The cloud native era killed VMware's lock-in. Here's what to run instead. » Giant Swarm
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Following Broadcom's acquisition of VMware and subsequent price hikes, infrastructure teams are evaluating three realistic alternatives: Nutanix (closest like-for-like, still proprietary), Proxmox (open source, free, suits mixed VM/container workloads), and bare metal Kubernetes (no hypervisor overhead, best for fully containerized workloads). Giant Swarm's managed platform supports all three through a shared Cluster API (CAPI) foundation — using CAPX for Nutanix, CAPMOX for Proxmox, and Metal3 for bare metal — meaning the management layer, GitOps via FluxCD, observability, and security bundles remain consistent regardless of infrastructure. Migration from VMware is designed as a phased, reversible process: the management cluster moves first, then workload clusters migrate team by team with no hard cutover date, allowing VMware license costs to shrink incrementally. For workloads not yet containerized, KubeVirt on bare metal lets legacy VMs run as native Kubernetes workloads during the transition period.
Table of contents
Three realistic alternatives to VMwareHow Giant Swarm sits across all three: the Cluster API foundationMigration from VMware: how the platform makes it gradualWhat about workloads that still need VMs? KubeVirt on bare metalThe layer boundary: what Giant Swarm owns and what stays with youThe honest bottom lineSort: