Life After VMware - A summary and comparison of hypervisors!
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Welcome to the final-final video on evaluating your options if you’re coming from the world of VMware and ESXi, with this video being my opus, my coup de grâce, the finalé of this series that has taken up practically 4 solid months of my time. In this video, I’m going to attempt to aggregate and summarize as much of the information from the last four videos as I can, put a nice little bow on it, and hand it over to you!
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*Chapters*
0:00 Introduction
0:45 Let’s recap, shall we?
1:24 Can hypervisor ‘X’ replace VMware?
2:22 What’s it running, and how is it deployed?
4:17 Let’s talk supported storage!
5:09 Comparing backup solutions!
6:11 Live migration, workload balancing, and HA!
7:24 What about the GUI?
8:34 What’s it take to run them?
9:57 Let’s talk cost and support!
12:18 Where does this leave us?
13:01 What hypervisor should you run?
14:23 Closing! - Věda a technologie
Import from ESXi tool would have been a great point to discuss , great review.
Remember using ESXi almost ten years ago... Nice tool... Helped a lot!
I tried the xcp-ng and XO because of this channel. I have to say it was a nice surprise after Oracle VMM(it was also xen based, rests is the hell), but it has a few painful features/limitations compared to a VMware stack(we have ~400 hosts with various VMware product):
- tricky to setup in airgapped environment and more complicated if you do a "green field" setup, but it will change with XO Lite soon, if it will able to create/manage VMs
- There's only embedded VM console(at least what I found)
- You can only attached ISO image to the VM only from dedicated SR(I think it is XEN speciality, it was the same under Oracle VMM)
- User, group and ACL management is crap. It least I didn't find any reasonal logic behind it. Hard to setup, but not just compared to VMware, compared to anything.
- I didn't find a way to setup ACLs using VM tags. It would be useful and easier than selecting VMs.
On the other hand, it is pretty good. I hope the new versions of XO and xcp-ng will fix at least the user/acl management.
Just one comment on the proxmox part its the other way around, if you are using newer hardware you might want to choose proxmox because it comes with a much more recent kernel. XCP-NG on the other hand uses an incredibly old kernel which leads to al kinds of problems for people running newer hardware. Ran into this as well unfortunately otherwise I would be running it too. The devs seem to be more into back porting instead of just getting it working on a new kernel 🤷🏼♂️
Ok... Sorry to inform that proxmox do have load balance now! 😂
Where is this at in the config menus?
They have HA, but no automated load balancing based on workloads.
Regarding costs. If you buy datacenter versions of windows server for your hyperv, you can install an infinate number of windows vms. If you run any windows server you will always have to buy a seperate license ontop of your vm solution unless it's hyperv.
Any numbers for per host bases?
@rockychan1037 Don't have it at hand but there is a point where the cost effectiveness crosses over. If running more than 10 windows vms per host in a HCI cluster you will be running 4 or more hosts. Keeping cores around 48 per host the model quickly becomes obvious. A nutanix or vmware solution would cost as much per host for the windows servers and then you still have to pay their core costs in license fees. The prices are easily found online and a simple spreadsheet will tell you what you need to know regarding your environment.
@@GudmundurIngvarsson Thanks for the information. So it is now that Nutanix does not have a published price list.
Awesome review! Thanks
Great conclusion to a much needed series. You put in a ton of work here. I had a customer bring-up Verge IO up to me today and was curious if you've heard of it. Maybe it's also worth a video?
I haven’t, but I’ll look into it!
Hyper-V can also be managed by Windows Admin Center which is a pretty decent web administration offering from Microsoft
unfortunately with windows performance and kernel stability against linux
Has nothing to do with what I mentioned
The 2 worst things in this world in the same sentence 😂 hyper v and windows admin center eww
@@James-xg4jr Funny no issues with Windows Server at work
@@timothygibney159 yea it is just a bunch of I hate windows, linux zealots
Iv been using virtual box for a few years and only got more familiar with hypervisors this year, currently trying XCP-ng as it seems to be capable.
Microsoft Server has *Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct* , which can create pools of virtual storage from physical storage attached to specific nodes in a Windows Server cluster. Simply said, allows you to share all the disks in your cluster as if you were using some type of HCI platform. This is important, as now you can create MS Hyper-V Clusters with either external, internal, or internally shared storage.
HyperV Storage Spaces Direct is the MS HCI solution and with unternal NVMs I've achieved up to 1.5M iops in specific perf tests and as good as 250k iops with simulated generic workloads on both Windows and Ubuntu VMs.
Don't forget Rancher Harvester! Virtualization on top of kubernetes! So you get all of the benefits of k8s but you can still do containers (which are just way more resource efficent then VMs) and you get experience for real scale deployments if you want to!
Running VMs in k8s doesn't hold a candle to VMware or even any of the options covered in the video. Harvester puts some polish on it, sure. But the entire experience is far from fully baked.
@@funpunx What are some gaps in the experience in your opinion?
Mmh I don't know why they always forget that Hyper-V has its web console called Windows Admin Center, it's not perfect, but it addresses must of the mmc complains putting all together on the same platform and with interesting integrations and good graphics... so they just ignoring on purpose? 🤷🏻♂️
They also forgot that Microsoft Server has Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, which can create pools of virtual storage from physical storage attached to specific nodes in a Windows Server cluster. This allows you to share all the disks in your cluster as if you were using some type of HCI platform. Its big and means you don't need external storage anymore.
7:08 Proxmox does indeed have an automation section. It has an API you can use via bash or python. Once you play with it a little bit, it’s fairly easy to figure out how to use it.
My company decided to just convert to Microsoft since we already have those licenses with the OS.
But me personally I have VMWare Workstation Pro. and I use it for testing OS's and setting up small Virtual networks for various Application testing.
Is there something comparable besides Oracle? (also need something to be able to visualize MAC Os'es)
Nice series! I really enjoyed it, thank you for that. I would be interested in you opinion about oVirt, have you ever tried it? Maybe another video idea? :))
Same. I've used oVirt in place of VMware about 5 years ago and it was 100% a good HCI replacement for VMware/ESXi.
proxmox have drs-like mechanism. maybe not presente during the making of the video. also can importo form esxi via gui and more. not updated.
I was all set on XCP-NG but unfortunately, since the storage stack is so slow, it leaves too much performance on the table. We are a windows shop, so hyper-v it is.
VMWare has recently announced that VMWare Workstation Pro will be free for home/personal use. A good result for those using in that way.
I agree. I don't think it moves the needle in terms of the damage they've done to the brand and the future of VMware as a whole. But when an opportunity comes to get something like Workstation or Fusion for free, you take it!
Thanks!
That’s very kind of you! Thank you!
Long time Proxmox enjoyer here but I agree that the UI needs improvement. There are also simple operations that sometimes hang and requires you to drop to the terminal.
Was hoping too. Didn’t know VMware was still a thing and people know better 😂
I am using Incus/LXC simple, pure FOSS, light, powerfull (all what you want: clusters,etc.) and a little bit cli oriented.
It is a fork from LXD. And you know Ubuntu invested a lot in LXD (about 10 years x 10 people)....
My containers are NixOS so the servers :) So configurations are in 1 file only, easy.
it would be funny if you did another video laying out a hypothetical world where broadcom didn't decide to self destruct esxi
I kinda like this idea, I’ll think on it.
We are done with VMWARE and its crazy pricing - uninstalled VMWARE for thousands of servers. So glad. Now running MS Hyper-V and it works damn well.
Been working with hyper-v since server 2008r2 and the leaps and bounds of improvements up to now are insane and combining it with SCVMM is just so nice.
so how many servers did you move from esxi to hyper-v and in what time?
and how did you get at the point where you can say "it works damned well"?
Are you aware that 2019 will be the last release? MS is moving to Azure Stack HCI...
@@andreanivini38 and azure HCI doesn't perform well either... So the question stands, where is the magic coming from. Maybe we need some of these magicians that perform this move.
What's being deprecated is the Hyper-V Core edition, but Hyper-V role will continue as part of Windows Server, so you can continue using your Hyper-V environment as usual for years to come
You missed SmartOS with Triton Datacenter (ZFS, Bhyve, LX, KVM, PXE Boot etc...)
Each proxmox node has it's own built in backup feature for backing up just VMs & Containers.
It may not have all the features of the Backup Server but stop acting like it's not there.
Definitely needs a UI refresh!
There is no issue with hyper v.. only windows update and restart..
Inface i notice hyperv backup is much faster then esxi..
Agree that proxmos is a giant UX/UI mess. Nutanix pricing has a bunch of different options but generally you pay for a host license or a cores+flash license which tends to be more expensive on the high end, but cheaper on low end. a 3 year license + support for 2cpu poweredge XC based host costs about $20k, it is cheaper to license 3 years upfront and not do annual renewals.
the TCO is about on par with what vmware enterprise plus used to cost before the change. not very cheap.
What happens if Broadcom decides to by Nutanix?
@@dermick It could happen in the future. For now they're just dealing with the fallout with vmware.
Where I'm at I don't get to see the numbers but was told the vmware licensing costs went up 700%. Seems that they are just going to eat it this time around but I have a feeling that isn't going to happen next time. Though looking at the competitors support costs, they don't look like they are much better. The per host/per socket stuff is so frustrating.
Your company isn't alone. That's really the gist of what I've been hearing from many businesses. Those too close to their renewals are going to eat the cost with the expressed intention to use the next 3-years of subscription to begin working on migration out of the VMware by Broadcom ecosystem. No one really wants Broadcom in their data centers.
In terms of the licensing costs, there are more affordable options than others, especially in XCP-ng and Proxmox over say Nutanix, but all of them are likely going too be cheaper than the 700% your company is paying now.
Why is Noone talking about nutanix being on centos
I have a feeling there is concerted efforts behind the scenes to get off CentOS 7 and move to Oracle, Rocky, or Alma. I wouldn't be surprised if the next release of Nutanix is on a shiny new OS.
@2GuysTek agreed. It's just concerning because the eol Date is just around corner. Also seen to many products and company delay/procrastinate moving off unsupported products
@@techno8604 Agreed, and I'm sure there's plenty of back-channel conversation happening between Nutanix and Redhat about it as well since it will have a direct effect on Nutanix's entire platform.
No mention of Scale or KVM/Openstack? What about more exotic/newer solutions like Cloud Hypervisor? I'm an enterprise user, not a home labber or hobbyist so I'm looking at lots of options.
Scale still needs time on it's VM/Container side (and do you really want a dual NAS/Virtualization box? No.). KVM/Openstack: if Proxmox is too much to handle for them, well, that's a whole new world of not capable and where is the CYA Support? Cloud: had to look that one up....CYA support contract? I'll just leave it at that as it is a deal breaker for any VMware refugee.
@@LackofFaithify There are companies that offer support for Openstack if you feel that's a necessity. I work in an environment with a very large Openstack footprint and we've not had any commercial support in years. In fact, just about every commercial engagement we've had surrounding that platform ended in failure for the vendor. This is in addition to our multiple VMware deployments.
Canonical, IBM (Red Hat), Mirantis, and Rackspace will all happily take your money in return for a support contract of an Openstack deployment. Happy to hear about what other shortcomings you think it might have.
You did not mention XCP-NG's 2TB volume limitation.
It’s been announced that the 2TB limitation is being actively worked on by Vates as we speak, so I expect this to not be an issue much longer.
Proxmox 8.2 now has a direct VMware import tool
As I said in the video, it's been amazing to see how quickly the competition has been innovating and making changes to take advantage of the changing landscape! This is a perfect example of that.
You said you wouldn't make a recommendation on what other people should use because everyone's criteria is different and I can respect that, but you didn't mention what 2GT/the businesses you work for have decided. Are they just eating the added cost of VMware licensing or making a move to XCP-ng or another competitor? My employer has opted to eat the cost of staying with VMware based on all of our existing automations. I would have liked to see them at least TRY to stand up an XCP-ng or Proxmox node or two and run some non-critical workloads to see if they can get their automation working on a different platform to try and save some money, but nobody ever accused our management of being smart.
I am debating making a video on my decision just to address this for 2GT. The other businesses I interact with have decided to ride out their Broadcom licenses until they expire and go unsupported for a time to wait for the market to find the winner, and others have decided to buy 3-year re-ups with the express intention to use those 3-years to aggressively move off VMware.
Short answer is: no one is staying with VMware by Broadcom. Some moving faster than others depending on the size of their orgs.
What about Citrix Xenserver? XCP-NG is based upon it, but it's currently free if you use their virtual desktop system.
We are moving away from VMware this year to Xen Server after 15 years, since the cost for 4 servers is over 20k this year. Have used Xenserver for at least 10 years, and although it's not as powerful and a bit more complex than VMware, it's very reliable.
VMware software costs more than enterprise grade hardware!.
If you're already in the Citrix VDI space, which it sounds like you are, it makes total sense to go with Xenserver.
What about truenas scale?
While TrueNAS scale is really cool, it is not a hypervisor. We do use TrueNAS as a block storage back-end for our Proxmox hosts though.
@@TechBench hate to be THAT guy, but TrueNAS Scale _is_ a hypervisor; it uses KVM. Sure, TrueNAS is a storage OS first, with KVM bolted on, but it is a hypervisor none-the-less.
@@therumbler Ha! Well, thanks - TIL about the KVM functionality. Will definitely keep it in mind. I guess it's a little like the Synology VMM then - strange, but true!
Dose this support EUC ?
EUC in terms of 'End User Computing' or VDI? Not specifically that I've seen, but you'd wanna do some digging to find out. From all I've seen, Nutanix seems more focused on HCI for enterprise compute over VDI.
@@2GuysTek I’ll do my research as well. I’ll keep you posted :)
Final... yeah.... Not so much I suspect a lot of changes this year.
You’re not wrong. But definitely final for this series! :-)
Broadcom bomb?
How in the world did you get old hardware=proxmox? lol. You've been around Lawrence too long. Proof is in the Kernel. One is 4.something the other is 6.something. You have one guess which is which.
Whoa Proxmox support works out as the same price as running VMware Cloud Foundation which includes NSX , Aria and vSAN... why would you do Proxmox ?
VMware is per core unless they changed things yet again, again. Proxmox is per socket. Well you don't actually need to pay anything for Proxmox if you don't want to.
The user interfaces of XCP-ng, Proxmox, and HyperV are inferior; VMware remains unrivaled.
Have a look at our Nutanix video and their Prism GUI, it's pretty incredible.
You forgot to mention windows compatibility GUY!! .. As I understand it, XCP-NG plays extremely well with windows VMs. In my book, this cross compatibility (*nix & windows) makes XCP-ng THE clear winner(better choice).
umm, the OS the VM is running is irrelevant. I have win10 and win11 running on Proxmox with no problems at all. Wendell at Level1Techs built a Windows VDI box with Proxmox.
I'd be VERY surprised if there was any common virtualisation platform that didn't support Windows guests.
@@cgaquikkie You may be having the same mental block I did. I forgot how hand-holdy and walled garden VMware had become until the refugee crisis. They are just not all that up to speed on Linux in any modern form. And yes, the assumption here is that they were VMware only people that didn't have to do much or anything else.
Alas, there is no life after VMware. Broadcom killed VMware and now I must follow it into oblivion. *GRABS SWORD*
Nah. Staying put. VMware. Still the way to go.
Let's be honest no responsibile enterprise customer would run anything other than VMware, hyper v or Nutanix. The rest just lack features and support.
You're also minimizing VMware to a hypervisor. All of these companies have platforms with various features. You didn't compare the new changes only the old models.