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European Virtualization Platforms

OpenNebula Logo

OpenNebula

Spain
EU
Open Source
Self-Hostable

OpenNebula is an open-source platform for cloud and virtualization management, developed and managed by OpenNebula Systems S.L. The company's EMEA headquarters is in Pozuelo de Alarcón near Madrid, Spain; it also lists...

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Proxmox VE Logo

Proxmox VE

Austria
EU
Open Source
Self-Hostable

Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE) is an open-source server virtualization platform from Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH in Vienna, Austria. Martin and Dietmar Maurer founded the company in 2005; the first stable version...

Website
SUSE Virtualization Logo

SUSE Virtualization

Germany
EU
Open Source
Self-Hostable

SUSE Virtualization, formerly known as Harvester, is an open-source hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform built on Kubernetes. It comes from SUSE, which was founded in 1992 and is run from Nuremberg, Germany, with...

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XCP-ng Logo

XCP-ng

France
EU
Open Source
Self-Hostable

XCP-ng is an open-source virtualization platform based on the Xen hypervisor and on the XenServer code. It is developed as a community project and backed by Vates SAS, a French open-source software...

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A virtualization platform runs many virtual machines on a few physical servers and manages them: hosts, clusters, storage, networks, backups and moving machines between hosts. VMware vSphere has long been the standard in companies. Since Broadcom bought VMware and changed its licensing, many organisations look for a VMware alternative. This page lists virtualization platforms from European vendors, all of them open source at their core.

VMware alternatives compared

PlatformVendor and seatTechnologyLicence and modelTypical use
Proxmox VEProxmox Server Solutions GmbH, Vienna, AustriaKVM virtual machines and LXC containersAGPL, no licence fee, optional subscriptionSingle hosts up to clusters with Ceph or ZFS
XCP-ngVates SAS, Grenoble, FranceXen hypervisor with Xen OrchestraOpen source, paid pro supportPools with shared storage and live migration
OpenNebulaOpenNebula Systems S.L., Madrid, SpainCloud and virtualization managementApache 2.0, subscription with supportPrivate clouds and multi-site setups
SUSE VirtualizationSUSE, Nuremberg, Germany (seat in Luxembourg)Kubernetes-based hyperconverged platformOpen source, SUSE subscriptionVMs and containers on one cluster

What to check before replacing VMware

  • Inventory: Count hosts, virtual machines, guest operating systems and the features in use, such as snapshots, live migration or high availability.
  • Surrounding tools: Backup, monitoring and storage products must support the new platform. Proxmox VE, XCP-ng and SUSE Virtualization each ship their own backup and migration functions.
  • Migration path: Proxmox VE, XCP-ng, OpenNebula and SUSE Virtualization all offer tooling to import machines from VMware. Test with a few non-critical machines first.
  • Skills and support: Open source saves licence costs, but someone has to run it. All four vendors sell support subscriptions.

The background is explained on European alternatives to VMware. For hosted servers instead of own hardware, see VPS hosting.