Yeah, received an email from Broadcom about this.  Definitely lots of changes coming for sure as we move to VCF model.

Yeah...we talked about this today V100 call. Lots of folks leaning towards looking for other hypervisor solutions. 

Yeah bit sad that it looks like the free edition of ESXi is on the chop. Also all those SaaS Services people were ramping up to join….

I would say lots of folks investigating other hypervisors. Which is prudent of course - its always good to know ones options.

That said, there is a whole pile of FUD out there right now, and towards that point Broadcom could have done a far better job of helping partners and service providers navigate these changing tides.

The real challenge I see with this kind of simplification of VMware’s product portfolio is getting customers to buy into needing to buy the whole package when they may only need one feature. This may be where other Hypervisors can gain market share. If you only need a basic hypervisor and don’t care about converged storage, software defined networking, talented IT professionals that know the hypervisor, or an ecosystem of third party vendors that can augment and improve the solution, there are plenty of hypervisors to choose from.

If you want any of the above, your choices become very limited, very quickly. 

I agree with all your observations, @TylerJurgens 

But is it FUD Tyler? The new cost figures & reality of it all is...well...reality, not FUD. I crunched numbers back in Aug. 80K vs $150K

There are other factors...important factors...you mention though needing consideration - hypervisor maturity, feature set, integration, etc. for an org to think about before making any moves.

It'll be interesting to see how this yr fairs out. 

There is absolutely a great deal of FUD out there. 

As for licensing costs, yeah, I’ve heard those numbers and its a hard pill to swallow. Where before you may have said “I only want the Hypervisor” and you only bought VMware Hypervisor licensing, now you get the hypervisor, converged storage and the Aria suite. 

https://williamlam.com/2024/01/whats-in-the-new-vmware-vsphere-foundation-vvf-and-vmware-cloud-foundation-vcf-offers.html

So is it what you want? Not likely, and the cost increase is probably due to getting more capabilities after renewal than you had before. A big thing that has jumped out to me is that now you *only* get Enterprise Plus licensing (unless you go for an essentials plan). That’s HUGE, as I know many customers would get the standard edition licensing to save costs.

That’s what I mean about getting customers to buy into the whole package where you never needed to do so before. It makes sense to simplify the product portfolio, but I don’t like that it comes with removing the flexibility of buying only what you currently need. 

I'll be honest, I follow about no one sharing anything one way or the other about it all. So my take is from my own experience from last summer, pre-change. 

We do use Ent+, but nothing else. I never thought about it from the point you shared right there Tyler .... Std vs Ent/+. That's for sure a $$ issue. For us, the main cost issue is being forced to re-up support. We don't need it (it tends not to be good plus we experience virtually no issue). Then there's the VM density. Per-socket VM density is more than subscription-based instances. These are all the issues I have that are hard, tangible issues.

Very valid points @coolsport00 

I totally agree @coolsport00! Nutanix moved to subscription model based on vcpu and volumetry consumption before the VMware. If you want AHV, you must get AOS (hyperconvergency). Red Hat moved RHEL to OpenShift (more expensive bundle) and the RHEL standalone option will be in end-of-support next August. So, there are few alternatives ...

Honestly when CEOs make statements like “get your butts back into the office” that tells me a lot about a company. All the details afterwards become secondary and I can expect that if they don’t respect their staff they sure as heck are not going to respect customers, at least not the mid to smaller ones. I have seen this time and time again. 

Maybe I am just getting too old but it is much, much tougher to be polite, much, much tougher to remain civil when you get angry, but alas that is what the huge executive pay cheques are supposed to demand, after all if you want a loud hot head as CEO you could just hire me or the drunk down the street who I often hear screaming at the garbage cans.

This really comes from lessons I learned in the playground. No one says that you can’t create tough rules, no one says that if you own something you can’t do what you want. However, the way you do these things speaks volumes. In my work life I have had some very tough bosses. Often they would see the IT admins as annoying because they could not understand the technology. There were those that I knew were angry at what I was saying but would hear me out, then calmly give me instructions. Sometimes these were not what I wanted to hear but nevertheless I respected the voice and the person. Then there were others who went ape at the fact that someone “not executive level” dared to give another opinion. 

So licensing, keeping this product or not for me now is secondary. Trust is a very hard thing to build but very easy to lose.

I’ve been a huge VMware fan for many many years. I’ve got several certs and a decent sized environment. Reddit is FULL of FUD. Not saying its unwarranted, or wrong, but people are flying off the handle and some of it is still rumors. 

Currently I’m consolidating hosts.  I’m already down 4, and expect to drop another 4 or 6, that could be up to 20 sockets.  SRM may end up on the chopping block in favor of Veeam and AirWatch is already a target for replacement. I’m currently looking at options to get rid of my Horizon environment too. It’s not heavily used and been a decent cost for some time so this may just be the push we need.

That said, there are few competitors, and that do it as well.  Most people can’t up and shift in a year a company that has years of ties with VMware. It’s going to be interesting to see what pans out. 

“SRM may end up on the chopping block in favor of Veeam”  I agree with your comments, @Scott !

I’ll need a bit more testing large scale before I do it. SRM has been super solid with our SAN replication, but saving cost is always great too.

So far on the smaller tests I have done Veeam Replication has worked perfect, With our RPO’s here the 5 minutes variance using Global Mirror with Change volumes is acceptable I should be able to handle it all with replica.  I do enjoy the fact I have some retention points at the DR site this way too for users that delete files etc. 

For sure, SRM is a solid solution. Great to know about your tests results. Thanks for sharing, @Scott 

    I am not sure what it means for the old licenses; will they expire?
    I have also been doing a lot of reading, and I cannot seem to understand what they are trying to do – have licenses on a subscription basis. Why are they canceling partner contracts?
    These are serious changes that will impact a lot of people.
    Also, the next hypervisor should be able to convert the VM easily.

Depending on your vendor, Veeam Recovery Orchestrator has some nice SAN Replication/failover scenarios above what’s in Veeam B&R

I was reading another article this morning, and I took note that he wants people in the office if you live within 50 miles of an office.  FIFTY MILES!  That’s a lot of driving for some folks….60-90 minutes of driving, one way.  So 3 hours of driving every day?  No thanks...that’s just not feasible IMO.  If you live within 10 or 20 miles maybe.  To me, that needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis.  Many jobs don’t require being in the office, and many folks work better from home.  Blanket policies like this are dumb.

For example, the Governor of the State of Nebraska issued and executive order late last year stating that all state employees needed to come to the office.  I’m paraphrasing, but he said that the COVID is over and that the citizens of Nebraska expect the state to be working at peak performance, as such, the citizens of Nebraska expect State employees to be in the office.  There’s such a disconnect there.  First off, there’s not enough office space to send everyone to the office.  I don’t believe everyone needs to be in the office.  Clearly being in an office doesn’t make you more effective.  I as a citizen of Nebraska, I don’t expect everyone to be in the office.  Not to mention there’s so many employees that will now have to find new child-care facilities or figure out how to make the commute, etc.  Fortunately, the State employees union is fighting the return to the office order as this should required negotiations as this changes a lot of things - I don’t know all the nuances.  And of course, we had some major snow storms in the recent weeks, and if not for working at home, those employees wouldn’t have been able to work.  

I agree, it says a lot when a CEO or other leader makes blanket statements, based on their own feelings not necessarily on fact, that changes the entire culture of a company and can easily or most likely have adverse effects on the company itself.