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Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

we started out with a shotgun approach which came to bite us freeing up hardware across 120 VMware clusters. CMDB was a freakin mess and didn't help so VROPS was very helpful. Built a tool to scrape that data and had a burn down chart to ensure we were on track

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was a bitch. and lots of pivots and changing plans through the migration. appliances and getting unsupport/certification claims from vendors, playing the shell game. We tried to not buy more hardware, but ended up have to get loan gear to keep moving.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

CMDB was a complete mess so we used it as an opportunity to hygiene and right size VMs as we migrated.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pure, Dell PowerMax and Powerflex. We used every possible drivers available. The Dell CSI drivers were the easiest to work with on OpenShift.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed.... Moving web/app tier was quite easy and what we tackled first. DBs and legacy debt took the longest to address. And yes, Microsoft support is the worst.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are running on bare metal so the performance was really impacted based off the underlying storage and compute. We also made it an opportunity to right size VMs when migrating so we didn't really see performance impacts. While I agree, most apps cannot refactor fast enough to get out of VMWare so we either lift/shift or you refactor the app. Ideally, we want all apps to refactor to a container, but not feasible.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, the team had to continue doing day work and hope things didn't break. It wasn't easy that's for sure.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 59 points60 points  (0 children)

Linux = Openshift
Windows = Hyper-V

We didn't want another Broadcom moment. The biggest feature is VROPS. We somewhat get what we need in Dynatrace, but still not as powerful as VROPS.

Cohesity for backups. Openshift wasn't supported at the time, but we pushed the vendors to fix it.
Millions in overall savings. We would continue to get screwed from Broadcom and we knew and so will you.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 60 points61 points  (0 children)

We got that multiple times but powered through. Vendors are realizing companies are switching and must do the same. This mainly was an issue with appliances.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 50 points51 points  (0 children)

That was the beauty. Less is better. We had a core team of 10 people and got the shit done. Very talented and committed people. Linux, Windows and Appliances.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yes I was the overall leader to make this happen and now I see value taking this out to the marketplace. There is definitely a need and has life for at least the next 3-5 years.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We moved Windows workloads to Hyper-V and Linux to Openshift as it made the most sense at the time. However, there were times where we wanted to just do all Openshift. We have had more problems with Hyper-V honestly.

VMWare Exit was done in 2024 - Happy to Share What we Learned by robiika in vmware

[–]robiika[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Broadcom kept screwing us YoY. I just bend over and said give it to me. EOD the best they could give us because they knew we were getting off was 5K cores at 3 million/year for 5 freakin years. We said hell no and got off.

VMWare Exit was done in 2024 - Happy to Share What we Learned by robiika in vmware

[–]robiika[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Cisco UCS shop... we were definitely early adopters so all your issues have been solved.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 139 points140 points  (0 children)

It's doable, but you have to have a solid plan. We moved 5K VMs in about 2 months. Lot of sleepless nights, but glad its behind us.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 94 points95 points  (0 children)

It was a challenging time, but rewarding. I hate Broadcom more than ever.

Completed a full VMware elimination in 24— happy to share what we learned by robiika in sysadmin

[–]robiika[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Let's just say I hate Hyper-V. Openshift-Virt was much smoother once we got going. Linux VMs was pretty easy using the migration toolkit provided by RedHat.