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Maxta, a rising independent supplier of hyperconverged enterprise storage software, on Sept. 28 added new functionality that enables IT shops to migrate virtual machines from VMware’s ESXi to Red Hat virtualization and to run both hypervisors on the Maxta platform.
In this brave new world of mix-and-match everything inside data centers and across supply chains, the concept of coexistence within different layers of data management is a welcome one for IT managers. After all, a VM looks the same to any hypervisor; it’s simply a matter of which dashboard is controlling it. Thus, there are several good reasons for using a brand-agnostic traffic cop to handle data flows.
This ability to move some or all virtual machines to a fully-supported, open-source virtualization package helps organizations reduce or eliminate the VMware tax by choosing the hypervisor that best fits the needs of an application. Maxta claims to be the only hyperconverged solution in the market that supports both VMware and Red Hat virtualization.
While all hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) controllers are designed to simplify IT management by converging separate compute, storage and storage networking tiers into a single system in addition to administering virtual machines instead of storage, many of these solutions necessarily lock customers into specific hardware or hypervisors. Maxta says it not only can help customers eliminate the lock-in of server hardware or hypervisors but also facilitate the movement to open-source virtualization.
Having the choice of any brand of standard x86 server and different hypervisors gives enterprises a big advantage when negotiating with server or virtualization vendors, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said.
“Red Hat Virtualization is a data center virtualization solution that offers extensive virtual machine lifecycle management functionality including deployment, configuration, and decommissioning of virtual machines,” Terri McClure, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said.
“Maxta’s support of Red Hat virtualization gives organizations of all sizes a choice of two industry commercially hardened and fully supported virtualization solutions, while Maxta’s new ability to migrate to Red Hat Virtualization delivers the ability to choose.”
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