Austrian cloud provider Anexia recently completed a significant migration of 12,000 virtual machines (VMs) from the VMware platform to an open source Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) solution.
This decision was primarily motivated by the increase in VMware licensing costs, which had risen by more than 500 percent since the acquisition by Broadcom. In addition, new contract terms required annual upfront payments with two-year commitments, creating significant pressure on the company’s cash flow.
Anexia was able to address this transition because of its experience with Netcup, another hosting company it owned that was already using a KVM-based platform. In addition, the use of an abstraction layer called the “Anexia Engine” allowed customers to manage their VMs without directly interacting with the VMware interface, making the migration easier. The adoption of NetApp storage further simplified the process, as customers’ data was already stored in resources independent of the VMware infrastructure.
To ensure a smooth transition, Anexia developed an agent that analyzes customers’ VMs, determining their readiness for migration from VMware to KVM. Once the customer’s consent is obtained, the migration takes place with a single click and a short restart of the VM, thus minimizing service interruption.
This case highlights the importance for cloud service providers to carefully evaluate their technology dependencies and associated costs while considering open source solutions such as KVM to maintain competitiveness and ensure economic sustainability.
To explore this topic further, a detailed analysis is available in the following video: