Real-time application analytics - no
  • Multi-cloud load balancing - no
  • Application performance monitoring - no

AVI networks support integrations with previous versions of OpenStack

4
OpenStack Cinder + Manila (based on Ceph)

Key features:

  • Distributed Architecture:
    • Hyperconverged, integrates with vSphere
    • Based on local storage in ESXi hosts
    • Eliminates the need for external storage arrays
    • Cluster size: min 2 hosts, max: 64 hosts
    • Uses fast disks for caching and efficient placement
  • Data redundancy:
    • Distributed RAID, caching, and read/write optimizations
    • Provides fault tolerance at the storage policy level
  • Scalability:
    • Scailable with additional ESXi hosts to the cluster
    • Linear scalability of storage capacity and performance resources
  • Network speed: 25Gb/100Gb
  • File protocols: SMB, NFSv3, NFSv4.1
  • S3-Compatible Object Storage
  • Native snapshots

Multi-site cluster: vSAN Stretched Cluster

Comparable features:

  • Distributed Architecture - yes
    • Distributed architecture with a cluster of storage nodes running OSDs
    • Supports object, block, and file storage interfaces
    • Cluster size: min 6 hosts, max: 1000+ hosts
    • Does not require disks for caching
  • Data redundancy - yes
    • Data redundancy through replication (3 copies) and erasure coding
    • Replicates data across multiple OSDs or uses erasure coding for fault tolerance
  • Scalability - yes
    • Highly scailable, can scale out to tens of PBs of data
    • Allows adding or removing storage nodes dynamically without disruption
  • Network speed: 10Gb/25Gb/100Gb - yes
  • File protocols: CephFS, NFS via Manila - yes
  • S3-Compatible Object Storage - yes
  • Native snapshots - yes
  • Multi-site: Ceph RBD Mirroring - yes(1)

1 RBD mirroring affects performance due to journaling

5
VMware vCenter (VCF, VVF and vSphere STD)
OpenStack + Prometheus, MaaS, ArgoCD

Key features:

  • Centralized Control and Visibility
  • Web client and APIs
  • Inventory search 
  • Alerts and notifications
  • Dynamic resource allocation
  • Multi-tenant management

Comparable features:

  • Centralized control-plane - yes(1)
  • Web client and APIs - yes
  • Inventory search - yes
  • Alerts and notifications  - yes(2)
  • Dynamic resource allocation - yes(3)
  • Multi-tenant management - yes

1 When OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs
2 Based on Prometheus + Alertmanager with integrations
3 Provided by OpenStack Watcher

6
VMware Cloud Director (Cloud Management Platform)
OpenStack + Kubernetes

Key features:

  • Multi-site control
  • Cloud-native approach
    (Containers and VMs in the same environment)
  • Automation
  • Policy-driven Approach for Cloud management
  • Global Hybrid Cloud Management
  • Cloud Migration

Comparable features:

  • Multi-site control - yes(1)
  • Cloud-native approach - yes(2)
  • Automation - yes(3)
  • Policy-driven Approach - yes
  • Global Hybrid Cloud Management - no
  • Cloud Migration - yes(4)

1 When OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs
(Alternatively using ManageIQ)
2 Requires Managed Kubernetes service installation
3 Via Terraform, Heat or SDK
4 Using third-party migration service

7
VMware Aria Operations for Logs (vRealize Log Insight)
Elasticsearch + Logstash + Kibana

Key features:

  • Collect logs in files
  • Send logs to centralized system
  • Provide interface to search and analyze logs

Comparable features:

  • Collect logs in files - yes
  • Send logs to centralized system - yes
  • Interface for search and analysis - yes
8
VMware Aria Automation
OpenStack + ArgoCD

Key features:

  • Multi-cloud environments management
  • DevOps for infrastructure
  • Infrastructure as code and Kubernetes automation
  • Network automation
  • SecOps for infrastructure
  • SaltStack

Comparable features:

  • Multi-cloud environments management - yes(1)
  • DevOps for infrastructure - yes
  • Infrastructure as code and Kubernetes automation - yes
  • Network automation - yes
  • SecOps for infrastructure - yes
  • Ansible + GitOps approach - yes

1 Via GitOps approach based on ArgoCD

9
VMware Aria Operations for Networks
OpenStack Neutron + Hubble + SkyDive

Key features:

  • Networking
    • End-to-end troubleshooting traffic and path
    • Network assurance and verification
    • Overlay and underlay network troubleshooting
  • Applications
    • Application discovery and plan for migration
    • Measure application latency and performance
    • Finding network bottlenecks for application
    • Analyze traffic 
  • Security
    • Troubleshot security
    • FW policies and network segmentation recommendations
    • Dependencies map to reduce risk during migrations

Comparable features:

  • Networking
    • End-to-end troubleshooting traffic and path - yes(1)
    • Network assurance and verification  - yes
    • Overlay and underlay network troubleshooting - yes(1)
  • Applications
    • Application discovery and plan for migration - no
    • Measure application latency and performance - no
    • Finding network bottlenecks for application - no
    • Analyze traffic - yes
  • Security
    • Troubleshot security - no
    • FW policies and network segmentation recommendations  - yes
    • Dependencies map to reduce risk during migrations - no

1 Underlay network with Cilium Hubble, overlay (cloud) networks with SkyDive

10
VMware Tanzu (Container Orchestration)
OpenStack + Gardener

Key features:

  • Kubernetes cluster management
  • Multi-cloud
  • Application catalog
  • Service Mesh
  • Observability

Comparable features:

  • Kubernetes cluster management - yes(1)
  • Multi-cloud - no
  • Application catalog - yes(2)
  • Service Mesh - yes
  • Observability - yes

1 Using either Magnum or Gardener
2 Any Helm3 - based application

11
VMware Horizon (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
OpenStack + OpenUDS

Key features:

  • Remote desktops
  • Hybrid cloud management

Comparable features:

  • Remote desktops - yes
  • Hybrid cloud management - no
12
VMware SQL (Database as Service)
OpenStack Trove

Key features:

  • PostgreSQL support
  • MySQL support

Comparable features:

  • PostgreSQL support - yes
  • MySQL support - yes
  • MongoDB support - yes
  • Redis support - yes
  • Cassandra support - yes

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