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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
6.9
Red Hat OpenShift boosts productivity, reduces costs, enhances scalability, and ensures seamless migration with strong security for organizations.
Sentiment score
5.5
VMware ESXi boosts ROI by reducing hardware costs and staff, despite increased expenses, enhancing efficiency and management.
Red Hat OpenShift has proven to be an intelligent product for me, being built on Kubernetes, which is widely recognized and is where many cloud providers are deploying new workloads.
Systems & Storage Engineer at ATOS
Time was the major thing which saved a lot, and in terms of resources, it has reduced resource utilization so the remaining users can focus on other tasks.
Server Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The management burden decreased from a 20-person team to just five or six people providing 24/7 support.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Red Hat OpenShift's customer service is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, but some users report slow response times.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware ESXi support varies, with efficient solutions but slower responses post-Broadcom acquisition impacting overall satisfaction.
Red Hat's technical support is responsive and effective.
Infrastructure Manager at Appzone Group
Customer support is really good because so far in our case, we have always received a prompt response, and they have been really helpful to us.
Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The response time for customer support is excellent, and they go deep and can resolve things easily.
Operation Director at Zaintech
I rate the technical support from VMware as nine or ten out of ten.
SAP B1 Support Consultant at Abacus Consulting
In the last three or four years, we did not require any support from VMware engineers, indicating its high reliability.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
Customer service and support are good; they are reachable, and at times remote support suffices.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Red Hat OpenShift is praised for scalable capabilities, efficiently handling user demands with features like horizontal pod autoscaling.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware ESXi excels in scalability, supporting varied business sizes and seamless infrastructure expansion, despite some licensing challenges.
The on-demand provisioning of pods and auto-scaling, whether horizontal or vertical, is the best part.
Director at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
OpenShift's horizontal pod scaling is more effective and efficient than that used in Kubernetes, making it a superior choice for scalability.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Red Hat OpenShift scales excellently, with a rating of ten out of ten.
System Analyst at Freelancer
The solution is scalable, allowing us to scale up or down regardless of infrastructure size.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
vCenter Server can manage up to 1,000 ESXi servers within a single UI interface, allowing extensive deployment and management capabilities.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
My customers are highly satisfied with its scalability.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Red Hat OpenShift is highly stable and reliable, scoring eight to nine out of ten, with isolated challenges.
Sentiment score
8.3
VMware ESXi is praised for its stability and reliability, with updates effectively addressing occasional downtime and maintenance concerns.
Red Hat OpenShift can scale to thousands of nodes, allowing multiple clusters to be managed in different geolocations and managed by centralized advanced cluster management, ACM.
Operation Director at Zaintech
It provides better performance yet requires more resources compared to vanilla Kubernetes.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I've had my cluster running for over four years.
Infrastructure Manager at Appzone Group
ESXi is stable, and our business operations depend on it year after year.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
Stability rates a perfect 10.
Managing Partner at evercloud
 

Room For Improvement

Red Hat OpenShift needs better UX, simplified configurations, improved support, and optimized integrations to enhance user satisfaction and scalability.
VMware ESXi's pricing, usability, and support challenges deter small businesses, needing improvements in scalability and user experience.
Learning OpenShift requires complex infrastructure, needing vCenter integration, more advanced answers, active directory, and more expensive hardware.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
If I could change or improve one thing about Red Hat OpenShift, it would be to provide more information on the web because the information is limited and I need to explore more.
Manager Cybersecurity at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Providing a mobile application for remote access to ESXi servers would be beneficial.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
It's not cost-effective for small users and creates a gap for alternatives, while favoring larger clients.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
The cost of VMware ESXi is very high, especially after the acquisition by Broadcom, which led to price increases.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Setup Cost

Red Hat OpenShift's pricing is high but offers comprehensive support, with cost variations depending on hosting, nodes, and enterprise agreements.
VMware ESXi's high costs post-Broadcom acquisition cause dissatisfaction despite straightforward licensing, with potential discounts offering limited relief.
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.
Senior Technical Lead at MORO
The pricing for Red Hat OpenShift is considered quite high.
Manager for Middleware at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that Red Hat OpenShift comes out as an expensive solution compared to having AKS, GKE, or EKS.
Lead Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The product is very cost-effective, though not fixed, as pricing tends to fluctuate over time.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
The solution is moderately priced, not exactly cheap yet not overly expensive either.
SAP B1 Support Consultant at Abacus Consulting
The pricing is expensive, with the cost for customers ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
 

Valuable Features

Red Hat OpenShift enhances security, compatibility, and automation for flexible cloud-native deployments, reducing time-to-market for applications.
VMware ESXi offers high availability, robust performance, intuitive management, and seamless integration, ensuring stability, efficiency, and diverse virtualization capabilities.
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The main benefits Red Hat OpenShift provides for me as a final user include the capacity to integrate third-party tools and also the integration between observability, security, and monitoring capacities.
Architect Projects at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
This is one of the main things, in addition to having integration with ACM and ACS, where we can have the ability to manage multiple clusters and to secure them, deploy them, manage them, run GitOps and day-two operations, as well as upgrades and other functionality which is made easy using these tools.
Operation Director at Zaintech
Its capability to move virtual machines to physical machines is very efficient for our live environment.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
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.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
vMotion is a daily used technology that allows us to have machines distributed across different sites while maintaining redundancy between the sites.
Managing Partner at evercloud
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Container Management (5th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
VMware ESXi
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 3.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware ESXi is 2.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat OpenShift3.5%
VMware ESXi2.6%
Other93.9%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

AA
Operation Director at Zaintech
Platform has transformed our cloud into a secure, unified home for diverse modern applications
One of the best features of Red Hat OpenShift is that it has the catalog, the application catalog, and the operator hub, which allows us to deploy things easily and straightforward without going into a lot of hassles. This is one of the main things, in addition to having integration with ACM and ACS, where we can have the ability to manage multiple clusters and to secure them, deploy them, manage them, run GitOps and day-two operations, as well as upgrades and other functionality which is made easy using these tools. Red Hat OpenShift also provides virtualization capabilities, and I am currently working with Zain to make a project where we will convert F5 appliances to virtual machines and to manage them through Red Hat virtualization, OVE. Red Hat OpenShift is a unique platform because it provides the features for both worlds, containerization, and VMs at the same time, requiring you to learn one skillset in order to manage all of this at the same time. In the beginning, our cloud depended only on virtual machines, so I introduced this to our management to start to work with microservices and with containerization. This was adapted in our cloud, providing us the capability to sell more of these features and to reduce the hardware requirement by about thirty percent, following the trends of using containerization for all modern applications. In addition, it reduced the time to develop and to deploy a new application; all we need is using Jenkins for CI/CD. Once we commit any code, it gets triggered, and it will implement the new container in a very flexible and easy way, within seconds. This decreased the time to market and increased agility, allowing us to capture new opportunities very fast.
Gourab Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Virtualization has transformed our data center and delivers consistent uptime with seamless maintenance
The most valuable feature VMware ESXi offers me is the user interface and the ease of handling operations without downtime, which is the biggest advantage, particularly with capabilities for live patching, and VCF 9 in patching areas; the bundled licensing provided simplifies management as I can utilize resources based on my needs without worrying too much about individual licenses. The zero-downtime patching is the feature that makes the biggest difference in my day-to-day operations, as well as managing hosts with an n+1 configuration, using a buffer host to streamline maintenance within a cluster of hosts. The vMotion feature is another important aspect, as we opt for auto vMotion to optimize resources within the cluster, enabling the underlying VMs to be moved seamlessly from one host to another based on utilization without impacting applications. VMware ESXi has positively impacted our organization significantly in terms of operations and cost optimization, as we optimized our environment under a per-core license agreement, achieving around 30 to 40% cost-effectiveness and maintaining almost 99.99% uptime across our environment, where VMware ESXi is run on about 85% of our setup. Improvements in operations were made possible through visibility provided by VMware ESXi into hardware enhancements, such as virtual storage platforms with vSAN, which we incorporated into our environment supported by VMware ESXi 9 to enable effective live patching without impacting operations, and we regularly utilize RV tool reports to track actual utilization and optimize resources, reducing our footprint from 100 VMs on 100 hosts to 47 hosts, yielding substantial financial benefits thanks to the support from our VMware ESXi TAM.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise16
 

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 needs improvement with OpenShift?
I hope that the interface and dashboard can become more user-friendly to assist in creating clusters and managing network interfaces easily, as opposed to relying heavily on command lines, which co...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware ESXi?
We recently renewed our VMware ESXi subscription for 14,000 cores, and the total cost was approximately 16 crore for three years. Overall, I found the pricing and licensing process to be very simpl...
What needs improvement with VMware ESXi?
While there is nothing particularly frustrating, a quicker response from VMware ESXi for planning existing hardware implementations of VCF 9 would be beneficial, especially for P1 issues where reso...
What advice do you have for others considering VMware ESXi?
For large enterprises with over 1,000 to 2,000 servers, my advice is to adopt VMware ESXi, ensuring you use the latest technology-supported hardware such as vSAN for an easier operational experienc...
 

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 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.