2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Alternatives Report Now Available

DCIG is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the 2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Alternatives Report.

Inaugural 2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Alternative Solutions Report Offers Smaller Organizations Path Forward with Viable vSphere Alternatives

Small business and organizations with edge sites may represent the companies most impacted by Broadcom’s recent VMware software licensing changes. Many may now need to identify viable VMware vSphere alternative solutions that deliver comparable functionality at a lower cost.

Here is where they get some good news. Multiple such alternative solutions exist that may cost less than half of VMware vSphere’s new subscription-based pricing. Further, many of these solutions include software utilities that simplify VM migrations from vSphere to their platform. DCIG highlights solutions that meet these criteria in the inaugural 2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Alternatives report.

Working Definitions of SMB and Edge Site

DCIG generally defines a small and medium business (SMB) as having between 10 and 99 employees. Further, an SMB typically operates as its own entity with no larger organization necessarily overseeing its daily IT operations. The SMB handles the management of its IT functions with one, a few, and perhaps even no fulltime IT staff.

An edge site resembles an SMB in terms of the number of employees that work at its physical location. Like an SMB, it may also have one, a few, or no IT staff onsite to manage its IT operations. However, the edge site is part of a larger organization that generally handles its IT operations.

This larger, parent organization will usually have full-time IT staff that manage and oversee the IT operations at edge sites. This parent organization may manage tens, hundreds, or even thousands of edge and remote sites.

Examples of edge sites include any organization that has parts of its operations running remotely. These may include churches, convenience stores, retail stores, and federal, state, and local government agencies.

Specific VMware vSphere Alternative Considerations for SMBs and Edge Environments

SMBs and organizations with edge environments possess different requirements for a VMware vSphere alternative than enterprises. They still need a vSphere alternative to offer specific core features. These include high-availability, product reliability, software-defined storage, software-defined networking, and the ability to host Windows and Linux guest OSes. They also often look to the provider to deliver education, training, and 24x7x365 technical support.

However, the need to scale the solution to support the highest levels of capacity, networking, and processing may not exist. SMBs and edge sites tend not to run applications and workloads that test the technical limits of the solutions that host them. Further, SMBs and edge sites tend to less frequently experience sudden growth or performance spikes.

These differing, and generally lower, expectations for a hypervisor provided the impetus for these organizations to make a change. Broadcom’s decision to reduce the number of VMware software licenses only contributed to their willingness to explore other options.

This stems, in part, from the fact that an all-inclusive software licensing model may benefit these organizations less frequently. Granting them access to more software features only helps them if they can use these features. Further, many report significant cost increases associated with Broadcom’s new software licensing model.

These factors and others have contributed to SMBs and organizations with edge sites to reevaluate their virtualization platform. To make the best choice of a VMware vSphere Standard alternative solution, they must first quantify:

• The VMware software features they currently use.
• How broadly they use VMware and its features across their organization.
• How well competing hypervisors stack up.

Alternative virtualization solutions vary in their architecture, deployment options, software features, and software licensing and technical support options. In choosing an alternative, organizations must consider which vSphere features they currently use and how broadly they use them.

2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMWARE VSPHERE ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS

In preparing this report, DCIG formally evaluated 15 different VMware vSphere alternative solutions based on multiple different features and capabilities. The general categories under which the features of these SMB/Edge 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 in the SMB/Edge Edition:

• HiveIO Hive Fabric
• NodeWeaver
• Scale Computing Platform (SC//Platform)
• StorMagic SvHCI
• VergeIO VergeOS

Common Features Across All SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Standard Alternative Solutions

DCIG consider 25 different VMware vSphere Standard alternatives of which 15 met DCIG’s inclusion criteria for this report. Across these 15 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Standard alternative solutions DCIG evaluated over 250 features on each one.

13 of the 15 solutions minimally offer the following seven (7) core features. DCIG believes the other two products also minimally support these seven features. However, DCIG could not authoritatively confirm their support of them prior to publication of this report.

1. Hypervisor. The hypervisor permits an SMB or edge site to run one or more virtual machines (VMs) on a single computer. Each of these 15 solutions includes a hypervisor by default. Generally, SMBs and edge sites should expect the solution to offer a Linux-based KVM or a variant based on KVM.
2. Management interface. The management interface 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 third-party management platforms.
3. Software-defined networking (SDN). SDN, included in all 15 solutions, 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 nodes in the solution.
4. Software-defined storage (SDS). SDS, also included in all 15 solutions, virtualizes physical hard disk and solid-state drives. This feature will minimally virtualize the server’s physical disk drives, though some include options to virtualize external storage arrays. SDS 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.
5. Support Linux guest operating systems. SMBs and edge sites increasingly use Linux as a guest operating system (OS) as an alternative to Windows. This trend has accelerated in recent years. Global tensions have led some international providers to no longer formally support Windows as a guest OS. While over 70 percent of the solutions support the Windows guest OS, Linux variants represent the only guest OS for which all 15 vSphere alternative solutions offer support.
6. Web-based management GUI. All 15 products minimally provide SMBs and edge sites 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, SMBs and edge sites 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 SMBs and edge sites to enter the IP address of each installed solution to manage that instance.
7. Command-line interface (CLI). SMB and edge site administrators often need a CLI to facilitate scripting specific administrative tasks. Each of these 15 solutions offers a CLI to perform these tasks. However, the CLI commands that each solution supports may and likely do differ. If SMB and edge site administrators plan to use the CLI, they should verify the solution’s CLI includes the commands they need.

REPORT AVAILABILITY

The full 2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Alternatives report is available for download immediately on DCIG’s site with registration by following this link. The full report contains additional details such as:

• A list of all 15 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere alternatives evaluated.
• A list of all features available with the VMware vSphere Standard software license.
• Similarities and differences between the DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere alternatives.
• A profile of each DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere alternatives that lists at least three (3) ways each one distinguishes itself from the other solutions.

CONFIDENTIALITY AND COPYRIGHT

Other than excerpts from this report published in this announcement, the contents of the 2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 SMB/Edge VMware vSphere Alternatives report are copyrighted and may not be republished without the express written permission of DCIG.

KEEP UP TO DATE WITH DCIG

DCIG will release more DCIG TOP 5 reports in the weeks and months to come. Please sign up for the weekly DCIG Newsletter to receive notice of their availability.

To learn about DCIG’s forthcoming research and publications, see the DCIG Publication Calendar.

Technology providers interested in licensing DCIG TOP 5 reports or having DCIG produce custom reports, please contact DCIG for more information.B