System virtualization remain the foundation of several datacenter infrastructures, although somebody thinkgs that virtualization is not cool anymore.
For the on-prem deployment VMware (by Broadcom) vSphere is still the main solution with a large adoption (over 60% according with several analyst), but after Broadcom acquisition and all the changes in the licensing model and licensing price, some customers are looking for some alternatives.
And there are a lot of posts related to this topic:
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploring-top-5-alternatives-vmware-2024-sandeep-sharma-ew0ec/
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-6-vmware-alternatives-consider-2024-n1uec/
- https://redresscompliance.com/exploring-top-vmware-alternatives-a-guide-to-virtualization/
- https://kubedo.com/2024/03/05/alternatives_to_vmware/
- https://exeo.net/en/the-best-vmware-esxi-alternative/
- https://stormagic.com/resources/white-papers/2024-25-dcig-top-5-vmware-vsphere-alternatives-smb-edge-edition/
- https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/top-10-alternatives-competitors-to-vmware-in-2024/
- https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/server-virtualization/vendor/broadcom-vmware/product/vsphere/alternatives
From Gartner’s top five alternatives, the most common are:
- Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
- Public Cloud IaaS
- Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
- Microsoft Hyper-V
- Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
Other lists give a better order with a realistic order rate, for example the top ten virtualization solutions:
- VMware vSphere
- Hyper-V
- Nutanix Cloud Platform
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
- XenServer by Citrix
- Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization|Redhat Virtualization by IBM
- VM Server|Oracle Linux by Oracle
- Virtuozzo Hybrid Server
- Sangfor HCI
- Scale Computing
There are also detailed lists for some specific use cases, like: DCIG Report: top 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere alternatives
But with criteria you should consider before choosing a proper system virtualization solution?
Maturity and adoption level
Not all products have the same maturity level. Of course VMware was the first and has the maximum number of years of experience.
Same for the adoption level… some product has become a “de-facto standard” and will much more probable find virtual applicances or 3rd party solution for that product.
Scalability
The platform should grow with your business and be able to run your workloads without performance or resources constraints. It should be easy to add or reassign resources and manage an increasing number of virtual machines or containers.
Especially if you’re managing resource-intensive applications, don’t forget to look into the product’s resource efficiency.
Evaluate compatibility and validation
Before anything else, you must ensure that the alternative supports the operating systems and applications you plan to run.
Compatibility with your existing hardware and software ecosystem minimizes disruptions during the transition.
Support by the vendor and from the community
Not all vendors have the same support and this can make a huge difference for a mission critical solution like a server virtualization product!
Also strong community support can be invaluable, especially for open-source solutions but also for proprietary solutions. Look for active forums, documentation, and third-party tools that integrate with the platform.
Interoperability and 3rd party support
Expecially for backup, if you plan to use backup based in VM images, you need a strong interoperability, support and certification process by different backup vendors.
Of course, you can manage all the workloads like physical systems and backup thought agent using the same VM network, but this option is less preferable and has scaling issues.
Migration tools
One important category of the 3rd party tools are the migration tools. In the past they were crucial to facilitate and accelerate the migration from physical (using P2V tools), but now they can be very important for platform migration or cloud migration (using V2V tools).
Cost and licensing model
Of course, the cost is important, but you should consider the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), because usually there are a lot of hidden costs (like some operation costs). You should always understand the total cost of ownership of any solution, including initial licensing, subscriptions, and any needed support services. Open-source solutions may offer cost advantages but evaluate if they meet your needs compared to paid alternatives.
A price model per socket (or per host) is perfect in most cases, but a recent trend is move to a cost per core or cost per usage.
Knowledge and expertise
Moving from one virtualization layer to another, while technically can be quite easy it also means that you need to build up new knowledge on another set of technology. This is not something that is done overnight and needs to be planned properly. Secondly depending on which technology you choose, the pool of people that know that specific technology might also be a lot fewer then the ones that know VMware.
Manageability and usability
Related to the required knowledge, a user-friendly management interface simplifies administration tasks and reduces the learning curve for your team. If you need to train your employees, you should know that in advance.
But you need also a powerful command line or other ways (like RestAPI) to perform automation at scale.
Security and compliance
When choosing an alternative to ESXi, you should look for features like secure boot, role-based access control, and network isolation capabilities.
And have also the proper security certifications/compliances.
Features and capabilities
In the past the features gap was a huge differentiator, but now most of the virtualization solutions are offering the features you most need, such as live migration, high availability, and backup functionalities.
For SMB in fact the difference is quite small (for features comparison), but for the Enterprise still there are some unique features available only in some products.
