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  1. Stackups
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  4. Virtualization Platform
  5. Packer vs VMware vSphere

Packer vs VMware vSphere

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere
Stacks608
Followers550
Votes30
Packer
Packer
Stacks573
Followers566
Votes41

Packer vs VMware vSphere: What are the differences?

Developers describe Packer as "Create identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration". Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images. On the other hand, VMware vSphere is detailed as "Free bare-metal hypervisor that virtualizes servers so you can consolidate your applications on less hardware". 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.

Packer and VMware vSphere are primarily classified as "Infrastructure Build" and "Virtualization Platform" tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by Packer are:

  • Super fast infrastructure deployment. Packer images allow you to launch completely provisioned and configured machines in seconds, rather than several minutes or hours.
  • Multi-provider portability. Because Packer creates identical images for multiple platforms, you can run production in AWS, staging/QA in a private cloud like OpenStack, and development in desktop virtualization solutions such as VMware or VirtualBox.
  • Improved stability. Packer installs and configures all the software for a machine at the time the image is built. If there are bugs in these scripts, they'll be caught early, rather than several minutes after a machine is launched.

On the other hand, VMware vSphere provides the following key features:

  • Powerful Server Virtualization
  • Network Services
  • Efficient Storage

"Cross platform builds" is the top reason why over 24 developers like Packer, while over 6 developers mention "Strong host isolation" as the leading cause for choosing VMware vSphere.

Packer is an open source tool with 9.1K GitHub stars and 2.47K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Packer's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Packer has a broader approval, being mentioned in 115 company stacks & 21 developers stacks; compared to VMware vSphere, which is listed in 56 company stacks and 25 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere
Packer
Packer

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.

Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images.

Powerful Server Virtualization;Network Services;Efficient Storage;Consistent Automation;High Availability;Robust Security
Super fast infrastructure deployment. Packer images allow you to launch completely provisioned and configured machines in seconds, rather than several minutes or hours.;Multi-provider portability. Because Packer creates identical images for multiple platforms, you can run production in AWS, staging/QA in a private cloud like OpenStack, and development in desktop virtualization solutions such as VMware or VirtualBox.;Improved stability. Packer installs and configures all the software for a machine at the time the image is built. If there are bugs in these scripts, they'll be caught early, rather than several minutes after a machine is launched.;Greater testability. After a machine image is built, that machine image can be quickly launched and smoke tested to verify that things appear to be working. If they are, you can be confident that any other machines launched from that image will function properly.
Statistics
Stacks
608
Stacks
573
Followers
550
Followers
566
Votes
30
Votes
41
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 8
    Strong host isolation
  • 6
    Industry leader
  • 5
    Great VM management (HA,FT,...)
  • 4
    Easy to use
  • 2
    Great Networking
Cons
  • 9
    Price
Pros
  • 27
    Cross platform builds
  • 8
    Vm creation automation
  • 4
    Bake in security
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Good documentation
Integrations
No integrations available
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
Docker
Docker
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
OpenStack
OpenStack
VirtualBox
VirtualBox

What are some alternatives to VMware vSphere, Packer?

VirtualBox

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.

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation

You can use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create your own templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run your application. You don’t need to figure out the order in which AWS services need to be provisioned or the subtleties of how to make those dependencies work.

Proxmox VE

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.

Scalr

Scalr

Scalr is a remote state & operations backend for Terraform with access controls, policy as code, and many quality of life features.

Pulumi

Pulumi

Pulumi is a cloud development platform that makes creating cloud programs easy and productive. Skip the YAML and just write code. Pulumi is multi-language, multi-cloud and fully extensible in both its engine and ecosystem of packages.

Azure Resource Manager

Azure Resource Manager

It is the deployment and management service for Azure. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure subscription. You use management features, like access control, locks, and tags, to secure and organize your resources after deployment.

KVM

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).

Habitat

Habitat

Habitat is a new approach to automation that focuses on the application instead of the infrastructure it runs on. With Habitat, the apps you build, deploy, and manage behave consistently in any runtime — metal, VMs, containers, and PaaS. You'll spend less time on the environment and more time building features.

Google Cloud Deployment Manager

Google Cloud Deployment Manager

Google Cloud Deployment Manager allows you to specify all the resources needed for your application in a declarative format using yaml.

Qemu

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.

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