VMware Acquisition by Broadcom

Subscription-only licensing; costly, complex product bundles; cancellation of the VMware partner program…

Been keeping up with the news lately? If so, you are already aware of Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.

Naturally, this has created a lot of questions for VMware’s existing 500,000+ customers and partners.

If you’re one of these, we understand your concerns. Now is the time to have a solid plan B, to chart your own course rather than be left in the lurch. It’s no secret that being acquired is a risky business. So why risk your business?

Explore alternatives to vSAN for storage virtualization and hyperconverged infrastructure

Edge sites often don’t need the features and benefits provided by datacenter solutions, nor the additional hardware necessary to run them. Broadcom’s changes to VMware’s products and licensing model, combining many products together in costly subscription-only bundles, will force organizations to significantly over-provision their IT infrastructure.

It is better to consider hyperconverged solutions that have been designed for the edge and are able to meet the needs of the edge, with easy management and lightweight high availability, at a significantly lower cost.

Compare the features of VMware vSAN and StorMagic SvSAN below as an example, and note that an entire SvSAN cluster, including hardware, software and support contract, can be purchased for less than $10,000.

Virtual SANs Compared

Capabilities StorMagic SvSAN VMware vSAN
Licensing model
  • Perpetual
  • Subscription
  • Subscription
Hypervisor support
  • VMware vSphere
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • KVM
  • VMware vSphere
Minimum cluster size
  • 2 nodes
  • 3-4 nodes (Traditional)
Witness / Quorum service Yes Yes
Clusters serviced per witness 1000 64
Minimum witness bandwidth 9Kb/s 2Mb/s
Maximum witness latency 3000ms RTT (WAN or LAN) 500ms RTT, or 100-200ms RTT for stretched clusters (high bandwidth WAN)
System requirements Small Medium – High
Processing 1x vCPU, 2GHz 2x CPUs or 1x dual core CPU
Memory 1GB 32GB per ESXi host
Storage Any disk combination SSD required
Networking 1x 1GbE NIC 10GbE preferably

What about vSphere?

VMware vSphere is the dominant hypervisor in the market and certainly part of the crown jewels of VMware. And while it will likely remain a viable hypervisor in the future, many businesses are now looking for alternatives to vSphere, either due to the acquisition-related uncertainties, or due to cost and/or capability issues. At StorMagic, we can provide that flexibility. The same SvSAN code runs on vSphere, Hyper-V, or Linux KVM. SvSAN also provides support for containers, so as customers move away from hypervisors completely, SvSAN can move with them.

Manage Your Dependence on VMware vSphere

Get the latest advice and recommendations from Gartner on how to reduce dependency on VMware vSphere with this new report. The paper helps educate on alternate server virtualization platform options, providing the tools necessary to create a contingency plan.

Book a Demo of StorMagic SvSAN

Simply complete the form to book your demo of SvSAN. A member of the StorMagic team will be in touch right away to arrange a Webex demo at a time convenient to you.

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What VMware vSAN customers say after switching to
StorMagic SvSAN:

First Enterprise Bank

USA, Banking/Finance
  • FEB conducted server upgrades and added virtualization with VMware initially, but needed to address disaster recovery (DR) objectives
  • FEB needed an affordable, hyperconverged solution that could run all of the bank’s back- office applications, ensure high availability and simplify the DR plan.
“The StorMagic solution was 87% less expensive than VMware’s – we spent less on the software and we were able to re-purpose four existing servers instead of buying six new ones that vSAN required.”
Chris Hood | IT Director | First Enterprise Bank

Lisbon Airport

Portugal, Travel
  • VMware’s virtual storage solution proved too expensive
  • SvSAN came in considerably below the cost of competitor solutions without compromising on any of the features necessary to ensure the airport’s guiding system remained online and functioning.
“I can’t believe how easy and reliable StorMagic SvSAN truly is. The Lisbon airport now has the confidence that our airplane docking/ guiding system can survive almost any type of failure, and we saved a whole bunch of money along the way.”
Pedro Ponte | IT Consultant

Additional Resources