DOP 312: Transitioning from VMWare to KubeVirt

Episode 312

Show Notes

#312: In this episode, the discussion focuses on the complexities and strategic considerations of migrating from VMWare to platforms like KubeVirt and OpenStack. Kevin Jackson, Director of Product Management at Trilio, joins the discussion to share insights on the challenges, benefits, and operational implications of such migrations. Topics include the intricacies of managing virtualization and cloud environments, the potential pitfalls and cost implications, and the importance of understanding existing applications before making a switch. Kevin highlights the significance of thorough research, involving partners, and the concept of lift and shift during migrations. The session also touches on the evolving role of Kubernetes in managing both applications and infrastructure, and the potential for KubeVirt to serve as a transitional technology.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why could VMware raise prices so sharply after the acquisition?

Viktor Farcic frames it on DevOps Paradox episode 312 as a question of switching cost rather than need. Some technologies are easy to replace, some are hard, and some represent years or decades of investment in something very specific. VMware sits in the last group. Kevin Jackson agrees that virtualisation is ingrained in how a generation of administrators works, which is exactly what gives the pricing power.

What is KubeVirt and where does it sit?

Kevin Jackson describes it on DevOps Paradox episode 312 as a third platform that blurs the line between applications and hardware. VMware and OpenStack are the comparable pair at the infrastructure layer, with Kubernetes running above them. KubeVirt lets teams manage virtual machines through the same control plane and the same processes they already use for applications, rather than through a separate stack.

What is the first step in moving off VMware?

Kevin Jackson says research on DevOps Paradox episode 312, and specifically understanding how the existing environment is used. If your infrastructure owners have no visibility into which applications run there, the effort is larger regardless of the destination. He warns against picking KubeVirt without engineers who already know Kubernetes, and suggests partners or commercially supported platforms for organisations unwilling to do that work.

Should KubeVirt be your first experience of Kubernetes?

Kevin Jackson allows it on DevOps Paradox episode 312, calling KubeVirt a gateway to the wider ecosystem once teams see what else the platform can do. Viktor Farcic disagrees: almost every company already runs something modern that would be an easier first Kubernetes project. Jackson’s counter is time, since a contract renewal does not leave room to explore Kubernetes at your leisure.

What do teams forget to plan for in a VMware migration?

Kevin Jackson points at the ecosystem on DevOps Paradox episode 312: monitoring, alerting and integrated services that worked out of the box will not simply carry over. He also names people, since engineers unwilling to retrain leave, taking years of company knowledge rather than platform knowledge. His counterpoint is that a migration is the rare opportunity to replace legacy tooling nobody could justify touching before.

Can you migrate off VMware without buying new hardware or taking downtime?

Kevin Jackson describes the approach on DevOps Paradox episode 312 as capacity management. Consolidate existing workloads onto fewer hypervisors, free up physical machines, build the new platform on those, test workloads there, then move more across and repeat, expanding the new cluster as the old one shrinks. Darin Pope compares it to a sliding puzzle with one empty square.

What is the DevOps Paradox podcast?

DevOps Paradox is a weekly podcast co-hosted by Darin Pope and Viktor Farcic, covering DevOps, platform engineering, and modern software delivery. Episode 312 brings in Kevin Jackson, director of product management at Trilio, to discuss moving from VMware to KubeVirt or OpenStack, what the migration actually costs, and what teams overlook. Every episode page carries the audio, the video, and a full transcript.

Episode Transcript

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Guests

Kevin Jackson

Kevin Jackson

After authoring multiple books on OpenStack Clouds, Kevin has gone on a cloud-native Kubernetes architecture journey. He has over 25 years of experience in system architecture and engineering at Auto Trader UK and Rackspace. Kevin is now a Senior Director of Product Management at Trilio, a backup and disaster recovery company specializing in Kubernetes and OpenStack. Kevin is responsible for the overall management and product feedback of Trilio software, as well as heading up the global solutions team that helps enterprises meet data protection and disaster recovery requirements.

Hosts

Darin Pope

Darin Pope

Viktor Farcic

Viktor Farcic

Viktor Farcic is a member of the Google Developer Experts and Docker Captains groups, and published author.

His big passions are DevOps, Containers, Kubernetes, Microservices, Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment (CI/CD) and Test-Driven Development (TDD).

He often speaks at community gatherings and conferences.

He has published DevOps Paradox and Test-Driven Java Development.

His random thoughts and tutorials can be found in his blog The DevOps Toolkit.