VMware Exit: FIS-ASP Gets Off to a Flying Start with SUSE KVM

In enterprise virtualization, the time has come for open-source alternatives. Since the sweeping changes to licensing and pricing in the VMware ecosystem, many IT decision-makers have been faced with drastically rising costs and unpredictable roadmaps. Against this backdrop, the debate over digital sovereignty is taking on a whole new economic significance.

A Breakthrough Instead of a Cost Spiral

The full-service IT provider FIS-ASP demonstrates what a successful transition looks like in practice. The managed service provider operates high-availability infrastructures for over 50,000 users from three redundant data centers in Bavaria. Instead of absorbing the massive price increases for the proprietary virtualization solution, FIS-ASP decided to make a complete switch to an open infrastructure stack based on SUSE KVM and SUSE Virtualization.

The strategic focus of this transformation project is clearly on the hypervisor. FIS-ASP is gradually replacing its existing VMware ESXi virtualization platform with SUSE KVM—a high-performance enterprise version of the proven open-source hypervisor that is natively integrated into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications. Manuel Sammeth, Managing Director of FIS-ASP, confirms that this transition is succeeding without any loss of functionality: The feature set of SUSE KVM is fully comparable to that of the VMware ecosystem for his application scenarios. What’s more, parameters such as I/O limits, bandwidths, and burst characteristics can be controlled even more granularly and precisely in the new setup than before. Using Ansible automation tools and a customized management interface, the MSP retains full control over resource management. However, it is clear that a new operating model must be developed. The SUSE KVM solution proves to be the ideal technological lever for protecting existing hardware investments in the company’s own data centers over the long term while simultaneously ensuring the financial predictability of hosting services. But the transition is not merely a 1:1 swap at the hypervisor level; rather, it is an evolutionary step for the entire workload management process. Through the parallel use of SUSE Virtualization for traditional VMs and cloud-native workloads, traditional virtualization is directly integrated with modern container technologies. Based on KubeVirt, the platform enables traditional virtual machines and cloud-native applications to run side by side on a standardized open-source stack.

Seamless Provisioning

This hyperconverged infrastructure is managed centrally via SUSE Rancher for SAP Applications. This enables FIS-ASP to run both traditional HANA and SAP application servers on SUSE’s hypervisor (SUSE KVM) on the one hand, and innovative cloud-native services and classic non-SAP VMs on the other, all on SUSE Virtualization. Another key success factor in the migration from VMware to SUSE KVM is SUSE Multi-Linux Support. It provides enterprise-level support for hybrid environments and allows FIS-ASP to continue running existing guest operating systems, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, without modification during the migration phase.

Risk-Free Migration at Your Own Pace

Large, business-critical SAP systems and HANA databases with several terabytes of RAM can be migrated with a high degree of automation and at your own pace. The FIS-ASP success story impressively demonstrates: The switch from VMware to SUSE KVM (SAP application servers and SAP HANA) and SUSE Virtualization (non-SAP classic VMs and cloud-native workloads) is not only the answer to a volatile market, but also the ideal path to true technological freedom and digital sovereignty.

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