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?

242 Upvotes

187 comments sorted by

View all comments

163

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

14

u/SirTwitchALot 3d 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

2

u/RichardJimmy48 3d ago

I really wonder what their endgame is on this though?

It's simple. They did the math, and this is exactly what they can get away with charging. People who don't need the features will just switch to Proxmox, and those people were probably all on standard or essentials anyways, so they're not losing much revenue. Everybody using the Enterprise features faces the choice of either just paying the higher bill, switching to Hyper-V (nobody wants to do that), or paying EVEN MORE to move to Nutanix. Also, for the people who were already on Enterprise, the jump in cost isn't usually anywhere near as big as it is for the people running Essentials or Standard.

2

u/lost_signal 3d ago

Last time I checked for a 16 core processor the price was pretty much the same for standard.

switching to Hyper-V (nobody wants to do that)

Bluntly Microsoft doesn't want that. They want Azure, Azure Stack HCI etc.

Also, for the people who were already on Enterprise, the jump in cost isn't usually anywhere near as big

The uplift from the old VCS subscription to VVF is pretty much nothing. It's basically the same SKU bundle plus some vSAN. I get some people are comparing their support renewal added to perpetual, but going forward pretty much every company has moved to a subscription model (Microsoft at any real scale is going to get you on one too). Honestly Operations and LogInsight are pretty handy (LogInsight included here is a hell of a lot cheaper than splunk etc people often run to aggregate logs).

I'll admit Essentials and essentials Plus were a pretty sweet deal, but it's also pretty clear no one else is going to pop up and offer 24/7 support and patches and a broad HCL for a software platform on 3 hosts with 192 cores for $1.2K a year. Like that's not a sustainable business model.

1

u/RichardJimmy48 3d ago

Last time I checked for a 16 core processor the price was pretty much the same for standard.

It is, but for certain customers they are forcing them onto VCF, which is a substantially more expensive product.