Kubernetes-based Alternatives to VMware

Table of contents:

• Key Features & Benefits of Running VMs on Kubernetes
• Platforms Supporting VMs on Kubernetes
• Addressing Storage, Backup, & Disaster Recovery for Kubernetes-Based Virtualization
• Why Storage is Critical for Kubernetes-Based VMware Alternatives
• Real-World Use Case: Portworx with Kubernetes-Based VM Platforms
• Considerations for Choosing the Right Kubernetes Storage Solution
• Why Portworx
• Conclusion

VMware’s rich feature set, including robust virtual machine management, high availability, and reliability, has been trusted by businesses over the decades. It has helped organizations optimize their data center operations.

With applications becoming distributed and containerized, organizations are seeking solutions that natively align with cloud native architectures. Teams have realized the advantages that Kubernetes offers regarding application portability, scaling, and developer productivity and are, hence, looking for Kubernetes-based alternatives to VMware.

In this post, we will explore five prominent Kubernetes-based alternative systems to VMware that organizations are eager to use for virtualization.

 

Key Features & Benefits of Running VMs on Kubernetes

Running VMs on Kubernetes offers numerous advantages and enhances operational efficiency and application management.

Migrate Legacy Workloads Without Re-Architecting

Using Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), tools like KubeVirt treat VMs as native Kubernetes objects and allow organizations to run VMs natively within Kubernetes clusters without rearchitecting their applications. This approach keeps legacy applications functional alongside modern workloads, enabling businesses to gradually adopt Kubernetes to reduce disruptions and risks while upgrading tools and processes.

Future-Proof Application Development

Kubernetes supports hybrid workloads, managing both VMs and containers using a single platform. This allows teams to gradually shift applications from VMs and containerize them. It allows teams to use the same CI/CD tools across VMs and containers thus reducing operational overhead. This approach allows for the adoption of cloud native practices like GitOps, enabling teams to gradually modernize their applications.

Unified Management for VMs and Containers

Kubernetes enables unified management of VMs and containers using familiar tools like KubeVirt and kubectl. This standardizes deployment, scaling, and monitoring processes regardless of their architecture, thus reducing operational complexity. Observability tools like Grafana and Prometheus can be integrated to provide comprehensive monitoring and logging across mixed workflows, improving visibility and issue resolution.

Scalability & Resource Optimization

Combining VMs and containers in a unified infrastructure, Kubernetes enhances resource usage and eliminates silos maximizing efficiency.  Built-in auto-scalers like Horizontal Pod Autoscaler and Cluster Autoscaler dynamically adjust resources for optimal performance, reducing VM sprawl and underutilization, which lowers infrastructure costs.

High Availability and Resiliency

Kubernetes effectively manages high availability and resiliency for VMs and containers. ReplicaSets maintains the pod states and automatically reschedules to healthy nodes if they fail. Auto-scaling ensures workloads can handle varying workloads and multi-cluster deployments for fault tolerance by distributing them across different clusters. Rolling updates enable zero-downtime deployments for both containerized and virtualized workloads.

Improved Portability Across Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments

By abstracting the underlying infrastructure, Kubernetes enables workload portability across different cloud providers. It facilitates consistent application deployment across platforms by defining VM specifications in vendor-agnostic manifests. It also simplifies storage and networking management through CSI (Container Storage Interface) and CNI (Container Network Interface) plugin support.

Kubernetes-Native Ecosystem Integrations

Kubernetes enhances VM workload management by integrating cloud-native solutions like Portworx for persistent storage, ensuring data consistency and reliability. It integrates with CI/CD, security, and monitoring tools like Jenkins, Prometheus, and Istio, improving workflows and security. It uses CNI plugins to maintain consistent networking policies, ensuring reliable connectivity across environments and simplifying management for diverse workloads.

 

Platforms Supporting VMs on Kubernetes

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is a feature of Red Hat’s OpenShift solution for running VMs on a Kubernetes cluster, designed to consolidate workloads into a unified platform. The platform supports both Windows and Linux VMs, making it suitable for diverse enterprise workloads.

Key Features & Benefits:

• It enables users to run VMs alongside container workloads, making it easier to gradually refactor monolithic, virtualized applications into containers and leverage Kubernetes’ orchestration capabilities.
• It provides a Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) to migrate legacy applications VMs from other hypervisors at scale to OpenShift, enabling organizations to standardize their infrastructure on a single platform.
• Red Hat’s enterprise-level support offers performance tuning tailored to specific workloads and utilizes RHEL KVM hypervisor technology for robust VM performance.

Drawbacks:

• Higher subscription costs, due to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform subscription fee with bare metal pricing model, which includes both the platform and virtualization capabilities.

• Requires familiarizing teams with Kubernetes concepts and resource management needed for effective VM management within OpenShift.

SUSE Harvester

SUSE Virtualization (formerly Harvester) is a comprehensive hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) platform designed specifically for running VMs and Kubernetes clusters on bare metal servers.

Key features and benefits:

• SUSE Virtualization offers businesses an affordable and flexible solution for minimizing costs and modernizing their infrastructure.
• It has native integration with SUSE Rancher for multi-cluster management along with integration with Longhorn for embedded storage management.
• It unifies the management of VMs and containers and supports VM live migration and high availability features.

Drawbacks:

• Managing and troubleshooting Harvester, especially when dealing with advanced configurations, requires expertise for production.
• Harvester is relatively new in the HCI space and hence might lack some advanced features and robustness, which mature solutions provide, though it is evolving rapidly to compete with them.

Spectro Cloud

Spectro Cloud is an end-to-end Kubernetes management platform that streamlines the process of deploying, managing, and scaling clusters more easily in complex and enterprise environments. It ensures a consistent cluster configuration across multiple environments. Their platform, “Palette” efficiently manages the entire lifecycle in a variety of environments, including multi-cloud, on-premise, edge, bare metal, and hybrid.

Key Features & Benefits:

• Palette provides a unified interface for simplifying the deployment and lifecycle management of Kubernetes clusters and VMs, which facilitates seamless operations in mixed environments.

• It can support hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling the organization to manage Kubernetes clusters and VMs across public cloud providers, bare metal, and Edge cloud.

• Spectro Cloud provides enterprises with robust policy-based governance tools such as Kyverno, Open Policy Agent (OPA), and Palette Vertex to help them manage resources and implement security, compliance, and operational efficiency across their Kubernetes deployment.
• Cluster Profiles on the Palette platform make policy management easier at scale by providing reusable Kubernetes configurations that can be deployed consistently across multiple environments.

Drawbacks:

• Spectro Cloud does offer a comprehensive set of features, but managing advanced settings requires deep expertise to fully leverage the capabilities of the platform.

• Spectro Cloud has a relatively small market presence compared to established players like Red Hat, SUSE, and KubeVirt on DIY.

KubeVirt on DIY Kubernetes

KubeVirt is a popular tool that extends Kubernetes by introducing VirtualMachine custom resources. It enables organizations to run traditional VMs alongside containerized applications.

Key Features & Benefits:

• It has strong Kubernetes integration through CRDs and APIs and allows users to interact with VMs and containerized applications using standard kubectl commands and YAML specifications.

• It provides fine-grained control over CPU, memory, and storage allocation, supporting both development and production workloads
• It ensures workload continuity by providing built-in high-availability features, including live migration and automated restart capabilities.

Drawbacks:

• It demands Kubernetes expertise, and its complex multi-component architecture, which requires managing various components, requires additional operational overhead.
• Organizations using KubeVirt have to rely directly on community support and documentation, making internal expertise and community engagement important for successful implementation.

Platform9

Platform9 is a service that provides a managed platform integrated with KVM-based virtualization. It allows organizations to manage both containerized and VM workloads in hybrid environments, targeting organizations seeking VMWare alternatives.

Key Features & Benefits:

• It provides a unified control plane to manage VM and container workloads across on-premises and cloud environments.
• It has zero-touch management features, including automated deployment, patching, and upgrades across Kubernetes clusters and VMs.
• It has a comprehensive monitoring stack with integrated Prometheus and Grafana, offering out-of-box visibility into cluster health, VM metrics, and container performance.

Drawbacks:

• It comes with a SaaS-based pricing model, and with operational overheads, this is an expensive option, potentially higher than self-managed solutions for large-scale deployments
• Dependency on Platform9’s control plane and update cycles limits customization options and impacts teams requiring complete deployment autonomy.

Summary

 

Platform	Key Features	Benefits	Drawbacks
OpenShift Virtualization	VM lifecycle management (Linux/Windows) Migration Toolkit for legacy workloads Enterprise KVM hypervisor	Unified container/VM platform Enterprise support with SLAs Advanced performance tuning	High OpenShift licensing costs Steep Kubernetes learning curve Complex architecture
SUSE Harvester	Bare metal HCI with integrated storage VM high availability and live migration Built-in monitoring stack	Rancher integration Cost-effective VM platform Enterprise-grade monitoring	Limited container features Immature ecosystem Separate VM/container management
Spectro Cloud	Multi-environment management Policy enforcement (Kyverno/OPA) Reusable cluster profiles	Single interface for hybrid cloud Strong compliance controls Simplified multi-cloud ops	High technical complexity Limited market presence Resource-intensive deployment
KubeVirt	Native K8s VM management VM lifecycle with live migration K8s storage/network integration	Mixed VM/container workloads Flexible deployment options K8s ecosystem access	Complex component setup Community support model High operational overhead
Platform9	Managed KVM virtualization Integrated monitoring Automated lifecycle management	Reduced operational overhead Consistent hybrid experience Managed service support	High SaaS pricing Control plane dependency Limited customization

 

 

Addressing Storage, Backup, & Disaster Recovery for Kubernetes-Based Virtualization

Effective storage, backup, and disaster recovery are crucial for Kubernetes-based virtualization. They ensure high availability, data protection, and seamless scaling for all workloads, including containers and VMs.

Storage Challenges in Kubernetes-Based Virtualization

Persistent Storage for VMs: Managing persistent storage for VMs in Kubernetes is challenging due to their large image sizes compared to containers and the need for block or file storage. Persistent Volumes (PVs) and Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) add complexity, requiring careful management to prevent orphaned storage when VMs are deleted or fail.

Performance Needs for Stateful Workloads: Stateful workloads require high-performance storage, but choosing the right solution is challenging. Local storage offers fast performance but ties VMs to a single node, limiting flexibility. Network storage provides more flexibility but introduces latency. Direct pass-through storage offers high performance but complicates the architecture, limiting portability and requiring specialized configuration.

Scalability Across Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments: Kubernetes faces scalability challenges in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Managing diverse storage solutions across different clouds is complex and can lead to inconsistencies. Data synchronization issues can cause drift, while network latency slows data transfers between environments. Varying scaling capabilities create potential bottlenecks or underutilization, while security concerns around data transfers and access control must be managed.

How Portworx Solves these Challenges

Portworx provides a comprehensive solution for managing persistent storage in Kubernetes environments, specifically addressing the challenges associated with stateful applications. Portworx Enterprise Storage provides reliable, scalable, persistent storage specifically designed for Kubernetes environments, ensuring high availability and performance for VM-based workloads.

Portworx’s dynamic provisioning allows it to automatically create PVs based on demand, eliminating orphaned storage issues. Portworx’s automation and policy-driven workflows streamline the management of diverse storage solutions, ensuring data mobility across cloud environments without much latency or complexity. This helps in maintaining consistent performance across environments while preventing synchronization issues.

Portworx enables high-performance block storage that can be accessed across multiple nodes, enabling efficient operation of stateful applications while maintaining flexibility. With integrated data replication and synchronous failover, Portworx ensures consistent performance during node failures. Portworx Backup offers Kubernetes-native backup and disaster recovery solutions, safeguarding both container and VM workloads and enabling quick data restoration to ensure business continuity. These solutions effectively address the complexities of managing storage and recovery in a Kubernetes environment.

 

Why Storage is Critical for Kubernetes-Based VMware Alternatives

Storage is a core element for any Kubernetes deployment, particularly for stateful applications. The following points outline why storage is critical for various Kubernetes-based solutions:

OpenShift Virtualization

OpenShift Virtualization combines VMs and containers, but managing persistent storage for both can be complex. OpenShift’s native storage lacks the high availability and performance for VM workloads in cloud-native environments. Portworx integrates with OpenShift seamlessly, providing enterprise-grade persistent storage with high availability, consistent performance, and advanced features like automated data migration and disaster recovery. This allows organizations to manage both VMs and containers efficiently while reducing operational overhead and complexity.

SUSE Harvester

Harvester uses Longhorn as its default storage system, which provides RWX support through NFSv4. However, this implementation has some performance limitations and requires additional NFSv4 server setup. Portworx offers enterprise-grade capabilities, including synchronous replication, storage encryption, snapshots, and optimized RWX implementation. It integrates with Harvester’s KVM-based VMs and provides automated storage provisioning with enhanced performance characteristics.

Spectro Cloud

Spectro Cloud faces the challenge of implementing a multi-cloud strategy while ensuring consistent performance and data availability across diverse environments. Portworx addresses this by offering scalable and reliable storage solutions, features like cross-cloud data mobility, automated storage provisioning, and high availability. Portworx simplifies persistent storage management in multi-cloud environments, ensuring seamless data access and performance consistency across platforms for reliable and scalable data management.

KubeVirt/DIY Kubernetes

Managing PVs effectively in DIY Kubernetes setups, including KubeVirt, can be challenging due to complex storage configurations and scalability issues and ensuring high availability for stateful applications across diverse environments. Portworx simplifies the deployment of scalable storage solutions with minimal operational overhead, enabling efficient management of PVs and ensuring that stateful applications remain highly available, reliable, and performant, even in complex DIY Kubernetes environments.

Platform9

In managed Kubernetes environments like Platform9, managing persistent storage for stateful applications and ensuring reliable, scalable, and available storage across different environments is crucial. Portworx solves this by providing automated storage provisioning, high availability with data replication, and easy data migration across clouds.

It simplifies storage management, reduces operational complexity, and ensures that stateful applications are always available, even in case of failures, without requiring manual intervention.

 

Real-World Use Case: Portworx with Kubernetes-Based VM Platforms

When teams decide to move from VMware to cloud native technologies and Kubernetes-based solutions, they encounter several challenges in modernizing their infrastructure. While traditional storage solutions work well with VM requirements, the transition becomes complex when teams must identify alternatives beyond the Container Storage Interface (CSI).

The key challenges include optimizing storage performance, implementing security measures, establishing disaster recovery protocols, and achieving efficient resource utilization.

The transition typically reveals several key challenges:

• Alternatives like vSphere, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, or KubeVirt do not provide built-in storage solutions that work seamlessly across the existing VMware environment and the new Kubernetes infrastructure.
• Containers increase application density by 10x, requiring scalable backups, but many existing solutions lack compatibility with different volume types, risking data loss.
• Difficult to identify and implement dedicated security measures in a hybrid environment for the clusters and the storage volume operations.

While VMware File System (VMFS) and vSAN offer a standard way to manage storage for VMs, modern virtualization solutions lack such standards, making storage management more complicated.

Portworx addresses these challenges with its Kubernetes-native storage and data management capabilities by:

• Enabling organizations to use disks or LUNs from their existing storage systems as backing storage, creating a virtualized storage pool within Kubernetes for VM disks.
• Ensuring high availability and data recovery with zero RPO for Kubernetes through synchronous and asynchronous replication, supporting uninterrupted business operations.
• Providing robust data protection for containerized workloads, including VMs on containers, supporting smooth migration over time.
• Offering detailed RBAC for managing clusters and volumes over cloud or on-premises, with volume encryption tied to key management systems.

This is just one scenario but you can read or watch webinars about more such real-world use cases where Portworx allowed the enterprises to manage mission-critical applications in a Kubernetes infrastructure and impacted real businesses.

For more information on how Portworx can help you migrate to VMware alternatives seamlessly and enable storage functionality for your modern virtualization solutions, check out this lightboard video: Running Virtual Machines on OpenShift using Portworx

Considerations for Choosing the Right Kubernetes Storage Solution

The selection of an appropriate storage solution for Kubernetes depends upon various factors that the technical and infrastructure needs of the business must determine. Here are a few typical considerations:

• Different applications have different storage demands—databases need high IOPS, message queues require low latency and analytics and reporting systems need high throughput. Such stateful workloads on Kubernetes require persistent storage to maintain data integrity in case of pod upgrades, failures, or restarts. Kubernetes offers StatefulSets, Persistent Volumes, and PVCs for such workloads while supporting different access modes (RWO, ROX, RWX) based on application requirements.

• Preventing data loss from accidental deletion, natural disasters, and unexpected incidents requires robust backup and disaster recovery strategies. Evaluate the storage’s snapshot capabilities and ensure that it allows you to define Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) based on your business requirements.

• Hybrid and multi-cloud environments require an easy integration of storage solutions for a seamless, unified experience. The solution has to be capable of interacting effectively across these environments using consistent APIs, migrating data easily from one environment to another, providing consistent storage management and policies for all environments, and enhancing security.
• Enterprises must select a storage solution that simplifies management and maximizes operational efficiency. It should include automated provisioning of storage resources, scalability, and lifecycle management to reduce manual effort and minimize error. The solution should also enable monitoring of storage health and performance and alerting tools to predict and solve problems in advance.

Based on the above considerations, enterprises can align their strategy on Kubernetes-based storage solutions with their technical requirements, infrastructure capabilities, and business objectives.

 

Why Portworx

As seen from the factors above, Portworx stands out with its high availability, scalability, backup, and restore capabilities. It is a leading container data management platform providing enterprise-grade storage solutions optimized for Kubernetes. Thus, Portworx may well be an enterprise’s go-to solution for the following:

• Portworx natively integrates with Kubernetes using CSI to deliver data management capabilities. Using Portworx, enterprises can manage storage, backup, disaster recovery, and more using Kubernetes-native constructs that reduce complexity and streamline workflows. It provides dynamic provisioning that helps optimize resource utilization by making storage resources available dynamically at the time of requirement.

• Portworx-Fast boosts the performance of persistent storage in Kubernetes and, hence, allows better data access at higher transfer rates. Portworx also offers a flexible storage tiering feature that automatically scales up and out to meet the growing demand of applications. To learn more about it, refer to Portworx’s basic guide to Kubernetes storage.

• Portworx includes high availability and scalability, which ensures data is available whenever a node fails and scales efficiently to serve the needs of modern, constantly changing applications. It promises zero downtime for stateful applications, which feature synchronous replication, asynchronous replication for DR, and self-healing clusters.

• Portworx is the ideal alternative for enterprises seeking flexibility and agility in their infrastructure, as it is compatible with the leading Kubernetes platforms such as OpenShift, Rancher, EKS, GKE, and AKS. It provides seamless integration with these platforms, enabling enterprises to deploy, manage, and scale stateful workloads and not be limited to a single cloud provider. It allows for multi-cloud deployments in which data can be replicated or migrated across Kubernetes clusters within different cloud environments.

 

Conclusion

In this blog, we explored why enterprises should transition from legacy workloads to Kubernetes-based alternatives and discussed a few key reasons to make that shift.  We explored the key features and benefits of Kubernetes-based alternatives to VMware, such as Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, SUSE Harvester, Spectro Cloud, KubeVirt on DIY Kubernetes, and Platform9.

We also looked at storage, backup, and DR challenges in Kubernetes-based virtualization and how Portworx resolves them through its enterprise storage, backup, and data management solutions.

Portworx provides enterprises with Kubernetes storage and backup capabilities to overcome these migration challenges. It addresses scalability, high availability, disaster recovery, and a multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud environment.

Using the right Kubernetes-based alternatives and strong storage solutions can help businesses protect their infrastructure, simplify processes, and encourage new ideas in today’s competitive world.

Learn how Portworx can help your enterprise move to Kubernetes-native storage solutions with the resources listed below:

• Portworx Webinars
• Portworx Demos
• Portworx Whitepapers