The recent acquisition of VMware and the implementation of new policies and operating models, particularly regarding pricing and licensing, are causing headaches for many CTOs and CIOs.

Historically, virtualization using VMware has been a cost-effective way to manage compute infrastructure. It ensures efficient utilization of compute resources, maximizes idle compute on servers, and provides workload isolation even on the same bare-metal infrastructure. However, the introduction of a revised pricing model may overshadow these benefits.



According to VMware, the simplification of their portfolio will enable customers to extract more value from their investment and facilitate the delivery of new innovations. They claim that the new licensing model aligns with industry trends and offers several benefits. However, industry experts have raised concerns about potential long-term customer costs. Many organizations that don't require the robust offerings are struggling to sell the new pricing model to their business owners.



Mark Thaver, the CEO and Founder of Licensing Data Solutions, identifies four major perspectives on VMware's recent changes:



1. The transformation is beneficial for customers fully committed to utilizing VMware but disadvantages those who don't employ the complete suite of products.



2. The implementation of product bundling is expected to lead to a price increase of two to five times for all customers. Acquiring these bundles may have financial implications, and some of the bundled products may be unwanted.



3. The bundling strategy could result in underutilisation of software, wasting resources on unused programs.



4. VMware aims to encourage customers to adopt more products from their suite. This may lead to changes in bundle offerings and the introduction of premium versions to generate additional revenue.



As a result of these changes, many organisations are reconsidering their use of VMware and exploring alternatives. While full cloud adoption doesn't seem to be favored by large organizations, recent reports suggest that some workloads perform better and are more affordable on-premises. Netflix, for example, found that on-premises setups were more suitable for certain workloads. This discovery resonates with other organizations, particularly in the Fintech sector.



While there are alternative options available, forward-looking organizations may find value in reviewing their modernization strategies. Microservices powered by native Kubernetes on bare metal offer one such option, allowing organizations, especially startups, to benefit from the best of both worlds.
 
Why Kubernetes?
 
Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is open-source software used for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It facilitates the management of containers within a microservices architecture. Google has been using Kubernetes for over 15 years to handle critical production workloads, and the community is constantly working on improving it.



While some organizations are in the early stages of their modernization journey, others have already embraced microservices and containerization. However, some of these companies may have faulty and expensive architecture. They host their Kubernetes clusters on hosts that are virtualized using VMware virtualization software.



Kubernetes on bare-metal infrastructure is an architecture that provides these organizations, as well as new entrants, with the option to remove an additional layer of expensive software licenses. It also eliminates the overhead in terms of compute introduced by the extra virtualization layer.



By implementing Kubernetes using this architecture, companies, especially start-ups, can save thousands of dollars in software license costs while achieving superior performance. The savings come from the elimination of the cost of virtualization software and the cost of the host OS on VMs. Additionally, it allows for efficient utilization of infrastructure compute by removing hypervisor overhead and reduces the cost of maintenance, including labor costs.



Ericsson suggests that the total cost of ownership of Kubernetes is greatly reduced when the Kubernetes cluster is installed on bare-metal servers. The company estimates that, depending on the workload type and cluster configuration, 30 percent or more can be saved in the total cost of ownership by eliminating the extra hypervisor layer introduced by virtual machines.



Installing Kubernetes directly on bare-metal removes various overheads and provides an additional advantage in terms of performance. CenturyLink found that network latency is three times lower for bare-metal Kubernetes. Furthermore, according to a Stratoscale study (which benchmarked the performance of standalone Docker containers, not containers running in a Kubernetes cluster), containers running on bare metal perform 25-30 percent better.



The management of Kubernetes clusters installed on bare-metal is greatly simplified, and the removal of the additional layer of abstraction in the hypervisor means there is one less point of failure or management bottleneck.



These well-researched benefits, combined with recent developments at VMware, make a strong case for adopting this new approach in virtualization and microservices. Many organizations can extract significant benefits and save on IT costs with just a minor tweak to their architecture. This new move clearly presents an advantage to Kubernetes.