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Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

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Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#101

Post by firesteelrain »

WokeUp420 wrote: post #90
firesteelrain wrote: post #24

We run a lot of ESXi with vSphere (part of overall VCF solution). It works very well. But I am part of Big Corp. so they don’t mind paying. We are good via warranties etc using what we already purchased. I don’t know that I share the same sentiment that we could have just used ProxMox. We are a Dell heavy shop and there is a new Dell Private Cloud product that is very promising. More like choose your own adventure.

Dell private cloud lock in would be the death of any company. You don't want to be isolated to one hardware vendor. We've told Dell to kick rocks many times for renewals and would not be able to do that if we were in their Cloud, which requires Dell hardware. Don't do it

It’s not their Cloud, you buy a bunch of PowerEdge R7725 for example and then choose between OpenShift, VCF and one other I can’t remember at the moment.

It’s on prem

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#102

Post by dizhn »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #96
anonymousiam wrote: post #45

So the Linux qemu-img tool can still convert VM disk images from .vmdk into formats compatible with all the other hypervisors. Is there something more to the process of VM migration from VMWare than just using this tool (and manually creating the proper virtual hardware profile in the new hypervisor)? Obviously the types of supported virtual hardware will be different between hypervisor types, but that's usually some…

> Is there something more to the process of VM migration from VMWare than just using this tool (and manually creating the proper virtual hardware profile in the new hypervisor)? Yes? Do that for the hundreds of VMs, with a minimal downtime, bonus points for a dumb C-level on your neck. You would quickly learn what "just converting disk images" is not enough for moving between hypervisors. Just as an example: last yea…

>A minuscule in modern times 1TB+ VM took a whole weekend to be moved

Why?

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#103

Post by ExoticPearTree »

kev009 wrote: post #36
ramgine wrote: post #9

I got my current job because I could lead the hyper-v to VMware migration project. Just this year I led the VMware to hyper-v migration project. VMware was such a great product (although a bit cumbersome in the VCF environment I managed). It’s really unfortunate it went the way of Broadcom. In comparison Hyper-v feels like a typical Microsoft product. A bunch of different tools created by different teams to do tasks…

Corporate IT is kind of a parallel universe to me, so it is interesting to see how widely used these products are and how impactful these types of events are. There are a few broad categories to building one of these platforms.. core virtualization ("relatively easy"), device model ("medium hard"), storage management ("hard"), management plane ("medium hard"). VMWare popularized x86 core virtualization and defined th…

I had a lot of positive experiences with VMware (ESXi + vCenter). Every time I had a new project, I tried to keep it as simple as possible and it worked wonderfully. SAN, Distributed Switches, Automatic VM migrations to balance CPU usage etc.

VSAN was a weird one until I understood the logic behind it, but the licensing costs kind of brought on-par to buying a SAN and be happy.

I haven't touched Microsoft Hyper-V.

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#104

Post by ExoticPearTree »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #75
ramgine wrote: post #9

I got my current job because I could lead the hyper-v to VMware migration project. Just this year I led the VMware to hyper-v migration project. VMware was such a great product (although a bit cumbersome in the VCF environment I managed). It’s really unfortunate it went the way of Broadcom. In comparison Hyper-v feels like a typical Microsoft product. A bunch of different tools created by different teams to do tasks…

> quietly built a proxmox cluster Why is your place of work not moving wholesale to Proxmox? It's mad that HyperV is chosen as a solution in this day and age.

Because it is made of a lot of open source components glued together in different weird ways. Sure, I would trust KVM over Hyper-V any day, but the management sucks for Proxmox.

If they build their new Datacenter Manager offering into what vCenter offered and abstract away all the ugliness (imagine creating a "distributed" switch on Proxmox with two clicks) I think they will make a killing.

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#105

Post by nubinetwork »

WokeUp420 wrote: post #92
nubinetwork wrote: post #7

Rather than converting the cold vm disk, couldn't you boot up the vm, dump the disks to stream, and send the streams into another format?

Try doing that to 3,000 production VMs.

Where do you work that a single sysadmin manages 3000 VMs?

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#106

Post by SanjayMehta »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #62
SanjayMehta wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user of VMware Desktop who switched to VirtualBox, my experience was VMware was just so much easier to use. I now use UTM to host Windows 11 Pro on my mac for exactly one Windows application. With the exception of suspend, it does the job.

Do you host arm win11 or intel?

ARM

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#107

Post by PunchyHamster »

throw0101a wrote: post #100
WokeUp420 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proxmox is amateur hour. No enterprise support

> Proxmox is amateur hour. No enterprise support 24/7 support will be available starting in October: * https://www.proxmox.com/en/about/company-details/press-relea... The other thing perhaps worth noting that the entire stack is open source, even Proxmox's 'special sauce' for management. Depending on your organization, if you can solve a problem with Debian (and Qemu) you can solve a problem with Proxmox.

If you can solve a problem with Debian and Qemu Proxmox gives you nothing.

Better to just use same automation you use for VMs to just keep fleet of bare Debian + KVM machines.

Proxmox is for when you don't have a bunch of Linux experts on board. And that's also kinda what enterprises want to pay for, removing "liability" of having to keep very competent team.

...the fact that ends up costing them more everywhere is of no concern to middle management

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#108

Post by PunchyHamster »

anonymousiam wrote: post #45

So the Linux qemu-img tool can still convert VM disk images from .vmdk into formats compatible with all the other hypervisors. Is there something more to the process of VM migration from VMWare than just using this tool (and manually creating the proper virtual hardware profile in the new hypervisor)? Obviously the types of supported virtual hardware will be different between hypervisor types, but that's usually some…

Doing export manually vs automating it using their libs

Re: Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads

#109

Post by PunchyHamster »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #47

Can someone exfiltrate the VMWare source so that it can be distributed at a later date once Avago (Broadcom) cease? A friend of mine said that VMWare was still the best VM platform due to the ecosystem that built around it, so it'd be nice if it could be preserved for later resurrection. I know time moves on quickly, but it'd be a shame to lose it entirely. I know this is promoting criminality, but there's something…

There is nothing to be saved there. There is nothing "special" in VMWare now aside from having the enterprise support, and frankly any effort would be better spent making KVM/libvirt more "enterprise friendly"
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