Fresh from debuting a version of its software for open source VMware alternative Proxmox, data management vendor Veeam has developed a prototype to backup another virtualization platform: the Xen Server fork XCP-NG.
News of the prototype emerged in Veeam's forums, where earlier this month Olivier Lambert – CEO and co-founder of Vates, the French outfit that's the driving force behind XCP-NG – inquired if Veeam was contemplating support for the platform.
On October 7, Veeam senior veep for product management Anton Gostev wrote that the developer wasn't contemplating support for XCP-NG, as it "simply has different business priorities at the moment and R&D resources are needed elsewhere."
But on October 23, after a couple of posts expressing interest in XCP-NG backup, Gostev returned with news that "some weeks ago" he asked his team to develop a prototype, which landed on his desk last week.
"The team has presented me a fully functional XCP-NG backup and restore prototype based on Veeam 12.2," Gostev wrote, praising XCP-NG's devs for doing a "fantastic job" on APIs and stating that praise came "from someone who was directly involved in our Proxmox integration development."
That's still a long way short of proof Veeam will support XCP-NG, but there's clearly an interest in doing so – likely as the platform garners more attention amid Broadcom's licensing changes that have seen some VMware users complain of big price rises.
Those changes also spurred analyst firm Gartner to produce a document on October 14 titled "Top Five Alternatives to VMware" that opens as follows:
Gartner's top five alternatives are:
- Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure;
- Public Cloud IaaS;
- Microsoft Azure Stack HCI;
- Microsoft Hyper-V;
- Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
Nutanix topped the list because, in the opinion of Paul Delory, a research vice president in the Gartner for Technical Professionals team, its products match functions of VMware's Cloud Foundation (VCF) suite, and offer a stellar UI and "best-in-class migration tool." But would-be migrators are warned Nutanix may not be cheaper than VCF.
The same warning applies to moving VMware infrastructure to public cloud IaaS, but Delory argued the idea "can no longer be dismissed without analysis" and calculating the cost of on-prem to cloudy ops is a chore worth undertaking.
"Do not be surprised if public cloud lift-and-shift proves to be cheaper," he wrote. "This may be an uncomfortable conclusion for VMware administrators, but it is possible that public cloud IaaS is not only a viable option, but your best option."
Delory rates Azure Stack HCI highly, describing it as "a new and disruptive model for on-premises infrastructure, one that blurs the line between HCI and distributed cloud, and there is much to recommend this approach."
But until recently "Microsoft was ambivalent about this product" due to its preference for Azure, and saw AzureStack as "a fallback plan for workloads that could not move to Azure because of some constraint."
Microsoft has changed its tune during 2024, but the product is unproven at the kind of scale some VMware shops will need – and has weak storage tools.
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- AT&T and Broadcom may settle VMware support case
- XCP-NG thanks Broadcom for increased interest, swipes Citrix for not helping build an alternative
- OpenStack Dalmatian debuts with a new dashboard, better security and GPU-wrangling
Redmond's Hyper-V earned its place on the list as an alternative for VMware users who want just a standalone hypervisor instead of the VMware bundles Broadcom now sells.
"It is difficult to imagine any enterprise IT organization that doesn't already own Windows Server licenses, so Hyper-V is available at no additional cost," Delory wrote, before adding that the product "has never matched VMware in either technical capabilities or user experience" and is therefore harder to manage.
VMware shops are warned that Red Hat's OpenShift Virtualization "will feel foreign to a vSphere administrator, and the learning curve will be steep" as it is built on OpenShift and Kubernetes – "neither of which the typical VMware administrator knows how to operate."
Delory also noted the need for lots of manual management chores, the lack of migration tools, and "laborious" performance management tools.
The analyst rated the Red Hat product as suitable for those who need to keep a few VMs ticking over alongside their fleet of containers. ®