{"id":11162,"date":"2026-11-03T21:31:22","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T01:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/?p=11162"},"modified":"2026-11-03T21:31:22","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T01:31:22","slug":"a-cloud-architect-built-openvddk-after-vmware-locked-its-disk-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/a-cloud-architect-built-openvddk-after-vmware-locked-its-disk-library\/","title":{"rendered":"A cloud architect built OpenVDDK after VMware locked its disk library"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">When <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vmware.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">VMware<\/a> pulled its <a href=\"https:\/\/platform9.com\/blog\/vddk-no-longer-available\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Virtual Disk Development Kit<\/a> from public downloads, plenty of people lost a tool they never thought about. VDDK is a library that lets software read virtual disks. Backup products rely on it, and so do the migration tools that move machines off VMware. So cloud architect Andrija Pani\u0107 wrote a replacement.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The timeline is short. In August, VMware limited VDDK downloads to its partners. Customers could no longer fetch it, and several rival migration tools became harder to install or run. Pani\u0107 says a surprising range of software shares that one small library, from virt-v2v and nbdkit to the importers in Forklift\/MTV, Proxmox VE and Apache CloudStack, along with countless home-grown scripts. His view was simple: your ability to move your own data shouldn\u2019t hinge on a download page.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">His answer, <a href=\"https:\/\/openvddk.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">OpenVDDK<\/a>, is a drop-in stand-in for the disk library that backup and migration tools load. He wrote it from scratch in Go, with a thin C layer that matches VMware\u2019s interface, library name and symbol versions. By his account it relies only on public documentation and black-box testing and contains no VMware code. One limit matters: it reads disks but cannot write them, which suits backup and migration work.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Testing claims come from Pani\u0107 himself. He reports success on vSphere 6.7 U3, 7.0.3, 8.0.3 and 9.1.1, and says every disk read matched in his lab runs on the newest version. Independent testers, he says, have used it with Forklift, MTV on OpenShift, a Proxmox VE pipeline and custom nbdkit tools. He also mentions production reports, such as a German cloud provider moving a large file server and a US company heading to Apache CloudStack. He is careful to add that these are not audited endorsements or guarantees for every environment. That candor is worth noting.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Other routes exist. OpenNebula\u2019s OneSwap reports a 96 percent success rate, <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/nutanix-sharpens-sovereign-cloud-push-as-enterprises-seek-control-beyond-vmware\/\">Nutanix<\/a> adjusted its Move tool to work without VDDK, and Red Hat has described a workaround while it prepares a fix. Pani\u0107 released OpenVDDK under an Apache license, so those teams could fold it in.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Anyone planning a real migration should test it on a copy first, since a single engineer\u2019s project carries different risks than a vendor-supported tool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When VMware pulled its Virtual Disk Development Kit from public downloads, plenty of people lost a tool they never thought about. VDDK is a library that lets software read virtual disks. Backup products rely on it, and so do the migration tools that move machines off VMware. So cloud architect Andrija Pani\u0107 wrote a replacement. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8636,3952,8634,6820,8635],"class_list":["post-11162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andrija-panic","tag-open-source-virtualization","tag-tags-openvddk","tag-vmware-migration","tag-vmware-vddk"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A cloud architect built OpenVDDK after VMware locked its disk library - Web Hosting News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/a-cloud-architect-built-openvddk-after-vmware-locked-its-disk-library\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A cloud architect built OpenVDDK after VMware locked its disk library - Web Hosting News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When VMware pulled its Virtual Disk Development Kit from public downloads, plenty of people lost a tool they never thought about. 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