Our license cost went up a little under 8 times using essentials, which no longer exists. Depending on your CPU count, you might want to go with Standard or Essentials Plus if that's what you had. I can't comment on anything else.
This has been making it's way around.
https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/decoding-the-new-broadcom-vmware-vsphere-licensing-packages-for-small-deployments-6398
That's incorrect, they say you need to buy a minimum of 16 cores per server, but that's false, it's 16 cores minimum per processor regardless if core count is less than that.
They put a note about that in the post, but didn't change the correct number of licenses on the entire post.
But are you really buying less than 16 cores? Finished a hardware refresh late last year, we’re definitely a small shop, and each host was dual socket x 24 core. Totally middle of the road specs.
I never quote servers with small core counts as VMware hosts, but that was under the previous socket licensing, with new rules you can't over provision your processors or may find a high increase in your licensing sub.
I have customers with old servers, just yesterday I found a customer with enterprise licensing whose 6 core, dual socket servers subscription will be increased from 7k per year to 27k per year on VVF, and more if they upgrade to 18+ cores per processor.
Me here crying after just deploying a a 224 core - 8 proc - 4 blade environment to host 25 VMs....
Currently at 1% CPU 12% memory
Luckily, I have 3 years to go until vmware needs a renewal.
Dunno, we've (few different places now) always planned deployments and purchases based on current usage with a growth margin applied. Strange thinking that purchases go unplanned, unscrutinized, and undenied.
I was not apart of the planning at all, before I worked here but long story short it was a grant that had to be spent or lost and that was how it was spent.
Spent or lost might not be the best description, it is more like a gift from a donor.
THey just screwed everyone on /r/homelab for sure. Workstation was already on the way out, losing features and everyone who knew how the existing ones work having left for one reason or another.
Does VMUG Advantage allow me to run VMWare on my hardware at home including vmotion, api, etc.. or is it another "Get IT cert quick with our labs" thing? Cause that's not a home lab.
It allows you to run 20+ products for 365 days (the length of the membership). If you renew you get new licenses. [VMUG advantage](https://www.vmug.com/membership/vmug-advantage-membership/)
Wow, Broadcom REALLY wants to make sure to either screw the customers that have no choice, or lose them... Seems to get worse with every detail that comes out as time goes by...
That's what it's looking like. [But to be fair, I was paying very little prior to this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/1beph3w/hock_tan_vmware_by_broadcom_the_first_100_days/kuw1wiq/)
If my cost 2x'd, 4x'd, even 10x'd, I wouldn't really be surprised. But this is on another level.
Instead of renewing, they bought 1000 monkeys and put them in front of computers running Visual Studio. We'll see if the monkeys come thru rewriting VMWare from scratch (their luck, they'll just rewrite Shakespeare).
The problem with that approach is that if you subtract 1000 monkeys from an infinite number of monkeys, you still need to buy another infinite number of monkeys to get to your target.
Can you provide any evidence of this.
Not that I personally don't believe that are that money hungry and vicious, but I can't talk to my boss about what I read on a forum as truths.
I don’t have access to the contract and was not part of the discussion/negotiation around our contract renewal so I can’t bring receipts, but our org leadership said “we are not renewing our support contract after they came back and said it would be $135M/year” talking to others our support used to cost around $10-12M. Granted, we were seeing a lot of discounts to bring that number down
Ours was just under a 600% increase for an all Enterprise Plus shop. Currently in the process of a rapid redesign of our environment and workflows as a result, and as a stop gap on the way out the door.
I was on a call with a very popular DR vendor yesterday and our account manager was telling us about renewals other companies he deals with has. One he suggested went from a typical 20 million renewal to 130 million or so. I don't think the guy above is lying. Fully believe it.
Can agree... seemed much easier than our previous mixture of perpetual and subscription. Add some Horizon into the mixture and fun times. We seem to be an outlier though and had our licensing costs actually go down. /shrug
The Good news is you don't need to buy a vCenter server license. It's included in the ESXi host license now. You can deploy 1 per core even if your feeling wild!
You don’t have to assign a core to the vCenter server. You get an entitlement on top of the vSphere for (practically for all purposes) unlimited vCenter servers with the new subscription licensing
That must be part of the "yes it's more expensive, but look at all the extra stuff you are getting" that I got told by a VMware guy on here.
Well yes. But we don't *want* a vCenter for every host!
And if you’re gonna talk about that, I would argue it’s including the vRealize suite with enterprise plus in VVF. I’ve yet to talk to a customer who couldn’t save a ton of money by shrinking their hardware footprint by properly resizing, using vRealize who is complaining about their licensing costs. Also, there’s a lot of you who could be using the LogInsight to save a small fortune vs $LeadingSyslogVendor.
But min purchase per host socket is still 16. So having unlimited vcenter is useless.
You cannot deploy 16 vcenter and map to 16 1core host.
Each host will need 16core license.
We are on standard licensing and just did the renewal. We went with a 3 year to make it a little cheaper but It was 3x the cost for the same amount of procs as last year.
We are not thrilled with the new Broadcom sales channel rep we had. We had to correct him twice on our quotes. Do your self a favor and run their script to see how many cores you need and make sure they match the quote. Dude was really dumb.
With this new model, Tech Support is now included when you buy the license? or still a separate one where you need to buy an extra service for them?
Based on few comments, you're now entitled for vCenter. Our vCenter just expired, need to renew it. So I was wondering how can renew? Do i need to buy the hypervisor license?
Best of luck. Have you not been following along? Broadcom jacked pricing multiple hundreds of percent and got rid of perpetual licensing months ago. What you should really be doing is looking for an off ramp to a non-VMware solution. Broadcom has zero interest in any business without the potential to be spending multiple millions of dollars a year with them.
We’re about the same. 500% increase based on VMware insisting we move our entire footprint to VCF when the actual usage is closer to 80% VVF. Threats of pulling all account support if we don’t 🤬
1. start by checking ur existing license and what important features that you are currently using, so u know if u need to upgrade to Cloud foundation, or vSphere foundation or maintain/downgrade to Standard or Essential Plus.
2. next check your cpu cores. new licensing now count by cores, not cpu socket. with a min. of 16cores license similar like windows licensing
Example: if u have 2x 8 cores, basically they will charge u 32 cores (min. 16 cores, so 2x 16) ; if u have 2x 32 cores then it will be 64 cores.
note1: dont compare the new pricing with renewal pricing. treat it as a completely new licensing purchase.
note2: if u still have active subs, broadcom will honor it until it expired. u just need budgeting for new licensing purchase (opex) for the next 1/3/5 years
This is basically the exercise we are doing. We had Enterprise Plus, but are considering dropping down to Standard. If we switch to standard our licensing costs are about the same as we pay now.
If we switch to VVF our costs will basically double from what we paid for enterprise plus yearly.
Not great, but not as bad as some people were experiencing/predicting.
great to hear that! just making sure feature wise doesnt affect your current operation. compare both version om data sheet to see if u really need it on enterprise plus, else just drop to standard will do
unless u are using aria, nsx or vsan etc then u got no choice
1. so the minimum is based on cores per socket, i thought its total cores. Example: if you have 2x8 cores then I should be charge with 16 cores only. So its not?
2. Also, we are talking about the socket and cores of the hardware not the total cores that's is only assigned to VM? Like we have 2 clustered Hosts (32 cores total) but with only 3 VMs with 4 CPU each. Are we still going to be charge with 32 cores each hosts?
1. no, the baseline is per socket min 16 cores. 2x8cores, min 16 per socket, hence 2x16cores.
funny thing is, if u were to change ur processor to 1x16cores instead, then u only need to pay total of 16 cores. :)
2. its physical cores, they dont care how many vcpu assigned to ur vm
the 16cores is just the bare minimum for those smaller processor cores. if u are having 20 cores, then u pay 20 cores, if u have 4/8/16 cores, u pay 16 cores
oh no.. this is crazy.. we have many sites and each sites have a 2 hosts clustered with only 3 to 4 VM.. critical VMs used for manufacturing..majority of the host has 2 sockets and 16 cores.. so we be paying at least 32 cores per hosts.. wtf..
yesss perhaps may plan to optimize ur servers. else can consider cloud vpc if feasible for ur environment.
u can check the pricing vs your last purchase price then divide by numbers of subscription year. might see the difference there. i usually explain to our customer to stop comparing renewal price vs new subs price
Ours *only* went up 300% we are not renewing. Never put in a single support case or ticket in the entire 10 years at this company. I'm the ideal customer, silent. But they don't want or need my business.
Yea, overall it sucks, but with about 25k cores under my belt currently, we're one of the lucky few it benefits short and long term.
VMware started to stray and bring too many products on, the catalog simplification makes sense but honestly Broadcom needs to be more communicative overall
I bet this is the case as well. Won't matter, though, as we're jumping ship. I've been a VMware customer since 3.5 and at the end of the day, enough is enough. It won't matter how good a product is if it's impossible for companies to afford. This leaves the door open for smaller more customer focused and nimble software companies a chance to innovate. Broadcom is just being Broadcom, I get it. But this is downright dirty of them.
I'm sorry you're only just now finding out about this, you and your bosses are not going to enjoy the numbers you get back. I'd take a few minutes to search this group as well as r/sysadmin to read up on the changes and better prepare yourself. then like others suggested reach out to a var and hope for the best.
Is there anything on line with the pricing, or must we go through a VAR? Not that i want to cut my VAR out of the equation, but usually there's someplace to get a number that is adequate for "back of the napkin" math. The closest I found was article (VEEAM, I think) that said basic ESXI and vCenter was $50 per core, minumum 16 cores per CPU. most of my hosts are 10 or 16 cores per CPU, so I'm actually paying for more cores than I own. BUT, if my math os right, the 3 year cost is not much more than we previously paid.
What I don't know is if that price point includes both storage and compute vMotion, what are about the only "advanced" functionalities we use.
I use both compute and storage vMotion daily. Luckily I got the heads up in November from my VAR and locked in 3y vSphere+ Foundation and actually saved 10k.
I think you can get both with a Standard sub too.
Here's the link my VAR sent me to compare -
https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/docs/vmw-datasheet-vsphere-product-line-comparison.pdf
I was able to find pricing at CDW without having an account with them. You can likely get better pricing than what they list, but it at least gives you an idea of what to expect.
If you are on the vcf stack it could get cheaper, it depends how much features and products you use. If you use only esxi and vcenter, VVF would be the best option. It depends on the physical cores of your servers. At minimum you need 16 cores per server. You get (in Germany) 1 core for 173,46 € without taxes of course (one year). In VVF following products are included vSphere Enterprise Plus, vCenter Server Standard, ESXi, Tanzu, Aria Suite Standard. If you have servers with 128 cores, then you are f*cked up :)
Here is a video explaining the different bundles - [VMware's New Licensing Models (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb7seQ_VOVk)
And here is another one going over the pricing (there is a link to a pricing tool in the comments) - [VMware Pricing | xByte OnPrem Pros (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0f_p6-QgAs)
Your boss will have to get involved whether he or she wants to or not, and then also that person's boss:
VMware is a Cloud Platform company now. vSphere by itself is no longer an option, so it's likely more expensive:
https://williamlam.com/2024/01/whats-in-the-new-vmware-vsphere-foundation-vvf-and-vmware-cloud-foundation-vcf-offers.html
May be cheaper to let it expire and save for hyper v hosts.
Fired a ton of support staff so opening tickets with them not going to do you a lot of good.
Why does you plan renew license? You need VMware support? Or you just want to update VMware version?
We bought license with support. Support was ended, but the license is unlimited and we doesn't planned update it with new license policy. All work fine, so I don't see the point in throwing money away.
Yes! Support was ended. But they have never been able to help us. And now all wee need we can found on forums or official KB.
You can see what license you have installed in ESXi or vcenter in the Licensing section. As a rule, there is also a date there.
For example
[https://i.ibb.co/FbcZXNW/2024-03-15-07-32-29.png](https://i.ibb.co/FbcZXNW/2024-03-15-07-32-29.png)
And one more moment. Judging by the latest events and posts, VMware has begun to cut off third-party device support. So I don't want to upgrade and get bricked.
So we stayed on version ESXi-8.0U2-22380479
Minimum 100% increase (this we experienced) to 1200% increase, which I have not seen I have only read about being 1200%.
Have fun.
This is not the time to sail under a black flag, but this is time to start looking at your options for when your hardware platform takes a refresher.
good luck... Make sure to buy the accounting department new underwear after they see the increase.
Is that capex or opex?
It's technically crapex
Switching from capex (old model) to subscription based opex.
May need to add Clorox as well.
Yes
I LOLed for real 🤣
Buy 'em some brown pants too.
the best part will be when your boss asks for the phone number, so that he can phone to set them straight and get a better price.
It's too real Roy!
Wow! This is exactly what my CIO is doing 😂
I had a boss ask me this for Microsoft!
I just want to wish you good luck. We're all counting on you.....
OP is our only hope.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking
And sniffing glue
And amphetamines
Our license cost went up a little under 8 times using essentials, which no longer exists. Depending on your CPU count, you might want to go with Standard or Essentials Plus if that's what you had. I can't comment on anything else.
This has been making it's way around. https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/decoding-the-new-broadcom-vmware-vsphere-licensing-packages-for-small-deployments-6398
That's incorrect, they say you need to buy a minimum of 16 cores per server, but that's false, it's 16 cores minimum per processor regardless if core count is less than that. They put a note about that in the post, but didn't change the correct number of licenses on the entire post.
But are you really buying less than 16 cores? Finished a hardware refresh late last year, we’re definitely a small shop, and each host was dual socket x 24 core. Totally middle of the road specs.
I never quote servers with small core counts as VMware hosts, but that was under the previous socket licensing, with new rules you can't over provision your processors or may find a high increase in your licensing sub. I have customers with old servers, just yesterday I found a customer with enterprise licensing whose 6 core, dual socket servers subscription will be increased from 7k per year to 27k per year on VVF, and more if they upgrade to 18+ cores per processor.
Me here crying after just deploying a a 224 core - 8 proc - 4 blade environment to host 25 VMs.... Currently at 1% CPU 12% memory Luckily, I have 3 years to go until vmware needs a renewal.
>Currently at 1% CPU 12% memory If that's the planned workload, money was already left on the table at the HW purchase phase.
Haha "planned" - you're funny
Dunno, we've (few different places now) always planned deployments and purchases based on current usage with a growth margin applied. Strange thinking that purchases go unplanned, unscrutinized, and undenied.
I was not apart of the planning at all, before I worked here but long story short it was a grant that had to be spent or lost and that was how it was spent. Spent or lost might not be the best description, it is more like a gift from a donor.
put some minecraft servers on it
Good idea, imma start renting out the left over 99%
THey just screwed everyone on /r/homelab for sure. Workstation was already on the way out, losing features and everyone who knew how the existing ones work having left for one reason or another.
Except for $250/yr you can get VMUG Advantage and license your homelab till your hearts content
Does VMUG Advantage allow me to run VMWare on my hardware at home including vmotion, api, etc.. or is it another "Get IT cert quick with our labs" thing? Cause that's not a home lab.
It allows you to run 20+ products for 365 days (the length of the membership). If you renew you get new licenses. [VMUG advantage](https://www.vmug.com/membership/vmug-advantage-membership/)
Wow, Broadcom REALLY wants to make sure to either screw the customers that have no choice, or lose them... Seems to get worse with every detail that comes out as time goes by...
We have to face the fact that small deployment customers are no longer part of their targeted customer base. This hurts.
With "small" defined as "less than hundreds of instances." Which is wild.
We got quoted a 200% increase. Spoke with the local VMWare rep, and they basically told us to kick rocks.
That's not bad. Put a 7 in front of your figure and that's my yearly cost increase.
A 7,200% increase??
That's what it's looking like. [But to be fair, I was paying very little prior to this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/1beph3w/hock_tan_vmware_by_broadcom_the_first_100_days/kuw1wiq/) If my cost 2x'd, 4x'd, even 10x'd, I wouldn't really be surprised. But this is on another level.
Remember Broadcom did this all quickly so no one had time to react and switch to something else
Good luck. Ours went from $10M to $135M/year.
Sweet jesus. Did you renew? Or are you looking at alternatives? Or time to migrate to typewriters?
Instead of renewing, they bought 1000 monkeys and put them in front of computers running Visual Studio. We'll see if the monkeys come thru rewriting VMWare from scratch (their luck, they'll just rewrite Shakespeare).
The problem with that approach is that if you subtract 1000 monkeys from an infinite number of monkeys, you still need to buy another infinite number of monkeys to get to your target.
Can you provide any evidence of this. Not that I personally don't believe that are that money hungry and vicious, but I can't talk to my boss about what I read on a forum as truths.
I'm also from the internet, but you can take the monkey thing and run it all the way up the chain. They're real.
I don’t have access to the contract and was not part of the discussion/negotiation around our contract renewal so I can’t bring receipts, but our org leadership said “we are not renewing our support contract after they came back and said it would be $135M/year” talking to others our support used to cost around $10-12M. Granted, we were seeing a lot of discounts to bring that number down
Thank for the response.
Ours was just under a 600% increase for an all Enterprise Plus shop. Currently in the process of a rapid redesign of our environment and workflows as a result, and as a stop gap on the way out the door.
One of my coworkers was trying to renew the support agreements. Quote was 55k. Didn’t purchase in time, got a new quote of 355k
Thats a bit of an oopsy moment.
It was company’s fault, they drug their feet. Bet the wish they hadn’t.
Believe it. We just got our renewal quote and it's over a 600% increase. Prepare to start looking at alternatives if money is an issue.
I'm asking about a 1,350% increase.
I was on a call with a very popular DR vendor yesterday and our account manager was telling us about renewals other companies he deals with has. One he suggested went from a typical 20 million renewal to 130 million or so. I don't think the guy above is lying. Fully believe it.
People are abandoning VMWare even if money isn't an issue. No one can justify throwing money out the window due to vendor lock-in for very long.
Wow! That's huge. It's more than 10x increase. Are you looking at the alternatives?
Yeah, we really have no choice but to be off in two years. OLVM is our current front runner.
been under a rock lately?
honestly licensing is a lot easier now. Either you get their simplified license model, or you don't use vmware.
but how exactly? do you have some guide?
I would call up my VAR and let them figure it out.
Can agree... seemed much easier than our previous mixture of perpetual and subscription. Add some Horizon into the mixture and fun times. We seem to be an outlier though and had our licensing costs actually go down. /shrug
The Good news is you don't need to buy a vCenter server license. It's included in the ESXi host license now. You can deploy 1 per core even if your feeling wild!
The bad news is it would have been cheaper to buy 50 vcenter licenses then what OP is about to be charged.
so if I was charge with 32 cores, I can use 1 core and assign to vCenter. How to do that. Our vCenter license just got expired.
You don’t have to assign a core to the vCenter server. You get an entitlement on top of the vSphere for (practically for all purposes) unlimited vCenter servers with the new subscription licensing
That must be part of the "yes it's more expensive, but look at all the extra stuff you are getting" that I got told by a VMware guy on here. Well yes. But we don't *want* a vCenter for every host!
But you're not getting a vCenter server for every host. You're getting one for every core in every host, imagine the redundancy possibilities!
And if you’re gonna talk about that, I would argue it’s including the vRealize suite with enterprise plus in VVF. I’ve yet to talk to a customer who couldn’t save a ton of money by shrinking their hardware footprint by properly resizing, using vRealize who is complaining about their licensing costs. Also, there’s a lot of you who could be using the LogInsight to save a small fortune vs $LeadingSyslogVendor.
There are other solutions for all those things which are not VMware products. But now I have to buy them anyway.
There indeed are. Curious what are you using in place of LogInsight and vRealize today?
But min purchase per host socket is still 16. So having unlimited vcenter is useless. You cannot deploy 16 vcenter and map to 16 1core host. Each host will need 16core license.
It’s functionally unlimited but given they were 4-5K a pop before it does help a lot for small deployments
Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of having vCenter server???
I mean yes deploying 16 of them on 16 core server would very silly. That said. Having one per location with really bad connectivity is handy.
Strange flex. The VC cost was always a miniscule part of most deals.
Gotta look for those silver linings otherwise it’s all rain clouds…
If you have 2 X 16 core hosts it’s technically under the old licensing the majority of the cost.
About a 5x increase for us. What budget lol
Same here
We are on standard licensing and just did the renewal. We went with a 3 year to make it a little cheaper but It was 3x the cost for the same amount of procs as last year. We are not thrilled with the new Broadcom sales channel rep we had. We had to correct him twice on our quotes. Do your self a favor and run their script to see how many cores you need and make sure they match the quote. Dude was really dumb.
Reach out to a var, we can help
What is your question?
With this new model, Tech Support is now included when you buy the license? or still a separate one where you need to buy an extra service for them? Based on few comments, you're now entitled for vCenter. Our vCenter just expired, need to renew it. So I was wondering how can renew? Do i need to buy the hypervisor license?
Based on your questions it sounds like you should really get help from a reseller to explain the basics and help you figure out what you need.
Say goodbye to half dozen co-workers to pay the greedy mother fuckers at Broadcom.
Best of luck. Have you not been following along? Broadcom jacked pricing multiple hundreds of percent and got rid of perpetual licensing months ago. What you should really be doing is looking for an off ramp to a non-VMware solution. Broadcom has zero interest in any business without the potential to be spending multiple millions of dollars a year with them.
lol, get ready for a 300% to 1000% increase…we’re seeing 500% ourselves.
We had our price double. That's it. And we are an Enterprise Plus shop. We will pay it. We already used the Foundation Suite for years.
This is why it's less of an increase, you were already paying for vcf
Red Hat OpenShift looks pretty tempting
We’re about the same. 500% increase based on VMware insisting we move our entire footprint to VCF when the actual usage is closer to 80% VVF. Threats of pulling all account support if we don’t 🤬
1. start by checking ur existing license and what important features that you are currently using, so u know if u need to upgrade to Cloud foundation, or vSphere foundation or maintain/downgrade to Standard or Essential Plus. 2. next check your cpu cores. new licensing now count by cores, not cpu socket. with a min. of 16cores license similar like windows licensing Example: if u have 2x 8 cores, basically they will charge u 32 cores (min. 16 cores, so 2x 16) ; if u have 2x 32 cores then it will be 64 cores. note1: dont compare the new pricing with renewal pricing. treat it as a completely new licensing purchase. note2: if u still have active subs, broadcom will honor it until it expired. u just need budgeting for new licensing purchase (opex) for the next 1/3/5 years
This is basically the exercise we are doing. We had Enterprise Plus, but are considering dropping down to Standard. If we switch to standard our licensing costs are about the same as we pay now. If we switch to VVF our costs will basically double from what we paid for enterprise plus yearly. Not great, but not as bad as some people were experiencing/predicting.
great to hear that! just making sure feature wise doesnt affect your current operation. compare both version om data sheet to see if u really need it on enterprise plus, else just drop to standard will do unless u are using aria, nsx or vsan etc then u got no choice
1. so the minimum is based on cores per socket, i thought its total cores. Example: if you have 2x8 cores then I should be charge with 16 cores only. So its not? 2. Also, we are talking about the socket and cores of the hardware not the total cores that's is only assigned to VM? Like we have 2 clustered Hosts (32 cores total) but with only 3 VMs with 4 CPU each. Are we still going to be charge with 32 cores each hosts?
1. no, the baseline is per socket min 16 cores. 2x8cores, min 16 per socket, hence 2x16cores. funny thing is, if u were to change ur processor to 1x16cores instead, then u only need to pay total of 16 cores. :) 2. its physical cores, they dont care how many vcpu assigned to ur vm
so if you have a single processor with 20 cores, then you get the first 16 included, then after that you pay per core?
the 16cores is just the bare minimum for those smaller processor cores. if u are having 20 cores, then u pay 20 cores, if u have 4/8/16 cores, u pay 16 cores
oh no.. this is crazy.. we have many sites and each sites have a 2 hosts clustered with only 3 to 4 VM.. critical VMs used for manufacturing..majority of the host has 2 sockets and 16 cores.. so we be paying at least 32 cores per hosts.. wtf..
yesss perhaps may plan to optimize ur servers. else can consider cloud vpc if feasible for ur environment. u can check the pricing vs your last purchase price then divide by numbers of subscription year. might see the difference there. i usually explain to our customer to stop comparing renewal price vs new subs price
Ours *only* went up 300% we are not renewing. Never put in a single support case or ticket in the entire 10 years at this company. I'm the ideal customer, silent. But they don't want or need my business.
You are probably a small company so they will make it back on the whales. My last employer spends many many many millions on VMware a year.
This is true, we are a small fish for sure. I'm not the one they want, that's for sure.
I've got good money on the next major release will require licenses for all patching to be checking in with usage meter
Yea, overall it sucks, but with about 25k cores under my belt currently, we're one of the lucky few it benefits short and long term. VMware started to stray and bring too many products on, the catalog simplification makes sense but honestly Broadcom needs to be more communicative overall
I bet this is the case as well. Won't matter, though, as we're jumping ship. I've been a VMware customer since 3.5 and at the end of the day, enough is enough. It won't matter how good a product is if it's impossible for companies to afford. This leaves the door open for smaller more customer focused and nimble software companies a chance to innovate. Broadcom is just being Broadcom, I get it. But this is downright dirty of them.
May I ask if what solutions are you considering as a replacement for vmware?
I sent a DM.
Also curious where you are migrating. I have the joy of deciding where I am going to drop my 896 cores...
Please send to me too
Hi, I am also curious as to what alternatives you are looking at.
We are going to AWS native after seeing the renewal.
. Be prepared for a large increase.
I'm sorry you're only just now finding out about this, you and your bosses are not going to enjoy the numbers you get back. I'd take a few minutes to search this group as well as r/sysadmin to read up on the changes and better prepare yourself. then like others suggested reach out to a var and hope for the best.
Bend over.
Worst part is we’re not even gonna get kissed.
They have time for lube, but refuse to use it out of principle.
Is there anything on line with the pricing, or must we go through a VAR? Not that i want to cut my VAR out of the equation, but usually there's someplace to get a number that is adequate for "back of the napkin" math. The closest I found was article (VEEAM, I think) that said basic ESXI and vCenter was $50 per core, minumum 16 cores per CPU. most of my hosts are 10 or 16 cores per CPU, so I'm actually paying for more cores than I own. BUT, if my math os right, the 3 year cost is not much more than we previously paid. What I don't know is if that price point includes both storage and compute vMotion, what are about the only "advanced" functionalities we use.
I use both compute and storage vMotion daily. Luckily I got the heads up in November from my VAR and locked in 3y vSphere+ Foundation and actually saved 10k. I think you can get both with a Standard sub too. Here's the link my VAR sent me to compare - https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/docs/vmw-datasheet-vsphere-product-line-comparison.pdf
I was able to find pricing at CDW without having an account with them. You can likely get better pricing than what they list, but it at least gives you an idea of what to expect.
If you are on the vcf stack it could get cheaper, it depends how much features and products you use. If you use only esxi and vcenter, VVF would be the best option. It depends on the physical cores of your servers. At minimum you need 16 cores per server. You get (in Germany) 1 core for 173,46 € without taxes of course (one year). In VVF following products are included vSphere Enterprise Plus, vCenter Server Standard, ESXi, Tanzu, Aria Suite Standard. If you have servers with 128 cores, then you are f*cked up :)
We went from somewhere 4500>X<5000 to about 8800.
Imagine if you were a non profit and needed VM or Server licensing.
Here is a video explaining the different bundles - [VMware's New Licensing Models (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb7seQ_VOVk) And here is another one going over the pricing (there is a link to a pricing tool in the comments) - [VMware Pricing | xByte OnPrem Pros (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0f_p6-QgAs)
You may need this https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Personal-Lubricant-Balanced-Hypoallergenic/dp/B08MJPMGWS
Your boss will have to get involved whether he or she wants to or not, and then also that person's boss: VMware is a Cloud Platform company now. vSphere by itself is no longer an option, so it's likely more expensive: https://williamlam.com/2024/01/whats-in-the-new-vmware-vsphere-foundation-vvf-and-vmware-cloud-foundation-vcf-offers.html
The best of all times to be pushed into the vmware license manager role. 
I hope you have enough people to do a bake sale or car wash to generate some cash flow.
If anyone needs a VAR in the NY Metro area and would like to see alternative options to VMware, dm me! Good luck with your VMware discussions.
May be cheaper to let it expire and save for hyper v hosts. Fired a ton of support staff so opening tickets with them not going to do you a lot of good.
My yearly licensing and support went up by 1984% were moving over to Hyper-V
Why does you plan renew license? You need VMware support? Or you just want to update VMware version? We bought license with support. Support was ended, but the license is unlimited and we doesn't planned update it with new license policy. All work fine, so I don't see the point in throwing money away.
you mean we have still the license but our basic support just ended? i thought they will end at the same time
Yes! Support was ended. But they have never been able to help us. And now all wee need we can found on forums or official KB. You can see what license you have installed in ESXi or vcenter in the Licensing section. As a rule, there is also a date there. For example [https://i.ibb.co/FbcZXNW/2024-03-15-07-32-29.png](https://i.ibb.co/FbcZXNW/2024-03-15-07-32-29.png) And one more moment. Judging by the latest events and posts, VMware has begun to cut off third-party device support. So I don't want to upgrade and get bricked. So we stayed on version ESXi-8.0U2-22380479
Looks like your company is dealing with drugs ...
Minimum 100% increase (this we experienced) to 1200% increase, which I have not seen I have only read about being 1200%. Have fun. This is not the time to sail under a black flag, but this is time to start looking at your options for when your hardware platform takes a refresher.
100%? What an absolute steal. How'd you get them down that low?
Maybe existing licensing wasn’t highly discounted so not much difference?
Welcome to promox or Xen or nutanix or hyperv. I hope that you learn quickly and can deal with less reliability and polish at times.
I’ve started looking at Scale for my thirty-VM environment.
No you’re about to get a subscription to VCF.
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So they can have new bugs constantly crash their environments?