Category: vmware exit
Showing 69 posts.
Rob Pankow
Oct 5th, 2026 | 14 min read
vSAN ESA vs OSA: What the Express Storage Architecture Actually Requires From Your Hardware
The honest difference between the Express Storage Architecture and the Original Storage Architecture is not a feature list. OSA was a software layer you could lay on hardware you mostly already owned. ESA is a hardware specification with software attached: all-NVMe TLC, no cache tier, a faster fabric, and a prescriptive node profile. That makes the move a procurement event, and it puts a quote for all-NVMe hardware in your hand. This post compares the two architectures on the five criteria that decide what you have to buy, then asks the question the quote actually raises.
Chris Engelbert
Oct 4th, 2026 | 13 min read
vSphere 7 and 8 End of General Support: What the Date Actually Forces You to Decide About Storage
Pick your end-of-general-support date and count backwards. The hypervisor is not what moves slowly: a replacement host can be standing by in an afternoon. The storage tier is what cannot be moved in a maintenance window, what has to exist on both sides at once during a phased migration, and what every layer above it waits on. This is the sequence the date actually imposes, stage by stage, with the precondition, the check and the way back at each one.
Rob Pankow
Oct 1st, 2026 | 11 min read
A GPU-Attached VM Cannot Live Migrate: GPU Passthrough and vGPU After the vSphere Exit
The GPU boxes are usually the last wave in a migration plan, and they are the wave where the plan quietly changes shape. A virtual machine holding a physical GPU is not a normal VM with an extra device. The assignment itself is what removes live migration, and no storage layer gives it back. What storage does decide is how long every unavoidable stop lasts.
Rob Pankow
Sep 28th, 2026 | 15 min read
The Key Provider Does Not Travel: VMware Encryption Key Management After the vSphere Exit
Run the inventory and the encrypted machines are a subset, not the estate. That subset has a different migration path from everything around it, and the reason is not the cryptography. Both vSphere encryption features terminate in a Key Provider, and the Key Provider is the one component of the trust chain that has nowhere to land on the other side. Here are the three paths out, and what each one actually costs.
Chris Engelbert
Sep 27th, 2026 | 12 min read
The .vswp File Nobody Sized For: VM Swap Files and Datastore Capacity After the vSphere Exit
Power on a VM with 64 GB of configured memory and no reservation, and vSphere writes a 64 GB file to the datastore before the guest has finished booting. One per powered-on VM, reserved whether or not a single page is ever swapped. It is real capacity, it is in your datastore used figure, and it does not exist on the other side of the exit. Here is the arithmetic for pulling it back out before you size the destination.
Michael Schmidt
Sep 26th, 2026 | 13 min read
Where the Latency Number Came From: esxtop, DAVG and KAVG After the vSphere Exit
esxtop did not just tell you that storage was slow. It split one latency figure into three, and the split told you whether to blame the device, the fabric or the host's own queue. After the exit the symptom survives and the attribution does not, because no single vendor owns the whole path any more. Here is what each counter actually measured, and which instrument reports that layer now.
Rob Pankow
Sep 25th, 2026 | 13 min read
The VM Template After the vSphere Exit: Three Ways to Run an Image Catalog
A VM template was never one thing. It was a catalog, a portable envelope and an identity step, sitting on top of a storage trick that made a new machine appear without copying the image. After the exit those jobs split apart, and there are three defensible places to put them. Which one is right depends on image size, how often you instantiate, and how many clusters need the same picture.
Chris Engelbert
Sep 24th, 2026 | 16 min read
Raw Device Mapping and the Multi-Writer Flag: What Happens to Shared Disks After the vSphere Exit
Two guests writing to one disk on purpose is a configuration that has run quietly in vSphere estates for fifteen years, and it is one of the reliable ways for a migration plan to come apart. Here is what the multi-writer flag, raw device mapping and SCSI-3 persistent reservations were actually doing, where each one lands on the destination platform, and which part of the guarantee has no clean replacement.
Rob Pankow
Sep 22nd, 2026 | 14 min read
Migrating VMware to Proxmox VE: The Storage Decision to Make First
Most guides to migrating VMware to Proxmox VE are compute guides. They cover the cluster build, the network bridges and the disk import, and they treat storage as a prerequisite bullet. It is not a prerequisite, it is the decision: the storage backend you pick determines whether live migration survives, whether you still have snapshots, and how much raw disk you buy to replace a licence bill. Here are the paths, what each one costs, and the condition that makes each one correct.
Chris Engelbert
Sep 21st, 2026 | 15 min read
Crash-Consistent by Default: Who Quiesces the Guest After the vSphere Exit
On vSphere, asking for a quiesced snapshot was a checkbox, and VMware Tools quietly drove the guest filesystem and the Windows VSS writers on your behalf. After the exit that layer is gone, a CSI VolumeSnapshot is crash-consistent unless somebody makes it otherwise, and the failure is silent rather than loud. Here is what each piece of the old chain was doing, where it lands now, and which link has no automatic replacement.
Rob Pankow
Sep 19th, 2026 | 13 min read
pNFS and Parallel RWX: The Shared Access KubeVirt Live Migration Actually Needs
ReadWriteMany is not one mechanism. It is two, and which one you get depends on the volume mode. For raw block devices the consumer arbitrates. For a shared filesystem something below has to supply namespace consistency, lock arbitration and cache coherence, and the usual answer funnels every client through one server head. This is how parallel NFS splits the control path from the data path, and why that split decides whether a KubeVirt VM can be live migrated at all.
Chris Engelbert
Sep 18th, 2026 | 11 min read
VMware Capacity Planning After the Exit: Why the Old Forecast Overbuys
A vSAN cluster sized for 400 TB of usable capacity holds roughly 800 TB of raw flash, and the plan behind it reserved a quarter of that again before anyone was allowed to fill it. Carry that number into an exit plan and you will buy a machine that is substantially too big. The capacity forecast is a model with four inputs, three of them change when the datastore goes away, and nobody hands the buyer the new arithmetic. Here is the model, the ratios, and what rebuilding the forecast actually costs.
Michael Schmidt
Sep 17th, 2026 | 13 min read
The VMware Compatibility Matrix After the Exit: What Breaks When Nobody Certifies Your Stack
The compatibility matrix was never really a list. It was a single accountable answer to the question of whether a given pile of hardware and software was allowed to work together, and vSphere Lifecycle Manager enforced it inside the product. After the exit that authority splits three ways and nothing consolidates it again. This is what breaks, in the order it breaks, and what each break actually costs.
Rob Pankow
Sep 16th, 2026 | 14 min read
The vTPM Becomes a PVC: Where Windows VM Firmware State Lives After the vSphere Exit
A vTPM is not a stateless device. It holds keys, and on vSphere that state lived inside an encrypted file in the VM's home directory, where nobody had to think about it. On KubeVirt the same state is a PersistentVolumeClaim with a hard volume mode requirement, an access mode requirement, and consequences when it is lost. This is what that volume actually is, what it needs from the storage layer, and the part of the migration no storage vendor can fix for you.
Chris Engelbert
Sep 15th, 2026 | 16 min read
The Array Integration You Lose: vVols, VASA and VAAI After the vSphere Exit
Keeping the array through a hypervisor migration is a defensible decision, and most of the arguments for it are about capacity and depreciation. Almost none of them mention that three of the array's most useful features were never really the array's. vVols needs a VASA provider registered in vCenter. VAAI's offload primitives are SCSI commands the ESXi storage stack issues. Take the hypervisor out and the array keeps presenting blocks, while the integration contract quietly ends.
Michael Schmidt
Sep 14th, 2026 | 17 min read
VMware Site Recovery Manager Replacement: Who Orchestrates Failover Without vCenter
Site Recovery Manager never replicated a single byte. It orchestrated, and it did so by calling a storage replication adapter that promoted, demoted and test-mounted replicated consistency groups on the array. That contract has two halves, and after vCenter leaves, both of them need an owner. Here is where each half lands, what a replication policy actually gives you, and the one capability you have to assemble rather than buy.
Rob Pankow
Sep 11th, 2026 | 17 min read
Leaving vSphere Without a Storage Refresh: What Happens to the Array You Already Own
Every exit plan starts with the hypervisor. Almost none of them start with the array sitting under it, which has a support contract, a depreciation schedule, and a refresh date of its own. Those two clocks are now running at the same time, and the decision about the second one is usually made by default. Here is what keeping the array actually buys, what it keeps costing, and how to tell which answer is yours.
Chris Engelbert
Sep 10th, 2026 | 16 min read
Space Reclamation After the vSphere Exit: Who Gives Deleted Blocks Back
About three months after the cutover, someone notices the pool reports 41 TB consumed while the volumes only claim 12. Nothing has failed. Deleted space is simply not coming back, because the chain that used to return it was a column, an alarm, and a per-datastore setting in vSphere, and it has different owners now. Here is each link in that chain, who owns it after the exit, and how to prove it works.
Michael Schmidt
Sep 9th, 2026 | 14 min read
The Air-Gapped VMware Exit: What Breaks When Your New Storage Layer Cannot Phone Home
Almost every VMware migration guide quietly assumes four things: a container registry the cluster can reach, an operator catalogue that resolves, a vendor control plane to register with, and a licence that validates over the network. In a disconnected estate all four fail at once. This is what the storage layer actually needs mirrored, what it needs nothing for, and where the translation is not clean.
Rob Pankow
Sep 8th, 2026 | 14 min read
Leaving VMware Tanzu: The vSphere CSI Driver Does Not Come With You
If you were already running Kubernetes on vSphere, your exit looks easier than everyone else's. Your PVCs are Kubernetes objects, your manifests are already declarative, and no workload needs converting. Then you look underneath and find the provisioner, and the provisioner is not portable. This is what actually happens to the storage layer when a Tanzu estate leaves, which pieces survive the move, and which ones only look like they do.
Chris Engelbert
Sep 7th, 2026 | 14 min read
vSAN Stretched Cluster Replacement: Two-Site Synchronous Storage After the VMware Exit
A vSAN stretched cluster is not one feature. It is two data sites, a witness that holds no data, site-local read affinity, and a policy object that expresses failures to tolerate across sites and within them. Leaving vSAN removes all four at the same time, and the migration plans that go wrong are the ones that only replaced the mirror. Here is what each piece actually did and what has to take it over.
Michael Schmidt
Sep 6th, 2026 | 10 min read
Migrating vSphere VMs to SUSE Virtualization: The Storage Mapping You Declare Up Front
Every VM migration onto Harvester now starts with a storage mapping, declared once, before the first disk moves. That single form decides whether live migration works, whether multi-disk snapshots are usable, and whether you can change your mind later. Here is what belongs in it, and why landing on the bundled default is a decision you pay for twice.
Rob Pankow
Sep 4th, 2026 | 14 min read
Storage Tiering After the vSAN Exit: What Decides Which Data Sits on Flash
vSAN made the hot-versus-cold decision for you, at the disk group, with a ratio you fixed at build time. Leaving takes that decision away and hands nobody a replacement. Storage policies do not fill the gap, because they declare capability rather than placement. Here is who actually decides what lives on flash afterwards, and why the return trip out of cold storage is the part that turns into an incident.
Michael Schmidt
Sep 2nd, 2026 | 15 min read
Private Cloud Architecture After VMware: What the Storage Layer Has to Provide
Nine posts in this series answered the question what replaces this VMware feature. None answered the question underneath it: what are you actually building? The buyer's own word for it is private cloud, and most of the properties people miss when they leave vSphere turn out to be storage properties. Here are the six that matter, which ones your new platform gives you by default, and which ones the storage layer still has to supply.
Rob Pankow
Sep 1st, 2026 | 14 min read
Data Residency Requirements: The Sovereignty Decisions Your Storage Layer Makes
Sovereignty appears in the exit business case as a slide, then disappears into the architecture. It re-emerges as six storage decisions that nobody planned: where replicas land, where snapshots go, who holds the keys, who can reach the data plane, where telemetry is exported, and where the DR site sits. Most of them are made by a default rather than by a person. Here is the list, what vSphere decided for you before, and which defaults can cross a boundary without anyone noticing.
Chris Engelbert
Aug 31st, 2026 | 16 min read
Migrating VMware to Red Hat OpenShift: The Storage Decisions MTV Makes For You
The Migration Toolkit for Virtualization asks you for one thing on the storage side: a StorageClass. It then makes four decisions on your behalf, and three of them are hard to reverse once the virtual machine is running. Here is what MTV actually does to your disks, which defaults hurt, and what the destination storage layer does and does not change.
Michael Schmidt
Aug 30th, 2026 | 12 min read
What Replaces the VMware Datastore When You Leave vSphere
A datastore is a place you put virtual machines into. Its Kubernetes counterpart is not a place at all, it is a rule the cluster provisions from. That single category change is where most vSphere storage migrations quietly go wrong. Here is what each storage construct actually maps to, how clean each mapping is, and what breaks if you assume it is one-to-one.
Rob Pankow
Aug 29th, 2026 | 11 min read
The Other VMware Exit: Storage for Providers Who Move Customers, Not Workloads
Almost everything written about leaving VMware assumes you own the workloads. Hosting providers, MSPs and sovereign cloud operators do not. Their tenants are customers, their tenant boundary is a contract, and their migration happens one account at a time on schedules they do not control. That changes the storage decision completely.
Chris Engelbert
Aug 28th, 2026 | 13 min read
Leaving VMware Without a Hypervisor: Bare-Metal Kubernetes and the Storage Problem
Every VMware exit plan assumes the exit lands on another hypervisor. A third path exists: no hypervisor at all, containers straight on physical servers. It is a real option, and it removes something most teams do not notice they were relying on. Not the hypervisor, the datastore. Here is what bare-metal Kubernetes does to storage, why it strands capacity by default, and how the three exit paths actually compare.
Michael Schmidt
Aug 27th, 2026 | 14 min read
VMware and Hyper-V Together: Storage for the Mixed Estate You Actually Have
Almost every VMware exit plan is written as if the source were a single vSphere cluster. Real estates are mixed: a vSphere cluster, an inherited Hyper-V failover cluster, cloud instances that started as a pilot, and a rack of physical servers nobody ever virtualized. Consolidating compute onto one platform does not consolidate storage, and here is what each of those four legs arrives with, what breaks when they land on a default StorageClass, and which parts a storage layer actually decides.
Rob Pankow
Aug 26th, 2026 | 14 min read
What Happens to Your VMware Backups When You Leave vSphere
Every VMware exit plan budgets for moving the virtual machines. Almost none of them budget for moving the backups, and the backup estate is a second migration hiding inside the first one. Here is what the hypervisor backup API, changed block tracking, the proxy topology and the retention chain each become after the exit, which parts a storage choice decides, and which parts stay firmly the backup product's job.
Chris Engelbert
Aug 25th, 2026 | 19 min read
What Happens to Your VMware VDI Desktops When You Leave vSphere
Every VMware exit plan covers the server estate. Almost none of them cover the desktops. VDI is the most storage-latency-sensitive workload in the vSphere estate, which means the boot storm, the clone provisioning model and the per-desktop write churn all land on whatever StorageClass you happen to pick. Here is the requirement-by-requirement translation, including the parts storage does not solve at all.
Michael Schmidt
Aug 24th, 2026 | 18 min read
What Replaces VMware HA, DRS, and Fault Tolerance When You Leave vSphere
vSphere HA looks like a compute feature. It is not. It restarts a VM on a surviving host only because that host can already see the disk, and reproducing that on Kubernetes is entirely a storage decision. DRS turns out to be a scheduler problem, Storage DRS mostly stops existing, and Fault Tolerance has no equivalent at all. Here is the feature-by-feature translation, including the one that has no honest answer.
Rob Pankow
Aug 23rd, 2026 | 16 min read
What Replaces vMotion and Storage vMotion When You Leave vSphere
Every VMware exit guide argues about where the VMs should land. None of them tell you what happens to the features your maintenance windows depend on. vMotion has a direct equivalent whose precondition is storage. Storage vMotion has none, and on a pooled storage layer most of what it was invented to solve stops existing. Here is the feature-by-feature translation, including the two that are not storage problems at all.
Chris Engelbert
Aug 21st, 2026 | 12 min read
VMware Cloud Foundation 9: What the Forced Upgrade Changes About Your Storage Design
Most VMware exit writing argues about cost. The vSphere 8 support deadline argues about the calendar instead, and the in-family destination quietly changes the storage design underneath you. Here is what a platform release actually touches below the datastore, what the published support dates really buy you, and what each available path does to your storage architecture.
Michael Schmidt
Aug 20th, 2026 | 12 min read
Leaving Azure VMware Solution and VMware Cloud on AWS: Where Your Storage Lands
Hosted VMware buyers are being pushed to pick a new landing platform, and every off-ramp checklist skips the datastore. In Azure VMware Solution and VMware Cloud on AWS the datastore is vSAN, capacity is bought in whole hosts, and the migration is the one moment that coupling is actually open to change.
Rob Pankow
Aug 19th, 2026 | 13 min read
VMware Perpetual License: What Actually Expires, and What It Costs to Keep Running
The license is perpetual. The support contract is not. Understanding which of the two actually expires changes the renewal conversation, and it moves the real deadline from the vendor's calendar to your hardware refresh.
Michael Schmidt
Aug 16th, 2026 | 9 min read
Converged, Hyperconverged, or Disaggregated: Choosing Infrastructure After VMware
Converged infrastructure kept the array separate. Hyperconverged dissolved it into the servers. Both answers were written before licensing changed, and there is a third option the comparison pages leave out.
Rob Pankow
Aug 6th, 2026 | 9 min read
OpenShift Virtualization Storage: The Kubernetes-Native Alternative to Commercial HCI Platforms
Commercial Kubernetes-native HCI platforms solve real problems for OpenShift Virtualization, but their separate, capacity-tiered storage subscription and proprietary control plane bring their own lock-in. What to check before committing to one.
Rob Pankow
Aug 5th, 2026 | 8 min read
The Double-Replication Tax: Rethinking Storage Redundancy for Databases After the VMware Exit
vSAN let teams dial per-VM storage redundancy with an explicit policy. Move a self-replicating database onto a Kubernetes storage layer with its own fixed replication factor, and that dial disappears, silently stacking a second redundancy layer on top of one the database already provides.
Rob Pankow
Aug 4th, 2026 | 16 min read
Best VMware Alternatives 2026
The best VMware alternatives in 2026 span three families: Kubernetes-native platforms, hypervisor-first platforms, and packaged HCI. Compare OpenShift, Rancher, Talos, Cozystack, Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, Nutanix, Harvester, and OpenStack, and see why the storage layer decides whether the migration holds up.
Rob Pankow
Aug 4th, 2026 | 7 min read
Platform Engineering After the VMware Exit: Self-Service Storage, Multi-Tenancy, and GitOps
Leaving vSphere retires more than a hypervisor. It retires the storage policy, DRS, and template model platform teams used to hand VMs to application teams. This post maps that VMware admin workflow onto Kubernetes-native equivalents: StorageClasses instead of storage policies, quotas instead of DRS limits, and GitOps-managed manifests instead of vCenter click-ops.
Rob Pankow
Aug 3rd, 2026 | 7 min read
Migrating VMware VMs to KubeVirt: A Storage-First Guide
Moving a VMware VM to KubeVirt starts with a storage decision, not a hypervisor one. Every disk becomes a PersistentVolumeClaim through a CDI DataVolume import, the live migration cutover window needs ReadWriteMany block storage, and a failed cutover should mean a snapshot restore, not a re-run of the conversion. This guide covers the storage mechanics most migration guides skip.
Rob Pankow
Jul 28th, 2026 | 8 min read
Zero-Copy VMware-to-HCI Migration: What It Doesn't Solve for Storage Architecture on Kubernetes
Hyperconverged infrastructure vendors are marketing zero-copy migration paths that convert VMware VVols directly into their own native virtual disk format, skipping a byte-for-byte data copy. That solves the one-time cost of the move. It does not solve the storage architecture question the migration creates: your data is now coupled to a new proprietary hypervisor instead of an old one.
Rob Pankow
Jul 17th, 2026 | 9 min read
SUSE Harvester Storage Architecture: Replacing Longhorn with Disaggregated NVMe/TCP
Harvester bundles Longhorn as its default storage engine, so every VM disk inherits Longhorn's per-volume replication overhead and full-replica rebuild time on node failure. This guide covers Harvester's storage architecture, what SUSE's new Certified Storage for Virtualization framework opens up, and how disaggregated NVMe/TCP changes the node-failure recovery model for VM workloads.
Chris Engelbert
Jul 14th, 2026 | 10 min read
Why OpenEBS Becomes a Liability When You Use It to Replace vSAN
VMware teams replacing vSAN with OpenEBS often discover the operational bill arrives later than the licensing one. Storage pool CRDs, replica rebuild windows, and an engine transition most teams never planned for are what OpenEBS operational burden looks like in production. Here is what to expect and what managed NVMe/TCP offers as an alternative path.
Rob Pankow
Jul 10th, 2026 | 10 min read
Kubernetes Multi-Tenant Storage Isolation: Per-Tenant NVMe/TCP After VMware Migration
Kubernetes namespace isolation controls CPU and memory but leaves storage unsolved. This guide covers how disaggregated NVMe/TCP delivers per-tenant QoS at the storage layer, the StorageClass design pattern, and the RBAC model that gives post-VMware teams the storage isolation they had in vSphere.
Chris Engelbert
Jul 9th, 2026 | 8 min read
Why Ceph Becomes a Liability When You Use It to Replace vSAN
VMware teams replacing vSAN with Ceph often discover unexpected operational costs. Monitor quorum management, OSD lifecycle sequencing, and BlueStore tuning are skills vSphere admins do not carry over. Here is what Ceph operational burden looks like in the first year and what managed NVMe/TCP offers as an alternative path.
Rob Pankow
Jun 29th, 2026 | 11 min read
Day 2 Storage Operations After the VMware Exit: Snapshot, DR, and Observability on Disaggregated NVMe/TCP
The VMware migration plan covers what you are leaving. It rarely covers what you need to operate after the exit. vCenter handled snapshots, replication, and storage observability automatically. Kubernetes does not. This guide walks through how disaggregated NVMe/TCP delivers all three as native capabilities of the storage layer, without an overlay.
Rob Pankow
Jun 26th, 2026 | 11 min read
After the VMware Exit: Replacing Overlay Storage on Kubernetes with Disaggregated NVMe/TCP
Most VMware migration guides cover what you're leaving. Almost none address the storage decision on the other side. Teams that migrate to Kubernetes without rethinking storage end up rebuilding the same hyper-converged coupling problem they escaped — just in container form. This guide explains the overlay storage tax, why it replicates vSAN's failure modes, and how disaggregated NVMe/TCP breaks the pattern.
Rob Pankow
Jun 25th, 2026 | 11 min read
vSAN Exit Cost Economics: Broadcom Licensing vs. Disaggregated NVMe/TCP
Broadcom's post-acquisition pricing reset pushed vSAN licensing from a predictable line item to a per-core contract that scales with every server refresh. This guide models the real cost of VMware vSAN at 200 cores under VCF and VVF, compares it to commodity NVMe/TCP storage, and explains what the per-core number actually omits.
Rob Pankow
Jun 23rd, 2026 | 12 min read
OpenShift Virtualization Storage Architecture: Disaggregated NVMe for Live Migration and Multi-Tenancy
OpenShift Virtualization requires ReadWriteMany block storage for VM live migration and CSI-accessible persistent volumes for tenant Kubernetes clusters running as VMs. This guide covers the storage architecture options and how disaggregated NVMe/TCP meets both requirements without a proprietary array dependency.
Rob Pankow
Jun 15th, 2026 | 9 min read
KubeVirt Persistent Storage: Architecture Guide for Production VM Workloads
KubeVirt VMs on Kubernetes are backed by PVCs, which means live migration and fault tolerance depend entirely on your storage model. This guide covers how disaggregated NVMe/TCP block storage removes the local-disk scheduling constraint and enables unrestricted VM live migration on Kubernetes.
Rob Pankow
Apr 6th, 2026 | 4 min read
Unified Storage for Containers and Virtual Machines on OpenShift
Learn how to design unified OpenShift storage for containers and virtual machines without forcing VM workloads and Kubernetes-native applications into separate storage models.
Chris Engelbert
Mar 31st, 2026 | 6 min read
Best vSAN Alternatives 2026
The best vSAN alternatives in 2026 depend on your migration path, performance requirements, and operating model. Compare simplyblock, Ceph, and Longhorn.
Rob Pankow
Mar 28th, 2026 | 8 min read
Replacing vSAN Storage When Moving to OpenShift or Kubernetes
Most VMware migration guides focus on the compute layer — but vSAN is the storage layer, and it does not migrate. Here is what platform teams need to plan when replacing vSAN as part of an OpenShift or Kubernetes transition.
Chris Engelbert
Mar 25th, 2026 | 15 min read
Simplyblock Replaces Your VMware and Database Architecture
The VMware + database stack was never designed for modern workloads. Here's how simplyblock and PostgreSQL replace it with a decoupled, API-driven, Kubernetes-native data architecture.
Rob Pankow
Mar 20th, 2026 | 8 min read
Private Cloud Storage for Proxmox and Kubernetes
A unified storage foundation for Proxmox and Kubernetes helps enterprise teams modernize private cloud estates without splitting operations across VM and container silos.
Rob Pankow
Mar 16th, 2026 | 9 min read
Backup and Restore for KubeVirt and VM Workloads on Kubernetes
Platform teams running containers and VMs together need unified backup and restore workflows that protect both workload types on one storage foundation. This post walks through the tooling, consistency challenges, and RPO/RTO design that make it work.
Rob Pankow
Mar 5th, 2026 | 4 min read
Simplyblock vs vSAN
Compare Simplyblock vs vSAN for modern stateful infrastructure: architecture, performance, operations, and migration fit for Kubernetes and OpenShift programs.
Faisal Octachat
Nov 22nd, 2025 | 7 min read
VMware vs Harvester – Next-Gen HCI for Modern Workloads
Learn how VMware and Harvester stack up in performance, scalability, and efficiency for next-gen workloads.
Faisal Octachat
Nov 22nd, 2025 | 8 min read
VMware vs Nutanix - Modern Virtualization and HCI
VMware and Nutanix are compared for modern virtualization and HCI, helping you choose the best fit for your business infrastructure.
Faisal Octachat
Nov 21st, 2025 | 7 min read
VMware vs OpenStack Virtualization or Open Infrastructure?
VMware and OpenStack each offer distinct approaches. Learn how virtualization and open infrastructure impact modern systems and scalability.
Faisal Octachat
Nov 20th, 2025 | 7 min read
VMware vs Kubernetes - Two Paths for Modern Systems
VMware and Kubernetes offer unique benefits for modern systems. Compare their strengths to choose the best path for scalability and control.
Faisal Octachat
Nov 19th, 2025 | 8 min read
VMware vs Talos Picking the Right Architecture
See how VMware and Talos compare in design, performance, and day-to-day use. Choose the architecture that matches your requirements.
Faisal Octachat
Nov 19th, 2025 | 8 min read
VMware vs OpenShift – Virtualization or Containers?
See how VMware and OpenShift differ in platform model, workload fit, and storage implications for modernization programs.
Faisal Octachat
Jul 2nd, 2025 | 7 min read
KVM vs VMware: Architecture, Cost Model, and the Exit Question
KVM and VMware ESXi solve the same problem with opposite models: an open hypervisor inside the Linux kernel versus a proprietary integrated suite. How they differ in architecture, operations, and cost, and what a migration involves.
Faisal Octachat
Jun 20th, 2025 | 5 min read
KubeVirt vs VMware – When to Use Each Tool
KubeVirt vs VMware helps you see how each handles VMs, workloads, and hybrid environments in modern infrastructure setups.
Faisal Octachat
Jun 20th, 2025 | 6 min read
VMware vs Proxmox – Which Platform Works Best in 2026
VMware vs Proxmox offers two strong paths for virtualization. See how they differ in setup, flexibility, and storage use in real situations.