Top 5 Enterprise Broadcom VMware vSphere Alternatives in USA

This market report, published on July 18, 2024, was written by Todd Dorsey, senior storage analyst, Data Center Intelligence Group LLCwww.dcig.com (DCIG).

2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 Enterprise VMware vSphere Alternatives US Edition Report Now Available

This report provides guidance on the DCIG TOP 5 VMware vSphere alternative solutions that enterprises should consider as they address Broadcom’s recent changes to VMware’s software licensing. These top 5 solutions provide enterprises with the best options for deploying an alternative solution that may offer more favorable licensing terms and features they may need.

VMware by Broadcom licensing changes prompting enterprises to reevaluate their choice of hypervisor
Broadcom formal announcement of the scope of the changes to VMware’s software licensing in December 2023 sent shockwaves through many enterprises. Many enterprises expected Broadcom to fully adopt subscription-based software licensing once it completed its acquisition of VMware. However, few enterprises, if any, had insight into the breadth of these changes or how they might impact them.

What caught many enterprises off guard was Broadcom’s decision to reduce the number of VMware software licensing options. Many software features that enterprises could once license individually could now only obtain as part of a software bundle.

This announcement coupled with follow-on announcements about Broadcom’s updated pricing prompted all size enterprises to reevaluate their virtualization platform.

To make the best choice of a VMware vSphere alternative solution, they must first quantify:

• The VMware software features they currently use.
• How broadly they use VMware and its features across their enterprise.
• How well competing hypervisors stack up.
• The number of VMware software features an enterprise uses and how broadly it uses them factor into any decision.
• Alternative virtualization solutions vary in features, software licensing methods, and technical support options. These options and others all factor into selecting an appropriate VMware vSphere Standard alternative.
• The state of enterprise VMware vSphere standard alternative solutions

In USA, DCIG identified 19 different VMware vSphere Standard alternative solutions available in different configurations. Deployment options may include software for use on-premises, in the cloud, a preconfigured hardware appliance, or a combination of these.

Some providers also partner with hardware OEMs so that enterprises may order appliances from their preferred OEM. A few providers even make IaaS available as an option. If electing to use IaaS, the provider manages its software after it an enterprise deploys it.

Software licensing
It has emerged as a hot-button topic. Broadcom chose to consolidate and simplify VMware’s software licensing and move solely to subscription-based software licensing. This decision has led competitors to differentiate themselves in how they make their software available and license it.

For instance, Broadcom ended the availability of the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (free edition). In response, some providers offer low- or no-cost software licensing to encourage enterprises to use their software. Optionally, some providers grant enterprises more time to test running existing enterprise applications on their VMware vSphere alternative.

Some providers do compete vs. Broadcom’s subscription-based only pricing for VMware vSphere. Alternatively, some offer only perpetual software licensing. A few give enterprises a choice between perpetual or subscription-based software licensing.

Support for multiple hypervisors
Moving to an alternative platform does not automatically mean an enterprise must abandon using VMware vSphere Standard in every instance. Some HCI platforms support multiple different hypervisors.

Supported hypervisors may include Microsoft Hyper-V, different versions of the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), and VMware vSphere Standard, among others. An enterprise may even elect to run a different hypervisor on different deployments of the provider’s HCI solution.

Many enterprises may find running one or more hypervisors in addition to VMware vSphere their most affordable and practical option. Moving every application or workload off VMware vSphere may not work due to some advanced vSphere features they utilize.

Top 5 Enterprise VMware vSphere Alternatives in USA
In preparing this report, DCIG formally evaluated over 25 different VMware vSphere alternative solutions based on multiple different features and capabilities. 19 of these solutions met DCIG’s criteria for the US Edition of this report.

The general categories under which the features of these VMware vSphere alternative solutions fell included:

• Data protection and security.
• Deployments options.
• Licensing and pricing.
• Management.
• Software options.
• Technical support.

Based on these criteria, DCIG awarded the following VMware vSphere alternative solutions a DCIG Top 5 ranking:

• HiveIO Hive Fabric
• Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
• Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
• Scale Computing Platform (SC//Platform)
• VergeIO VergeOS

Common features across all VMware vSphere alternative solutions
Each of the 19 evaluated VMware vSphere alternative solutions targets offers the following core features.

Across these evaluated solutions, enterprises may only safely assume that each one minimally possesses the following features:

• Hypervisor. The hypervisor permits an enterprise to run one or more VMs on a single computer. Each of these 19 solutions includes a hypervisor by default. Generally, enterprises should expect the solution to offer a Linux-based KVM or a variant based on KVM.
• Management interface. It facilitates the management of the VMs, and other software features offered by the solution. Many include multiple management interfaces. These may include a CLI, a web-based GUI, REST APIs, and integration with 3rd-party management platforms.
• SDN. Included in all 19 solutions, it 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.
• SDS. Also included in all 19 solutions, it virtualizes physical HDDs and SSDs. This solution will minimally virtualize the server’s physical disk drives, 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 OSs. 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 OS as an alternative to Windows. Regardless of which guest OS enterprises prefer, all 19 vSphere alternative solutions support both Linux and Windows.
• Web-based management GUI. All 19 products minimally provide enterprises with a web-based 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 of these 19 solutions 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.