VergeOS Might Be The VMware Alternative You've Been Looking For!

[@tubes9181]

No homelab offer is a no go for me

[@jeffcampbell3392]

i have a few home labs running, maybe ask them?

[@gearboxworks]

@@jeffcampbell3392- It needs to be official, not a "hope they will let me have one" which they can always in the future - on a whim - say "No."

[@somalsharma3175]

if you're wondering , there is no free version , thank you

[@2MRSTARZ]

Dam

[@eXca1iburN]

Saved me 17 minutes, cheers bud

[@aefgshwrthwrhnwrhnbw]

What a disappointment

[@seansingh4421]

Hey as long as its priced fairly for non enterprise customers and its feature rich, why not ? Them Developers gotta eat too yk ?

[@collierm2006]

Except there is. Request a trial and then get the license key. Yes it’s not open ended, but they will happily renew it for you at no charge. I want the home lab version too, but there are still options right now if you want to test it.

[@RyanGrange]

Site says their pricing is "surprise free", but then they don't provide the pricing. Surprise!

[@JimConner]

Anyone else chuckle when they added "storage nodes" and "compute nodes." It's like it used to be but still is. I want to try this but my homelab is too ghetto. Back to Proxmox and XCP-ng . Good video. Explains with coherent information.

[@TheJensss]

Open source and free home lab options are great recruiting. Most people with a homelab work in a IT department that gladly would pay for a good product

[@gabeoravitz]

Verge is not the only platform that doesn't require the same node config across the cluster. Nutanix has allowed storage only and compute only nodes for some time now. Not to mention they don't require all nodes to be the same specs or have the same components.

[@ricardoaugusto2333]

OpenStack also has different configs as needed. You can have as nodes: controller, compute, network, storage, HCI (compute+storage) or even a mix of them all. For example, controllers can also do compute functions, though it's not recommended, and almost all nodes have network functions running.

[@locusm]

How does their cost structure look? Per node/core? Any ballpark numbers?

[@wiscokid]

Prices per node. they have production node and backup node. Cores do not matter for pricing. So if you have not many cores you will overpay, but if you have a lot of cores, the price will be a fraction of the cost of VM ware. Also Backup Nodes are half the price of a production node. We have been looking at them, but we are a lower core business, so our cost compared to VM ware would be more. But I friends out there who run a lot of cores, and their price with VM W$re went up by 100k, and with Verge the price would have been a minute fraction of vmware costs.

[@MrReidster]

@@wiscokid Also no extra cost per TB for vSAN or FC storage, all included in the per Node license

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

Is it serfware (subscription).

[@aaronzimmerman1703]

Verge offers extended trials and and NFR for internal use after becoming a partner. I would also point out that there is backups built in to the product and there is one 3rd party company named Storware that that as I understand it offers "traditional" type backup software that works with Verge. Double check me on this part, but this is what I heard.

[@JackWeems]

The ability to connect to the web management interface from the console is something every hypervisor should copy.

[@IJayJayI]

Seems like it would be fun to experiment with, yet for homelabs or advanced home labs situations, I personally believe Proxmox PVE is the best.

[@alejandroparrello6493]

Same here 🤜🤛👌

[@brockwilkie6022]

you guys are scary, was just starting to look at this last night

[@MrReidster]

With a the VDI user setup you can get to the VM console in 1 click which is great for admins, devs, and desktop users who need web console access but you don't want them to have access the rest of the virtual infra By the way, Awesome review, I love it 🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼

[@johnharrison712]

My primary concern is that VergeOS requires two or more servers, which could be challenging for small businesses or home labs. Plus, you can't simply have a boot drive (for the OS only) and use NFS or iSCSI for your external VM storage.

[@2GuysTek]

One good thing about VergeOS, unlike VMware, is that their OS is more flexible on what gear you run it on. So you could use NUCs if you wanted. I'm also willing to bet when they roll out their homelab version, it'll be geared towards single-host deployments.

[@LarryL2]

You can do a single node install... We use it for a backup target and I have one in my homelab. The lack of NFS/iSCSI is a pain but I get the choice they made here since they started as a file system and grew into a hypervisor / hci

[@MrReidster]

not to dismiss iSCSI or NFS but you don't need them with the VergeOS UCI build because you can run storage and compute nodes separately, where the storage nodes provide VM storage to the compute nodes, which is actually a lot easier to manage and support than another tiered system like iSCSI or NFS, and, and, you get the performance that you build into it. you want NVMe? you want 100Gbps? build it in your storage nodes

[@Pablo-nt8nf]

Yeah, maybe for smaller teams in a bigger business environment I can see this working out nicely, especially if they stick to their data sizing estimates and performance is a key requirement, but when the bulk of your vmware clusters all simply utilize shared NFS volumes, the idea of replacing that with storage nodes isn't all that appealing and one of the reasons why we weren't terribly excited about Nutanix when we looked at that ages ago. With that said, I am probably going to still look into Verge just because I dislike Broadcom that much. :)

[@MrReidster]

@@Pablo-nt8nf we hope you do :-) and you can scale out the storage node independently from the compute so you don't have to worry about the preconfigured size, you can start with a small capacity and grow as you need

[@justwantedtoreply]

Still looking for a replacement, have 2 esxi nodes with vcenter.. tried proxmox but I hate the storage part of it, just doesn't compute for me

[@liewchengyeh]

CEPH isn't hard to understand..... but i just don't like it's high memory overhead..... ** i wish everything would just use ZFS.... why i need another protocol on SAN layer ? VMFS is more efficient..... cause it can be used both locally and wide-SAN network (without needing another protocol layer)......

[@KimmoJaskari]

XCP-NG is a more mainstream alternative. You can duplicate the setup of a smaller vSphere setup - XCP-NG type 1 hypervisor, a storage solution to support them and Xen Orchestra to control it all. Of course, if you do demand hyperconvergence then that's not it.

[@cpuuk]

Why the initial spec for OOB management i.e. iLO, iDRAC etc, how does that figure into the setup?

[@MrReidster]

that is so that you can remotely manage console for doing remote installs and bios/disk changes if needed

[@arieheinrich3457]

Rich, from your experience, with the increase in AI and GPUs, do you think investing in any virtualization platforms a good choice going forward ? do we need a hypervisor when we talk about Kubernetes and containers ? Primarily for companies and enterprises.

[@gabrielegaetanofronze6690]

Now you definitely have to look into ours! I found Elemento a while ago and we have created our KVM based hypervisor called AtomOS. You deserve some tests! 😎

[@zedtrek]

Hi, interesting project. Is the GUI available in the community version?

[@ScottzPlaylists]

Whats the best Open Source Alternative?

[@2GuysTek]

On the open source side, It’s between either Proxmox or XCP-ng, as to which one over the other will really come down to you, your preferences, and the features you want/need. Both will work.

[@gilbert1975nf]

That's nice! I'd like to test it in my homelab, but the requirements is right for me at the moment.

[@LarryL2]

I have a single node in my lab running on a nuc.

[@peteratkin3788]

It would be nice to know the prices. There is nothing on the website, does not bode well.

[@gearboxworks]

My #1 question was "Is there a FREE homelab version?" which you fortunately answered at the very end. No FREE homelab version like the old ESXi? No dice for me.

[@gearboxworks]

BTW, when I say "FREE" I mean a minimal version, one that a user can get started with. It would be fine if they had a regular and a Pro version and charged for the Pro version where the regular version had significant limits in want it can do - not limits in functionality but limits in capacity. A FREE version allows someone to bootstrap themselves into the ecosystem when there is no current associated revenue, whereas a paid version creates a bar that people who don't already have experience - and who gets hired without experience? - will typically never hurdle.

[@IJayJayI]

Idk, but for me I prefer Proxmox.

[@KimmoJaskari]

XCP-NG is literally free, and you can compile Xen Orchestra using a script that's available on Github and run that for free, too. I wouldn't do that in production but homelab? All day long.

[@Carlos-Rodrigues]

Me too ❤️ ​@@IJayJayI

[@RobertoRubio-ij3ms]

Thanks for the awesome video.

[@WTF0v3r]

None of the new virtualization stacks are going to make a dent without enterprise backup support. We really need Veeam, Rubrik, and Cohesity to get on the vanilla KVM train.

[@2GuysTek]

This is really the core issue for every virtualization stack out there. If you don’t have support or provide means to support 3rd-party backup systems, you’re going to be leaving potential customers behind.

[@LarryL2]

Storware release is coming pretty sure veeam may be as well

[@2GuysTek]

@@LarryL2 Veeam would be a game-changer.

[@MrReidster]

It's not native but you can backup at the VM Level with read-only VM snapshots that are shared via NFS, this allows for any 3rd party backup solution to backup VM to any type of target i.e. cloud, tape, external nas, etc...

[@WTF0v3r]

@@MrReidster That's not something enterprise or higher end commercial level customers want. They want a solution that is fit for purpose and can cover all their recovery workflows or a large majority of them out of the box. They don't typically buy science projects.

[@wiscokid]

Thanks for doing this video, we have been looking at and talking with Verge for a while. They seem like good people, willing to help get a trail going with any assistance we need. Really like that you can do 2 node clusters, and tiered storage. And the backup nodes versus the productions nodes was an interesting license model. Unfortunately for us we have 2 locations and some production on both, and some backups on both. But they were flexible with us, so they are reasonable unlike VMware who believe in knifing our back with a smile. Love to hear more, would like to see the backup node in works, and some replication/backup jobs. See how well their dedupe works over the wire site to site.

[@gaidin]

Was this video sponsored? If not they'll be real happy you just read out the promotional parts of their website to us all lol

[@worldtravels2763]

I understand this is kvm and qemu. What would the advantage of this be over ProxMox? From what I can tell, PM is much more mature. Is the "selling" point of this the UI? I would say thats the least important and least used thing in a hypervisor. Am I missing something? Thanks

[@2GuysTek]

That's a good question. Fundamentally both PVE and VergeOS are using the same foundation for virtualization, so apples-to-apples, the virtualization performance is likely to be the same (or similar.) When comparing the two stacks together, the benefits to you or the 'best fit' will come down to things like their UI/UX, how they do HCI, support, etc.

[@MrReidster]

VergeOS is a complete HCI / UCI (compute and storage separate) built into a single software stack. You can have a 2 node HA HCI vSAN stack up and running in under 30 minutes. And it has many enterprise type features like vSAN, Multi-Tenancy, MicroSeg, vGPUs, vTMPs, Snapshots, Replication, Deduplication and NAS services builtin.

[@jeffcampbell3392]

proxmox founded 2008, Verge/yottabyte 2010. not sure i would say much more mature...open source proxmox against a fully supported enterprise product written as a fully featured VSAN with a full featured hypervisor on top of it, one code base, one software, no bolt-ons needed.

[@autohmae]

They started as a storage company, so let's assume they have really good storage solution ?

[@kirksteinklauber260]

What's the underlying virtualization technology? QEMU? Proprietary? another?

[@wojtek-33]

Qemu/kvm

[@kristopherleslie8343]

Kvm he said it in first few minutes lol

[@kristopherleslie8343]

@@kirksteinklauber260 I remember one of my mentors pushed me to qemu/kvm back a few year back I only played with it for about 60 days but was a decent experience glad these guys are building off it

[@ITProSupply]

Really a bummer esxi is being trashed. It was the industry leading product for a long time.

[@seansingh4421]

I have no problem with it being a paid solution. Hey them developers gotta eat too yk ? Price it fairly and I might check it out

[@kjstech1982]

Trying to figure out why VergeOS keeps getting downvoted on reddit....

[@wiscokid]

vmware bots my bro

[@MrReidster]

@@wiscokid yeah, it's reddit so...

[@tubular031]

Ran into vergeos last week. I like the idea of bring your own hardware that the others don’t do and I saw they support San storage which non of the hci vendors do. BUT only fc Sanstorage. Most of my customers are on iscsi so no support for external storage boooooo big miss.

[@NLPprompter]

i wish qubes os can be more simpler to use

[@intheprettypink]

Barely a minute into the video, checked their website. No demo video or iso to test yourself. Hard pass.

[@2GuysTek]

If you would have watched more than a minute of the video, I provide a link to download their trial ISO. But, since you only have a 1-minute attention span, here's a link: www.verge.io/download/

[@stocky9803]

I agree and no community edition. With proxmox and xcpng im finding a lot of these alternatives hard to grasp but im glad his showing them off nevertheless

[@WilliamSupples]

@2GuysTek your show notes has the wrong url for vergeio

[@2GuysTek]

Should be fixed now! Thanks for catching that!

[@Daniel-k4t3n]

It sounds like proxmox set up with ceph and docker so far and the 14 day ehhh nothing seems outstanding really

[@cwarehime]

Nope, no test lab or home lab versions, only 14 day testing. This is the deal breaker.

[@jayjay05]

No backup integration sucks!

[@nunoCuhelio]

Love it!!!!!!!!

[@DanLow85]

Looks promising. The no third party backup support unfortunately makes this a non-starter for me professionally. Fingers crossed for a homelab version soon.

[@MrTweetyhack]

nice advertisement

[@autohmae]

And the website will be gone in 5 years ? As .io will be going away ?

[@ChrisCebelenski]

Hadn't really heard of them, but ... OK. Another KVM based package, sure. Obviously I haven't played with it, and for enterprises it all comes down to support. From the homelab perspective, I can do all this already with Proxmox, ceph, etc, and because there's no homelab version I'm never going to be able to get familiar with it to even bring it to a customer. If I'm reading it right they're trying to converge not only storage but compute, etc, but in a heterogeneous environment. Not sure how that's going to work without a lot of pre-classification of resources since it really does matter what hardware I run my VM's on. Even now I have quite a few VM's I can't migrate to other nodes due to specific hardware requirements, like GPU's or large memory support, etc. It will be interesting to see if they find a niche that they fit in, and how they tailor the software for that niche - Right now I don't think they will have much impact on the general-compute end that VMWare held.

[@MrReidster]

We are replacing VMware on a daily basis and having a huge impact, there's not much you can do with VMware that the VergeOS can't

[@MatthewHill]

This doesn't quite smell right to me.

[@helicam1234]

Proxmox...

[@kjstech1982]

I'm getting mad XOA (xcp-ng) vibes from this UI.

[@MrReidster]

🤔

[@Highseeker]

Proxmox

[@JAMaitim]

Closed source/paid but not popular? Auto pass.

[@tm02019]

No Free Tie huh? No try :))

[@NoobSpielt_]

Is this video sponsored?

[@2GuysTek]

It is not.

[@gearboxworks]

I wondered the same thing. Too bad you didn't say so up front.

[@jeffnew1213]

Really? A VMware alternative with no backup solution, no user base and no community, unknown support, etc. It's another Debian-based clone virtualization platform, and this one is in it's teething stage. What happened to your near-requirement for folder organization of VMs and other objects? What happens to your all-flash SANs and your large capacity NFS NASes when you adopt this? Where's the fault tolerance and DR? What is there for resource allocation and control, a la DRS/sDRS? Hybrid on-prem and cloud? A couple of points in regard to a statement you made early on about allowing dissimilar node types. Firstly, VMware's EVC levels the playing fleld for nodes made up of different CPU generations. And you're aware that VMware's vSAN supports computer-only nodes in a vSAN cluster. vSAN also has no restrictions on using existing SAN and NAS. You've been looking for VMware alternatives probably longer than anyone. More than a year out from Broadcom's intrusion, there is still no replacement for VMware. Most of the other alternative at least offer a replacement in the home lab. This falls short there as well.

[@wiscokid]

They have a built in backup solution that works well, and the design of the infrastructure allows you to have a multi location redundent backup, with the deduplication, your backups will move much faster than veeam (we have veeam). reach out to them, they will explain better than I how it works, but the dedupe works before transfer with some kind of cache and send pointer technology.

[@aaronzimmerman1703]

Backup and DR are built in to the platform. After speaking to Verge, they offer 24x7 US support.

[@frankwong9486]

Looks at those requirement Ok fine go get something else

[@SignedAdam]

Proxmox better

[@RobertoRubio-ij3ms]

I am a heavy/pro Proxmox user and I can say there is no such thing as "better". Each one has its pros and cons. With close to 100 clusters and close to 300 Proxmox nodes under management,we are still out looking for alternatives. Not to replace Proxmox, but for different use cases.

[@LaserFur]

and it can't do what VMware Workstation pro can. I realize that it's a different market, but being able to keep the exact version of code tools with the OS is needed for long term support of industrial products.