this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I get why enterprise likes VMWare but KVM isn’t harder to deal with. I’ve always worked at smaller companies so this isn’t an expert opinion. But I’ve always felt like at the infrastructure level, it ends up being cheaper to hire experts and run the open source solution (assuming it’s mature and at feature parity) than pay licensing and support fees.

An expert in one thing will usually add to your company in other ways too. Talent > “solutions” in the long run.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I learned years ago that buying something from a big company instead of using a free open source solution is about aoutsourcing responsibility. Its about being able to sue a company about damages instead of hiring reliable personell to run and write fixes for foss software. Also insurance is much easier.

Not that I follow that advice, my company is still 99% foss software.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Exactly. All enterprise software pricing is about liability and how much blame you can put on the software vendor when everything goes wrong.

Of course, your company's employees are still going to be the ones picking up the pieces but you get to tell your investors "actually it was VMWare's fault". And you can't do that with OSS, even if you're buying support.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Let me tell you about a large bank and two data centers operated using VMware and the type of talent the bank is able to hire and retain. A move away from VMware is a 5-year project involving hiring, retraining, design mistakes, budget overruns, and a lot of grey hair. The year was 2012. 7 years later, one DC converted to OpenStack, the project is shelved and the majority of th OpenStack DC gets converted back to VMware due to "OpenStack disaster."

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

RHEV > OpenStack

Don't hate the game just because of one frail player.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

But isn't RHEV dead?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I work in hosting. We mostly use Proxmox for our Hypervisors which is already a step up from "bare" KVM in regards to convenience/ease of use (especially for High availability scenarios and the like) We also run VMWare and while I don't love the "locked down you gotta do it the VMWare way" nature it's often so much easier and the HA is mich more convenient. Also it has proper functionality for custom resourcing/access/billing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Say what? Going back to only KVM in modern DCs is some crazy talk. If your org is small enough that KVM is even remotely an option, then I'd recommend running a cost/benefit analysis on whether hosting a small server farm on prem is even worthwhile.

But when you're managing hundreds of servers with dozens of various purposes, FOSS solutions aren't always tenable. And not using a mature, feature complete virtualization platform is just straight up masochistic, not to mention potentially dangerous from a security standpoint.

I agree that talent > solutions, but if you want to retain that talent, you have to make their lives not miserable at work, which means sometimes having to purchase solutions to make their lives easier.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Small and medium (and even large) companies investing in talent instead of commercial solutions is the solution to improving FOSS. I know it has downsides, as you stated, but there are significant upsides. FOSS is cheaper than a custom solution, and the company only has to pay for the modifications it wants to see. The whole community then benefits from their hard work adding features and maintaining the software.

I'm not saying that it's the BEST idea for every company. All I'm saying is not to discount FOSS out of hand for these companies. There are significant advantages for companies that should be weighed against the cons. This kind of advocacy is also important in furthering the FOSS model.