Platform9 Pushes Swing Capacity Workaround For VMware Migrants

Private cloud platform vendor Platform9 has a new lure for disaffected VMware users: A tool that allows migrations without requiring extra hardware.

This matters because organizations that decide on major software migrations may need to continue using existing hardware, either because they don’t have spare capacity among their server fleet or lack cash to update kit, but can’t overwrite their existing software. Many, therefore, look for “swing capacity” – servers to use during the migration, before moving back to their everyday hardware.

Swing capacity is not hard to find in the cloud age, but it is expensive and deploying it adds many steps to migrations because the boxes used must be configured ready to run whatever workloads they’ll briefly host.

With this in mind, Platform9 has tweaked the vJailbreak tool it offers in its Private Cloud Director platform, and which VMware partner Rackspace used to shrink its own VMware portfolio, so it no longer needs swing hardware to pull off a migration.

We’re told the updated tool runs alongside a VMware implementation, migrates a single host to Private Cloud Director, then moves VMs to that host. Users then rinse, lather, and repeat until the migration is done – apparently in far less time than you need when using swing hardware.

Another feature of Platform9’s new release is a Terraform-based application catalog that includes standardized application stacks that DevOps types can use to provision the perfect environment for their apps.

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Platform9 isn’t alone in thinking about Terraform and migrations: In late July, startup FluidCloud delivered a tool that can identify cloud infrastructure, describe it in a proprietary file format, and re-deploy the same rig to another cloud. The tool also produces Terraform files, if users prefer working with that tool.

FludiCloud CEO Sharad Kumar described the tool as turning any cloud infrastructure into a platform-as-a-service template that can be teleported into another cloud. The company is talking to Nutanix about using the tool to enhance VMware migrations.

Vates, the company backing the Xen Orchestra private cloud platform, is also working on faster VMware migrations. Last week the company’s CEO Olivier Lambert teased an improved migration process he says has reduced the time needed to move a VM from 25 to two minutes.

Other VMware alternatives continue to evolve. As we reported on Monday, open source virtualization platform Proxmox just debuted a new version.

And last week, HPE announced a Community Edition of its Morpheus hybrid cloud orchestration platform. The freebie can work across three CPU sockets. If you want to take it for a spin, you need to mail HPE and ask for a license.

Another notable move among VMware contenders came with the late July acquisition of hyperconverged infrastructure contender Scale Computing by Acumera, a provider of managed network security and edge computing solutions.

The combined business will operate under the Scale Computing brand and aim to deliver “AI-ready edge infrastructure”. ®