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Replacing VMware vSAN with SmartX Distributed Storage: Comparable Features with Optimized Performance and Stability

As enterprises seek reliable VMware alternatives, SmartX distributed storage (ZBS & SFS) emerges as a high-performance contender. This comparison reveals how SmartX matches vSAN’s enterprise features while delivering superior stability during snapshots, high utilization, and hardware failures. Discover why SmartX is the optimized choice for mission-critical workloads.

SmartX HKMO 2025 Recap: Recognitions, Products & Solutions, Case Studies, and Events

In 2025, SmartX solidified its leadership in the HKMO market, dominating IDC and Gartner rankings for HCI and virtualization. By launching ECP 6.2 and SKS 1.5, SmartX accelerated the global “VMware exit” movement, delivering mission-critical reliability to finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. From robust IT modernization to cutting-edge AI infrastructure, SmartX is no longer just an alternative—it is the new standard for the AI era.

SmartX 2025 Q2 Recap – Recognitions, Products, Solutions, and Cases

In Q2 2025, IDC recognized SmartX for topping China’s HCI software market for the second consecutive year. We continued to innovate our products and solutions, with the release of SKS 1.4 and significant upgrades of the VCCI solution in security management. We also shared compelling customer stories across the financial services and healthcare sectors, showcasing how SmartX ECP enables core system operations, serves as a VMware alternative, and facilitates IT modernization.

SmartX VCCI Solution Upgrade: Securing the Interconnection Between Virtualized and Containerized Applications

SmartX VM-Container Converged Infrastructure (VCCI) solution now supports the unified network security policy management of both VMs and containers. This enhanced feature ensures the efficient interoperability between virtualized and containerized applications while boosting the data security, visualization, and O&M simplicity of the entire SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP).

SmartX 2025 Q1 Recap – Recognitions, Products, Solutions, Cases, and Events

In Q1 2025, SmartX continued to be recognized by IDC and Gartner as the leader in China’s HCI Software Market. We released SmartX ECP v6.2 and enhanced various features in security, performance, availability, and O&M support. Facing enterprise demands regarding DeepSeek, we introduced a private deployment solution based on SmartX ECP to accelerate enterprises’ DeepSeek deployment and validation process.

SMTX File Storage in HCI 6.0: Providing Diverse Data Storage Services with One Platform

Recently, SmartX officially launched HCI 6.0, enhancing our Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP). One of the standout features is the introduction of SMTX File Storage (SFS), which enables SmartX ECP to offer enterprise customers stable, high-performance, and scalable distributed file storage services. With SFS, enterprises can meet diverse data storage needs using a single platform, reducing the costs associated with legacy NAS procurement while boosting storage reliability and performance.

Accurate and Effective: Virtual Machine High Availability in SMTX OS

Featuring the converged deployment of compute and storage, SMTX OS (SmartX hyperconvergence infrastructure software) enhances the effectiveness of VM HA through storage features such as multi-replica strategy and rack awareness (topology-aware data allocation). Additionally, it offers rich VM rebuilding services that enable IT engineers to address various server and VM failure scenarios through an optimized VM HA function.

Kubernetes on VMs vs. Bare Metal: Comparison of Performance

This article presents empirical performance data of Kubernetes running stateful and stateless applications on VMs (SMTX Kubernetes Services, referred to as SKS) and bare-metal servers. Overall, the results demonstrate that SKS shows performance ranging from 82% to 96% of bare-metal-based Kubernetes, indicating that VM-based Kubernetes can effectively meet the requirements of the majority of containerized applications in production environments.

Shield Your Business from Ransomware with SmartX HCI: Detect, Isolate, Recover

To help customers defend against ransomware attacks, SmartX has introduced HCI 5.1 portfolio with upgraded anti-ransomware capabilities. Leveraging SmartX observability platform (based on CloudTower), software-defined network and security product – Everoute, and SMTX Backup & DR, organizations can protect their systems from ransomware through a three-stage strategy: actively detect ransomware attacks, isolate infected VMs, and recover data in a secure environment.

2023 SmartX Recap: Products, Recognitions, and Customer Stories

2023 marks a new milestone for SmartX, as we have helped over 1,000 enterprise customers deploy over 20,000 HCI nodes worldwide. We continued to upgrade our products and solutions, with our HCI portfolio evolving into a full-stack IT infra solution with enhanced capabilities in virtualization, storage, network and security, O&M, DR, migration, and container management. Our products have been widely recognized by research institutions, including Gartner, IDC, Forrester, and GigaOm, and customers from various industries, including financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing. 

Preserving Data Integrity with Temporary Replica Strategy of SmartX HCI

Hyperconvergence software (HCI) usually leverages multiple replicas to provide redundant protection for storage data. However, the mainstream multi-replica strategy still cannot avoid the risk of data loss during the replica recovery process. To address this challenge, SmartX HCI 5.1 introduces the innovative “temporary replica” strategy. This strategy prevents the degradation of replica numbers during the replica restoration process, enhances the security of storage data, and strengthens the stability of core business services.

Network I/O Virtualization in SmartX HCI: Virtual NIC, PCI Pass-through and SR-IOV Pass-through

To facilitate users in leveraging network virtualization, SmartX has introduced PCI NIC pass-through capability in SMTX OS 5.1. This feature, combined with the existing SR-IOV pass-through and virtual NIC capabilities supported in previous versions, enables SMTX OS 5.1 to comprehensively support ELF (SmartX native hypervisor) users in harnessing the benefits of network I/O virtualization. Users can select the most suitable options based on their requirements for network performance, network isolation, and cost efficiency in various use cases, including futures trading, HPC, and more.

SmartX 2023 Q3 Recap – Recognitions, Products, and Case Studies

In Q3 2023, SmartX achieved a significant milestone by introducing our upgraded HCI portfolio, SmartX HCI 5.1. We have also received recognition from Gartner and IDC for our Chinese HCI SW Certified System market share and APAC customers’ choices. Moreover, we are actively collaborating with customers in various industries, including Finance, Healthcare, and Manufacturing, to explore HCI scenarios and cater to their specific needs.

GPU Passthrough & vGPU: Using GPU Application in Virtualization with SMTX OS 5.1

To maximize GPU utilization, many enterprises choose to virtualize GPUs or use them in virtualization (including HCI). But how can we fully leverage GPU’s capabilities on virtualized IT infrastructure? And how can we provide stable, high-performance storage as well as compute resources for various GPU applications with an integrated IT infrastructure? To help users address these challenges, SmartX has introduced GPU passthrough and vGPU features in the upgraded HCI software SMTX OS 5.1.

About SmartX

SmartX builds powerful and simple-to-use computing and data infrastructures, elevating IT to focus on application and innovations that power their business.

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