September 24, 2025 — 18:42

Author: silver  Category: virtualization  Comments: Off

Work in progress (dec-2024)

Last update: September 2025

Product list

List of virtualization platforms to completely or partially replace VMware Sphere (aimed at “any” enterprise environment besides “small”)

Vendor / Product	HV	Notes
“The big boys”
IBM RedHat OpenShift / OKD	kvm	➡ k8s ➡ has vm addon “OpenShift Virtualization” ➡ based on KubeVirt operator
Oracle Virtualization (VM Server and Linux KVM)	kvm	➡ Oracle Linux KVM is based on oVirt
Nutanix Cloud Platform	ahv
OpenStack	multiple	➡ complex to setup and maintain
Apache CloudStack	multiple	➡ OSS ✖ needs specific hardware
Azure Local	hyperv	➡ run vm’s and select azure services onprem ➡ formerly “azure stack hci”
XCP-ng	xen	➡ XenServer fork (Vates offers Support) ✔ management appliance available (“XO”) ✖ product seems “unfinished” at best
“Second tier“
Proxmox Virtual Environment	kvm	➡ uses debian, linux, novnc etc ✖ seems to be aimed at smaller env’s ✖ outdated management webui
OpenNebula	kvm	➡ touted as vcloud replacement ✔ webui, user/tenant self service
Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure	multiple	➡ based on openstack
Harvester HCI	kvm	➡ built on k8s (+ kubevirt) ➡ formerly “suse virtualization”
“New / lesser-known“
Sangfor HCI	xen	➡ chinese company
VergeOS	kvm
Scale Computing	kvm
Triton	kvm	➡ originally developed by Joyent ➡ solaris/illumos based
Platform 9	kvm
HPE VM Essentials	kvm

Not included: public cloud

Shortlist

Currently it seems migrating to RedHat’s OCP (and OCPv) is a popular option.

In general, Kubernetes with KubeVirt is a solid choice. The KubeVirt project was initiated in 2016 by RedHat to run KVM vm’s as native k8s objects. Besides OCP there are multiple other products available such as Harvester or “vanilla” k8s.

It benefits from the large k8s landscape (storage, networking etc). Also, combining k8s with kubevirt makes it possible to run both containers and vm’s in a cluster (on bare metal) with somewhat similar functionality as VMware Tanzu.

Ecosystem

Everything else besides VMware’s ESX Hypervisor & vSphere like vSAN, vCenter, PowerCLI and Aria (Automation, Operations, Logs/vRLI). Similar tooling and automation offered by these alternatives or other 3rd party replacements.

Storage

Options to replace vSAN / switch to NAS or SAN:

• SDS: CEPH, Cloudian, Starwind VSAN or zVault (NAS)
• Hardware: DDN/Trintri (NAS), NetApp (NAS), TrueNAS, Pure Storage, HPE, IBM or Dell

Management

• Azure Local: like cloud (Arc control plane)
• XCP-NG: Xen Orchestra (multiple hosts)
• Harvester: Rancher
• ManageIQ can manage OpenStack and OpenShift/K8s platforms

IaC

• Terraform supports most vendors
• Ansible supports most vendors

Scripting

• Azure Local: PowerShell
• XCP-ng: xe cli tool (local)
• ProxmoxVE: Bash(?)

Backup

• Veeam supports Hyper-V, Proxmox VE and XCP-NG, their product Kasten supports Kubernetes
• Commvault supports Proxmox VE (but not Kubernetes)

Logging

A few “DIY” centralized logging examples are Elastic (ELK stack), InfluxDB (TICK stack), Grafana Loki, Splunk and GrayLog

API

• Proxmox VE API (REST). Clients: most popular languages
• OpenNebula API (XML-RPC), Clients: Java, Go …
• Nutanix REST APIs and SDK (Python, Java, Go, JS)
• OpenShift: API based on k8s
• XCP-ng: “XAPI” or Orchestra API
• CloudStack API
• Azure Local API (REST)
• Kubernetes (OCP, Harvester, KubeVirt)

More information

Links

• https://www.theregister.com/Tag/VMWare
• https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=vmware+alternative
• https://veducate.co.uk/kubevirt-for-vsphere-admins-deep-dive-guide/

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant

From research reports, to get an idea about market trends

Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software

File and Object Storage Platforms