OpenStack vs VMware vSphere

Overview

OpenStack

Stacks790

Followers1.2K

Votes138

VMware vSphere

Stacks608

Followers550

Votes30

OpenStack vs VMware vSphere: What are the differences?

OpenStack and VMware vSphere are both popular cloud computing platforms used by enterprises for managing their virtualized infrastructure. Let's explore the key differences between these two platforms.

Architecture: OpenStack is an open-source platform that uses a modular architecture, allowing users to choose and integrate different components to build a customized cloud infrastructure. On the other hand, VMware vSphere is a proprietary platform that provides a comprehensive suite of integrated components for virtualization, networking, and storage.
Cost: OpenStack is known for its cost-effectiveness as it is based on open-source technologies and can be deployed on commodity hardware. It allows organizations to leverage existing hardware investments and reduce their infrastructure costs. VMware vSphere, being a proprietary platform, requires licensing fees and is typically deployed on enterprise-grade hardware, which can be more expensive.
Flexibility: OpenStack offers greater flexibility in terms of customization and integration. It allows users to combine different components and technologies to create a highly tailored cloud infrastructure that meets their specific requirements. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, provides a more standardized and integrated approach, which may be more suitable for organizations looking for a pre-packaged solution.
Vendor Lock-in: OpenStack avoids vendor lock-in by providing an open and vendor-agnostic platform that can run on various hardware and software configurations. It allows organizations to switch between different vendors and technologies without major disruptions. VMware vSphere, being a proprietary platform, may lead to vendor lock-in as it requires organizations to adopt a specific set of technologies and tools.
Community Support: OpenStack enjoys a large and active community of contributors and users who contribute to its development, provide support, and share best practices. This vibrant community ensures continuous improvements, regular updates, and access to a wide range of resources. VMware vSphere, although it has a strong user base, relies more on vendor support and may have a smaller community-driven ecosystem.
Feature Set: OpenStack offers a wide range of features and capabilities that cater to the needs of various enterprise workloads. It provides support for virtualization, network, storage, and orchestration, among others. VMware vSphere, being a more mature platform, also offers a comprehensive set of features, including advanced virtualization, high availability, disaster recovery, and centralized management tools.

In summary, OpenStack provides a modular and cost-effective solution with greater flexibility and less vendor lock-in, while VMware vSphere offers a comprehensive and integrated platform with robust features and vendor support.

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Detailed Comparison

OpenStack	VMware vSphere
OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.	vSphere is the world’s leading server virtualization platform. Run fewer servers and reduce capital and operating costs using VMware vSphere to build a cloud computing infrastructure.
Compute;Storage;Networking;Dashboard;Shared Services	Powerful Server Virtualization;Network Services;Efficient Storage;Consistent Automation;High Availability;Robust Security
Statistics
Stacks 790	Stacks 608
Followers 1.2K	Followers 550
Votes 138	Votes 30
Pros & Cons
Pros 60 Private cloud 39 Avoid vendor lock-in 23 Flexible in use 7 Industry leader 5 Robust architecture	Pros 8 Strong host isolation 6 Industry leader 5 Great VM management (HA,FT,...) 4 Easy to use 2 Great Networking Cons 9 Price

What are some alternatives to OpenStack, VMware vSphere?

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Apache CloudStack

CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Proxmox VE

It is a complete open-source platform for all-inclusive enterprise virtualization that tightly integrates KVM hypervisor and LXC containers, software-defined storage and networking functionality on a single platform, and easily manages high availability clusters and disaster recovery tools with the built-in web management interface.

KVM

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V).

VirtKick

Software as a service platform for hosting providers.

Qemu

When used as a machine emulator, it can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performance. When used as a virtualizer, it achieves near native performance by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. it supports virtualization when executing under the Xen hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux. When using KVM, it can virtualize x86, server and embedded PowerPC, 64-bit POWER, S390, 32-bit and 64-bit ARM, and MIPS guests.

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop for Mac allows you to seamlessly run both Windows and MacOS applications side-by-side with speed, control and confidence.

Parallels

It is an application and desktop virtualization software vendor that offers management and delivery platforms for Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows desktop deployments.

VMware Fusion

It gives Mac users the power to run Windows on Mac along with hundreds of other operating systems side by side with Mac applications, without rebooting. It is simple enough for home users and powerful enough for IT professionals, developers and businesses.

OpenNebula

It provides a simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable on-premise enterprise clouds in existing infrastructures. It can be primarily used as a virtualization tool to manage your virtual infrastructure in the data-center or cluster, which is usually referred as Private Cloud. It supports Hybrid Cloud to combine local infrastructure with public cloud-based infrastructure, enabling highly scalable hosting environments.

Related Comparisons

OpenStack vs VMware vSphere: What are the differences?

Architecture: OpenStack is an open-source platform that uses a modular architecture, allowing users to choose and integrate different components to build a customized cloud infrastructure. On the other hand, VMware vSphere is a proprietary platform that provides a comprehensive suite of integrated components for virtualization, networking, and storage.
Cost: OpenStack is known for its cost-effectiveness as it is based on open-source technologies and can be deployed on commodity hardware. It allows organizations to leverage existing hardware investments and reduce their infrastructure costs. VMware vSphere, being a proprietary platform, requires licensing fees and is typically deployed on enterprise-grade hardware, which can be more expensive.
Flexibility: OpenStack offers greater flexibility in terms of customization and integration. It allows users to combine different components and technologies to create a highly tailored cloud infrastructure that meets their specific requirements. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, provides a more standardized and integrated approach, which may be more suitable for organizations looking for a pre-packaged solution.
Vendor Lock-in: OpenStack avoids vendor lock-in by providing an open and vendor-agnostic platform that can run on various hardware and software configurations. It allows organizations to switch between different vendors and technologies without major disruptions. VMware vSphere, being a proprietary platform, may lead to vendor lock-in as it requires organizations to adopt a specific set of technologies and tools.
Community Support: OpenStack enjoys a large and active community of contributors and users who contribute to its development, provide support, and share best practices. This vibrant community ensures continuous improvements, regular updates, and access to a wide range of resources. VMware vSphere, although it has a strong user base, relies more on vendor support and may have a smaller community-driven ecosystem.
Feature Set: OpenStack offers a wide range of features and capabilities that cater to the needs of various enterprise workloads. It provides support for virtualization, network, storage, and orchestration, among others. VMware vSphere, being a more mature platform, also offers a comprehensive set of features, including advanced virtualization, high availability, disaster recovery, and centralized management tools.

OpenStack vs VMware vSphere

Overview