VMware Alternatives

OpenMetal offers an open source alternative to VMware that can reduce your costs while providing more flexibility and stability.

Key Considerations for Using OpenMetal as an Alternative to VMware

With cloud hosting costs on the rise and the recent acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, users looking for an alternative to VMWare and other proprietary hosting platforms are increasingly considering open source options due to their flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Many open source virtualization options not only deliver the same features, but they can remove costly licensing fees to improve your bottom line profitability.

Open Source Alternative to VMware

For more than 20 years, VMware has been a leader in the cloud infrastructure space, expanding its portfolio of services into all facets of public, private, and hybrid clouds. In truth, however, they are predominantly a software company that pioneered virtualization before going on to create the concept of software-defined data centers (SDDC).

Now, as they focus on multi-cloud models, they are increasingly moving away from hosting on their own cloud and, instead, towards putting their software onto partner cloud platforms that include AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and more.

While there are plenty of alternatives to VMware from other proprietary solutions such as Azure, Oracle VM, Citrix Hypervisor and others, what about open source? There are open source alternatives that offer a wide range of features and capabilities, from server virtualization to cloud computing.

Let’s look at some of the greatest advantages of open source alternatives to help you make an informed decision that is best for your organization’s needs.

Cloud Cost Considerations

One of the biggest considerations is the way costs factor into bottom line profitability. In an OpenMetal blog article “OpenStack vs VMware: Cost Considerations” we took a deep dive into a few key topics:

Proprietary Licensing Costs

Licensing costs account for a significant portion of VMware costs, much like many of the other VMware competitor services. And because these platforms are built to operate on special purpose hardware and software, the higher your need for higher levels of service, the higher you can expect your licensing costs to grow.

Open source alternatives are typically built to be vendor-agnostic to work on regular hardware and with software that is openly available to anyone without limitations.

Vendor Lock-In

Vendor lock-in refers to a situation where customers are not able to easily move their products or services from one vendor to another. This is typically because of incompatibilities or dependency on proprietary hardware and software. But some pricing models also have the ability to restrict or complicate customers from easily moving from one vendor to another.

Because open source alternatives are not dependent on any hardware or software vendors, this removes commitments to any single vendor. 

Staffing and Support

Because of the commonly proprietary nature of VMware and its competitors, the requirement to obtain specialized skills to manage and support makes it difficult and costly to hire and train staff, and/or maintain ongoing certifications.

The open source community can help to overcome some of these concerns by providing access to a world of problem solvers ready to help resolve issues that may arise.

Operational Considerations

While VMware pioneered new technologies, their development is still bound by internal policies and motivations. The open source community includes billions of people worldwide that contributed unfettered by policy or special interests, enabling unlimited possibilities that can impact the following:

Development Speed

As opposed to proprietary products that develop and release enhancements as part of planned product releases, the open source community work never stops.

Collaboration is an expectation that brings open source developers of all expertise to come together and solve problems quickly, propelling new innovations and results.

Additionally, as open source code is typically available to all, community members can use and apply code from existing projects as a base to accelerate new releases.

Software Quality

While proprietary software providers do thorough quality assurance testing, there can be possible conflicts of interest if and when conducted by internal teams.

When software is being developed via an open source project, concerns and vulnerabilities tend to be transparent so that the community can come together to resolve. This often results in exceptional levels of innovation and high quality outputs.

Security

Like the software quality discussion above, proprietary software is often vetted for security strengths. But because internal teams are all focused on the same platform, it may create blind spots for unique risks. And, when identified, it can take time to reshuffle employee priorities to resolve and formally release.

The visibility of open source code open access allows community developers to review and improve upon open source programs. It can also accelerate reviews by the community, to detect vulnerabilities that can be fixed very rapidly.

OpenMetal is Something Different

There are many options as an alternative to VMware. But if you are looking for something truly unique, how about an open source platform that is also challenging the norms of conventional cloud?

Single-Tenant Environment

OpenMetal clouds are single-tenant environments, hosted on a Cloud Core made up of 3 dedicated servers that are assigned to you, offering the inherent performance, security, and TCO you would expect from a private cloud model.

Use and Scale On Demand

OpenMetal clouds can be deployed in less than 45 seconds, scaled up (or down) on demand, and billed as little as hourly, offering the inherent low cost of entry, scalability, and ease of use that you would expect from a public cloud model.

Control and Customization

OpenMetal clouds give users more control over the root configurations of Cloud Core servers to customize settings and optimize performance for your unique needs.

No Hardware Management

Whiles users can customize server operations, OpenMetal still manages the server hardware. It is still a cloud. It is just YOUR cloud to use as you desire.

Built on OpenStack

OpenMetal clouds are built on top of the power of OpenStack and set up using Kolla-Ansible and Ceph-Ansible with various OpenStack cloud services enabled at deployment.

Committed to Open Source

OpenMetal supports and works to expand open source efforts through community participation and the development of educational and learning programs.

OpenMetal clouds are built for cutting edge companies that want the best of public cloud, private cloud, and bare metal to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

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