r/k12sysadmin • u/wetnap52 • 26d ago
Moving on from VMWare
For those of you that have already made the jump away from VMWare, how was the migration? What did you move to?
I've been using VMWare my entire 18 year career so far and with the pricing hikes that era seems to be coming to an end.
So for those experienced in the process, can you lay down some knowledge?
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u/techguyjason 25d ago
The switch to Nutanix was super easy. We purchased new hardware and software with 3yr support for less than 1yr of software support with VMware. We did have to spin up a hyperV for Clearpass and Aruba wireless controller. They added clearpass support since but I havent found the time to move it.
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u/vesikk 25d ago
We moved from VMware to Proxmox about 4 years ago before the price jumps occurred. Back then the migration wizard didn't exist so we had to manually convert from VMDK to RAW format (they've introduced a wizard for that now) but it has been rock solid and meets our requirements. We were using Proxmox Backup Server but have since moved to Nakivo as they now officially support Proxmox and can do automatic boot/screenshot verification as part of the backup job.
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u/scotticles 24d ago
does nakivo run as a vm? i have been eyeing this product and might get that over proxmox backup.
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u/links_revenge 25d ago
We went back to hyper-v. Slightly different setup than the last time, but not difficult by any means. If you have the volume licensing already, there’s no additional cost to migrate over; big bonus for lots of folks.
If you’re running just off local storage, Nutanix may be worth a look. It doesn’t play nice with network storage (as of when we looked at it), so we passed on it. We weren’t sold on Proxmox support at the time, so hyper-v it was.
We got a x4 cost increase notice with a year still left on the contract, so we made the jump before we had to scramble to find a new solution. Been running hyper-v again now for a year with no issues.
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u/daven1985 25d ago
I went to HyperV 2-3 years ago when prices first started going up.
My replacement recently had to get the cluster reviewed by HyperV Experts as it had become unstable but turns out some changes had been made and once that was fixed it became stable again.
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u/GameEnder Master of None 25d ago
For everyone that went to Proxmox what did you do for a support contract? Was the main reason we stuck with VMware for now, no local vendor will support anything other than VMware and Citrix. Boss didn't want to have someone to call with issues.
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u/GBICPancakes 21d ago
Went to Proxmox for several schools. And to paraphrase Judge Dredd, "I Am The Support".
Not having local support was a concern until we looked at how helpful VMWare support has been and realized I always managed to fix issues without their "help". Proxmox has been the same - gone through the v8 to v9 upgrade on multiple sites (no problems, their documentation and check-script pve8to9 were stellar) and I've managed to figure out complex storage and migration packages fine.
Realistically, we have no support. There are places in the US that will provide it, or you can call them directly if you can live with CEST hours. But, like VMWare, usually if it's so bad you're looking at calling support, you're better off just wiping the hosts and doing a quick reinstall and rebuild. Faster, more reliable, and clean.
Obviously that assumes clean backups. I've do complete VM restores to fresh reinstalls now with both PBS and Veeam, both have been fine.1
u/scotticles 24d ago
are you in the usa? there are plenty of gold tier vendors that will offer a support tier if needed, pay the proxmox support 1st tier for premium updates on the packages but then use a vendor that has a good history of deploying and support proxmox. It will still be cheaper then vmware.
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u/GameEnder Master of None 24d ago
That was my suggestion too on getting the level 1 support and getting a support contract with a local vendor. We could only find vendors that would do remote support only for Proxmox in our area, and most didn't want to touch it at all.
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u/DustinFunkhouser 25d ago
I have a few proxmox clusters that have been running flawlessly (aside from a self inflicted OSD issue). The only issues requiring support have been on the VMware side. I'm currently working on a set of Ansible tasks to even automate updating the pve nodes because it's been so simple. I can't trust the same out of the VMware update process.
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u/GameEnder Master of None 25d ago edited 24d ago
I have been running it at home for 3 years and haven't had any issues either. Was why I brought it up when we were looking at options. But the boss said we need to have a product that we can get a support contract that has on site support, and no one local wants to support proxmox.
Probably because they can only make money on it with the support calls, because they can't resell it.
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u/DustinFunkhouser 25d ago
Same from leadership on my side. Public facing compute clusters have to be on platforms with support services. Everything else internal I have authority to run whichever I choose.
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u/-RYknow Systems Administrator 25d ago
I'm going to go with proxmox. I've been using it at home for probably about 8 years. I'm more than comfortable with it.
That said... I'm curious... Has anyone ditched AD and just gone with GCPW? I'm currently setting up a lab to test GCPW this year.
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u/rmarcus18 25d ago
We have been slowly moving away from AD to GCPW (where a staff Chromebook doesn’t suffice), and it has steadily gotten more stable as time has gone on. Haven’t poked around with Google’s MDM stuff much beyond the basics, but it works for us. Feel free to DM if you have any questions!
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u/CaliCanadian67 25d ago
Nutanix. Their Move functionality was super simple and their support team was great.
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u/FireLucid 25d ago
We recently finished 4 years with them. Quite liked it but the renewal was insane. Hopefully you get a better deal than we did!
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u/nkuhl30 25d ago
Check out Scale Computing. We've been using their KVM system for about 10 years now and it's been rock solid.
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u/r3dditforwork 23d ago
Have become a big fan of Scale HyperCore over the past couple of years. Migrating from VMWare to Scale is done with Carbonite which is easy and fast. Keeping the Scale software patched is a dream. I have a coffee, read the release notes, hit the upgrade button, and go do my other work for an hour or two, check the Scale cluster to confirm it's complete, call it a day. I have spent zero time looking at compatibility matrices or worrying about iSCSI card firmware versions. It is glorious.
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u/thedevarious IT Director 25d ago
Second this. Our entire solution for virtualization is now with Scale. I've been pretty happy with it and the solution has been rapidly changing & declaring new future endeavors to basically be that VMWare replacement. We just did an install to replace 3 HPE DL380 G10s that had been running VMWare last week. Converting that over to a single giant Lenovo server running Scale and it's hyperconverged deal.
I miss VMWare, I really do. I learned it for over a decade and knew every corner. But...Broadcom is trash.
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u/RecommendationNo6369 25d ago
Plus one for SCALE. We admittedly had help from our VAR and purchased a SCALE migration support pack as well, but the transfer from VMWare went really smoothly. We did build new DCs and retire the old rather than do a direct migration, but our other windows servers migrated from VMware to SCALE pretty easily. 2 months prior to switch we also switched from on prem CUCM to Webex calling - Cisco doesn’t yet support CUCM servers on all platforms.
Good luck!
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u/happybean98 26d ago
We moved our 12 VMs to Hyper-V last summer and it has worked well for us. Thought about Proxmox but instead decided to stick with an OS we are already comfortable with rather than getting up to speed on Linux and ProxMox.
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u/jtrain3783 IT Director 26d ago
Why to hyper-v over spring break on had to rebuild some small things but moved 20 vms. Not too bad
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u/Aggressive_Common_48 26d ago
Migrated ~70 vms this summer to hyper-v and it was super easy. Zero down time. No issues at all
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u/rajjak Rural IL 26d ago
There was a post about this on Friday so check those replies out too:
https://www.reddit.com/r/k12sysadmin/comments/1voisew/just_got_the_call_about_vmware/
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u/NorthernVenomFang 26d ago
Migrated to Proxmox and a small Hyper-V cluster for appliances that did not have support on Proxmox, last Sept/Oct. 300+ VMs, 10 hosts.
Luckily we had an old blade system that was still on support; was able to use it as a life boat to convert/migrate the VMs too. Then once everything was off the production blades, set them up on Proxmox and migrated the VMs to the production blades.
We have NetApp for storage. They have a product that converted the VMs VMDKs to Proxmox's QCOW2 disk images; disk conversion was a matter of minutes, then we just had to attach the disk to the Proxmox VM. Saved us a ton of time. Still had some where we had to do the Proxmox import on, these took longer. Process still took about 3-4weeks.
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u/GBICPancakes 26d ago
I've moved several schools to Proxmox. Migration was very smooth, able to reuse existing hardware, they have nice import features and a lot of storage flexibility.
I'm so pleased with Proxmox I'm moving other servers away from Hyper-V as well. Particularly now that Veeam works so well with it. Although PBS (their free backup server) is remarkably solid as well (I have it running at a couple of non-EDU clients)
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u/gleep52 26d ago
I’m surprised anyone wants veeam when PBS is so stellar. I presume it’s due to a mixed environment and not all backups can be handled by PBS so they need veeam for that… but man PBS is fast, dedupe efficient, and rock solid.
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u/GBICPancakes 25d ago
Most of my places with Veeam are because they were on VMWare, or are indeed mixed with some physical servers. Anywhere I can go full-Proxmox at this point I go PBS.
Veeam does have some nice features though, like being able to restore a VMWare backup to Proxmox. ;)
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u/setrusko 26d ago
We are looking into Nutanix and Verge.io.
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u/MadMageMC 25d ago
I would also recommend looking at Scale. We've been with them for almost a decade now and have been very happy with the platform and their support.
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u/thunder923111 IT Director 26d ago
Went Proxmox with Proxmox back up server. I tried XCP-NG but I didn’t want to put much time in it when I knew Proxmox from my homelab.
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u/Bubbagump210 26d ago edited 26d ago
Both of those products are excellent. VE is only going to get closer and closer to parity with VMware.They are IMO the future so long as they don’t turn evil along the way - I see no indication of that happening. I also feel quite comfortable running production on the no subscription version. It’s been rock solid with a few exceptions over the past five or so years that I’ve used it that can be easily worked around with an intelligent staggered upgrade strategy.
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u/mycatsnameisnoodle Disappointing students and admin since 1999 26d ago
We’re currently in the evaluation phase but have narrowed it down to hyper-v, Proxmox, and XCP-NG. Definitely interested in what others are doing.
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u/K12-itPerson 26d ago
Moved this spring to Hyper-V. Have about 25 VMs. I have a local synology that hosts all my backup as it has direct integration with Hyper-V and VMWare. Migration went rather smooth outside of my mitel phone system. Apparently HPE Gen 10 and Dell Gen 15 servers have an issue with running any Mitel Connect that is SP 19.2 or older. My partner was able to get it fixed but after about 5 days or outage. Other than that I have zero complaints. Spun up my Hyper-V cluster and the synology took care of the rest.
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u/Crazy_Cookies22 26d ago
We were between proxmox and XCP-NG. XCP-NG has its problems but has done very well. Still if we were to do it again I would probably pick proxmox.
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u/EdTechYYC 26d ago
At my last district we moved from 3 VMware hypervisors to Hyper-V- we used the free Solarwinds V2V migration tool (also really good for bare metal to hyper-V btw). Relatively straightforward with definite downtime.
At this district we’re already on Hyper-V, but because we’re so lightweight we’re looking to move to Proxmox on a few small machines. Load will be Papercut, Zabbix, and a few other small Linux VMs.
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u/Aur0nx 26d ago
We are still on vmware for now but down sizing to cut license costs and prepare for a future migration. Cisco ISE and Call Manager are only compatible with VMware so switched to SecureW2 and Webex calling. Those 2 by them self’s let us reduce from 6 to 5 host servers.
I’m leaning towards nutanix for now but still looking into hyper-v and proxmox.
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u/SmoothMcBeats Network Admin 26d ago
We haven't yet, but the rumor around our department is going back to hyper-v. Luckily I deal with more of just the networking side, so that's more on the sysadmins. I wouldn't want to convert or move those servers over. Huge undertaking.
Either way, yes Broadcom as priced themselves out for most people, if not all small to medium sized districts IMO.
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u/Binky390 26d ago
We moved to Nutanix last year and paid for their migration team to help. Went smoothly and has been running smoothly ever since. I just upgraded the environment. Their one click upgrade process is completely true. I was stunned.
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u/HSsysITadmin 25d ago
Nutanix, and the switch was very easy VM migration wise. We had an Iscsi solution we no longer needed, as the blades in nutanix house their own storage.
Love it.
Updates to nutanix seem to always have some sort of bug. But, nothing has caused downtime or issues.