@olivierlambert
I understand and I thank you for at least hearing me out.
If I go with KVM, I know that I’m not going to have all the fancy bells and whistles that XCP-NG offers. Believe me I know, I used your product and loved it. However, I will be able to operate and have an enterprise level backup fully supported via BDR Suite for $3 per VM.
I can have as many hypervisors and file servers as my heart desires and never pay a penny more. It’s all based around the VM count and it’s all paid monthly. I can scale up or down as needed and only pay for the Qty that’s used during that month.
Again, I would prefer to use XCP-NG but many of my customers require that I use a fully supported enterprise backup system. The only way I could afford to do it under your current model would be if your $1000 plan (pro) was $500 per hypervisor and that’s still almost double of what I’d be paying if I went with KVM and BDR Suite and never pay more when adding additional servers. I completely get your point about making enough but I wonder If you wouldn’t get a lot more people in my boat if you did come down or offer an MSP per month model that we could afford. Again, I thank you for at least hearing me out. Thank you.

@olivierlambert
Would you consider an MSP style licensing model where customers would pay $4 or $5 per VM monthly with a 20 VM minimum? I could swing that and have enterprise backup support via XO on all my hypervisors.
By paying it monthly on what I actually use is a much more attractive model.

@dariosplit
The problem is that I need (and required to have) enterprise level support for the backup system and since that’s handled through Orchestra then the current support model puts me in an all or none situation. I could run the Hypervisors for free and manage them plus orchestra all myself - no problem there. However, Vates isn’t going to help me with a backup and restore issue unless I’m paying them nine grand per year (9 hypervisors at $1,000 each yearly) and we just can’t afford that with all my other operating costs. A $4 per VM per month MSP option would solve this for me. Pay for what you use month to month. I really wish they would consider an MSP monthly option like many of backup solutions offer such as Veeam, Nakivo, and BDRSuite.
As a small MSP owner, I am willing to pay what I can afford. If we are willing to do most of the work ourselves, isn’t some money better than no money?
There are probably a lot of other folks in the same boat I’m in. It sure seems like there’s a whole other market Vates could tap into if they just add more flexibility in their pricing models. A $4 or $5 dollar VM per month MSP option would solve all my problems.

@olivierlambert
Thank you for clarifying everything. By the way, I meant no disrespect to your product. I setup XCP-NG 8.2 and Orchestra in a lab environment about a year and a half ago (I think) and I loved it.
In fact, we have spoken through chat before about getting over that 2TB vm disk image. I think it’s been addressed in 8.3 but I really have not had time to tinker with 8.3. I believe it was SMAPI version 3 that fixes it. I may have botched the name - sorry - my memory isn’t the greatest.
Anyway, I have 12 servers running in a cabinet at a datacenter that I am getting a killer deal on. My MSP is very small and we are not making that much above our cost and I also have a full time programmer who works for me so there’s just not a lot of extra money coming in.
I have seventy two VMs running on VMware based hypervisors. The were licensed using three sets of VMWare essentials license allowing for 3 nodes each so I had to maintain 3 different VCenters instances. The other three servers were Linux based fileservers where I ran Nakivo to back everything up.
It all has to go somewhere because has screwed everybody since the Broadcom merger.
Anyway, I was thinking XCP was the way to go and as soon as it could break through the 2TB vm image barrier then I would start converting VMs.
The thing that changed was when the pricing changed, that scared me. In my mind I’m thinking, I know I could go at this alone and do everything my self but If I did, I would have no support with your backup system. I currently pay Nakivo 2.75 per VM per month for backup and support services. I have had to call them in the past for several very important issues and had I not had their support I might have really been in hot water.
In all the years I ran VMWare essentials, I never had to call them for support because their stuff just worked and I knew how to set it up.
I feel that XCP would be the same in that regard but since I can’t just get support on the backup portion of Orchestra, your new pricing model leaves me with an all or none option when it comes to support and I just can’t afford 9 thousand dollars per year. I could afford a third of that and only get support on the Hypervisors running Orcgestra and maybe one or two others with the most important VMs. I just can’t swing them them all.
If I do KVM then I will do everything myself using Cockpit and Virt Manager which I’m okay with. That’s nothing new. However, I would backuping everything up using using BDRSuite for $3.00 per VM per month. The bill would be $250 per month.
It’s a smidge more than I’m paying Nakivo but I would continue being supported as I am now.
Maybe if you had a per VM with a low monthly rate option then I’d be able to afford running everything in XCP-NG and pay as I go and only pay for what I actually use. If you had such an option then I could swing paying $4 per month per VM if that gave me backup support and the ability to add as many hypervisor hosts as I feel that I needed and also kept everything patched via updates.

@DustinB
All I’m saying is that I wish they would consider an option where they keep my XO updated and patched with all features enabled but as far as support goes, I would turn to the community instead - I’m on my on as far as Vates is concerned. To not have to recompile the source every time there is an update to XO would be worth paying $200 -$400 per host monthly.

@manilx
I would even do $400 per host per year for what I described earlier but not a penny more.
Looks like it’s going to be KVM with BDR Backup Suite.
Only $250 per month for 75 VMs and unlimited hosts.

@manilx
I certainly see your point.
I just wish there were something in middle where they keep me patched and my XO updated and maybe ai just pay for support on an “as needed” basis.
I compiled it from source one a year ago and it did work but it would just be nice to have them keep my software up to date for a smaller fee and I just pay for additional support as needed. Like $300 per host per year but I would pay additional to speak with someone at Vates.
That I could do.

I used XCP-NG about a year ago in a test environment when it was still 8.2. I couldn’t run some of my larger VMs on it because of your 2TB storage limit because SMACI v3 hadn’t been incorporated at that time but was coming in version 8.3.
Fast forward a year later - I am ready to leave VMWare but after visiting your site alomost a year later, Isee the prices have increased dramatically. I was all on onboard with moving to XCP-NG and buying a subscription for XO only and not the actual hypervisors. I’m a small MSP running only 70 VMs so my budget is limited. I need to be able to do full and incremental backups of all my VMs to network storage. Anyway, I could afford to use you under your old pricing plan but not the new.
If your Pro suite were half the cost then you would be closer to what I would be paying if I went the Native KVM route using virt manager and Cockpit with a BDR Suite for backups that covers up to 75 VMs. Basically you did exactly what VMWare did, you priced yourself out of being my next solution. I just thought I would let you know why you were going to get our business until the price hikes. I was really looking forward to your turn key solution. I guess I will just develop out my own web based KVM solution with VCenters like capabilities using a PHP front end and backend that runs prepared virsh commands for snap shotting, starting and stoping VMs, and moving them from host to host. It is going to be a lot more work but I will donate it to source forge when I’m done and offer a more cost effective way of doing things for the really small MSPs out there.

@olivierlambert said in First SMAPIv3 driver is available in preview:

right now, but likely in the future,

Are we going to eventually be able to have larger than 2TB volumes on EXT4 partitions? I'm not really setup to do ZFS and not really sure I want the headache that come along with it. My PERC controllers have always been super reliable so Ext4 is fin with me as for FS trype.