Disaster Recovery Journal Fall 2024

Three Considerations When Selecting a VMware vSphere Alternative Organizations that inter nally heavily use VMware software and its many features will find it more difficult to select an alternative solution. The challenges stem from both migrating to an alterna tive solution and then learning to use the alternative solu tion’s comparable features. To identify a new solution, orga nizations should minimally consider if, and how well, an alternative solution deliv ers any of the following three advanced features. Consideration #1: Migrating Data and VMs from VMware vSphere A competitive VMware vSphere alternative may appear compelling on the sur face. However, adopting it often requires an organization to migrate its existing data and VMs from VMware to the alternative. Assuming an organization needs to migrate data and VMs, the difficulty of doing so varies significantly between competitive alterna tive solutions. On one end of the spectrum, some alternative solutions do not offer any software to facili tate data and VM migrations. This puts the onus on an orga nization to identify third-party software that can perform the data and VM migrations. In some cases, organiza tions may already own backup software that can perform data and VM migrations. They may

alternative solutions support both Linux and Windows.  Web-based management GUI . All alternative VMware products minimally provide enterprises with a web based graphical user interface (GUI) to manage their solution. However, each solution’s GUI may differ in terms of its capabilities. For instance, enterprises should verify if the GUI can access, visualize, and manage all installed instances of the solution in their environment. Some may achieve this feat. Other GUIs may require enterprises to enter the IP address of each installed solution to manage that instance.  Command-line interface (CLI) . Enterprise administrators often need a CLI to facilitate scripting specific administrative tasks. Each alternative solution offers a CLI to perform these tasks. However, the CLI commands that each solution supports may and likely do differ. If enterprise administrators plan to use the CLI, they should verify the solution’s CLI includes the commands they need. All alternative solutions share these seven features in common with each other, and VMware vSphere. This com monality may help some orga nizations quickly identify a viable VMware vSphere alter native. However, these seven features may only represent some of the features many organizations must consider.

GUI, REST APIs, and integration with third-party management platforms.

Some organizations may simply choose to accept all these VMware software licens ing and pricing changes. However, many current and prospective VMware custom ers minimally plan to evaluate viable, cost-effective alterna tives to VMware software. In so doing, they will find more than 20 VMware software alternatives. Features in Common with VMware vSphere DCIG recently completed an evaluation of available VMware vSphere alternatives. Across the competitive offer ings, organizations will find multiple features also offered in VMware vSphere. Seven features that will find in most, if not all, competitive solutions include:  Hypervisor . The hypervisor permits an enterprise to run one or more virtual machines (VMs) on a single computer. Each alternative solution includes a hypervisor by default. Enterprises should expect the alternative solution to offer a Linux kernel-based virtual machine (KVM); a variant hypervisor based on KVM; or Microsoft Hyper-V.  Management interface . The management interface facilitates the management of the virtual machines (VMs) and other software features offered by the solution. Many include multiple management interfaces. These may include a CLI, a web-based

 Software-defined networking (SDN) .

SDN enables centralized control, programmability, and flexibility to adapt the network infrastructure to changing needs. This feature handles,

directs, and prioritizes the communication between the different internal nodes and/ or VMs in the solution.  Software-defined storage (SDS) . SDS virtualizes physical hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs). Each solution will minimally virtualize the serv¬er’s HDDs or SSDs, though some include options to virtualize external storage arrays. Using SDS, the solution generally puts all the physical storage together into one central pool of storage. It then partitions this storage pool into smaller storage segments and assigns individual storage partitions to specific VMs.  Support Windows and Linux Guest Operating Systems . The Windows OS became ubiquitous in enterprises years ago and remains heavily used in enterprise data centers. However, enterprises increasingly use Linux as a guest operating system (OS) and as an alternative to Windows. Regardless of which guest OS enterprises prefer, all vSphere

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