Introduction
VMware vSphere, as a representative product of virtualization technology, has long occupied a mainstream position in the virtualization market of the financial industry. Following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware and changes in payment methods and the domestic innovation background, many financial enterprises have begun the process of replacing the VMware virtualization platform, but there are several challenges:What is the maturity level of domestic virtualization products that serve as alternatives to VMware?What requirements must be met to achieve domestic innovation standards? How should compatibility and stability be considered?Given the long-term use of VMware virtualization, which supports a large number of business systems, how should a suitable replacement strategy be designed for enterprises? This article shares insights and experiences from peers in the financial community.
01. What is the maturity level of domestic virtualization products that serve as alternatives to VMware?
@A user from a bank:
There are many domestic virtualization products available now. How far can the so-called alternative VMware products develop? If it is merely virtualization, how do their functions and performance compare to VMware? What is the state of their after-sales service system? Is there a wealth of online documentation (KB, API interfaces, etc.) available for customers to analyze and troubleshoot issues and integrate operations?
@zhangpan31, a technical manager at a bank:
Currently, we have a private cloud system based on a cloud platform. Compared to traditional VMware, there are still shortcomings, such as:
1. The overselling of CPU in cloud vendors’ virtualization products is relatively low, generally between 1:2 and 1:3. VMware does not impose strict limits on this, theoretically allowing for 1:8 or even 1:10+, depending on the resource utilization and contention of each unit.
2. Cloud vendors’ virtualization products do not have memory overselling capabilities; once allocated, memory is occupied regardless of actual usage.
3. The backup of virtualization needs significant improvement; most solutions are based on virtual machine snapshots, which are less efficient in backup recovery and physical space resource usage compared to VMware’s downstream backup software. Backups are based on disk snapshots rather than the entire virtual machine, making it less convenient than VMware.
4. Regarding after-sales support: since customers cannot access the vendor’s internal knowledge base, deeper PD often relies on the original vendor. Relevant APIs need to be obtained from the original vendor, as the APIs listed on the official website or in manuals are often incomplete or unavailable.
@nkj2021, a system architect at a securities firm:
Domestic products have indeed provided relatively mature supporting products to ensure business continuity and data security in the financial industry. These products are designed with the special needs of the financial industry in mind, such as high availability, data integrity, security, and scalability.
In terms of virtualization, domestic virtualization software has already provided high availability cluster functions similar to VCenterHA. These functions can automatically migrate virtual machines to other healthy nodes in the event of hardware or software failures, ensuring business continuity. Additionally, these domestic virtualization software also offers features like virtual machine snapshots and incremental backups, similar to virtual machine CDP protection, effectively safeguarding data security.
In terms of unified backup platforms, many domestic vendors have launched mature products, such as Inspur and Lenovo. These backup platforms can support various data types and storage devices, providing flexible backup strategies and recovery solutions to ensure data reliability and integrity.
Moreover, for advanced features like cross-data center extended clusters and VAAI technology, some domestic virtualization products have also provided corresponding support. These features can further enhance the availability and performance of virtualization environments, meeting the financial industry’s demands for high scalability and high performance.
@Anonymous user:
There are currently many domestic virtualization products on the market that can replace VMware, and there are already several cases, so we can look at it from three aspects:
1. Functionality and performance: In terms of pure virtualization, the differences seem minimal.
2. After-sales service system: It seems acceptable, but some issues still need to be escalated to the backend for resolution.
3. Online documentation: It is continuously improving, but there are still significant differences between vendors in this regard; larger vendors perform much better, so comparisons should be made when selecting.
It should also be noted that the situation varies among different domestic virtualization vendors, making it difficult to generalize, so everyone needs to compare and choose based on their actual circumstances.
@Zhu Xiangdong, a senior engineer at a bank:
In comparing domestic virtualization platforms with VMware, in terms of basic virtualization functions such as virtual machine management, virtual storage, and virtual networks, it seems that domestic platforms can achieve over 90% of VMware’s functionality. However, in some advanced features and integration capabilities, such as fault tolerance, dynamic migration, and backup recovery, domestic platforms may still have some gaps. In terms of performance, domestic platforms may have reached or even exceeded VMware in certain scenarios through optimizations in virtualization engines and IO management.
Regarding the after-sales service system, domestic virtualization vendors are continuously improving their after-sales support, training certification, and online documentation. Some large vendors have established relatively complete service systems. However, compared to VMware’s extensive global coverage and mature support system, the service capabilities of domestic platforms still need further enhancement, and the ecosystem of domestic platforms needs to be further established and improved.
02. What requirements must domestic virtualization meet to achieve domestic innovation standards? How does it relate to the compatibility of previous virtualization infrastructure?
@Effort to move bricks, a system operation and maintenance engineer at a bank:
To meet domestic innovation standards, domestic virtualization must satisfy the following requirements:
Integrity: The databases, middleware, and other internal architectures used by the virtualization software must be domestically produced.
Security: The virtualization platform must have strict security control measures, including access control, identity authentication, and encrypted transmission, to ensure data security.
Reliability: The virtualization platform must have high reliability and availability to ensure business continuity and stability.
Flexibility: The virtualization platform must have flexible configuration and management functions to meet different business needs.
Performance: The virtualization platform must have high performance and low latency to ensure efficient business operations.
As for compatibility with previous virtualization infrastructure, it is generally compatible. However, it is not as critical; for domestic innovation replacements, it is best to fully overhaul the stack using domestic architectural infrastructure. Compatibility in this area is relatively more important.
@nkj2021, a system architect at a securities firm:
To meet domestic innovation standards, domestic virtualization must satisfy a series of requirements covering technology, security, and management aspects. Specifically, the main aspects include:
1. Technical requirements: Domestic virtualization products must possess independent core technologies, including but not limited to virtualization engines, resource scheduling algorithms, and network virtualization. The products should also demonstrate good performance, meeting high availability, high reliability, and high security requirements.
2. Security requirements: Domestic innovation standards emphasize information security, so domestic virtualization products need to have comprehensive security mechanisms, such as data encryption, access control, and security auditing, to protect user data.
3. Management requirements: Virtualization products need to provide convenient management tools and functions for users to manage and schedule virtual resources uniformly. Additionally, the products should comply with national management standards and regulations, such as classified protection and segmented protection.
4. Compatibility and interoperability: Domestic virtualization products need to have good compatibility and interoperability, enabling seamless integration with mainstream domestic and international operating systems, databases, middleware, and other software products.
@Zhu Xiangdong, a senior engineer at a bank:
Regarding compatibility with previous virtualization infrastructure, it may involve issues that need to be addressed when migrating to a domestic virtualization platform. Attention should be paid to the following aspects:
1. Whether the selected domestic virtualization infrastructure is consistent with the instruction set of the previous architecture. If the instruction sets are consistent, applications can generally be deployed directly, and compatibility migration solutions for virtual machine images can be considered, requiring targeted optimization of images to adapt to the new virtualization environment. If the instruction sets differ, applications will generally need to be adapted, and deploying new applications on the new virtualization platform may be a better approach.
2. Storage and network compatibility: Check the level of support for storage and network by the domestic virtualization platform and assess whether upgrades or modifications to the existing storage and network infrastructure are necessary.
3. Evaluate the backup format of the domestic virtualization platform and develop a new backup plan to ensure reliable data backup and recovery.
4. Seamless integration of management tools to reduce the learning curve for operation and maintenance personnel on the new platform.
03. How to consider the compatibility of various software products carried during the virtualization platform’s domestic innovation replacement?
@nkj2021, a system architect at a securities firm:
During the domestic innovation replacement of the virtualization platform, ensuring the compatibility of various software products after migration is crucial. Here are some suggestions to consider compatibility issues after migration:
1. Conduct a compatibility assessment in advance: Before starting the replacement work, assess the compatibility of various software products on the existing virtualization platform. This includes checking whether the software products support the new domestic innovation virtualization platform and whether there are known compatibility issues. Based on the assessment results, compile a list of software products that may require special handling or modification and develop corresponding migration plans and strategies.
2. Custom adaptation and interface development: For software products with compatibility issues, consider custom adaptation and interface development. This includes writing middleware interfaces or conducting custom development to facilitate data exchange and business logic integration between the new and old virtualization platforms. When performing custom adaptations, ensure data integrity and accuracy while minimizing the impact on business continuity.
3. Data migration and transformation: During the migration process, attention must be paid to data migration and transformation issues. The change of virtualization platforms may involve changes in data formats, structures, and storage methods.
@Effort to move bricks, a system operation and maintenance engineer at a bank:
This work must be done before migration; waiting until after migration is too late. It is necessary to evaluate compatibility based on the underlying hardware architecture of the domestic innovation virtualization platform, the operating system of the virtual machines, etc., and involve suppliers in compatibility testing and validation. Especially if migrating to a virtualization platform based on ARM hardware architecture, it will involve modifications and replacements of the software’s underlying code.
04. How to ensure the stability of domestic alternatives to VMware virtualization software?
@nkj2021, a system architect at a securities firm:
Currently, domestic virtualization software can indeed cover most of VMware’s functionalities, but in terms of long-term operational stability, more practical experience is needed for validation. Different domestic vendors have their own characteristics and advantages in the research and application of virtualization technology, leading to variations in stability.
In terms of stability, ideal virtualization software should have a low failure rate, reducing the risk of service interruptions or data loss due to software issues. Additionally, the frequency of upgrades should not be too high to avoid frequent maintenance operations impacting business operations.
Stable virtualization software should maintain continuous and smooth performance output, unaffected by other virtual machines or management platforms. This requires the software to have efficient resource scheduling and isolation mechanisms to ensure that each virtual machine receives stable performance guarantees.
Among domestic virtualization software vendors, some well-known brands have accumulated rich practical experience and achieved good results in terms of stability. However, since virtualization technology involves complex system architectures and underlying technologies, specific stability performance still needs to be evaluated based on actual application scenarios and requirements.
To choose the most stable domestic virtualization software, consider the following aspects:
1) Understand the vendor’s research and development capabilities and technical background, choosing vendors with rich experience and expertise.
2) Refer to the actual user experiences and evaluations to understand the software’s stability and performance.
3) When selecting software, consider conducting practical tests or trials to assess whether the software meets your specific needs.
05. How to design a suitable replacement strategy for enterprises that have long used VMware virtualization and support a large number of business systems? Should it be based on business systems as units, advancing the replacement with a full-stack domestic innovation approach, or should a separate virtualization layer replacement plan be designed?
@nkj2021, a system architect at a securities firm:
1) Replace one business system at a time, based on the importance and urgency of the business. The replacement process will involve the entire stack of domestic innovation, including the virtualization layer, operating system, middleware, database, and application layer, allowing for customized replacements tailored to the characteristics of each business system, ensuring business continuity and data security during the replacement process. Replacing business systems one by one helps control risks during the replacement process, avoiding instability or business interruptions caused by large-scale replacements.
2) Design a separate replacement plan for the virtualization layer, focusing solely on replacing the virtualization layer without involving the full-stack domestic innovation of the business system. When replacing the virtualization layer, consider using domestic virtualization brands that are compatible with or similar in functionality to VMware to ensure a smooth transition during the replacement process. Since only the virtualization layer is being replaced, without involving the full-stack replacement of the business system, the replacement cycle is relatively short. The cost of replacing the virtualization layer is relatively low, which can reduce the overall replacement costs for enterprises.
@Anonymous user:
1) Advancing with a full-stack domestic innovation approach based on business systems is certainly optimal, even directly transforming into a cloud-native architecture. However, this approach is limited by the support of suppliers and carries certain business risks, requiring thorough validation and preparation.
2) Designing a separate replacement plan for the virtualization layer is relatively easier, requiring only a certain amount of business cutover time.
Which replacement route to choose depends on the level of support and capability of the system vendor, as well as the complexity involved, while also considering the replacement timeline for VMware. A comprehensive consideration of all business systems, based on the ease of transformation and the importance of the systems, should be made to formulate an overall timeline and target.
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