Virtualization Costs Are Out of Control. Here’s How to Regain Control with Smarter Storage.
As virtualization remains the backbone of modern enterprise IT, a new challenge is emerging: costs are escalating rapidly, and unchecked. With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware leading to licensing fee hikes of 200 – 300%, many organizations are finding themselves trapped between rising infrastructure demands and shrinking IT budgets.
This is not just a VMware story – it’s a wake-up call.
Abandoning VMware is not only costly, but changing hypervisors carries risk, not least of which is the risk of being locked into yet another vendor’s ecosystem. Enterprises must now rethink not only their virtualization strategies but also the underlying storage infrastructure that fuels them. And for savvy, forward-thinking IT leaders, that means turning to open enterprise storage platforms like TrueNAS.
The Strategic Case for Rethinking Virtualization Economics
Storage plays a critical, and often underestimated, role in virtualization costs. When your storage architecture is inefficient, it doesn’t just inflate storage hardware spend. It also drives up server count, and with it, your VMware licensing, power usage, and operational overhead.
That’s where TrueNAS offers a unique lifeline by turning the conventional storage-cost equation on its head: flexible, performant Open Enterprise storage with Fast Dedup and sub-millisecond NVMe performance.
How TrueNAS Cuts Virtualization Costs Through Efficiency
With the latest release of TrueNAS 25.04 (“Fangtooth”), TrueNAS H30 and F100 platforms unlock a new generation of cost-optimized storage for virtualized infrastructure. Here’s how:
✅ Sub-Millisecond Latency: With powerful performance backed by higher endurance triple-layer cell (TLC) NVMe drives, your virtualization hosts spend less time waiting for storage, letting you consolidate workloads, reduce server counts – and thus, VMware license needs.
✅ Fast Deduplication: Built for virtualized environments where identical OS and app data proliferate across VMs, Fast Dedup slashes storage footprint and bandwidth requirements.
✅ Fast Copy: Accelerates VM cloning and provisioning while reducing performance bottlenecks.
✅ Open Architecture: Avoids the lock-in and inflated pricing of proprietary vendors.
The result? Some organizations report up to 50% total savings on storage and VMware licensing. One TrueNAS customer, a leading electric vehicle manufacturer, projected over $2 million in lifetime cost avoidance across its 5 virtualization clusters, all while improving performance and maintaining 24×7 support.
Purpose-Built Platforms for Modern Workloads
Whether you’re managing edge infrastructure or scaling a high-performance datacenter, TrueNAS has you covered with the latest NVMe flash storage:
- TrueNAS H30:
Compact, 2U design ideal for remote offices and edge workloads. Up to 1 PB effective flash capacity with high-efficiency deduplication. - TrueNAS F100:
High-performance flagship delivering over 10 GB/s bandwidth and 20 PB effective flash capacity, engineered for virtualization at scale.
Both systems maintain 0.5ms average latency even with deduplication enabled; a level of consistent performance that’s rare even among higher-cost enterprise storage solutions.
Why TrueNAS, Why Now?
The economics of virtualization are shifting. Licensing changes, budget constraints, and performance expectations are converging to make traditional storage models unsustainable. Organizations need:
- Transparent, predictable pricing
- Scalable performance that doesn’t break the budget
- Proven enterprise support, without proprietary lock-in
TrueNAS delivers all three. TrueNAS 25.04 (Fangtooth) unlocks these capabilities for the first time. Deduplication is typically expensive or slow. TrueNAS changes that equation by combining smart software with powerful NVMe hardware at a fraction of the cost. Backed by the open-source innovation of OpenZFS and a global community of adopters, it offers CIOs and IT leaders a smarter path forward.
Lead the Infrastructure Conversation
Today’s IT leaders must drive transformation, not just keep the lights on. That means aligning technology decisions with financial discipline, and choosing platforms that do more with less.
TrueNAS isn’t just an alternative. It’s a strategic advantage.
In a market of rising costs and diminishing ROI, now is the time to rethink storage economics and regain control of your virtualization stack.