Veeam bets on more VMware alternatives, including Red Hat and China’s Sangfor
Plans a universal API to back up all hypervisors, too
Backup software vendor Veeam has thrown its weight behind more alternatives to VMware.
On Wednesday, the company announced both version 13 of its flagship Data Platform product and a plan to support at least 13 hypervisors.
In the first half of 2026, Veeam will add support for XCP-NG, HPE’s Morpheus VM Essentials, Citrix’s Xen Server, and Sangfor. Later in the year, the company will support Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
HPE’s Morpheus is quite new and is yet to achieve much traction. HPE has pitched it as a solid server virtualization platform that suits users who don’t need everything VMware packs into its Cloud Foundation private cloud suite. XCP-NG, a fork of Xen Server, is likewise hasn’t won substantial market share.
Citrix has a substantial installed base for Xen Server, but for years hasn’t suggested it as a host for workloads other than its own products – a stance it changed in July without offering details of the technology it plans to adopt or a timeline for when it will re-enter the mainstream virtualization market.
OpenShift Virtualization is also new and unproven. It’s also a direct competitor for Cloud Foundation, and we’re told Broadcom and VMware rate it their most formidable challenger.
Veeam clearly sees all of them as an opportunity worthy of investment, suggesting growing user populations.
That’s likely due to Broadcom’s preference for selling Cloud Foundation, a product that is considerably more capable and expensive than its vSphere bundles. The Register consistently hears that Broadcom and its partners do not swiftly or enthusiastically respond to requests for vSphere licenses, and that many VMware users take the hint and seek alternative platforms for virtualized workloads that can do without VCF. Australian VMware partner Interactive, for example, recently told us it moved some internal workloads from VMware to Proxmox.
Workloads moved to other hypervisors still need backup, and Veeam has a big customer base among VMware users. Supporting more hypervisors therefore means Veeam can help its users as they transition to multi-hypervisor estates.
Who is Sangfor?
Readers can be excused for not having heard of Sangfor, as it’s a Chinese vendor that has for a decade delivered hyperconverged infrastructure products based on the open source KVM hypervisor, though it doesn’t do much business outside the Middle Kingdom.
The Register recently learned that China’s Alibaba Cloud has suspended operation of its VMware service, meaning some users in China need a new home.
Veeam supporting Sangfor therefore gives it access to the massive Chinese market, and perhaps to some users stranded by Alibaba.
Veeam also announced a plan to create a “Universal Hypervisor Integration API” which it bills as a “framework enabling any hypervisor vendor to integrate natively with Veeam’s backup and recovery capabilities using a standardized API, future-proofing customer environments as new virtualization technologies emerge.”
All of which suggests Veeam concurs with analyst firm Gartner’s view that plenty of contenders are set to enter the virtualization market. ®