The shift from traditional on-premises virtualization solutions like VMware to alternative private cloud solutions represents a significant leap towards agility, scalability, and digital transformation for many organizations. As companies seek to capture the power of private cloud computing, migrating from VMware to an open private cloud platform is a strategic move that promises enhanced flexibility, cost efficiency, and access to advanced technologies. In this blog, we’ll explore the key considerations, benefits, and strategies for successfully migrating from VMware to open cloud environments.
How the need for a VMware migration started
Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in November 2023, concerns have risen throughout the IT industry. Broadcom has a history of streamlining acquisitions by discontinuing services for providers below a certain volume threshold. While these providers may be profitable individually, serving them incurs higher costs due to the expansive market size. To compensate for the loss of revenue, Broadcom implements significant price hikes for larger partners or customers, ultimately boosting the profitability of its product line and benefiting shareholders.
In late February 2024, Broadcom’s anticipated changes unfolded, affecting VMware’s product lineup, pricing structure, and partner program. Among these changes, the most significant is the transition to Broadcom’s invitation-only Broadcom Advantage Partner Program (BAPP). Notably, partners must now meet a substantial requirement of 3500 cores (with a minimum of 16 cores per socket) to even be considered for participation. This marks a departure from traditional pricing models and signifies a considerable financial commitment, equivalent to over a million dollars annually in licensing fees.
While partners with approximately 3500 cores face price hikes, those with fewer cores experience a significant price discrepancy, potentially rendering them uncompetitive or unprofitable. This poses a significant challenge for smaller hosting companies and managed service providers that rely on VMware, jeopardizing their established partnerships.
Of particular concern for VMware’s future is the removal of the free version, which will limit access for educational and developmental purposes, potentially hindering the platform’s adoption by future IT professionals and students. This decision may diminish the platform’s long-term viability, except in large organizations where migration costs outweigh product expenses, presenting an opportunity for alternative private cloud- or public cloud solutions.
Why companies are migrating from VMware to open private cloud solutions.
The decision to migrate from VMware to an open platform is driven by several factors.
Cost efficiency
Open private cloud platforms often offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model, eliminating the need for upfront licensing and storage investments and reducing ongoing maintenance costs.
The VMware infrastructures that clients are running, are often not fully managed, only software support applies. But when comparing to a fully managed KVM OpenStack infrastructure within your own infrastructure, the pricing per node per year can decrease by nearly or more than half, depending on the number of cores you use.
Scalability and flexibility
Open private cloud infrastructures allow businesses to scale resources up or down based on demand, without purchasing licenses, providing unmatched flexibility compared to traditional virtualisation solutions.
Also, the multi datacenter and redundancy functionalities are completely covered with the open source cloud solutions.
Innovation and agility
Migrating to open private cloud, opens up opportunities for leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and IoT, fostering innovation and agility.
Planning the migration journey from VMware to open cloud
A successful migration from VMware to an alternative private cloud platform requires thorough planning and strategy. Here is a broad overview of key steps in the migration journey, from which you can further work out your plan.
Assessment and goal setting
Inventory assessment
Conduct a comprehensive inventory of your VMware environment, including VMs, applications, storage, and network configurations.
Migration goals
Clearly define your objectives for migrating to the cloud, whether it’s cost savings, improved scalability, or accessing specific cloud services.
Choosing the right cloud platform
Cloud provider selection
Evaluate cloud solutions such as OpenStack, CloudStack and Proxmox considering factors like services offered, pricing, compliance, and geographic reach. If you are interested in more information about a migration from VMware to OpenStack, you can read more details about it in our blog that we wrote about this specific topic: https://fairbanks.nl/vmware-to-openstack/
Migration strategy and execution
Lift and shift (rehosting)
This strategy involves moving existing VMs and applications to the cloud with minimal changes. It’s often the fastest way to migrate but may not fully leverage cloud-native features.
Refactoring (replatforming)
Refactoring involves making minor adjustments to applications to take advantage of cloud-native services and features, improving scalability and performance.
Rearchitecting
For applications that can benefit significantly from cloud capabilities, a complete rearchitecting may be necessary. This approach is more time-consuming but offers the most long-term benefits.
Testing and optimization
Testing
Rigorous testing is essential to ensure that applications perform as expected in the cloud environment. This includes functional testing, performance testing, and security testing.
Optimization
Post-migration, continuously monitor and optimize your cloud environment for cost, performance, and security. Cloud platforms offer various tools for resource management, cost optimization, and security posture improvement.
Specific help with the migration from VMware to open private cloud
If you are still at a complete loss or need help with your further steps, there are several ways that Fairbanks can help you out.
We have broad experience with the migration to open source clouds and can fully manage it for you. Throughout the migration process, you can trust us to work together with your teams on all the intricate details, including data migration, application compatibility testing, and infrastructure optimization. Our goal is to ensure minimal disruption to your operations while maximizing the benefits of the open private cloud environment. With our managed services, we continue to monitor and manage your cloud environment proactively, ensuring optimal performance, security, and scalability over time.
There are several ways in which we offer our services. So, our clients work together with us in different ways. For example, some of our clients let us manage the private cloud temporarily to train their own employees and support it themselves after time, other clients use the resources elsewhere. Some of our clients first start a multi hypervisor cloud, running both VMware and fully managed private cloud, to do some testing and migrate in their own pace from VMware to open cloud within their own datacenter. Some of our clients just want us to setup and manage the cloud infrastructure and migrate virtual machines themselves, others want us to support them with each step in the complete process. Your choice… In the end it is important that we handover functionality, so you can use all features as you are used to within your current setup.
Conclusion about migrating away from VMware
Migrating from VMware to an open source cloud platform is a transformative journey that can significantly benefit organizations in terms of cost savings, scalability, and access to advanced technologies. By carefully planning the migration, choosing the right cloud platform, and executing a well-thought-out migration strategy, businesses can smoothly transition to the cloud, overcoming any challenges along the way. Organisations that embrace changes will find themselves better positioned to innovate and grow in the digital era.
We understand the importance of autonomy in cloud technologies and aim to provide options for companies affected by commercial interests. With now over 13 years of open source cloud experience we offer a wide variety of migration solutions, ensuring seamless transitions amidst these industry shifts.
I would love to hear your insights on VMware and the different strategies you employ in your work with it. Feel free to share your thoughts and to contact us!
