Tweaks its hardware to run multiple private cloud stacks, and shift between them
Lenovo has a hunch that some of you are about to shift to a different hypervisor and has created hardware to make the move easier.
As explained to The Register by Kumar Mitra, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group’s executive director for Central Asia Pacific, plus Australia and New Zealand, some organizations are contemplating cloud repatriation projects to on-prem hyperconverged or private cloud rigs.
“A lot of customers are looking for a pathway to move off the VMware platform,” Mitra added. “What we are seeing is customers are now open to doing more pilots, more proof of concepts.”
While hyperconverged and server virtualization stacks require vanilla x86 servers and off-the-shelf components, vendors like Lenovo traditionally create SKUs tuned to each stack’s peculiarities. The Chinese company therefore offers HX series appliances tuned for Nutanix, the VX series designed to run VMware, and the MX series to run Microsoft Azure Local.
Mitra told The Register that customers currently want infrastructure that doesn’t tie them to a platform.
Late in 2025, the Chinese hardware giant therefore launched a new “FX” series of hyperconverged appliances that it certifies as suitable to run stacks from VMware and Nutanix. Users can ask Lenovo to install either platform and it’s possible to convert the machines to run one or the other. Naturally, Lenovo offers its services capabilities if you choose to make the move.
“FX is a pretty emphatic proposition for proof-of-concept projects because it can handle multiple hyperconverged platforms,” Mitra said. “We have unlocked the hardware and made it more open.”
While he is confident that the FX series can help migration projects, Mitra acknowledged that moves away from VMware aren’t easy.
“It is easier said than done, as users have built a lot of skills around VMware and it is a brilliant product,” he said.
It’s also a product that now comes in only one form – the Cloud Foundation private cloud bundle that offers many features users who adopted VMware to virtualize servers may not require. Broadcom argues that full and enthusiastic adoption of Cloud Foundation quickly pays for itself by improving efficiency and manageability of an IT estate and allowing it to span virtual and containerized workloads.
Independent analyst Michael Warrilow, who specializes in server virtualization, hyperconverged infrastructure and management tools, recently wrote that VMware users mostly wasted 2025 and the year saw most enterprise-scale VMware migrations make only “minor progress.”
Warrilow said Broadcom customers should “Assume that multi-hypervisor environments are going to become the norm, and that you must dismantle your VMware-heavy management tooling (if you wish to reduce your dependence).” The analyst feels that preparing for a multi-hypervisor world “is essential for longer-term success” but will “take time and money … and it will not yield significant benefits in 2026.”
His alternative to a VMware migration is to “Accept the situation and move on to other things (i.e., 'suck it up'). Accept VMware Cloud Foundation and its full-stack value proposition.”
Choosing the second option doesn’t mean long-term commitment to VMware, he added.
“There are simple ways to reduce the exposure and they should be implemented,” he wrote. “One example is in development environments, which in some cases can accrue up to 50% of license costs.”
“Moreover, development environments are a fertile place to build the next generation of on-premises IT infrastructure, where containers, virtual machines, physical instances and bare metal can coexist.”
Lenovo has aimed its FX boxen at just such environments – and beyond, because the machines use liquid cooling, a nod to their ability to run AI workloads.
Warrilow urges organizations to get up to speed on AI, because he feels it will help them to reduce dependence on traditional on-premises server virtualization.
“The bottom line: don't waste 2026,” he concluded. ®