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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

#141

Post by throw0101a »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #107
throw0101a wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

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

Proxmox gives you centralized management of a fleet of clustered systems with a very handy GUI (as well as CLI and API) that's used by many thousands of installations, which is a lot better than try to cobble together something yourself IMHO. Just because you have "a bunch of Linux experts on board" doesn't mean they have to 'waste' their time on re-inventing the wheel for management of VMs.

At my last job we had plenty of Linux folks and primarily ran a whole bunch of OpenStack, but we still used Proxmox for standalone management of VMs for 'tier zero' services (e.g., DNS, SMTP, LDAP, NTP) of various sorts that OpenStack itself depended on.

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

#142

Post by jasomill »

firesteelrain wrote: post #101
WokeUp420 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does this help with hardware vendor lock-in, unless there's a second source for PowerEdges I'm not aware of?

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

#143

Post by JoeBOFH »

deltoidmaximus wrote: post #127
JoeBOFH wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of setting up VMware Workstation with USB ISA cards to keep a line running. Ugh

I'd love to hear more about that. I didn't think Workstation could do anything besides USB device passthrough!

I’ll be honest it’s been over 10 years at this point. But we had to virtualize a dying Gateway 2000 that had Windows XP on it. As part of that we needed ISA to keep working. I found some USB ISA adapters and ordered them. It took a lot of messing around with Workstation, the host Windows 7 and drivers on the VM. I can’t remember all the details at this point :(

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

#144

Post by jasomill »

tristor wrote: post #139
vmwarestole wrote: post #60

Most of VMware virtualization code was stolen from kvm and they never were punished. Our laws are a joke, our courts are largely illegitimate and so to is our government.

As someone who has worked in this space longer than a lot of people currently in industry have been alive, VMware predated KVM by a number of years. VMware Server was released in 2001... KVM was announced in 2006 and entered the Linux kernel mainline in 2007. XenSource was formed and commercialized the Xen project with XenServer in 2006, the first open source Xen Project release was in 2003. So for all you can say, V…

VMware was also an early leader in desktop PC virtualization. I don't recall anything comparable in the late '90s. Virtual PC existed, but IIRC it was still a Mac-only emulation product.

One of the nice things about vSphere in a lab environment was the ease of moving VMs between Workstation/Fusion and ESXi, and prior to the Broadcom acquisition, pricing for the desktop and entry-level server products was reasonable, including free products, generous evaluations, and perpetual licensing with update-only subscriptions.

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

#145

Post by firesteelrain »

jasomill wrote: post #142
firesteelrain wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does this help with hardware vendor lock-in, unless there's a second source for PowerEdges I'm not aware of?

You can use the PowerEdge however you want. No lock in to VMware for VxRail, OpenShift, Azure, Nutanix etc

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/private-cloud/sf/private-clo...

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

#146

Post by stroebs »

pastage wrote: post #121
stroebs wrote: post #119

VMware is still seen as "platinum" level in my org compared to Proxmox, which I guess to a certain degree is true. But the features in use are basic VMs with vMotion. Proxmox provides that out of the box. Granted we've had a couple issues with a corosync wobble on larger clusters which was fixed long-term by putting corosync on a separate set of switches. So far the Proxmox experience has been pretty flawless. We run…

First time I read Ceph and "pretty smooth" in the same sentence, it is really that easy now days? I have always thought it was pretty heavy on operational knowledge.

I always thought it was heavy on operational knowledge too. Hence why we haven't moved to it yet.

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

#147

Post by yndoendo »

Incipient wrote: post #69
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.

This is the only POSSIBLE rational argument for this approach. 4x price, on 1/2 the customer base is still 2x revenue with less customers to deal with. They want to keep the Big Corp clients that are happy to pay. Now if it actually works out like this, only time will tell I suppose?

It will work for some time for Broadcom. They are private equity (PE); jack prices and don't care about the quality. Heard the stories from a previous company taken by PE.

Big business never think of the future. Good example is when two companies merged the brought down the cost of poly. Took a couple years for gravitation to the mean to bring up the base cost. They kept thinking it would stay low form them with being so big.

The Big Business that are staying with VMWare really should be tasking to know the cost of replacement with estimated time frame with a known successor. Yet, MB are blinded by staying with a known working tool. Perform the task on a few servers to reduce cost while investing in the education to do so. Big MBs really don't have a clear idea of investing wealth.

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

#148

Post by NBJack »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #132
chipx86 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another ex-VMware here (9 years on the Workstation team). It's so very sad to see... I grew up there from a career standpoint and I was proud to be there, loved being there, and I just don't recognize it anymore. I agree with your point about "winning was the default state." I joined during the Diane Greene era and left in the Pat Gelsinger era, spoke to all three CEOs at different points in one-on-ones, and learned…

What do you think was the root cause?

It made a lot of money with its core virtualization tech, which gave it excellent market momentum in datacenters. But the ever growing cloud lanscape was a shift that eventually became an all-hands-on-deck (sort of, and all too late) moment, hence the sudden interest in cloud-based offerings.

IMHO, I think it was never going to be an easy shift. But after Pat left for Intel, leadership never seemed to recover.

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

#149

Post by yardie »

tbyehl wrote: post #135
yardie wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to run FCM to manage the nodes? But I run HVM to manage the roles? But there’s no overall resource management like VMware vsphere or proxmox does natively? Microsoft hides their best stuff in SCVMM, which is another product and another license they want you to purchase. Anytime I've asked someone from MS why I can't X like I can in vCenter the response was usually, "oh, it's in System Center. FCM, HVM are ju…

SCVMM may technically have the thing you're missing from vCenter... but it's no vCenter. It is a grotesque, MMC plug-in-looking application where nothing quite makes sense to someone accustomed to vCenter or Hyper-V / FCM. Maybe if you're into Azure and slap another layer on top w/ Arc you'll have something that... is less icky but still isn't vCenter. But, hey, The Reg says that VMware is now claiming that vSphere S…

Microsoft has done a lot of shitty things, including letting Windows Server and SCVMM languish to push/force their customers to Azure. I've been to a few Ignites and the feeling I got was Server development was starving for resources while the things we've asked for were being deployed to Azure only.

I don't think SCVMM is as bad as you portrait. I've used both SCVMM and vCenter. vCenter is so far ahead. And SCVMM was getting there until 2022. When they stopped trying.

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

#150

Post by WokeUp420 »

anonreplier wrote: post #99
WokeUp420 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proxmox is good for a home lab but running an enterprise on it is a joke. Good luck with that

You work for Broadcom don't you fella?

No I work for a 100 year old Fortune 50 with 50,000 VMs.
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