Platform9 Advances Private Cloud Director and Delivers In-Place Cluster Conversion for Instant VMware Migration

Platform9 announced that its newest release of Private Cloud Director adds new AI hardware support and feature integration addressing top IT requirements for modern cloud to edge application management.

The company also unveiled a major new capability of its migration tool, vJailbreak; it now has the ability to convert entire VMware vSphere clusters in place, keeping services online and minimizing business disruption while automating large-scale VM migrations.

“Platform9 is delivering a seamless on-ramp option for enterprises seeking to exit VMware without sacrificing reliability or disrupting critical services. The introduction of in-place cluster conversion via vJailbreak is a game-changer for organizations seeking to modernize without forklift upgrades or major re-architecture,” said Paul Nashawaty, practice lead, theCUBE Research. “Our research indicates 63% of enterprise IT leaders cite migration complexity as the top barrier to moving off VMware. Platform9 directly addresses this concern with a low-disruption path forward. In parallel, the Private Cloud Director now supports AI hardware sharing, dynamic rebalancing and DevOps integration – capabilities aligned with the 72% of organizations that prioritize hybrid workload unification across traditional and AI-native applications. Platform9 has positioned itself not just as a VMware alternative but as a strategic modernization partner.”

The company’s Private Cloud Director, built by the original creators of VMware vCloud Director, delivers a familiar private cloud experience with the enterprise-grade features including VM High Availability, Dynamic Resource Rebalancing, VM Live Migration, Distributed Virtual Switches and Software Defined Networking, all running on existing server and storage infrastructure. 

“Customers want to invest in new AI projects but they have a lot of traditional VM-based applications that need support. Private Cloud Director helps to reduce existing virtualization costs significantly, freeing up funding for new AI initiatives and delivers a common foundation across all workloads. Customers will be surprised by what is possible with a platform designed uniquely for customers’ most urgent priorities,” said Madhura Maskasky, co-founder and CPO, Platform9.

Private Cloud Director supports traditional applications and embraces AI’s advancement into the enterprise. With this release, Private Cloud Director lets workloads share AI hardware efficiently as customers ramp deployment of AI-enabled applications while continuing to efficiently manage traditional applications within the same environment. 

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AI hardware is supported in both GPU passthrough mode and as vGPUs, enabling efficient sharing across teams. Predictive load management with Dynamic Resource Rebalancing uses machine learning to analyze usage trends and automatically shift workloads to maximize resource utilization, increasing efficiency and lowering TCO.

This release also introduces a Terraform-based application catalog facility that provides DevOps-ready automation for complex, multi-VM applications. Developers can now accelerate projects by selecting standardized application stacks that align with their preferred deployment tools and processes. With unified support for both VMs and containers, teams gain the flexibility to manage traditional and AI-native applications side by side. 

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This release also addresses edge deployment requirements with delivery of 2-node high availability cluster support. With strong demand from industrial and manufacturing deployments, customers can now easily extend the efficiency and scale of cloud architecture to reduce cost for edge application oversight.

Private Cloud Director supports on-prem and SaaS deployment models; a free full-featured community-supported Community Edition is also available.

Platform9’s vJailbreak, Most VMware Migration Experience 
With VMware customers actively seeking alternative platforms for their private cloud environments, the cost and complexity of migration has represented a leading roadblock to customer action. Industry analysts estimate large-scale VMware migrations will take 18-48 months to complete, with costs ranging from $300 to $3,000/VM. With Platform9’s new vJailbreak release, migrations can happen in days to weeks at one-tenth of the cost. 

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Maskasky continued: “Many customers we talk to are concerned about the cost and complexity of migration. With our latest version of vJailbreak, we’ve made the migration process as painless as possible for customers seeking to move forward with confidence. For the first time, we can convert cluster nodes in place while workloads are automatically migrated, keeping services online and minimizing business disruption.” 

With this update, vJailbreak can not only migrate fleets of VMs in a fully automated manner, but it can do the same for the underlying hypervisor hosts using full-stack hypervisor migration. The migration tool works in-place on an existing vSphere cluster. Hosts are handled one at a time in a rolling fashion. The tool automatically takes down a host, re-images it as a KVM hypervisor, configures storage and networking, then brings it up as part of a Private Cloud Director cluster. VMs are then automatically migrated into Private Cloud Director using the existing robust migration process of vJailbreak.

Resources:
Blog: Private Cloud Director: August 2025 Release
Blog: Escape Velocity: The Next Leap for vJailbreak and VMware Migrations