The VMware Exit Is a Protection Upgrade

The decision to leave VMware offers an opportunity to reassess the datacenter's protection and recovery strategies. Most teams plan to transfer the existing backup design to the new hypervisor, but a better approach could focus on improving resiliency and reducing recovery time, while keeping the backup application intact. Backup designs currently rely heavily on vSphere mechanics, so migrating to a new hypervisor will require a thorough examination of each assumption.

Backup vendors have been actively working on support for KVM-based platforms, and the backup application's role will expand beyond the migration process. Production should take on more responsibilities in the datacenter virtualization environment, such as resilience, fast rollback, replication, site failover, and immutable copies. This shift will reduce the load on the backup tier and allow it to focus on long-term retention, compliance archives, offsite copies, and granular recovery.

The challenge lies in asking the right questions to evaluate the new platform's performance. Vendors should be tested on their ability to handle failure scenarios, such as drive failures and VM deletions, while the primary site is offline. Additionally, a test migration through the backup application should be conducted to ensure restored VMs function correctly on the new platform.

Ultimately, the success of this transition depends on how well protection responsibilities are divided between production and the backup tier, as this decision will significantly impact the environment's cost and reliability over the next five years.