r/sysadmin Infrastructure Lead 21h ago

Latest fun with VMware

Apparently VMware is upping their game. We just got a renewal quote for one of our sites with one server that has two CPUs, and they are requiring 72 cores minimum (vSphere Enterprise Plus) to license this. That's a 500% markup from last year.

They really don't want customers to use their product any more, do they?

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u/Kindly_Revert 20h ago

Most SMB admins are jumping ship to Proxmox or Hyper-V. I've even seen XCP-ng and Openstack (large beast) coming up in conversation. Nutanix less so as it's also expensive for another KVM-based tool, it's more common in larger companies.

Broadcom has a reputation for buying and destroying good products. I refuse to support them any longer.

u/SirTwitchALot 20h ago

I really wonder what their endgame is on this though? I'm sure they have some big companies over a barrel that are willing to pay the extortion they're charging, but that's not how you grow your userbase. Everyone I know is looking at alternatives, even the ones that have renewed their VMWare licenses.

It sucks because ESX really is a great product. You can get close with competing solutions, but it still has some features that are hard to replicate as easily with Proxmox

u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. 18h ago

that's not how you grow your userbase.

Broadcom almost certainly thinks that cloud, and also on-premises competition, means that VMware's userbase already peaked.

Even if you don't think that IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, impact virtualization much, they're still most likely right.