VMWare Migration Options

If you’re contemplating moving away from VMware and exploring your options, it’s essential to understand the landscape of alternatives available, particularly those offered by Oracle. Oracle provides several enterprise class solutions to consider when migrating from VMWare. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the options and offer insights on where we think each option would work well.

On-Premise: Oracle Linux Virtualisation Manager

Oracle Linux Virtualisation Manager provides a robust alternative to VMWare for on-premise workloads. OLVM is deployed on physical hosts and supports Linux, Windows and Solaris guests.

• Very cost-effective on-premise hypervisor platform. Subscription model based on 2 socket physical host.
• “No-frills” functionality – provides robust hypervisor platform to run mission critical apps and databases without the bloat of unnecessary features.
• Easy migration – either via export to OVA or “live” migration over the network.
• Modest skills transfer – concepts are very familiar to VMWare admins. There will be cross-platform training required for VMWare administrators to become fully familiar with OLVM.
• Where would we use this: On-premise with a mixed guest footprint of Linux and/or Windows guests that require enterprise class performance and stability but don’t need all the bells and whistles.
• Migration Effort: Low-medium – depending on the storage footprint of the guests and the type of storage used for the database servers.

OCI: OLVM on Bare Metal

OCI bare metal cloud service provides an alternative to hosting your own physical infrastructure whilst having complete control over your hypervisor platform. The same capabilities as on-premise OLVM but run on “rented” physical infrastructure in OCI.

• OLVM platform in OCI using dedicated hardware. All the benefits of on-premise hypervisors without the hassle and cost of running physical infrastructure.
• Complete control over hypervisor resource allocation, configuration.
• Great option where unique software licensing requirements need to be adhered to.
• Easy integration with OCI and other Oracle Cloud service offerings.
• All the flexibility of on-premise without the complex overheads of networking, cross site redundancy etc that are associated with a data centre.
• Where would we use this: Where a customer is coming to EOL on current infrastructure and planning to move off VMWare but is still developing their long term infrastructure strategy.
• Migration Effort: Low-medium – same technical migration process as on-premise. We would need to consider OCI connectivity via VPN or FastConnect, or data transfer solutions for large vm footprints.

OCI: VMWare Cloud Service

OCI VMWare Cloud Service provides the VMWare hypervisor as a service on dedicated physical infrastructure. OCI VMWCS provides a 3 node VSphere cluster, 8T storage and total of 2T RAM as the base configuration. Simple, scalable, VMWare in the cloud.

• Cost-effective complete VMWare hypervisor platform in OCI.
• Integrates with existing “on-premise” VSphere environment.
• Reduce exposure to VMWare subscription cost increases.
• Great option to keep running VMWare under a predictable cost model whilst a long term infrastructure strategy is developed.
• Allows you to use existing VMWare skills and knowledge.
• Existing operational solutions – backup, monitoring, identity etc, are easily migrated to OCI VMCS.
• Great stepping stone to “cloud native” environment where a complete data centre exit may not have made sense previously.
• Where would we use this: Where the customer has a firm timeline to migrate off VMWare but is still developing their long term infrastructure strategy.
• Migration Effort: Low – VMotion the guests to OCI VMWare cloud service.

OCI: Native Services

OCI Compute and Block Storage provide cloud native infrastructure services. Flexible deployments and choice of license included or BYOL make this an attractive option for moving both Linux and Windows workloads to cloud services.

• Most cost-effective solution for Linux and Windows guests.
• Oracle Cloud Migrations service – mature toolset to automate the migration steps between “on-premise” VMware and OCI.
• OCI skills required.
• Need to consider re-platforming operational solutions – backup, monitoring, identity etc.
• Where would we use this: Where the customer has a cloud migration strategy and plan in place and is ready to migrate off VMWare.
• Migration Effort: Low – OCM service takes care of the heavy lifting.

Each customers environment is unique with different requirements. The flexibility offered by Oracle allows you to adopt one or all of the solutions to achieve your VMWare migration goals.

We have covered the options at a very high level. If you would like to explore the options further to help plan your VMWare migration, feel free to get in touch.