Why I am switching from VMWare
I was an early adopter of VMware. I have been running VMWare in one form or another since the early 2000's. Early in 2022 I started looking for a new hypervisor platform, because VMWare is no longer a good fit for many of my clients.
VMWare requires "big" systems
VMWare is cool. It has all the bells and whistles. It is designed (and priced) for the enterprise.
While it may be possible to run older versions of VMWare on commodity hardware the newer and newest releases do not run on older hardware. From a business perspective this makes sense. Neither VMWare nor its partners want to sell 1 widget 1000 times, they would rather sell 1000 widgets 1 time, so they focus on the needs of big enterprise customers. However, from a technological perspective there is not reason why a newer version of VMWare should not run on older technology. There are improvements here and there and the underlying technologies that enable systems to virtualize hardware has not change so significantly that it would prevent older hardware from running the newest version of VMWare.
Sale to Broadcom
In May 2022, Broadcom inked a $61 billion deal to purchase VMWare. There is a lot to be concerned about here. 1) Broadcom has a history of acquire and axe. Acquire a company. Fire/lay-off employees. Kill products. 2) Broadcom has indicated that they are going to focus on the high profit margin products and cut investment into products which may not be performing as well even if they have a promising future. 3) Broadcom has indicated they will be focusing on their 600 largest clients and are not interested in anybody else.
Alternatives
There were few alternatives to VMWare I evaluated: VirtualBox, Xen and Proxmox. I eventually settled on Proxmox, because:
- Core components are open source
- Built on a standard Linux Kernel
- Availability of enterprise subscriptions and paid support
- Ability to run on commodity hardware from a repurposed desktop to a massive server.
- Ease of use
- Functionality
Xen has many of the same features of Proxmox, but lacked a graphical user interface in the core system. This mean that the product was smaller and more efficient in many aspects, but a little bit harder to manage and deploy in a clustered redundant configuration.
Proxmox but contrast has a GUI interface in the core system and is super super super easy to cluster. Proxmox is not perfect. One feature I miss is the ability to run the system off of a USB drive. Proxmox is not as slick as VMWare, but for most businesses it brings the features of VMWare at a fraction of the cost.
Final Thoughts
After 20 years of using VMWare, I am going to miss it and like many relationships it is time to move on.