LXD vs VMware vSphere

Overview

VMware vSphere

Stacks608

Followers550

Votes30

LXD

Stacks104

Followers194

Votes68

LXD vs VMware vSphere: What are the differences?

Scalability: LXD is designed to be lightweight and is optimized for managing containers at scale. It allows for easy creation and management of large numbers of containers across multiple hosts. On the other hand, VMware vSphere is designed to handle virtual machines and is known for its robust scalability, allowing users to manage thousands of VMs in a single environment.
Resource Overhead: LXD provides a more efficient and lightweight solution for running containers, as it uses the same kernel as the host system, resulting in lower resource overhead. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, runs virtual machines with their own guest OS, which requires more resources for each VM.
Hardware Support: LXD is primarily focused on Linux containers and runs on Linux-based systems. It leverages the capabilities of the Linux kernel and can run on a wide range of hardware architectures. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, is a hypervisor-based virtualization platform that supports a variety of guest operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and others. It can run on x86-based hardware.
Management Interface: LXD provides a simple command-line interface as well as a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) called LXDUI for managing containers. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, offers a comprehensive management interface called vSphere Client, which provides a rich set of features for managing virtual machines, storage, networking, and other resources.
Virtualization vs. Containerization: LXD is a containerization technology that enables the lightweight and isolated execution of applications within containers. It allows for faster startup times and better performance compared to traditional virtualization. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, is a virtualization platform that enables the creation and management of virtual machines. Virtualization provides full isolation between VMs and enables running different operating systems within each VM.
Ecosystem and Support: LXD is part of the larger LXC (Linux Containers) ecosystem and benefits from the active open-source community behind it. It is supported by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and has a growing ecosystem of tools and integrations. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, is a commercial product supported by VMware, a well-established company in the virtualization space. It offers extensive documentation, enterprise-level support, and a wide range of additional tools and products.

In Summary, LXD and VMware vSphere differ in terms of scalability, resource overhead, hardware support, management interface, virtualization approach, and ecosystem/support. LXD is optimized for managing containers at scale with lower resource overhead, while VMware vSphere is a virtualization platform with robust scalability and support for various guest operating systems.

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Advice on VMware vSphere, LXD

Florian

IT DevOp at Agitos GmbH

Oct 22, 2019

Decided

lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.

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Detailed Comparison

VMware vSphere	LXD
vSphere is the world’s leading server virtualization platform. Run fewer servers and reduce capital and operating costs using VMware vSphere to build a cloud computing infrastructure.	LXD isn't a rewrite of LXC, in fact it's building on top of LXC to provide a new, better user experience. Under the hood, LXD uses LXC through liblxc and its Go binding to create and manage the containers. It's basically an alternative to LXC's tools and distribution template system with the added features that come from being controllable over the network.
Powerful Server Virtualization;Network Services;Efficient Storage;Consistent Automation;High Availability;Robust Security	-
Statistics
Stacks 608	Stacks 104
Followers 550	Followers 194
Votes 30	Votes 68
Pros & Cons
Pros 8 Strong host isolation 6 Industry leader 5 Great VM management (HA,FT,...) 4 Easy to use 2 Great Networking Cons 9 Price	Pros 10 More simple 8 Best 8 Open Source 8 API 7 Cluster
Integrations
No integrations available	LXC

What are some alternatives to VMware vSphere, LXD?

Docker

The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Proxmox VE

It is a complete open-source platform for all-inclusive enterprise virtualization that tightly integrates KVM hypervisor and LXC containers, software-defined storage and networking functionality on a single platform, and easily manages high availability clusters and disaster recovery tools with the built-in web management interface.

LXC

LXC is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Through a powerful API and simple tools, it lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers.

rkt

Rocket is a cli for running App Containers. The goal of rocket is to be composable, secure, and fast.

KVM

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V).

Qemu

When used as a machine emulator, it can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performance. When used as a virtualizer, it achieves near native performance by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. it supports virtualization when executing under the Xen hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux. When using KVM, it can virtualize x86, server and embedded PowerPC, 64-bit POWER, S390, 32-bit and 64-bit ARM, and MIPS guests.

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop for Mac allows you to seamlessly run both Windows and MacOS applications side-by-side with speed, control and confidence.

Vagrant Cloud

Vagrant Cloud pairs with Vagrant to enable access, insight and collaboration across teams, as well as to bring exposure to community contributions and development environments.

Parallels

It is an application and desktop virtualization software vendor that offers management and delivery platforms for Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows desktop deployments.

Related Comparisons

LXD vs VMware vSphere: What are the differences?

Scalability: LXD is designed to be lightweight and is optimized for managing containers at scale. It allows for easy creation and management of large numbers of containers across multiple hosts. On the other hand, VMware vSphere is designed to handle virtual machines and is known for its robust scalability, allowing users to manage thousands of VMs in a single environment.
Resource Overhead: LXD provides a more efficient and lightweight solution for running containers, as it uses the same kernel as the host system, resulting in lower resource overhead. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, runs virtual machines with their own guest OS, which requires more resources for each VM.
Hardware Support: LXD is primarily focused on Linux containers and runs on Linux-based systems. It leverages the capabilities of the Linux kernel and can run on a wide range of hardware architectures. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, is a hypervisor-based virtualization platform that supports a variety of guest operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and others. It can run on x86-based hardware.
Management Interface: LXD provides a simple command-line interface as well as a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) called LXDUI for managing containers. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, offers a comprehensive management interface called vSphere Client, which provides a rich set of features for managing virtual machines, storage, networking, and other resources.
Virtualization vs. Containerization: LXD is a containerization technology that enables the lightweight and isolated execution of applications within containers. It allows for faster startup times and better performance compared to traditional virtualization. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, is a virtualization platform that enables the creation and management of virtual machines. Virtualization provides full isolation between VMs and enables running different operating systems within each VM.
Ecosystem and Support: LXD is part of the larger LXC (Linux Containers) ecosystem and benefits from the active open-source community behind it. It is supported by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and has a growing ecosystem of tools and integrations. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, is a commercial product supported by VMware, a well-established company in the virtualization space. It offers extensive documentation, enterprise-level support, and a wide range of additional tools and products.

LXD vs VMware vSphere

Overview