A list of virtualization software and solutions as a starting point for replacing VMware products.
The solutions listed here offer similar functions to VMware virtualization products. Whether they are really suitable as an alternative depends heavily on individual requirements.
- Workstation
- Server
- Orchestration and Cloud Management solutions
- Migration
- VDI
- Cloud
- On-premises private cloud
- Contributing
- License
- VMware Workstation Pro - Build and run Windows, Linux and BSD virtual machines on a Windows or Linux desktop. [docs]
- VMware Fusion Pro - Run Windows, Linux, containers, Kubernetes and more in virtual machines (VMs) on MacOS. [docs]
- Flint - A modern, self-contained KVM management tool built for developers, sysadmins, and home labs who want zero bloat and maximum efficiency.
- GNOME Boxes - Application of the GNOME Desktop Environment, used to access virtual systems. Boxes uses the QEMU, KVM, and libvirt virtualization technologies.
- Parallels Desktop for Mac (Standard/Pro/Business Edition) - Run Windows, Linux, or macOS in virtual machines on a Mac.
- Microsoft Hyper-V - Lets you run multiple operating systems as virtual machines on Windows 10/11.
- Oracle VM VirtualBox (Enterprise) - Popular open source, cross-platform, virtualization software.
- OrbStack - Fast Docker and Linux VM host for macOS, aimed at developers on Apple Silicon.
- UTM - UTM is a full featured system emulator and virtual machine host for iOS and macOS. [docs]
- virt-manager - Desktop GUI for managing KVM and QEMU virtual machines through libvirt.
- Virtualbox - General-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use.
- Virtualbox with KVM Backend - KVM Backend for VirtualBox (has to be build from source).
- VirtualProg - VirtualProg is a modern and easy-to-use virtual machine manager built exclusively for macOS using Apple’s Virtualization Framework.
- VirtualBuddy - Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon, VirtualBuddy is a virtual machine GUI for macOS M1, M2, M3, M4.
- VMTek - Mac virtualization platform. Run multiple instances and versions of macOS, Linux and other operating systems side-by-side on a Mac.
- libvirt - Toolkit and API for managing KVM, QEMU, Xen and other hypervisors.
- Lima: Linux Machines - Lima launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding (similar to WSL2).
- Multipass - Multipass is a tool to generate cloud-style Ubuntu VMs quickly on Linux, macOS and Windows.
- QEMU - Generic machine emulator and virtualizer. KVM, Proxmox VE, and many other platforms are built on it.
- Quickemu - Quickly create and run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux virtual machines.
- Tart - A virtualization toolset to build, run and manage macOS and Linux virtual machines (VMs) on Apple Silicon.
- VMware vSphere - VMwares virtualization platform.
- VMware Cloud Foundation - vSphere Enterprise Plus, vSAN Enterprise, NSX Ent Plus (Network only), Aria Suite Term Enterprise, Aria Ops for Networks ENT, HCX Enterprise, SDDC Manager, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and vCenter Server Standard.
- VMware vSphere Foundation - vSphere Enterprise Plus, vCenter Standard, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and Aria Suite Standard.
- VMware vSphere Essentials Plus - Server virtualization solution for data center consolidation and enhanced application availability (vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) and vCenter Standard).
- VMware vSphere Standard - All-in-one solution for small businesses (vSphere Essentials Plus and vCenter Essentials).
- VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus - ESX Enterprise Plus with vCenter Standard (basically without VSAN, Kubernetes and VCF Operations).
- Arcfra Virtualization Engine - KVM-based virtualization for production environments, equipped with complete compute virtualization and VM life cycle management functionalities.
- Cyberus Hypervisor - Open-Source Hypervisor based on Linux/KVM and Cloud Hypervisor, suitable for cloud and edge appliances. All developments are upstreamed.
- euroNAS Enterprise Virtualization OS (eEVOS) - Enterprise level OS for Server virtualization. Creation, backup and management of the virtual machines have never been more easy.
- Harvester - Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution built for bare metal servers usingopen-source technologies including Linux, KVM, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, and Longhorn. [docs]
- HPE VME hypervisor - KVM-based Hypervisor from HPE.
- Incus - Incus is a container and virtual-machine manager. Based on LXC for containers and QEMU for virtual machines. [docs]
- Kubermatic Virtualization - Provides a unified platform that enables organizations to seamlessly orchestrate and manage both traditional virtual machines (VMs) and modern containerized applications. [docs]
- Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager - Open source KVM environment and oVirt-based management with support from Oracle. [docs]
- Proxmox VE - Open-source server management platform for virtualization. It integrates the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC). [docs, forum, endoflife.date]
- Nutanix AHV - HCI-optimized Hypervisor included with every Nutanix node [docs]
- Nutanix Community Edition - Free version of Nutanix AOS intended for internal business operations and non-production use only.
- Sangfor aSV - A next-generation hypervisor purpose-built for modern IT infrastructure. As the core virtualization engine powering Sangfor HCI, VDI, and Sangfor Cloud, aSV delivers a secure, high-performance, and reliable foundation for compute virtualization.
- Scale Computing HyperCore - Type 1 (bare metal) hypervisor
- Softiron HyperCloud - Delivers a on-premises or private cloud by supplying the entire stack from hardware provisioning to tenancy management
- StorMagic SvHCI - Based on open-source Linux KVM/QEMU technology and Open vSwitch, with storage virtualization provided by SvSAN. [docs]
- Ubuntu LXD - Open-source solution for managing virtual machines and system containers. LXD provides both KVM-based VMs and system containers based on LXC.
- VergeOS - VergeOS is an ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) solution that integrates virtualization, storage, and networking into a single data center operating system. [docs, download]
- Virtuozzo Hybrid Server - Bare-metal virtualization solution that includes container virtualization, KVM-based virtual machines, software-defined storage. It runs on top of VzLinux, a RHEL-based Linux distribution. [docs]
- ZStack ZSphere - Next-generation server virtualization software based on high performance, high security, high stability, and a strong focus on in-house development.
- ZSvirt - Open-source virtualization platform built on ZStack's ZSphere virtualization engine. [GitHub, docs]
- Citrix Hypervisor - High-performance hypervisor optimized for virtual app and desktop workloads and based on the Xen Project hypervisor [deprecated]
- Vates Virtualization Stack - Complete and fully open source virtualization stack.
- XCP-ng - User-friendly, high-performance virtualization solution, developed collaboratively for unrestricted features and open-source accessibility. [docs, forum, endoflife.date]
- XenServer (formerly Citrix Hypervisor) - Server virtualization platform, with all the capabilities required to create and manage a virtual infrastructure. XenServer is optimized for both Windows and Linux virtual servers. [docs]
- BSD bhyve - hypervisor/virtual machine manager available on FreeBSD and illumos. [docs]
- Canonical MicroCloud - Small-scale clouds optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. [docs]
- Karios Core - Karios Core reimagines the infrastructure stack by fusing the best features of FreeBSD, Bhyve, and ZFS into a single, integrated hyperconverged platform designed for contemporary performance, security, and ease of use.
- Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V - The Hyper-V role in Windows Server lets you create a virtualized computing environment where you can create and manage virtual machine. [docs]
- Triton SmartOS - Converged Container and Virtual Machine Hypervisor [downloads, docs]
- Cloud Hypervisor - Rust VMM for modern cloud virtual machines, built on virtio and KVM or Microsoft Hypervisor.
- Firecracker - Secure and fast microVMs for serverless and multi-tenant workloads, originally from AWS.
- VMware vCenter - Server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling vSphere environments (part of VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation).
- Apache CloudStack - Open-source software system designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform. [docs, downloads]
- Arcfra Enterprise Cloud Platform - A software stack designed to help enterprises build modern infrastructure at any location and scale they prefer.
- c12n.cloud - Fully automated, enterprise-ready open-source cloud platform built on OpenStack, Kubernetes, Ceph, and ArgoCD for sovereign IaaS.
- Cycle.io - Private-cloud platform that orchestrates containers and VMs across bare metal and multi-cloud, with L2/L3 networking. [docs]
- ManageIQ - Open source management platform for Hybrid IT. It can manage small and large environments, and supports multiple technologies such as virtual machines, public clouds and containers. [docs, downloads]
- HPE VM Essentials - Virtualization management solutiion for HPE VME Hypervisor hosts and vCenter integration.
- OpenNebula - Open Source Cloud Computing Platform to build and manage Enterprise Clouds. It supports multiple virtualization technologies, e.g. VMware, KVM and also LXC and Firecracker. [docs, downloads, forum]
- OpenStack - Cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed and provisioned through APIs with common authentication mechanisms.
- OpenStack Marketplace - List of several openstack distros & appliances
- Platform9 Private Cloud Director - Offers virtualization administrators a familiar private cloud experience with enterprise-grade features.
- Platform9 Private Cloud Director Community Edition - Free, community-supported, and full-featured version of Private Cloud Director
- Triton DataCenter - Open source platform that offers unified management of containers and virtualization. [docs, downloads]
- Virtualizor - Web based VPS Control Panel which a user can deploy and manage VPS on servers with a single click. Virtualizor supports KVM, Xen, OpenVZ, Proxmox, Virtuozzo, LXC, etc with an inbuilt hourly billing system. [docs]
- VMmanager - Platform for virtualization management. The platform allows to manage multiple clusters, create virtual machines, install OS, and run scripts. [docs]
- Xen Orchestra - Management interface for XenServer/XCP-ng [docs]
- Migrate to Proxmox VE - Official guide for moving VMs to Proxmox VE, including the built-in ESXi import wizard.
- Migration Toolkit for Virtualization - Orchestrated migration from vSphere, oVirt, OpenStack, Hyper-V and OVA to OpenShift Virtualization.
- Nutanix Move - Official warm migration from VMware ESXi (and Hyper-V, AWS, Azure) to Nutanix AHV.
- OVF Tool - Official CLI to import and export OVF, OVA and vSphere virtual machines.
- StarWind V2V Converter - Free GUI and CLI converter across ESXi, Hyper-V, Proxmox, oVirt and VirtualBox.
- virt-v2v - Convert virtual machines from VMware, Xen and Hyper-V to run on KVM, including VirtIO driver injection.
- virtio-win - Windows VirtIO drivers required for disk, network and balloon devices after a VMware-to-KVM conversion.
- Xen Orchestra V2V - Warm migration from VMware ESXi to XCP-ng and the Vates stack.
- Azure Virtual Desktop - Microsoft’s cloud VDI and remote app service.
- Citrix DaaS - Virtual apps and desktops, on-premises or as a service.
- Kasm Workspaces - Browser-based streaming of desktops and apps, including Proxmox VE as an autoscale provider.
- Omnissa Horizon - Former VMware Horizon, now independent. Virtual desktops and apps for vSphere and other platforms.
- Google Cloud VMware Engine - VMware Engine is a fully managed service that lets you run the VMware platform in Google Cloud.
- VMware Cloud on AWS - Managed VMware by Amazon.
- VMware on Azure - Managed VMware by Microsoft.
- Oracle Cloud VMware Solution - VMware cloud environment based on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).
- AWS Outposts - AWS compute, storage, and services on hardware in your datacenter or colocation site.
- Azure Local - Azure Local (former name Azure Stack HCI) is a hyperconverged infrastructure solution that VMs or containers and their storage. [docs]
- HPE GreenLake - Consumption-based private cloud and infrastructure in your datacenter.
- Lenovo TruScale - Pay-as-you-go on-premises infrastructure and private cloud.
- OVHcloud Hosted Private Cloud - Dedicated private cloud, including on-premises deployments (Nutanix-based).
Contributing guidelines can be found here.
This list is under CC0 1.0 Universal.