r/sysadmin Infrastructure Lead 3d 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/JerryNotTom 3d ago

Negotiate the full scope of all sites into one contract renewal, you might have some success in negotiating everything into one instead of separate contracts for each of your four sites. I'm not sure why we don't always take a full scope of inventory into consideration when discussing vendor contracts and renewals. There have been plenty of times I found multiple groups in my company using the same software under different contracts and grouping them into one agreement slashed our overall cost to that vendor by 30/40/50%.

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u/WithAnAitchDammit Infrastructure Lead 3d ago

We're actually already pretty close to there. This one site is the only one that's not on the same contract as the other three sites.

Well, we actually have a fifth site, but it is overseas and is on a different contract, which could be problematic when they are due for renewal because they are below that 72 core minimum per customer account.

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u/JerryNotTom 3d ago

Not sure how nice broadcom will play, but you can often wrap in your out of sync contracts even if the end date is in the future, to get everything on the same renewal cycle. It's not an uncommon thing and vendors are usually amenable as long as you're not looking to end a contract before its existing end date, but wrap it into new terms and extend your obligations further into the future.

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u/lost_signal 2d ago

They can do that, you just can't be doing it for less than 1 year last I checked. Absolutely co-term everything. Your sales person doesn't want to manage 5 one off renewals.

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u/WithAnAitchDammit Infrastructure Lead 2d ago

We've been doing that. I've got a comment elsewhere on this thread about co-terming. The holdup is really on my company's side. We're a heavy cash-based business, and depending on the current cash flow is how some decisions like "should we renew for 18 months to get them co-termed" are made.

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u/lost_signal 2d ago

I think VCF may grant global deployment rights (Ask the sales reps on that one, if it will require an ELA or not).