Open Source VMware Alternative

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

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

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

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

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

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 Using Horizon region switch or a stretched control plane
(Alternatively using ManageIQ)
2 Requires Managed Kubernetes service installation (Gardener)
3 Via Terraform, Ansible, Heat or Openstack SDK
4 Using third-party migration software

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

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

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

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 Helm based application, optionally via KubeApps

Key features:

• Workload optimization
• Inter cloud live migration
• Bulk migration
• Cloud-to-cloud migration
• Disaster protection
• Traffic engineering

Comparable features:

• Workload optimization – yes(1)
• Inter cloud live migration – yes
• Bulk migration – yes
• Cloud-to-cloud migration  – yes(2)
• Disaster protection – yes(3)
• Traffic engineering – no

1 Provided by OpenStack Watcher
2 Using either Coriolis or Cyclone
3 Using Coriolis, Storware or other tools

Key features:

• Remote desktops
• Hybrid cloud management

Comparable features:

• Remote desktops – yes
• Hybrid cloud management – no

Key features:

• PostgreSQL support
• MySQL support

Comparable features:

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