---
title: "The cloud native era killed VMware's lock-in. Here's what to run instead. » Giant Swarm"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-cloud-native-era-killed-vmware-s-lock-in-here-s-what-to-run-instead-giant-swarm-mugdzvx6b
source_url: https://www.giantswarm.io/blog/the-cloud-native-era-killed-vmwares-lock-in.-heres-what-to-run-instead
type: article
source: "Giant Swarm"
published: 2026-05-28T15:59:55.034Z
updated: 2026-05-28T16:00:35.131Z
tags: ["kubernetes", "infrastructure", "vmware", "proxmox"]
reading_time: 9
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# The cloud native era killed VMware's lock-in. Here's what to run instead. » Giant Swarm

**[Giant Swarm](https://daily.dev/sources/giantswarm)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Following Broadcom's acquisition of VMware and subsequent price hikes, infrastructure teams are evaluating three realistic alternatives: Nutanix (closest like-for-like, still proprietary), Proxmox (open source, free, suits mixed VM/container workloads), and bare metal Kubernetes (no hypervisor overhead, best for fully containerized workloads). Giant Swarm's managed platform supports all three through a shared Cluster API (CAPI) foundation — using CAPX for Nutanix, CAPMOX for Proxmox, and Metal3 for bare metal — meaning the management layer, GitOps via FluxCD, observability, and security bundles remain consistent regardless of infrastructure. Migration from VMware is designed as a phased, reversible process: the management cluster moves first, then workload clusters migrate team by team with no hard cutover date, allowing VMware license costs to shrink incrementally. For workloads not yet containerized, KubeVirt on bare metal lets legacy VMs run as native Kubernetes workloads during the transition period.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.giantswarm.io/blog/the-cloud-native-era-killed-vmwares-lock-in.-heres-what-to-run-instead>

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---

Tags: [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/infrastructure), [#vmware](https://daily.dev/tags/vmware), [#proxmox](https://daily.dev/tags/proxmox)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-cloud-native-era-killed-vmware-s-lock-in-here-s-what-to-run-instead-giant-swarm-mugdzvx6b)