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Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware ESXi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.8
Red Hat OpenShift improves productivity, offers cost savings, enhances system stability, and provides 15% ROI, especially in privacy-focused sectors.
Sentiment score
5.7
VMware ESXi saves time and money initially but may result in higher long-term costs despite improved efficiency.
With OpenShift combined with IBM Cloud App integration, I can spin an integration server in a second as compared to traditional methods, which could take days or weeks.
Moving to OpenShift resulted in increased system stability and reduced downtime, which contributed to operational efficiency.
It is always advisable to get the bare minimum that you need, and then add more when necessary.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Red Hat OpenShift support is mixed, praised for expertise but criticized for slow responses and varying experiences based on subscription.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware ESXi support is responsive and effective, but some users note delays post-Broadcom acquisition, affecting satisfaction.
Red Hat's technical support is responsive and effective.
I have been pretty happy in the past with getting support from Red Hat.
Red Hat's technical support is good, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.
I rate the technical support from VMware as nine or ten out of ten.
In the last three or four years, we did not require any support from VMware engineers, indicating its high reliability.
Customer service and support are good; they are reachable, and at times remote support suffices.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Red Hat OpenShift offers efficient scalability with automated features, easy deployment, and adaptability, despite cost and infrastructure considerations.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware ESXi offers scalable solutions, efficiently managing virtual environments with excellent vertical scalability, despite some licensing challenges.
The on-demand provisioning of pods and auto-scaling, whether horizontal or vertical, is the best part.
OpenShift's horizontal pod scaling is more effective and efficient than that used in Kubernetes, making it a superior choice for scalability.
Red Hat OpenShift scales excellently, with a rating of ten out of ten.
The solution is scalable, allowing us to scale up or down regardless of infrastructure size.
vCenter Server can manage up to 1,000 ESXi servers within a single UI interface, allowing extensive deployment and management capabilities.
My customers are highly satisfied with its scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Red Hat OpenShift is praised for stability, reliability, and features like Blue-Green deployment, with minor issues quickly resolved.
Sentiment score
8.5
VMware ESXi is praised for stability and reliability, with most users rating it highly despite occasional performance issues.
It provides better performance yet requires more resources compared to vanilla Kubernetes.
I've had my cluster running for over four years.
It performs well under load, providing the desired output.
ESXi is stable, and our business operations depend on it year after year.
 

Room For Improvement

Red Hat OpenShift needs better documentation, improved usability, and enhancements in security, integration, technical support, and installation processes.
VMware ESXi requires simpler licensing, improved usability, cost reduction, enhanced support, better scalability, and features like remote access.
Learning OpenShift requires complex infrastructure, needing vCenter integration, more advanced answers, active directory, and more expensive hardware.
Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services.
We should aim to include VMware-like capabilities to be competitive, especially considering cost factors.
Providing a mobile application for remote access to ESXi servers would be beneficial.
It's not cost-effective for small users and creates a gap for alternatives, while favoring larger clients.
The cost of VMware ESXi is very high, especially after the acquisition by Broadcom, which led to price increases.
 

Setup Cost

Red Hat OpenShift pricing is high but potentially cost-effective for large enterprises, offering comprehensive support and enterprise capabilities.
VMware ESXi is often seen as expensive, with high initial and annual costs and a confusing licensing model.
Initially, licensing was per CPU, with a memory cap, but the price has doubled, making it difficult to justify for clients with smaller compute needs.
Red Hat can improve on the pricing part by making it more flexible and possibly on the lower side.
The cost of OpenShift is very high, particularly with the OpenShift Plus package, which includes many products and services.
The product is very cost-effective, though not fixed, as pricing tends to fluctuate over time.
The solution is moderately priced, not exactly cheap yet not overly expensive either.
The pricing is expensive, with the cost for customers ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly.
 

Valuable Features

Red Hat OpenShift is valued for its security, scalability, automation, multi-cloud flexibility, and efficient management interface.
VMware ESXi is highly regarded for its reliability, user-friendliness, resource optimization, and efficient management of virtual machines.
Because it was centrally managed in our company, many metrics that we had to write code for were available out of the box, including utilization, CPU utilization, memory, and similar metrics.
The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift.
A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes.
Its capability to move virtual machines to physical machines is very efficient for our live environment.
As a level one or bare metal hypervisor, its unmatched scalability depends on underlying hardware, capable of managing large numbers of physical servers with one management platform.
The most important features are having a lot of code and CPU threads to ensure the system doesn't lag.
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Container Management (12th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
VMware ESXi
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 1.6%. The mindshare of VMware ESXi is 1.0%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management
Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively. We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge. Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.
Syed Ali Waqas - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently manages development environments with robust network integration
I recommend new users download and evaluate the free version from VMware's website. Once satisfied, they should purchase the professional version for a smooth and secure IT infrastructure. The professional version is cost-effective, allowing one to create multiple servers on a single server. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
What do you like most about VMware ESXi?
My customers are satisfied with the solution’s performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware ESXi?
VMware is shifting to Broadcom, and their prices are becoming more expensive nowadays. The management is considering whether to continue with VMware or switch to other products. I am not sure exact...
What needs improvement with VMware ESXi?
Pricing is a major issue with VMware ESXi as it is becoming more expensive. Many financial companies use VMware, so they should consider working on their pricing model to make it more affordable.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat OpenShift vs. VMware ESXi and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.