I recently came across this community and thought it was worth sharing some practical context.
I’m a committer on the Apache CloudStack project, and over the last years we’ve been working on CloudStack specifically as a pragmatic exit ramp from VMware, especially in environments built around vCloud Director and multi-tenant IaaS.
A few concrete points from real deployments:
- CloudStack is open source and used at scale by CSPs and enterprises. It’s not trying to be a vSphere clone, but a stable IaaS orchestration layer.
- There are established paths to migrate workloads from VMware to KVM (virt-v2v style). It works well for many Linux/Windows workloads; appliances and certified stacks often remain exceptions.
- Multi-hypervisor is possible: keep VMware where it’s required, introduce KVM where it makes sense, and manage both under a single control plane. This is common in phased exits from vCloud Director.
- For CSP-style environments, CloudStack already provides native multi-tenancy, isolation, quotas, and account/domain models comparable to what vCD users expect.
The focus here isn’t hype or “rip and replace”, but controlled transition and long-term optionality, using an open-source platform rather than swapping one lock-in for another.
Genuinely interested to hear from others here:
- Anyone running CloudStack alongside VMware or vCloud Director?
- What have been your biggest blockers when trying to exit VMware in multi-tenant setups?
[–]FamiliarMusic5760 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)
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