With the recent acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, many companies face an important decision: stay with VMware and accept the hefty price increases for licences or switch to an alternative? At Cloud360, we believe Proxmox is now the most attractive choice for most businesses. This mainly because the free version of VMware ESXi is no longer available.
What is VMware?
Back to the beginning for a moment, because what exactly is VMware? The company VMware was one of the pioneers of virtualisation technologies. It launched several platforms for this purpose, including VMware vSphere, VMware Workstations, VMware Fusion and the free solution VMware ESXi. These platforms allow to create multiple virtual machines and then manage them from a single physical server or desktop computer.
VMware has now become an essential component within the IT infrastructure of many organisations around the world. It offers organisations many advantages because it is efficient, flexible, scalable and, above all, reliable. Moreover, there was a free version available that was very widely used. However, following the acquisition of VMware by the Broadcom company, this version is suddenly no longer available.
Proxmox as VMware alternative
Virtualisation platform Proxmox VE (or for completeness: Proxmox Virtual Environment) has launched a migration tool following its acquisition of VMware. This allows you to switch to the Proxmox platform relatively easily if your organisation was previously using VMware ESXi. The acquisition of VMware and the launch of this migration tool by Proxmox have caused a huge shift in the visualisation platform market. This makes Proxmox the perfect alternative to the discontinued free version of ESXi and profiles itself accordingly.
Opportunities for Proxmox
Since the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, there has been a rapidly growing dissatisfaction among VMware customers. This is mainly caused by the huge increase in costs and the disuse of the popular free version ESXi. If you used ESXi yourself as an organisation, chances are you share this dissatisfaction and are looking for an alternative to avoid high licensing costs.
At the same time, in the visualisation market in which VMware dominates, this has opened up interesting opportunities for smaller players, like Proxmox in other words. Where smaller players were previously reluctant to compete with VMware, these parties now smell their opportunity and some are jumping on this very handily. As an organisation, this makes it the perfect time to make the switch.
Advantages of Proxmox
At Cloud360, we have helped many companies in recent times where licensing costs ran into the thousands of euros. We have seen amounts well above €10,000. We were able to convert these companies to Proxmox’s completely free solution. In our opinion, this is the best free alternative.
Is your organisation also looking for an alternative to VMware in order to massively reduce costs without compromising on quality and functionality? If so, we at Cloud360 are here to help.
How does migrating to Proxmox work?
Proxmox’s new Import Wizard makes it easy for businesses to migrate from VMware ESXi to the Proxmox Virtual Environment. This tool has been specially designed by Proxmox to minimise downtime. The Proxmox Import Wizard works with all ESXi versions from 6.5 to 8.0, including the latest free version of the tool.
The migration is relatively easy thanks to Proxmox’s Import Wizard, but there are some important considerations. Thus, transferring vTPM settings is not (yet) possible. It is therefore wise to plan the migration carefully and check that it meets all the requirements for your organisation. We recommend that when in doubt, you always call in a specialist to guide you through this. As Cloud360, we have helped countless companies with this and we are happy to discuss the possibilities and requirements over a cup of coffee.
Other VMware ESXi alternatives
Of course, Proxmox is not the only alternative on the market. Besides Proxmox, there are other important alternatives for VMware customers. One example is XenServer from Citrix, which has launched a similar migration tool. The OpenStack company has also announced plans to target VMware customers with the release of its Caracal platform. At Cloud360, however, we are convinced that Proxmox is currently the best and most efficient alternative.
Sparring about a migration with a local specialist?
Gebruikt uw bedrijf nog steeds VMware en bent u ook geschrokken van de hoge licentiekosten? Then the time is ripe to consider a switch to cheaper alternatives such as Proxmox. We at Cloud360 are happy to guide you through the migration process. In doing so, we guarantee a smooth transition to a new and cheaper virtualisation solution, without losing functionality. We are happy to determine, in consultation, the best solution to save IT costs by switching from VMware.