As enterprises seek cost-effective, flexible, and future-ready virtualization solutions, many are re-evaluating their reliance on VMware. With increasing licensing costs and vendor lock-in concerns, the need for a robust alternative has never been greater. Platform9’s Private Cloud Director emerges as the best VMware alternative for organizations seeking to move beyond VMware while maintaining enterprise-grade virtualization capabilities.
Why Private Cloud Director is the best VMware alternative
Platform9’s Private Cloud Director (PCD) is an enterprise-grade virtualization and container management platform that is a comprehensive VMware alternative for companies looking to migrate today. PCD is built with a focus on virtualized clusters and Kubernetes clusters as it’s key building blocks. PCD is purpose built with a focus on providing virtualization administrators a very familiar user interface and experience along with a long tail of features they rely on today with VMware.
And with tooling specifically designed around ease of migration, migrating away from VMware doesn’t have to be daunting. With Platform9’s vJailbreak, you can automate migration of your VMs and applications efficiently. VJailbreak supports both cold and warm migrations, ports over complex storage and network configuration, and offers advanced options like disk conversion, driver updates, and volume type adjustments. The ability to pre-create ports, map networks, and retain IP addresses ensures minimal downtime and disruption during migration.
Learn more about Private Cloud Director.
7 reasons to choose Private Cloud Director
1. Enterprise-grade clustering and high availability (HA)
Platform9’s Private Cloud Director is built with open-source KVM hypervisor behind the scenes and uses a combination of best of breed open source technologies along with our unique built-in features to provide enterprise-grade virtualization. PCD is built with virtualized clusters as a key building block. You can enable Virtual Machine High Availability (VM HA) and Dynamic Resource Rebalancing (DRR) at a cluster level. DRR operates in a similar manner to VMware DRS and is the only alternative in the industry to offer VMware style distributed resource scheduling and rebalancing. DRR strives to achieve optimal utilization of cluster resources by creating an even distribution of VMs across servers. DRR will periodically live migrate VMs from one host to another in a virtualized cluster in order to achieve best distribution of V Ms across servers. The VM HA feature ensures automatic failover and minimal downtime for critical VMs during server failures. This level of resilience is critical for enterprises managing mission-critical applications and large scale deployments.
2. Shared storage support
PCD is the only private cloud platform with deep integrations with every existing enterprise storage offering that’s out there. We support a wide range of storage backends, including block and file storage from leading vendors such as NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, and HPE. These integrations enable organizations to:
- Extend storage volumes dynamically.
- Implement advanced storage and QoS policies.
- Use periodic snapshots and backups to simplify disaster recovery.
3. Flexibility with bring-your-own-infrastructure
Platform9 offers infrastructure flexibility, allowing organizations to use their preferred hardware and avoid vendor lock-in. This freedom is enhanced by its ability to:
- Integrate with existing on-premises x86 server infrastructure from vendors like Dell, HPE, and Lenovo.
- Support diverse networking, compute, and storage configurations.
- Optimize costs by leveraging existing investments.
4. Modern and easy-to-use interface
PCD features a modern and user-friendly interface that is easy to adopt. Virtualization features are offered with a look and feel familiar to VMware users. This ensures a seamless transition by:
- Providing intuitive workflows and controls similar to VMware’s interface.
- Enabling easy adoption without steep learning curves.
- Offering the flexibility to integrate with a variety of enterprise platforms such as ServiceNow, Harness, Datadog, New Relic and various backup platforms such as Veeam, Cohesity, CommVault, and more.
5. Integrated with Kubernetes for cloud-native workloads
As containerization becomes the norm, Private Cloud Director bridges the gap between traditional virtualization and modern cloud-native needs. It offers:
- Kubernetes integration for running containerized applications.
- A unified experience for managing both virtual machines and containers.
- Features like auto-scaling and node pools for efficient resource utilization.
6. Cost-effective SaaS management
The SaaS based control plane of Platform9 reduces operational complexity and costs. Key benefits include:
- Regular updates and security patches delivered automatically.
- Proactive operations and monitoring via Always-On Assurance™.
- Significant cost savings with a hosted control plane (Kaapi).
For instance, running Kubernetes clusters without a control plane reduces node requirements and associated hardware expenses. This approach can result in savings of up to $170,942 for larger deployments, as fewer nodes mean less infrastructure and operational overhead. These savings scale as more clusters are added, delivering exponential value for enterprises.
7. Enterprise-ready reliability and support
Platform9 ensures enterprise-grade reliability with 24/7 support and a robust SLA. This Always-on Assurance™ capability provides:
- Proactive issue resolution through centralized monitoring.
- Advanced remote support (ARS) for complex troubleshooting.
- Zero disruption upgrades that are fully managed by Platform9, ensuring smooth transitions without downtime.
The path forward
Private Cloud Director provides a smooth transition away from VMware, equipping enterprise IT teams with a developer-friendly, cost-effective, and enterprise-ready private cloud platform. Whether you’re driven by cost considerations, the desire for flexibility, or the need to move to the future of API automation, self-service, multi-tenancy, containers, and more, Platform9 delivers on all fronts.
Are you ready to future-proof your IT infrastructure? Learn more about Private Cloud Director.
