Cost comparison

[ebam]

I like using Proxmox and I want to recommend that we look into using it at my work. We use VMware there now. I want to show seniors on the team the benefits of Proxmox but I don't know how to do that cost wise. Is there links or comparisons that are out there that help show why Proxmox is good solution. We have the hardware so it's not that kind of cost comparison. I'm thinking more about licensing and what you need to buy to use VMware to make it comparable to what you need to buy when using Proxmox. Assuming we purchase a Proxmox subscription (I can see those costs). But I have no idea what it costs to buy/run VMware. I keep hearing Proxmox is cheaper...but how can I find out it is?

Thank you.

 

[wosp]

Prices of VMware licenses can vary from country to country and from supplier to supplier and is also (like PVE subscriptions) dependent of your setup. Probably your company make use of some kind of SPLA (Service Provider License Agreement) model for monthly payment, within your company someone should know what VMware costs you. However, VMware is very expensive and you pay quickly several thousand of euros/dollars for just a simple setup. Proxmox VE itself is free software, because it's open source and licensed under AGPL v3. You are free to use it and don't pay anything for it, even in commercial setups. However, for stable updates (enterprise repo, recommended for production use) you need to have at least the community subscription for each node (only € 64,92 per physical CPU). Another benefit of taking a PVE subscription is you financially support the company behind this great virtualization solution, so they can keep up the good work.

Major pros of PVE:
- Lower costs;
- Open Source software, you can change what you want and see all the source code yourself to see what happens with your data (VMware is closed source, so you have really no idea/can't check what's done with your data);
- No need for a single management node like VMware;
- PVE can also use/run containers, VMware can't;
- Short lines to developers (using this forum and if your subscription allow also via ticket system). For example, some months ago I had a feature request, posted this on this forum and the next day it was already implemented (see https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/feature-request-show-ha-group-at-vm-status-info.26964/). When you use VMware and you have something like this, I'm pretty sure you will not succeed.

 

[tytanick]

In my experience i can say this:.

By using proxmox you save whole bunch of money (like 20000$) by not buying external shared hardware drive (like SAN or NAS)
In proxmox you can do shared storage using free software (ceph or drbd).
Also you save some money by not buying "center managment" software in vmware.
So those costs are valid only when using High Avaibility (which requires shared storage)

This is why i am using proxmox on production and reduce very big expensive shared storage NAS (which is btw single point of failure )
But this on the other hand requires 3 nodes vs 2 nodes + shared storage.
Still its cheaper but you can reduce that cost by using third smaller node.
those are some of my thoughts, anybody agree/disagree ?

 

[LnxBil]

Besides I really love Proxmox, there is one big drawback: If you want to migrate from a VMware cluster to Proxmox cluster in a SAN environment, there is no shared cluster storage filesystem that is stable, supported and is able to use "real" snapshots.

 

[ebam]

Thank you all for your most helpful posts and advice.

I found this VMware TCO calculator which will help me make a case.

https://www.vmware.com/go/tcocalculator/