Oasis Stack Oasis Stack A CloudHost Initiative
EN
Talk to us
Migrating from VMware

Keep the platform.
Replace the tier above it.

Oasis Stack replaces vCloud Director and Aria with one platform that runs the whole cloud business — while ESXi and vCenter stay exactly where they are. No forklift, no re-platforming, and no day where the estate is half-migrated.

Talk to an architect How it is priced
ESXi staysvCenter staysFlat fee, banded by scale
Nothing is re-platformed
Your hypervisor and your virtual machines do not move. The layer above them changes.
One platform, not a suite
Self-service, tenancy, metering, billing and governance arrive as one product.
Priced per deployment
A flat fee per deployment, banded by scale, so capacity added inside a band is not a licensing event.
Migrate in waves
Publish the existing estate first, then move tenants when you are ready.
The situation

The renewal arrived and the number had changed.

For most operators the problem was never the hypervisor — it is the tier above it. vCloud Director gave you multi-tenancy and a portal; Aria gave you automation and operations; between them they carried the licensing that scales with your hardware. When that commercial model moves under you, the technical decision and the financial one arrive at the same time, and the only options on the table look like re-platform everything or pay it.

What moves and what stays

The hypervisor is not the problem, so it is not the project.

Precision matters here more than enthusiasm. This is exactly what changes and what does not.

ESXi
Stays
Your hypervisor keeps running, keeps its version, keeps its support path. Oasis Stack sits above it.
vCenter
Stays
The platform integrates to vCenter and drives it. Your operations team keeps the console they know.
Virtual machines
Stay
Nothing is converted, re-imaged or moved between hypervisors. Running workloads are unaffected.
Hardware and storage
Stay
The estate you bought keeps serving the estate you run.
vCloud Director
Replaced
Tenancy, the self-service portal, the service catalogue and the provider constructs are delivered by Oasis Core and Cloud Foundation instead.
Aria (vRealize)
Replaced
Automation, lifecycle, operations and cost visibility move into the platform’s operations and governance layers, with Amin watching the estate.
vSAN
Replaceable
Ceph is integrated into the platform and can take over the storage layer, removing vSAN’s licensing. Be clear-eyed about this one: unlike the management tier, storage is a real data migration — it is worth doing, but it is a workstream, not a switch.
The commercial model
Replaced
Per-core licensing for that tier becomes a flat fee per deployment, banded by the scale of the estate. Growth inside a band does not re-price it; crossing one is a step you agree at the outset. How a band works. Model your current licence bill.
What arrives with it

A cloud business, not a replacement console.

Swapping one management suite for another would not be worth the project. This is what the tier above ESXi becomes.

Customers, not just tenants
Onboarding, quoting, contracts, subscriptions, invoicing and collections — the commercial layer vCloud Director never had.
One catalogue across everything
Your VMware estate, Kubernetes, bare metal and GPU in one catalogue, priced and governed the same way.
Governance that produces evidence
Policy enforced before provisioning, and the audit trail produced continuously rather than assembled for a review.
A marketplace of your own
CloudSouq gives the estate a storefront — partner services and ISV software sold under your brand.
Federation, if you want it
Sell into other Oasis clouds and consume from them, with customers and margins staying yours.
Amin across the estate
Health, capacity, cost and compliance signals read together instead of one console at a time.
How the migration runs

Publish first. Move when you are ready.

Because ESXi and vCenter stay, there is no cut-over day. The platform integrates to the estate you already run and publishes it as services, so the first customer can be served before a single tenant has been migrated off vCloud Director. The old tier is retired when it is empty, not when the project plan says so.

Deployment architectures
1
Integrate
The platform authenticates to vCenter and discovers the estate — clusters, datastores, networks, what is running.
2
Publish
Capacity becomes catalogue items with pricing, quotas and policy. Nothing has moved yet.
3
Onboard
New tenants land on the new platform. The old one keeps serving the tenants already on it.
4
Retire
Existing tenants move in waves. vCloud Director and Aria come out when the last one is off them.
The assessment

Start with what you actually run.

Before anything moves, we map your estate against the platform. You leave with a plan whether or not you go ahead.

Your vCloud Director and Aria estate
Organisations, virtual data centres, catalogues, networks and the automation running on them.
What moves and what stays
Line by line: the tier that comes off your VMware bill, and ESXi and vCenter, which stay on it.
Risks and dependencies
The integrations, workflows and tenants that need care, named before the first wave.
A wave plan
Which tenants move first and in what order, starting with a pilot.
The vSAN decision
Keep vSAN, or move storage to Ceph as a separate, planned data migration.
Your licence exposure
What your current licence does as you grow, and the banded fee against it, shared under NDA.
Request the assessment Model your licence bill first
Each wave

Pilot first. Check every wave. Keep a way back.

Tenants move in waves, and each wave is run the same way.

A pilot tenant first
One tenant moves before any others, so the method is proven on your estate.
Mapped, not converted
A tenant’s organisation, networks, catalogue, policies and permissions are recreated on the platform. Its virtual machines stay where they are, on ESXi.
Checked before the next
Each wave is validated with the tenant before the next one starts.
Rollback is planned
vCloud Director keeps running until the last tenant is off it, so no wave depends on a one-way switch.
What this does not do

The part a CFO will check.

Keeping ESXi and vCenter is what makes the migration safe. It also means this is not an escape from VMware altogether, and we would rather you heard that here.

ESXi and vCenter stay licensed
You continue to license the hypervisor and vCenter from VMware. What comes off the bill is the vCloud Director and Aria tier — substantial, but not the whole VMware line.
Moving off vSAN moves data
Replacing the management tier touches no storage. Replacing vSAN with Ceph does: it is a storage migration with a cutover per datastore, planned separately and usually later.
It is not a hardware saving
The platform improves utilisation and makes cost attributable. It does not make a refresh unnecessary.
Applications are unchanged
Migrating the management tier does not modernise a workload. That is a separate programme, and a different module.
The operating model still changes
Self-service and chargeback alter how teams request and account for infrastructure. That is organisational work no platform removes.
Questions

What people ask first.

Do our virtual machines move?

No. ESXi and vCenter stay, and the platform runs above them. Tenants move in waves; their virtual machines stay where they are.

Do we still pay VMware?

For ESXi and vCenter, yes. The vCloud Director and Aria tier comes off the bill once the last tenant is off it.

What happens to vSAN?

It can stay. Moving storage to Ceph is optional, and it is a real data migration, so it is planned as its own workstream.

Is there a cut-over day?

No. The platform publishes your estate as services first, and the old tier is retired when it is empty.

How long does it take?

It depends on how many tenants you have and how they are built. The assessment produces the wave plan; we do not publish a number of weeks.

What does it cost?

A flat fee per deployment, banded by scale, for the modules you adopt. You can model what your current licence does as you grow in the licence exposure calculator.

The other one
Running both? Migrating from Red Hat covers what is replaced there, what stays, and where the work actually is.
Migrating from Red Hat
Brief · 2 pages · sent by email
The VMware exit brief

What stays, what goes, how the migration runs — and what it does not do. For infrastructure and finance.

Get the brief
Your infrastructure. Your customers. Your margins.

Bring us your estate and your renewal date.

We will map what you run in vCloud Director and Aria against what the platform replaces, and what stays on your VMware bill.

Talk to an architect How it is priced