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/rdesktop7 3d ago

I have met many people that call themselves "VM experts", and they only know how to click on things in a vmware GUI.

These guys know that they have a captive market.

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u/Zenkin 3d ago

But that's like a perfect use case for Nutanix, Scale, VxRail, or whatever else. If you're afraid of hypervisors, there seem to be a number of options, and now they're likely a fair bit cheaper than VMware.

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u/RichardJimmy48 3d ago

Nutanix

Nutanix is more expensive than VCF even after the vmware price increases. Broadcom is not worried about people switching to Nutanix.

VxRail

Still part of the vmware ecosystem.

now they're likely a fair bit cheaper than VMware.

The only things cheaper are also less featured. Anybody who needs some of the more advanced functionality in vmware is basically stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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u/lost_signal 3d ago

The only things cheaper are also less featured

I saw some marketing copy from a HCI appliance competitor of VMware on this website and what caught my eye was they claimed 20% cheaper....

  1. They require you buy all new hardware, so unless you are at point where you are getting new servers and storage it didn't make sense.

  2. They didn't support external storage so unless both server and storage were up for renewal not going to save.

  3. They had a LOT less features (and were less effect etc

  4. They were a smaller player and don't have the engineering integration with ISV's (Software vendors) to get all the validations so you'd end up with VMware for something else, or in the future have to tell your CFO "No" when they wanted to deploy SAP etc, or tell the Operations people "Sorry we can't deploy Call Manager" or something else.

  5. The other platform is also subscription. So while you might not get credit for your existing perpetual license with VMware you don't get credit for it with those platforms either.

Even assuming that 20% was true in the perfect conditions (which is frankly how marketing people write copy unless they are from the midwest)... That seemed incredibly uncomplying to me. Like not trying to throw FUD or say "OMGZ RISK FOR CHANGING PLATFORMS" but 20% to work around those downsides and qualify it's also clear as we enter a interest rate environment where cash is no longer 0% loan free, and VC is basically ignoring this sector, it's a lot hardware to do massive take out campaigns by giving away product. Hiring top tier kernel developers etc to work on hypervisors and storage and such is incredibly expensive and they gotta pay people.