Just weeks after launch, Platform9 Private Cloud Director Community Edition is seeing impressive traction. In the last two weeks, we’ve recorded more than 800 total downloads (229 unique downloads)—a strong early signal of demand from users looking for a free, full-featured alternative to VMware.
Community growth, engagement, and feedback
The momentum is also visible in the community. Our Reddit presence grew by 72 new subscribers in just one month. The interest is clear: users are excited to get hands-on with a familiar, flexible, and open private cloud that runs on their own hardware—no strings attached.
“I joined Reddit specifically to post this message, as I am anxious to evaluate your product. If it’s as good as I’m hearing it is, our search for a VMware replacement may be over.”
“It was brilliant of them to release CE to the community without any functional restrictions of any kind.”
Rich@2guystek released a hands-on video titled “I Set Up My OWN Private Cloud! Here’s how YOU can too!” showcases a hands-on experience with the Community Edition, providing insights into its setup and capabilities.
Here is his comment after taking the Community Edition for a spin:
“Ever wanted to run your own private cloud, but OpenStack felt like too much? Same here—until now. I took Platform9’s new Community Edition of Private Cloud Director for a spin, and in no time, I had a full private cloud running in my #homelab. No complex configs. No chaos. Just clean, fast setup. Whether you’re homelabbing for fun, learning to be a cloud engineer, or just curious about what it takes to host your own cloud infrastructure, this might be the smoothest on-ramp out there. Watch how it all came together—and why you might want to try it too.”
Media and news mentions
Platform9’s Community Edition has garnered significant attention across various media outlets and industry analysts. Here are a few notable mentions:
- Constellation Research: Highlighted Platform9’s strategy to provide enterprises with a risk-free way to experience Private Cloud Director.
- Decision Insights: Covered its availability, highlighting its openness and accessibility.
- Cloud Native Now: Featured the launch at KubeCon EU, stressing its importance to the open cloud ecosystem.
- Run your free private cloud by TechWrix.
Why it’s resonating as a free VMware alternative
Community Edition delivers the full-featured experience of our Private Cloud Director for single-region deployments and home labs—including:
- VM High Availability
- Live Migration
- Dynamic Resource Rebalancing (similar to VMware’s DRS)
- Software-defined Networking
- Kubernetes and more
And yes we do not hold back any features other than disallowing multi-region deployment. So you can use every single feature that also gets used by our enterprise customers running Private Cloud Director at scale.
With no cost and no feature gating, it’s the easiest way to modernize your private cloud infrastructure, especially if you’re evaluating free alternatives to VMware.Learn more and deploy it yourself.
