VMware Migration to OpenStack

VMware vSphere (Hypervisor ESXi)

Key features:

(subject to subscription type and extra costs)

• Web console
• VM Live migration (vMotion)
• Volume migration (Storage vMotion)
• Clustering/HA for Control plane
• Backup Integrations
• Auto-rescheduling for VMs (VMHA)
• Hot plug and extend (Net devices/volumes)
• Site-to-site VM migration

OpenStack (Hypervisor KVM)

Comparable features:

• Web console - yes
• Live migration - yes
• Volume migration - yes
• Control plane HA - yes
• Backup-Integrations - yes
• VMHA - yes(1)
• Hot plug and extend (Networks/Volumes) - yes
• Site-to-site VM migration - yes(2)
• L4-L7 load balancing - yes(3)

1 OpenStack provides VMHA functionality with Masakari
2 When OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs
3 OpenStack Octavia

VMware NSX (VCF + VMware Firewall)

Key features:

• Switching (Layer 2 networks over Layer 3)
  • Within data center
  • Across data centers
• Routing
  • Distributed routing
  • Active-active failover with physical routers
  • Static routing
  • Dynamic routing
  • IPv6 support
• Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF)
  • Tenant isolation
  • Separate routing tables
  • NAT
  • EDGE Firewall
• Quality of service control (QoS)
• Security Groups
• NSX gateway (L2 Gateway)
• DPU-based acceleration
• Federation and Multi-cloud networking

(consistent networking and security across DCs,
private/public cloud boundaries)

OpenStack Neutron

Comparable features:

• Switching
  • Within data center - yes
  • Across data centers - yes(1)
• Routing
  • Distributed routing - yes
  • Active-active failover with physical routers - yes
  • Static routing - yes
  • Dynamic routing - yes
  • IPv6 support - yes
• Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF)
  • Tenant isolation - yes
  • Separate routing tables - yes
  • NAT - yes
  • EDGE Firewall - yes(2)
• QoS - yes
• Security Groups - yes
• L2 Gateway - yes
• DPU-based acceleration - yes
• Federation and Multi-cloud networking - yes(3)

1 if OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs
2 OpenStack has FWaaS extension
3 Partially with BGP VPN interconnection extension

VMware vSAN (Express Storage Architecture)

Key features:

• Distributed Architecture:
  • Hyperconverged, integrates with vSphere
  • Based on local storage in ESXi hosts
  • Eliminates the need for external storage arrays
  • Cluster size: min 2 hosts, max: 64 hosts
  • Uses fast disks for caching and efficient placement
• Data redundancy:
  • Distributed RAID, caching, and read/write optimizations
  • Provides fault tolerance at the storage policy level
• Scalability:
  • Scalable with additional ESXi hosts to the cluster
  • Linear scalability of storage capacity and performance resources
• Network speed: 25Gb/100Gb
• File protocols: SMB, NFSv3, NFSv4.1
• S3-Compatible Object Storage
• Native snapshots

Multi-site cluster: vSAN Stretched Cluster

OpenStack Cinder and Manila (based on Ceph)

Comparable features:

• Distributed Architecture - yes
  • Distributed architecture with a cluster of storage nodes running OSDs
  • Supports object, block, and file storage interfaces
  • Cluster size: min 6 hosts, max: 1000+ hosts
  • Does not require disks for caching
• Data redundancy - yes
  • Data redundancy through replication (3 copies) and erasure coding
  • Replicates data across multiple OSDs or uses erasure coding for fault tolerance
• Scalability - yes
  • Highly scalable, can scale out to tens of PBs of data
  • Allows adding or removing storage nodes dynamically without disruption
• Network speed: 10Gb/25Gb/100Gb - yes
• File protocols: CephFS, NFS via Manila - yes
• S3-Compatible Object Storage - yes
• Native snapshots - yes
• Multi-site: Ceph RBD Mirroring - yes(1)

1 RBD mirroring affects performance due to journaling

VMware vCenter (VCF, VVF and vSphere STD)

Key features:

• Centralized Control and Visibility
• Web client and APIs
• Inventory search
• Alerts and notifications
• Dynamic resource allocation
• Multi-tenant management

OpenStack + Prometheus, MaaS, ArgoCD

Comparable features:

• Centralized control-plane - yes(1)
• Web client and APIs - yes
• Inventory search - yes
• Alerts and notifications - yes(2)
• Dynamic resource allocation - yes(3)
• Multi-tenant management - yes

1 When OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs
2 Based on Prometheus + Alertmanager with integrations
3 Provided by OpenStack Watcher

VMware Cloud Director (Cloud Management Platform)

Key features:

• Multi-site control
• Cloud-native approach
  (Containers and VMs in the same environment)
• Automation
• Policy-driven Approach for Cloud management
• Global Hybrid Cloud Management
• Cloud Migration

OpenStack + Kubernetes

Comparable features:

• Multi-site control - yes(1)
• Cloud-native approach - yes(2)
• Automation - yes(3)
• Policy-driven Approach - yes
• Global Hybrid Cloud Management - no
• Cloud Migration - yes(4)

1 When OpenStack control plane stretched across DCs (Alternatively using ManageIQ)
2 Requires Managed Kubernetes service installation
3 Via Terraform, Heat or SDK
4 Using third-party migration service

VMware Aria Operations for Logs (vRealize Log Insight)

Key features:

• Collect logs in files
• Send logs to centralized system
• Provide interface to search and analyze logs

OpenStack + Logstash + OpenSearch OR OpenStack Venus

Comparable features:

• Collect logs in files - yes
• Send logs to centralized system - yes
• Interface for search and analysis - yes

VMware Aria Automation

Key features:

• Multi-cloud environments management
• DevOps for infrastructure
• Infrastructure as code and Kubernetes automation
• Network automation
• SecOps for infrastructure
• SaltStack

OpenStack Heat

Comparable features:

• Multi-cloud environments management - yes(1)
• DevOps for infrastructure - yes
• Infrastructure as code and Kubernetes automation - yes
• Network automation - yes
• SecOps for infrastructure - yes
• Ansible + GitOps approach - yes

VMware Aria Operations for Networks

Key features:

• Networking
  • End-to-end troubleshooting traffic and path
  • Network assurance and verification
  • Overlay and underlay network troubleshooting
• Applications
  • Application discovery and plan for migration
  • Measure application latency and performance
  • Finding network bottlenecks for application
  • Analyze traffic
• Security
  • Troubleshoot security
  • FW policies and network segmentation recommendations
  • Dependencies map to reduce risk during migrations

OpenStack Neutron + Hubble + SkyDive

Comparable features:

• Networking
  • End-to-end troubleshooting traffic and path - yes(1)
  • Network assurance and verification - yes
  • Overlay and underlay network troubleshooting - yes(1)
• Applications
  • Application discovery and plan for migration - no
  • Measure application latency and performance - no
  • Finding network bottlenecks for application - no
  • Analyze traffic - yes
• Security
  • Troubleshoot security - no
  • FW policies and network segmentation recommendations - yes
  • Dependencies map to reduce risk during migrations - no

1 Underlay network with Cilium Hubble, overlay (cloud) networks with SkyDive

VMware Horizon (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)

Key features:

• Remote desktops
• Hybrid cloud management

OpenStack + OpenUDS

Comparable features:

• Remote desktops - yes
• Hybrid cloud management - no

VMware SQL (Database as Service)

Key features:

• PostgreSQL support
• MySQL support

OpenStack Trove

Comparable features:

• PostgreSQL support - yes
• MySQL support - yes
• MongoDB support - yes
• Redis support - yes
• Cassandra support - yes