Platform9 Removes One of the Biggest Barriers to Replacing VMware: Linux Administration
Private Cloud Director now ships with Platform9 OS, a turnkey KVM-ready Linux distribution.
Platform9, the enterprise private cloud company, today announced updates to its Private Cloud Director (PCD), featuring Platform9 OS, a turnkey KVM-ready Linux distribution. The latest product update removes the Linux administration barrier required for enterprises to exit VMware and accelerate their journey to a modern private cloud. Platform9 OS also offers a secure and tightly validated platform that automatically stays up to date with growing cybersecurity threats and provides a critical building block for AI applications built on Kubernetes and agentic workloads.
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Broadcom’s recent VMware acquisition coupled with the increasing AI usage built around Kubernetes, have introduced seismic changes to the virtualization market, and have spurred many enterprise organizations to reassess how they’re managing their private cloud infrastructure. Amid this evolution, they’re seeking continuity from a familiar, VMware-like experience, enterprise-grade services and software, and flexibility in hardware choices to avoid continued vendor-lock in and increased price unpredictability driven by AI.
A January 2026 survey from CloudBolt found that 86% of IT decision makers are actively reducing their use of VMware. While the global Kubernetes-for-AI-workloads market is projected to grow from $4.8 billion in 2025 to $22.6 billion by 2034. The latest CNCF Cloud Native Survey found the production usage of Kubernetes now stands at 82% among container users, and 66% of AI adopters are using it to scale inference workloads.
“With today’s release of Platform9 OS, VMware administrators can deploy, operate, and upgrade an enterprise-grade KVM based private cloud without the overhead of traditional Linux systems administration,” said Sirish Raghuram, Chief Growth Officer and Co-Founder at Platform9. “Our design goal for Platform9 OS is that operators do not need to login to the Linux shell, it is intelligently managed by the Platform9 management plane.”
Key Feature Updates:
Linux Administrative Updates
- Turnkey Linux image configuration for admins without deep Linux expertise.
- Automated translation of VMware networking constructs into Linux-native networking.
- Automatic Conversion of VMware clusters to KVM to eliminate conversion complexity.
- Ability to create VMs Directly from ISOs for Linux and Windows.
Observability Updates
- Audit log functionality enhanced to improve readability, increase data capture, and enable administrators to create filtered log output.
- Integrate with external observability, logging and SIEM tools for better data visibility, integration with existing dashboards and reporting, and improved audit preparation.
- Parity for self-hosted Platform9 deployments: Self-hosted deployments now have the same observability and supportability available as Platform9 SaaS deployments.
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