300% Price Hikes Push Disgruntled VMware Customers Toward Broadcom Rivals (arstechnica.com) 54
After closing a $69 billion deal to buy virtualization technology company VMware a year ago, Broadcom wasted no time ushering in big changes to the ways customers and partners buy and sell VMware offerings -- and many of those clients aren't happy. ArsTechnica: To get a deeper look at the impact that rising costs and overhauls like the end of VMware perpetual license sales have had on VMware users, Ars spoke with several companies in the process of quitting the software due to Broadcom's changes. Here's what's pushing them over the edge.
For some, VMware prices more than tripled under Broadcom Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition in November 2023, and by December 2023, the company announced that it would stop selling perpetual VMware licenses. VMware products were previously sold under 8,000 SKUs, but they have now been combined into a few bundle packages. Additionally, higher CPU core requirements per CPU subscription have made VMware more expensive for some reseller partners.
"As on-premises virtualization projects move from [enterprise license agreements] and perpetual licenses to new bundling, socket-to-core ratios, and consumption models, the costs and pricing can increase two or three times," Gartner's 2024 Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies report that released in June reads. Numerous VMware customers I spoke with said their VMware costs rose 300 percent after Broadcom's takeover. Some companies have cited even higher price hikes -- including AT&T, which claimed that Broadcom proposed a 1,050 percent price hike. AT&T is suing Broadcom over perpetual license support and says it has looked into VMware alternatives.
For some, VMware prices more than tripled under Broadcom Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition in November 2023, and by December 2023, the company announced that it would stop selling perpetual VMware licenses. VMware products were previously sold under 8,000 SKUs, but they have now been combined into a few bundle packages. Additionally, higher CPU core requirements per CPU subscription have made VMware more expensive for some reseller partners.
"As on-premises virtualization projects move from [enterprise license agreements] and perpetual licenses to new bundling, socket-to-core ratios, and consumption models, the costs and pricing can increase two or three times," Gartner's 2024 Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies report that released in June reads. Numerous VMware customers I spoke with said their VMware costs rose 300 percent after Broadcom's takeover. Some companies have cited even higher price hikes -- including AT&T, which claimed that Broadcom proposed a 1,050 percent price hike. AT&T is suing Broadcom over perpetual license support and says it has looked into VMware alternatives.
What are the alternatives for enterprise scale? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone facing this issue where they work? What have you looked at?
(fingers crossed first post).
Why not Docker/Kubernetes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone facing this issue where they work? What have you looked at?
(fingers crossed first post).
We've always been on Docker. I haven't heard of anyone in my circles using VMWare for almost 20 years now. I was actually wondering who still uses them. Is it just legacy apps...like those folks who still use IBM Mainframes or DB2?...or are there good reasons for choosing VMWare for hosting servers?
Re:Why not Docker/Kubernetes? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Microsoft themselves are eliminating Microsoft Exchange and AD on-prem and forcing customers into cloud with containerized extensions for on-prem functionality.
The vNext versions of Windows Server/Exchange etc are all required to be integrated with your Azure instance so basically the local stuff is just a proxy for Azure.
Pretty pedantic there + Docker is a container!! (Score:1)
How to I host Microsoft Exchange and an Active Directory DC in a docker container? Docker/Kubernetes are container management platforms. VMWare ESXI is a hypervisor. The technologies and use-case are entirely different
That's a pretty pedantic distinction there, but I bet you feel smart and superior! You showed me!!! Also, Docker is a container, not a management platform, so if you're going to be smug and dismissive, can you at least get the details right? Yeah, there's no cool GUI, but most of us just build Docker containers in our CI/build system and version appropriately...so I stand by my statement. Anyone who would want to switch from a "Hypervisor" to a *NIX-native solution would probably want to look into Doc
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You can run multiple containers across different hosts and use a load balancer? Like literally any other networked service?
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Docker is a container, not a management platform
No. Docker is a set of tools for managing containers. It takes advantage of namespaces in the Linux Kernel to run the containers https://docs.docker.com/get-st... [docker.com]
Microsoft has no virtualization capabilities
Microsoft offers it's own Type II Hypervisor called Hyper-V. It's both their on-premesis virtualization solution as well as the base of the technology running their Azure hosted/cloud virtualization options.
I am pretty sure our Exchange server is hosting in Azure.
Mine isn't. Neither is our Active Directory. They're both on premises. I won't go into the pros and cons of moving Exchange or AD to Azure her
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VMWare's enterprise solutions let you do things like migrate virtual machines between physical hardware. Docker isn't a substitute. My particular use case is when we host temporary servers for customers. We create a dedicated VMWare host. When we are done, we delete the host and the backups and send an attestation that we have done so.
There is probably a solution we co
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There is still shitloads of it in Fortune 500 business that hasn't figured out how to get off Windows Server yet. Institutional inertia is very hard to overcome the bigger the business is.
Why not Microsoft Vitualization? (Score:2)
There is still shitloads of it in Fortune 500 business that hasn't figured out how to get off Windows Server yet. Institutional inertia is very hard to overcome the bigger the business is.
Makes perfect sense that they would have Windows Server for various reasons. I am not personally a fan, but see value in the Windows Server infrastructure (C# SQL Server, etc) ...it's a worthy competitor to the products I use. However, doesn't MS offer virtualization in their Windows Server products these days?
Re:What are the alternatives for enterprise scale? (Score:4, Informative)
I have been at companies/orgs looking to get away from VMWare for about a decade now. What VMWare brings to the table is the best control plane out there, solid scalability, ease of use for their clustered filesystem (VMFS is a heck of a lot easier to deal with than GlusterFS), and a number of features, like fault tolerance where a VM can keep going even if the hardware it is running on falls over, as another shadow VM took over.
I'm seeing people move to Hyper-V, Proxmox, and XCP-NG. Some are moving to Nutanix, but that is more of a hardware and software stack than a virtualization platform.
Proxmox is getting there. It has been hamstrung for years by lack of third party development, but Veeam, Nakivo, and other backup program makers are supporting it, so it is starting to emerge as a solid rival to VMWare on some fronts.
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I operate a MSP for small businesses. I started on ESXi and moved to a combination of Windows Server datacenter (Windows Server instances running on DC edition are automatically licensed, and I'd be spending that money anyway) and XCP-ng for my hypervisors. I have no major complaints about either product. I think you'll hear about Proxmox a lot in this thread as well, but it's a nonstarter for me because some people claiming to work for the FSF were condescending dickholes to me on IRC in 1994 and it'll be
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So you're not going to use an open source solution because someone was a dick to you in 1994?
But you'll use Microsoft products? They've been dicks to everybody going back previous to 1994.
Does not make sense.
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I'm not going to use the FSF solution because it turns out that there are many alternatives. Even when I was talking about Linux on IRC in 1994, I was specifically using either Yggsdrasil or Slackware at the time rather than Debian.
Regarding Microsoft, there's lots and lots of industry-specific applications that run on Windows and nothing else. The system I'm looking at this morning runs on a Paradox DB and looks like it uses Delphi libraries. The vendor says it needs to live on Windows Server 2016. Since t
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This is one of the dumbest things I've read all week. I can't imagine still being bent about shit that happened to me 30 years ago.
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A mix of KVM (Proxmox) and container orchestration (sitting on baremetal or Proxmox).
Looking at Apache CloudStack for multi-tenant cloud provisioning.
Bare Metal (Score:3)
My friend worked at a hosting company that was all bare metal, or bare metal and containers. They standardized on Dell using OpenManage to automate installs and updates. He said the cost savings and performance gains made up for the cost of not being able to overprovision hardware. I'd imagine with the VMWare price hike, it's even more cost effective.
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Hyper-V over here.
Yes, there are things VMWare can do that Hyper-V can't. We don't use any of those features.
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Anyone facing this issue where they work? What have you looked at?
For large corps (100,000+ users) there are no alternatives besides cloud. And many of them are using VMWare in the cloud (yes it is a real product). Anyone claiming they have an alternative isn't worried about availability, backups, & DR...
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I have 250k+ endpoints on the network, we use Proxmox, works better than VMware, and is cheaper, it has things like live-restore. All the extra DR, vGPU, SDN and other stuff costs extra on VMware/HyperV if it is at all "validated" to work together. We had a cluster of VMware for decades apparently, a few years ago, there was a problem between the IBM SAN and the Cisco server hardware (firmware bug) that took out the entire cluster and VMware just pointed the finger at Cisco, then at IBM, then at Red Hat (wh
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Re: What are the alternatives for enterprise scale (Score:2)
Azure, Windows 365 and Hyper-V are being rolled out in a large scale at the 80k employees company I work for. All the systems from the 90+ worldwide locations we can move out to the cloud are going that way, those staying are being upgraded to newer Windows Server OS versions and put on Hyper-X. On a positive note, countless duplicates are being converged to multi-tenant systems as well - and a lot more trust being put on the Azure and SDWAN availability across multiple units worldwide.
Broadcom has killed a
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Anyone facing this issue where they work? What have you looked at?
At my workplace, which would probably be classed small to maybe medium-ish (around 50-60 VMs and a user count in the mere hundreds), we use SCALE Computing's HyperCore [scalecomputing.com] product. It is KVM-based, though pretty customized by SCALE. We previously used VMware but were already moving onto SCALE well before the buyout, and at this point we are 100% SCALE.
While it certainly has its limitations (in particular no hardware passthru, so you're not getting any virtual USB or serial devices), it has worked well for o
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What's the logic behind this?
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The logic is that Broadcom has a habit of buying companies, cutting 90% of the workforce, and jacking up prices 300% (or more).
By the time hapless customers migrate to another provider, they'll have paid enough (coupled with the newly lowered operating cost) to let Broadcom make what they paid for VMWare back, plus a healthy profit (an they'll still have a not-completely-worthless company left at the end).
But not sure what this has to do with Trump (would help if I could see the parent post).
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That's the connection I'm trying to find.
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Re:300% price increases push me towards Trump (Score:4, Informative)
The inflation was baked into the system when President Biden took over from President Trump. Trump signed Congressional legislation effectively printing money to give to businesses and later to give to households to try to stave off a massive recession brought on by his inept handling of COVID-19. Inflation would have been there regardless of who was elected in 2020. And since he's tariff happy, it would probably be much worse today if he had been elected in 2020. And will be again if he's elected this year.
Free trade may be tough on high cost labor places like America, but it's great for prices. The trouble is tariffs may help out one particular labor sector - and the emphasis is on may - but the retaliatory tariffs that get imposed on our exports hurt many other labor sectors. Look up how much the soybean farmers were bailed out due to retaliatory tariffs. If you are buying a foreign product that is hit with a tariff, you pass on the costs. You may have long term contracts you can't break. You may have greater quantity or other specialized requirements that American manufacturing can't meet, at least immediately. Regardless, to get your products out the door, you frequently can't just shop American. Your input costs go up, and since the American way is to keep profit margins consistent, you raise prices.
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I agree, and I hadn't forgotten. However the total of Trump's virtual cash printing was a bit higher than Biden's if Google isn't failing me. Regardless, I've posted elsewhere complaining about both. Sorry I wasn't clearer.
I also don't disagree in principle with what they did. It probably was a reason we came out of COVID better off than most other countries at the cost of a huge spike in debt. All payments should have been targeted better so that those who didn't need them didn't get them, but that would
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What you say is true, but a lot of people want to drop the inflation blame on Biden, and Biden alone.
They're forgetting or consciously choosing to not remember that inflation was already on the way up before Trump left office (4.4% in Dec 2020).
But here's the thing that is most telling: the Trump campaign has totally shut up about the economy at this point, because they know there isn't an argument to be made there any more. Unemployment and inflation are both lower today than they were at this time 4 year
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True story, last week my daughter got wacked in the head at school with a hokey stick and she got a concussion. I tried to get a dr apt the same day but couldn't. The following day i learned there is such a large influx of Hatian migrants the apts are getting hard to make. Believe me or not. It happened and it was unprompted. I just asked the nurse at reception if things were busy and she was very exasperated when she volunteered that nugget of info. This is mega small town America by the way, out in the
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The garbage truck with their campaign logo on the side of it yesterday probably wasn't the best optics.
I thought it was a great euphemism for his campaign. Him riding along with a truckload of his campaign nonsense off into the sunset.
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I think blaming inflation on Trump or, for that matter, Biden is the mark of your typical parochial American. The idea that either of them caused inflation in the UK, the rest of Europe, other G20 countries, etc., is a pretty wild conclusion. Two things have driven inflation, and they are COVID for sure, but mainly the dick head Putin in the Kremlin and his decision to invade Ukraine and there is nothing any one could have done about that. Oh, and if you think rolling over and letting Putin take Ukraine wou
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Although this response was about Trump on a primarily American site, I think you'll find that when something is perceived as going wrong in a country, the leader of the country is blamed - either directly in the case of free societies - or silently in the case of places like Russia, North Korea, China, or like places where dissenters simply disappear, are sent to prisons or gulags, or die in dubious ways. People tend to hark back to when they are convinced times were better, whether or not such is warranted
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By the time Putin invaded Ukraine, inflation had already hit 8% year-over-year according to the BLS. Note that Putin invaded in 2022, more than 1 year into the Biden presidency. The year-over-year inflation rate in January 2021, the month of his inauguration, was about 1.4% (according to CNN) and there were no signals that inflation/depression was about to get started in 2021, the Fed hadn't cranked up the rates.
You could say that Bidenflation gave Putin the money to invade Ukraine (cutting off US gas/oil s
Acquisitions always... (Score:4, Insightful)
...make the product worse for customers.
Just say no to software subscriptions
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You could always support some product that is vaguely open source, like something based on Linux KVM or anything from RedHat.
Vendor lock-in (Score:1)
Nutanix (Score:2)
From the VARs we've spoken to the only "real" approximate replacement is Nutanix. No way around it really, companies love the opex expenses of the cloud vs capital, even if they are getting reamed.
We dumped it. (Score:3)
We just took a few months and made it the top priority to get rid of it. We did it. It's gone.
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What did you replace VMware with?
XCP-ng: Clustering [yes], Live Migrations [yes]... (Score:2)
At my office we use XCP-ng, though it lacks support for nested virtualization with Windows guests, which breaks WSL2, Docker on Windows, etc. They are supposed to be working on a fix. See [https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/issues/105](https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/issues/105).
Generally, setup is easy, clustering is a thing, you can live migrate VMs to other hosts, and you can live migrate VM disks to other storage arrays as well. There is also support for vTPM in the upcoming 8.3 release and it the current LTS
Proxmox VE (Score:2)
For my homelab, my pile of junk aged out of ESXi on CPU features at the end of 6.7. I moved to Proxmox VE, and picked up native LXC containers and live migration, which wasn't supported on the free license ESXi. But I deliberately keep my networking simple, and use BSD/ZFS based TrueNAS, don't dabble with Ceph, etc... So far, it gets what I need to do done. But I can't say how well it scales beyond 30 - 40 VM's/containers.
That said, in a larger environment, I would probably look at Nutanix. Redhat's beh