Transform your VMware workloads with ROSA on AWS: limitless modernization .

Changes in VMware: Challenges and Opportunities

The acquisition of VMware by Broadcom and the changes in its licensing model have caused a major disruption in the virtualization market, significantly impacting customers, many of whom are now looking for viable alternatives.

What changes has VMware undergone?

VMware has been a leader in virtualization, controlling 85% of workloads. However, after Broadcom's acquisition and the change in its licensing model, prices have increased significantly. Additionally, the number of product options has been drastically reduced, going from 200 down to just two packages: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). Notably, since April of this year, it is no longer possible to purchase VMware Cloud on AWS.

These changes are creating uncertainty among customers regarding the future viability of their solutions.

These changes have created new challenges for companies using VMware:

• Budget pressure: Rising costs make IT financial planning more difficult.
• Reduced flexibility: The simplification of options limits the ability to tailor solutions to specific needs.
• Support concerns: Reduced flexibility and service condition changes raise doubts about the future quality of support.

In this uncertain landscape, ROSA (Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS) emerges as a robust and attractive alternative. This solution combines the best of OpenShift, a leading container platform, with AWS’s scalability and advanced services.

Why ROSA is a solid alternative.

• Simplified management with fully managed OpenShift.
• Joint support from Red Hat and AWS, with a single billing system.
• Transparent cost model with no additional licensing fees.
• Scalability and high availability powered by AWS.
• Hybrid transition enabling both containers and virtual machines on a single platform.

In this post, we will explore what ROSA offers (and why it offers it) as a strategic alternative for companies looking to modernize their IT infrastructure. We believe ROSA can become the ideal ally in response to VMware’s changes and a key element in digital transformation processes.

What Are the Alternatives to VMware's Changes?

Gartner estimates that 70% of VMware customers are evaluating alternative solutions, and competitors are actively offering them.

Staying with VMware on an on-premise environment while accepting price increases and the new subscription model may be a short-term solution, but it could prove costly in the long run. Moreover, it does not address concerns about service quality and the company's future direction.

An alternative would be to modernize on-premise infrastructure without completely abandoning the environment. Solutions like AWS Outposts and the use of containers allow companies to leverage cloud benefits such as scalability and automation while maintaining control over their local infrastructure.

Another viable option is to switch to a competing hypervisor, such as Nutanix or Hyper-V, which offer more attractive features and pricing models compared to VMware.

Finally, the last option is a complete cloud migration, given the clear advantages it offers, such as greater scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. AWS, in particular, stands out for its broad range of services and tools to facilitate VMware workload migration and modernization, with ROSA as a leading option for those seeking an efficient and scalable cloud solution.

If opting for cloud migration, there are several approaches to consider:

1. "Lift and Shift" Migration to Amazon EC2 allows for a quick transition of VMware virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud. In this approach, VMs are moved as EC2 instances, enabling a seamless transition without reconfiguring applications.

Benefits:

• AWS offers a wide range of EC2 instances optimized for different workloads.
• AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) automates the migration process, making it even more efficient.

Considerations:

• While migration is fast, this approach may not fully leverage the flexibility, scalability, and cloud-native benefits. Applications might not be optimized for the cloud environment, limiting long-term performance and efficiency improvements.

2. Migration to Managed Virtualization Platforms (Replatforming). This is the approach explored in this post, specifically with ROSA, though Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is another option. Both solutions allow VMs to run in the cloud without losing essential virtualization features.

• ROSA is ideal for companies looking to modernize their applications by adopting a container-based approach, enabling unified management of VMs and containers while minimizing re-platforming effort.
• NC2 is a better alternative for those who prefer a more traditional experience similar to VMware, ensuring a smoother transition.

3. Modernization to Cloud-Native Services (Refactoring). Instead of simply migrating workloads, this approach modernizes them to fully utilize cloud-native services. This could involve breaking monolithic applications into microservices and deploying them in Amazon EKS or migrating databases to Amazon RDS.

According to a report, 58% of companies plan to move most of their virtual machine (VM) workloads to cloud-native environments (refactoring).

OpenShift Virtualization and the Role of KubeVirt

OpenShift Virtualization is a solution that allows running virtual machines (VMs) alongside containers within the same Kubernetes cluster. Thanks to this hybrid capability, companies can manage both legacy applications based on VMs and modern containerized applications within a single environment.

The engine that powers this functionality is KubeVirt, an open-source project that extends Kubernetes to manage virtual machines as native resources. Essentially, KubeVirt transforms Kubernetes into a hypervisor, allowing users to define, deploy, and manage VMs using the same tools and APIs used for containers.

KubeVirt handles the following tasks:

• VM creation and management: Allows defining VM specifications such as CPU, memory, storage, and networking.
• Hypervisor interface: KubeVirt interacts with the underlying hypervisor (usually KVM) to create and run VMs.
• Integration with Kubernetes: KubeVirt exposes VMs as Kubernetes objects, enabling management through Kubernetes tools and APIs.

In summary, OpenShift Virtualization, powered by KubeVirt, allows companies to modernize their infrastructure by combining virtual machines (VMs) and containers within an OpenShift cluster. In other words, it transforms OpenShift into an alternative to replace VMware, while also facilitating cloud migration and container adoption.

ROSA: A Robust and Modern Alternative

When choosing an OpenShift solution, it's important to understand the key differences between the available options. Here, we will focus on two alternatives: ROSA (Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS) and OpenShift Dedicated. Each of these services has distinct advantages depending on customer needs, but within the context of VMware migration, we can broadly summarize them as follows:

ROSA vs. OpenShift Dedicated

ROSA is a fully managed OpenShift solution that runs on AWS. It is designed for organizations seeking deep integration with AWS services, with joint support and management between Red Hat and AWS, all under a single billing system. This makes it ideal for those who want to maximize AWS services while managing Kubernetes easily.

On the other hand, OpenShift Dedicated offers fully managed OpenShift clusters by Red Hat, but hosted in a private virtual cloud on AWS or Google Cloud Platform. While Red Hat handles complete support, this option is better suited for companies already deeply integrated into the Red Hat ecosystem and prefer having full support and management handled exclusively by Red Hat, even though it is hosted on AWS.

Which one to choose?

• If your company already uses OpenShift and is considering AWS as the primary cloud provider, ROSA is likely the best choice, especially if you want to leverage AWS services.
• If you prefer to have full control of support and platform management through Red Hat and want to keep your operations isolated in a private cloud, meaning a hybrid approach, OpenShift Dedicated may be the best option.

The Different "Flavors" of ROSA

ROSA offers two architectural models for container management in the cloud: ROSA Classic and ROSA with Hosted Control Plane (HCP). Both models provide a robust and fully managed platform on AWS but differ in their implementation and the advantages they offer.

ROSA Classic

In this model, the control plane components are hosted in the customer’s AWS account, meaning both worker nodes and control plane nodes are deployed within the customer’s VPC. This provides greater control over the infrastructure.
Additionally, the control plane can be implemented in a single availability zone or distributed across multiple zones, offering high flexibility in redundancy and resilience.

ROSA HCP (Hosted Control Plane)

Unlike ROSA Classic, the ROSA HCP model has the control plane fully managed and hosted by Red Hat in its own AWS account.

The control plane is distributed across multiple availability zones, ensuring high availability and greater fault tolerance. While the worker nodes continue to be deployed in the customer’s VPC, the control plane uses AWS PrivateLink for secure and private communication between the customer and the control plane, improving security and reducing latency.

Both models offer advantages depending on an organization's architecture and control requirements. ROSA Classic may be suitable for those who prefer full control over their resources, while ROSA HCP is ideal for those seeking a more managed solution with higher availability and security.

Why Consider ROSA?

The key benefits of using ROSA include:

1. Simplified management with a fully managed OpenShift solution, reducing cognitive load. This allows IT teams to focus on application development and deployment, accelerating development cycles.
2. Architectural flexibility, with options such as ROSA Classic and ROSA with Hosted Control Plane, allowing companies to tailor the solution to their specific needs, modernization strategies, and use cases.
3. Hybrid compatibility, as it allows running VMs and containers together via OpenShift Virtualization. This simplifies the transition to the cloud and facilitates application modernization through containerization.
4. Seamless integration with AWS services, enabling businesses to leverage the best of both worlds.
5. More predictable cost models, with transparency and flexibility based on actual usage while reducing licensing costs. OpenShift Virtualization includes unlimited RHEL subscriptions for all virtual machines, avoiding additional expenses.
6. High availability of VM workloads: OpenShift and AWS availability zones ensure high availability with built-in features, making VM connectivity across different availability zones easier.

Steps to Migrate Workloads to ROSA and Key Supporting Tools

Migrating workloads to ROSA requires careful planning and preparation. At Paradigma, we work from technology to business, but even more so in large modernization or transformation processes, where we adopt a Business-Driven approach from the very beginning. This means that we strive to create business value by ensuring that every technological decision supports the company’s strategic goals, as we believe this is the best way to ensure these transformation processes are viable and successful in the long term. From a technical standpoint, we can divide the process into the following stages:

1. Planning and Initial Environment Assessment

• Application Identification and Prioritization: Determine which applications should be migrated to ROSA, typically those that can benefit from AWS’s scalability and flexibility. This involves creating an inventory of workloads to identify the most suitable applications, considering aspects such as:
  • Dependency Analysis: Understanding the relationships between applications, databases, networks, and other services.
  • Compatibility Assessment: Ensuring applications are compatible and identifying any necessary adjustments.
  • Impact or Degree of Change required for the migration.
• Architecture Analysis: Reviewing the current architecture, identifying dependencies and necessary resources to ensure infrastructure compatibility with ROSA.
• Risk Evaluation, considering migration risks such as downtime or data loss and developing mitigation strategies.

2. Migration Planning

• Define the Strategy: Decide whether to perform a direct migration (lift-and-shift) or refactor applications into microservices.
• Architecture Design: Define the ROSA cluster structure, connectivity with AWS, and integration with other local resources.
• Network and Security Planning: Establish security policies and access controls for critical resources, integrating them with your AWS VPC.

3. Infrastructure Setup in AWS and ROSA Environment Preparation

• Resource Provisioning: Setting up the required AWS resources such as VPCs, subnets, security groups, storage, etc. In other words, preparing all AWS services needed to support the migration.
• ROSA Cluster Deployment, where the cluster is configured, the appropriate model (Classic or HCP) is selected, and CI/CD tools are established for automated application deployment.

4. Application Preparation and Migration

For applications that will be containerized:

• Application Refactoring to containerize and package them with dependencies, facilitating deployment in ROSA.
• Uploading container images to a registry accessible to the OpenShift cluster.

For virtual machine migrations, Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) is used to transfer VMs. As explained earlier in this post, OpenShift Virtualization in ROSA enables VMs to be run as native Kubernetes resources. See more details here.

5. Testing and Optimization

At this stage, a comprehensive testing process is conducted to ensure that deployed applications function as expected in the new environment through performance and compliance testing.

Finally, once the migration is approved, the focus shifts to monitoring and maintenance, where monitoring tools are used to track performance and make necessary optimizations. It is essential to leverage OpenShift’s built-in features for continuous updates, rollbacks, and auto-scaling to streamline application lifecycle management.

Essential Tools for Migrating to ROSA

As we have seen, migrating workloads to Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) can seem complex, but with the right tools, the process becomes significantly more manageable. Some key tools include:

• Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV), which automates VM migration from VMware to ROSA, reducing downtime and simplifying the transition to containerized workloads in OpenShift. It’s important to note that MTV can also be used for OpenShift Dedicated.
• AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), as previously mentioned, automates the transformation of VMware-based VMs into Amazon EC2 instances, facilitating integration with AWS and ROSA.
• AWS Migration Hub provides a centralized platform for planning, executing, and monitoring all migrations to AWS, including those targeting ROSA.

And let’s not forget two key pillars in automation and lifecycle management:

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Tools: Solutions such as Terraform and AWS CloudFormation enable automated infrastructure provisioning on AWS, making ROSA deployment faster and more consistent.
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Tools: Automating development, testing, and application deployment processes with CI/CD pipelines configured for OpenShift accelerates delivery exponentially.

Conclusion: ROSA as a Strategic Improvement

ROSA is more than just a replacement for VMware—it is a catalyst and an opportunity to modernize your IT infrastructure.

By integrating containers and virtual machines into a single platform, ROSA offers the best of both worlds, allowing you to modernize applications with cloud flexibility and scalability while maintaining VMs in a unified management environment with common tools.

Not to mention its native integration with AWS services, making deployment and application management easier while leveraging the robustness of AWS’s global infrastructure.

If your goal is to transform your VMware workloads, ROSA could be the key solution, and at Paradigma, we can help you design a tailored strategy to maximize the benefits of ROSA and AWS.