Cost Consideration | From vSphere+vSAN to ZStack Cube

In 2024, following its acquisition by Broadcom, VMware will fully transition to a subscription model. The sale of licenses for various products will be restructured into four basic subscription packages: VVEP, VVS, VVF, and VCF, with additional components available through subscription-based services.

What Does the Subscription Model Mean for Users

The primary benefits of a subscription model are flexibility (subscribe and cancel anytime) and continuity (continuous feature updates and services). However, in the case of VMware's subscription model, many users may face reduced flexibility and limited continuity:

- VMware has discontinued the independent sale of its rich product services, requiring users to choose from four subscription packages, which may result in paying for unnecessary components.

- The perpetual license model has been changed to three subscription terms: starting from 1 year, followed by 3 years, and 5 years.

- Some components and services are strongly tied to the basic subscription packages, with more restrictions on server types (at least 16 cores per CPU).

- Upgrading a single product license requires updating the entire subscription package.

- Pricing can vary significantly depending on the user's usage and the corresponding subscription package.

For users, calculating costs and evaluating return on investment has become a complex issue. So, what does the subscription model really mean for users? ZStack product technology experts provide an analysis to help users understand the cost comparison before and after VMware's subscription model, share ZStack product solutions, and successful case studies. This article mainly interprets the HCI Solution.

HCI Solution

For some small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and medium-sized enterprise users who use vSphere+vSAN or vSphere+vSAN+NSX+Aria, VMware mainly recommends two subscription packages: VVF (vSphere Foundation) and VCF (vSphere Cloud Foundation).

If these users choose an HCI solution, they can adopt ZStack Cube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI). ZStack Cube HCI was included in IDC's "China Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Market Assessment 2023" report. According to the IDC report, unlike traditional HCI products with limited virtualization capabilities, ZStack Cube HCI is a new generation of cloud infrastructure that provides comprehensive cloud computing functions, meeting diverse customer needs and building a simple, stable, secure, and efficient new IT infrastructure.

In terms of product combination, ZStack Cube HCI can be freely and flexibly upgraded and expanded, supporting integration with ZStack CMP multi-cloud management functions, thereby building a new generation of cloud infrastructure for users.

ZStack Cube HCI Enables Rapid Delivery

ZStack Cube HCI products offer rapid delivery with features of high quality, high service quality, high cost-effectiveness, and high ease of use.

- VMware Management: ZStack Cube HCI pre-integrates VMware management functions and V2V migration services. Through an intuitive visual UI interface, it supports one-click management of the VMware platform or complete migration of cloud hosts and data from other virtualization platforms to the current Cube, simplifying the process of moving heterogeneous platform businesses to the cloud.

- Unified Operations and Maintenance Management Interface: ZStack Cube HCI integrates computing, network, storage, security, hardware, and other resources for visual monitoring and multi-dimensional hierarchical alarm mechanisms, supporting one-screen monitoring. In addition to interfacing with integrated distributed storage.

- Reliable Full Redundancy Architecture: ZStack Cube HCI features redundant power supplies, redundant system disks, and redundant network cards in its hardware system. In terms of multi-link redundancy technology, it designs aggregated management, business, and storage links to ensure link security. For high availability in computing/storage, storage policies support flexible adjustment of data security policy types, including the number of replicas and EC erasure codes. For application high availability, it supports cloud host HA fault tolerance and 7-layer load balancing.

ZStack ranks in the top 5 of IDC's cloud system software market report, holding the first place among independent cloud vendors. It supports over 3,600 enterprise users, collaborates with more than 300 active channels and 200 ecosystem partners, and provides users with more considerate and high-quality services.