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VMware Alternatives

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

Open Source vs. VMware

opensource

✅ Zero license fees and no lock-in ✅ Freedom to get support from different providers ✅ Transparent processes and many established projects ✅ Can replace 80% or more of VMware features

vmware

❌ Subscription based licensing bound to hardware specifications ❌ Expensive packages and support plans ❌ Academic pricing is gone ❌ Customers facing 200-600% price increase and full vendor-lock

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

IN-DEPTH 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 Manilayes
  • S3-Compatible Object Storage – yes
  • Native snapshots – yes
  • Multi-site: Ceph RBD Mirroringyes(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 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

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 Helm based application, optionally via KubeApps

11
VMware HCX (Application Mobility Platform)
OpenStack + Coriolis

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

12
VMware Horizon (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
OpenStack + OpenUDS

Key features:

  • Remote desktops
  • Hybrid cloud management

Comparable features:

  • Remote desktops – yes
  • Hybrid cloud management – no
13
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

Need help moving away from VMware?

Take control of your infrastructure and pay zero license fees

Tools to Migrate from VMware

Linux Logo
Virt-V2V

Open-source tool that converts VMs from VMware ESXi and XEN to KVM hypervisor. Part of Linux libguestfs library.

MigrateKit

Open-source tool by VEXXHOST to perform migrations from VMware to OpenStack with minimum downtime.

Coriolis

Paid tool by CloudBase for bi-directional VM migrations. Supported platforms include OpenStack and VMware.

In case of these or other questions

What can replace VMware? ⛅

Which Open Source solutions are recommended? 🛠️

Can we migrate our workloads with minimum downtime? 🏂

How to teach our team working with new software stack? 💸

We’d love to hear from you and help to solve your challenges! Wherever you are in your Infra journey, we have the expertise to make it a smooth experience.