With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, many enterprises are compelled to re-evaluate their IT infrastructure strategies and explore potential alternatives. However, the heavy reliance on VMware and various technical uncertainties make it difficult to determine whether to move away from VMware and, if so, what the next step should be.

Our blog series aims to provide clear answers to the most frequently asked questions around VMware replacement, covering strategy planning, evaluating alternative solutions (for both ESXi/vSphere and vSAN), and executing a smooth migration.

Check out our previous blogs: Top 4 Questions for VMware Alternatives: A Planning and Decision-Making Guide

This article focuses on the five top questions concerning vSphere alternatives:

• What are the alternatives to VMware vSphere?
• How to evaluate vSphere alternatives?
• Can open-source hypervisors like Proxmox VE and OpenStack replace vSphere?
• How to implement a smooth VM migration?
• What are the available VMware migration tools?

1. What are the alternatives to VMware vSphere?

According to Gartner’s A Guide to Choosing a VMware Alternative in the Wake of Broadcom Acquisition, alternative options to VMware vSphere include open-source hypervisors like Xen, KVM, LXD, etc., and hypervisors sold and supported by specific vendors like Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, etc.

Besides replacing vSphere with other hypervisors, Gartner also suggests Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) as an available option as it provides all the resources (e.g., compute and storage) required for virtualized (and containerized) workloads. Sample vendors and products include Arcfra Enterprise Cloud Platform (AECP) and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI).

For instance, AECP provides the Arcfra Virtualization Engine (AVE), a KVM-based virtualization platform that offers complete VM life cycle management functionalities as well as advanced features including SPDK vhost I/O acceleration, Dynamic Resource Scheduling, GPU passthrough and vGPU, and Intelligent Placement Groups. Additionally, enterprise users can leverage Arcfra Migration Tools to implement a smooth VM migration from VMware ESXi to AVE.

For more information on using HCI for vSphere replacement, please refer to our previous blog: Exploring VMware Alternatives? Tips for Enterprises with Varying Levels of VMware Dependency

2. How to evaluate VMware vSphere alternatives?

When evaluating vSphere alternatives, users should pay particular attention to their reliability, stability, and ability to support business services in the production environment. Some vSphere alternatives are KVM-based virtualizations, which may seem similar to vSphere in basic features like VM lifecycle management, VM HA, and resource load balancing. However, these alternatives’ performance, ease of use, and effectiveness can only be assessed through a long-term validation via PoC or supporting backup environment.

Notably, Gartner’s report also highlights the importance of examining the migration implications and available tools when evaluating vSphere alternatives, as many of these products lack reliable migration tools.

3. Can open-source hypervisors like Proxmox VE and OpenStack replace vSphere?

Many organizations may consider open-source hypervisors such as Proxmox VE and OpenStack as cost-effective alternatives to vSphere. These solutions eliminate licensing fees and offer community-based support for self-management. However, they often fall short in delivering advanced enterprise-grade features in VM management. Besides, open-source solutions typically lack the responsive support services and expert troubleshooting capabilities offered by commercial vendors, placing greater demands on users’ development and operational expertise. Moreover, performance, reliability, and stability can vary significantly among open-source products. As such, extensive long-term testing is crucial to prevent potential business losses resulting from critical failures or insufficient performance and stability.

One cost-saving vSphere replacing option is to transition from the “vSphere+centralized storage” architecture to a simpler, more resilient, and agile hyper-converged architecture that converges virtualization with distributed storage. For more details, please refer to Exploring VMware Alternatives? Tips for Enterprises with Varying Levels of VMware Dependency.

4. How to implement a smooth VM migration from VMware vSphere to the alternative platform?

When evaluating VMware alternatives, many users are concerned about reliability, compatibility, and the business impact of cross-platform VM migration.

• Reliability

If the migration process is unstable, it can pose significant O&M risks and may fail to complete the migration tasks within the designated time window, potentially disrupting normal business operations. To ensure migration reliability, users need to choose a technically robust and efficient migration tool. Additionally, pre-migration preparations — such as environment checks (e.g., verifying network connectivity, confirming whether the VMs to be migrated contain snapshots or virtual peripherals) and pre-migration testing — are essential to ensure the smooth execution of the official VM migration.

• Compatibility

Users should ensure the migration tool is compatible with their VMware environment, VM operating systems, and server hardware for a smooth migration. Currently, some vendors’ migration tools only support vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) rather than vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS). However, as migrating from VSS to VDS can disrupt business networks, users should test the migration tool and pick the one that supports VDS to avoid business interruption.

• Business Impact

Beyond pre-migration and compatibility checks, selecting the right migration tool is critical to minimizing business downtime. Take Arcfra Migration Tools as an example. Arcfra Migration Tools take an initial snapshot of the source VM and transfer the full snapshot copy to the target VM. During this process, the source VM can remain online and operate normally. After the full snapshot copy transfer is completed, users can choose to manually synchronize the incremental data generated during the snapshot of the source VM. Otherwise, users can directly shut down the source VM for incremental data synchronization. The advantage of manual synchronization is that most of the incremental data can be replicated while the source VM remains online, significantly reducing the subsequent downtime of the source VM for the final data synchronization.

5. What are the available VMware migration tools?

Usually, when migrating VMs from VMware vSphere to an alternative platform, enterprise users can use the migration tool provided by the alternative platform or opt for third-party options. For example, to transfer from vSphere to AECP, users can use Arcfra Migration Tools for a flexible, stable, and agentless VM migration. It supports mainstream vSphere/ESXi versions, online full data transfer, and resumable data transfers to ensure an efficient and stable cross-platform VM migration.

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