VMware Migrations Will Be Long, Expensive, and Risky, Warns Gartner (theregister.com) 80
Migrating from VMware's virtualization platform could take up to four years and cost organizations between $300 and $3,000 per virtual machine, Gartner has warned in a new report. Companies running 2,000 or more virtual machines will need up to 10 full-time staff for initial assessment and another six employees for a nine-month technical evaluation, according to Gartner.
"According to Gartner" (Score:5, Insightful)
The Gartner dartboard must have been busy. That must be how Gartner makes its predictions [horsesforsources.com].
Re:"According to Gartner" (Score:5, Informative)
You're being too generous, and probably not cynical enough. When I read that Gartner "study", the first question I had is how much Broadcom paid for those inflated time and cost estimates.
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"the first question I had is how much Broadcom paid for those inflated time and cost estimates"
The same thing I thought. What a racket.
Sounds like a great deal (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds like a great deal (Score:5, Informative)
I've already migrated a few customers from VMWare to Nutanix and other platforms. Some of them were pretty damned big. Never took that long.
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Definitely some good input.
Re: Sounds like a great deal (Score:2)
Re: Sounds like a great deal (Score:3)
big organizations have an PHB load that high (Score:4, Insightful)
big organizations have an PHB load that high.
Smaller ones don't need that level of staff to look at other systems.
Oh no! (Score:1)
Better stick with Broadcom(R) VMWare(TM), it just makes good business sense! :^)
Gratner Crack Monkeys (Score:5, Insightful)
Does migrating mean converting existing infrastructure, or does it mean entirely replacing the existing infrastructure with a forklift upgrade?
$3,000 per VM is ridiculous, unless it is a forklift upgrade including SAN, compute hardware, and backup system/infrastructure.
$300 per VM is more realistic, but still high if being done at scale.
Re:Gratner Crack Monkeys (Score:4, Informative)
It depends what's running in the VM. Linux migrates easy. Rsync. Maybe tweak the initrd. Done. Windows not so much. Windows you have to do a sysprep first which funks up authentication and has to be reworked. Because the virtual hardware in the other hypervisor doesn't perfectly match the virtual hardware in VMWare.
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Which basically means that it could make sense to do an upgrade of your Windows version at the same time. Many Windows systems are now on Server 2016, which means that they are getting a bit aged and Windows 10 goes end of support in October.
Going to Windows Server 2022 or even 2025 and Windows 11 24H2 are both points where it's worth to consider a transit to a new hypervisor.
This I Completely Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
This is completely wrong. Migrated VMs should NEVER be sysprepped.
Migrating a Windows VM from VMWare to another hypervisor platform has two or three possible requirements.
1. Converting the VMWare VMDK files to a format supported by the new hypervisor. This is almost certainly a requirement, but some hypervisors can work with VMDK.
2. Add/update drivers in the Windows VM. These can be injected pre-migration, or installed post-migration.
3. Postmigration, tune settings in the VM for things like storage and IP addressing.
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I don't know if you've ever tried to migrate Windows from one machine to another, but doing it without Sysprep is one hell of a slog. Just getting it to boot in safe mode on the new machine is tough.
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Maybe in the XP days, but from Vista onwards, it's not hard to migrate a Windows installation.
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This, XP was a nightmare requiring a bunch of manual hacks to the registry and system files to even prepare for moving to different hardware, more recent versions are more like Linux in that you can just boot it on different hardware and it will probably work fine on the first try.
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from Vista onwards, it's not hard to migrate a Windows installation.
Windows 7 definitely does not boot on mildly different hardware (virtual or physical) without being sysprepped before being shut down on the old hardware. It was a major problem for me when I replaced a laptop some years ago with an ever so slightly different model.
I'm pretty sure Windows 10 failed for me too, when I occasionally forgot to sysprep it first.
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Windows 7 definitely does not boot on mildly different hardware (virtual or physical) without being sysprepped
Windows 7 needs a boot repair generally if changing hardware - and the drivers for new hardware - ideally pre-installed before changing the hardware; not a Sysprep. Sysprep is designed to help prepare an image for mass deployment to new computers. Migration of a service environment to a new system was never intended by Microsoft and is not an optimal use case for Sysprep, since it general
Completely Wrong. Again! (Score:2)
I don't know if you've ever tried to migrate Windows from one machine to another...
You keep reconfirming that you don't know what you are talking about.
I think that you may be confusing an image roll out with moving a Windows install.
Moving VMs is never sysprepped. NEVER! Sysprep is only used for imaging purposes when deploying new instances.
Re: This I Completely Wrong. (Score:2)
This is false. I've migrated several real installs of windows from 7 on to KVM without ever using sysprep and they all worked fine.
don't need to sysprep just install virtio drivers (Score:2)
don't need to sysprep just install virtio drivers into windows.
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You haven't actually migrated a VMWare Windows instance to KVM or Virtualbox, have you?
Installing the virtio drivers is necessary but far from sufficient.
Re: don't need to sysprep just install virtio driv (Score:2)
I have and they all worked fine. Some of them I didn't even install the drivers first. They came up with basic drivers and I was able to install the drivers afterward.
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moved off vmware along time ago. I think there was an bit more but as long as you can boot in the other VM then you can remove the VMware stuff.
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Windows not so much. Windows you have to do a sysprep first which funks up authentication and has to be reworked.
I've done a ton of migrations of Windows P2V TO VMware; V2V from VMware to XenServer, and V2V from XenServer back to a newer version of VMware later and never had to Sysprep a single one of them. You sysprep to generate a new Sid only if you are preparing a shared template to be cloned to multiple new Windows machines.
It is possible to migrate Windows by simply converting the format of the v
Re: Gratner Crack Monkeys (Score:2)
Re:Gratner Crack Monkeys (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not to say that the actual migration costs will just be sftp-ing the disk images from the old system to the new system and assuming that everything will just work; but it sounds like their cost estimate is for an environment where internal expertise has been slashed to ribbons and there's an existing vmware infrastructure that was set up by consultants or by people who got downsized and has been running on a 'nobody understands it and all live in fear of touching it' basis for several years and you'll be doing a full archeological writeup of things more or less from scratch.
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Given that they call out "up to 10 full-time staff for initial assessment and another six employees for a nine-month technical evaluation" I don't think the Big Idea Guys at Gartner are even talking about into-the-weeds-for-nerds-who-don't-sign-enterprise-checks VM migration: more the assemble-the-stakeholders-to-develop-a-set-of-KPIs-for-the-RFP stage where you perform elaborate courtship rituals with salespeople to see which vendor you'll be locked in with in the future. That's not to say that the actual migration costs will just be sftp-ing the disk images from the old system to the new system and assuming that everything will just work; but it sounds like their cost estimate is for an environment where internal expertise has been slashed to ribbons and there's an existing vmware infrastructure that was set up by consultants or by people who got downsized and has been running on a 'nobody understands it and all live in fear of touching it' basis for several years and you'll be doing a full archeological writeup of things more or less from scratch.
Yeah, my first gut instinct is "this is paving the way for a consultant group to rake businesses over the coals that have no in-house expertise." It's either that, or Broadcom paid them off to make it sound like an impossible thing to do.
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We're migrating on existing equipment. We initially scaled VMware with enough bare metal servers for physical fault tolerance. We're just redeploying with non VMWare.
So, what's your per VM cost?
If you're over $3k per VM, I'm eager to do it for you for $2,999. ;D
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We moved an entire 70 VM Hyper-v Cluster to Nutanix (which is basically a Supported enterprise instance of KVM) in a matter of days and this was way before Nutanix Move existed.
Biggest issue was setting up Nutanix to boot into UEFI mode, since at the time UEFI secure boot was not officially supported. Once we got that working the VM's booted up and all we had to do is install virtio. Eventually Nutanix officially supported Secure boot and TPM 2.0 and we replaced our servers with newer virgin Nutanix install
all going according to plan (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure Broadcom is counting on businesses being afraid to leave them, whether or not there's any actual significant expense involved for them. Shovel the FUD like they're loading coal into the boiler
But I think we have to assume that Broadcom's bean counters have ran the numbers and figure this is still going to be a win for them.
Re:all going according to plan (Score:4, Insightful)
i have seen businesses migrating away from oracle for the same reasons... problem is most businesses wont, because they are too afraid. So they are banking on the experiences oracle had with gouging their customers they are aware some will leave but if the net income is higher with the remaining customers, they have won!
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Broadcom is simply continuing the pattern that flushed VMWare down the toilet in the first place. Just let them keep on flushing, nothing of importance will be lost.
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THIS!!
The PHB types are afraid of their own shadows and if they ONLY know of VMware, then it is even worse.
FEAR is what drives the people in the c-suites, which is why they hyperfocus on CYA procedures. Nobody ever gets fired for following proscribed procedures. And since VMware is all the procedures talk about, there is no moving off of them, until new procedures are created. Gartner Goons come in here, and their wild cost estimates. After all, Garner is part of the procedures.
Please notice, how self refer
Left the important parts out... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, if you hire a 3rd party consulting form to do it, it's going to cost a lot more than having your staff that manages your VM infrastructure. Here's the thing, if you have IT staff to do this, they can also handle the migration to another platform. I migrated to Proxmox VE and didn't have anywhere near those costs. Admittadly the infrastructure I manage is not 100+ hosts and 2000+ VMs, but still.
Let's get to the important stuff. Who wrote the article? A VMware bro.
Michael Warrilow
VMware,Senior Product Marketing Manager
In surprise news, a VMware marketing manager says moving away from VMware will be expensive, News at 11 everyone!
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Clearly Gartner has become a paid PR firm.
P.S. You can't spell "analyst" without "anal".
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It probably depends on how much you pay their staff and how talented or talentless they are.
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If the average salary of the type of tech who would be doing this is around $125k (from a quick google), then $300-$3000 is a rough translation of "between half a day and one week of person-time" per VM. And while spending a week on a single machine for the migration seems like a lot, if you have to do testing, shutting down interacting machines during an outage, pre-move backups for rollback, etc, I can see how it can easily take over half a day per machine...
A team I know recently took over a year to move
does that $3000 also have hardware / licensing fee (Score:2)
does that $3000 also have hardware / licensing fees added to it?
Alternatives (Score:2)
So what are the alternatives?
I'll give a real-world use case. I have a friend who manages a large organization's VMWare installation. It's mixed, with virtualized desktops and servers ran through a central management system. It's all off the shelf VMWare stuff customized and automated with Powershell and bash scripts. The OSes mixed Windows desktop and servers, along with Linux desktop and servers, with some Macs thrown in for good measure.
So what would replace this? Hyper-V? VirtualBox? Does anything have
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In open source, there is also OVirt. It was the basis for Red Hat Virtualization. It includes moving a running vm from one physical machine to another, SAN support, CPU pinning, snapshots, user and role based authorizations and more.
It is too bad that Red Hat is dropping virtualization. We have been using them for years. Admittedly, we only have 17 hypervisors and have had between 200-300 VM's. But the open source upstream is still going, and Oracle is now using Ovirt for its virtualization. (I hate recomme
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I hate recommending Oracle ... But the fact that they are using it probably means that it will be around for a while.
Unchanged form from the point they forked it / bought it from the Open Source version. Oracle: where good technology goes to die.
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Oracle: where good technology goes to die.
Sorry, that title goes to Symantec. They have acquired 57 companies in their time, including Veritas, Altiris, NitroDesk and more. Some of them still live, but many of them are just memories now.
Of course Symantec sold a lot of its business to Broadcom, so maybe Broadcom is a contender. As is Microsoft with its EEE policy. (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish)
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Hmmmm, you do make a good argument. Veritas was a particular sore point for me in the past.
No it won't. (Score:2)
Fear mongering article by someone trying to keep you bleeding for them.
You test the VM platform. You test the conversion process. You migrate machines.
The first two parts are very small scale, and the third can be done a machine at a time. They're VMs, they'll look exactly the same to the network.
The painful part will be paying the licensing during the overlap period and retraining your people for new maintenance and restore procedures. In the long run, it is worth it to escape Broadcom.
Somebody getting paid to ... (Score:3)
... boost / plug VMware / Broadcom, yes?
Seems like a job for AI (Score:1)
Seems like a job that will be farmed out to AI.
Tanzu lock-in (Score:2)
Contracting waste (Score:2)
... Like, why the fuck is Osh Kosh making custom-made postal trucks instead of buying off-the-shelf vehicles from Toyota or GM? Because Osh Kosh is a government contractor that's why. And this is entirely due to rules made up by the government itself. Just look at what's needed for IT contracting to see why there is so much government waste.
Bad example, IT contracting is labor intensive because it's *easy* to arrange data however you dream up inside the commodity hardware you buy.
US Postal service in my state *does* deliver mail via an ad hoc mix of commercial minivans, dodge step-vans, and the antique Grumman trucks. The entire point of the Next Gen delivery vehicle was because they know that the commercial vans are not good fit for mail delivery from hands-on-experience with the limitations. So the government tasked several government spec
well the air force can demand an offline key for V (Score:2)
well the air force can demand an offline key for VMware that will not time out like the older versions.
Its not that hard (Score:2)
Moving VMs between hypervisors is pretty trivial at this point, and with the right tooling can be done really quickly. Automation and 3rd party integrations will be the bulk of the LOE, but the sooner you start the sooner you finish.
but do the other systems have the same level of to (Score:2)
but do the other systems have the same level of tools that vmware has?
the same support level?
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The big vendors (RedHat, Microsoft) are in good shape, PVE is progressing rapidly. The little popup HCI folks are hit or miss. I wouldn't weight broadcom support very heavily into a decision. It's not VMware support anymore.
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Finally, Proxmox does have paid support available if required. If you have any Debian experience you may not need it.
well if the business need is must have enterprise (Score:2)
well if the business need is must have enterprise support Proxmox may not cut it.
At least now you can use veeam backups with it.
Why? (Score:2)
I would say it all depends on what you need the systems for and how you separate your data from applications and the OS.
In my case I could move the 2000 systems from VMWare to Proxmox in a day but either way I wouldn't use either because there are better solutions than running 2000 versions of the same OS in a VM.
If you lock yourself into a platform make sure you have a contingency plan especially if your core business depends on it.
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If you lock yourself into a platform make sure you have a contingency plan especially if your core business depends on it.
Exactly this. The moral of the story is don't get locked into a single platform without an exit strategy. Any vendor can pull the plug or turn the screws at any time.
It's already happened with vmware.
It's already happened to customers of various products in sanctioned countries like russia and myanmar. They have also had problems where even if a foreign vendor didn't increase the price or stop selling to you due to sanctions, the collapsing exchange rate has made the cost prohibitive.
Never used VMWare, but... (Score:2)
I've never used VMWare, but I can transfer a VirtualBox VM for under $100. Cheaper if done in bulk.
and you need to spin up an full side by side clust (Score:2)
and you need to spin up an full side by side cluster?
So you can move VM's with little downtime?
VMware is a roach motel. Easy in, difficult out. (Score:1)
Load was no real help, as even machines that had little load were sometimes considered very important by the customers (this was a h
So less than 1% the cost of sticking with vmware? (Score:3)
I think that's what they're saying?
So do the risk analysis. (Score:2)
Include the capricious and predatory practices of VMware in the analysis. Decide whether or not it is in the best interest of your company to accept the risk of remaining in partnership with this vendor.
Risk mitigation isn't free, but it has to be done. Being expensive isn't really that important. It's a consideration, but it's just one of many.
Love it! (Score:2)
The comments this time are spot-on and hilarious. Gartner is certainly smoking the lucrative billable hour crack. The hardest part of a migration is moving the data, and... that's about it, no matter what the destination is. Yeah, if you have a lot of them it will take time. A lot of coffee breaks mostly watching bits move. And yes there will be special edge cases that require some research. But if all you're doing is VM's and storage, it's really not hard.
Broadcom either was counting on the FUD of do
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well changing automation / tooling that is build on vmware may not be just drop in.
Proxmox UI can be better. And allow more spaces in VM names
This article brouht to you by VMWare! (Score:1)
Interesting comment .. (Score:2)
That depends on how deeply entwined the customer is with the VMware stack. If you're just using the generic hypervisor, then sure, a migration is simple. If you're using other functionality like VVOLs, NSX, etc., or if you have significant automation developed around PowerCLI, or if you have a business application which is only certified on the VMware stack, then migration becomes mo
If you want it (Score:2)
PHB's love long complex projects.
We just had a story about an Austrian company that built its own infrastructure on KVM and already moved.
Hosting Lufthansa and others.
In less than a year.
But PHB's love big emergency budgets.