VMware Reboots Its Partner Program Again (theregister.com) 28
VMware has notified partners that its current channel program will end, replacing it with an invitation-only system that significantly reduces the number of authorized partners. Partners not invited to the new VMware Cloud Service Provider program would have received non-renewal notices on July 15, 2025, and can continue transactions only until October 31, 2025, after which they may service existing contracts through their current terms.
The company is also ending its White Label program on October 31, 2025. The changes mark the second major partner program overhaul in 18 months, following Broadcom's January 2024 decision to terminate partners operating VMware-powered clouds with fewer than 3,500 processor cores.
The company is also ending its White Label program on October 31, 2025. The changes mark the second major partner program overhaul in 18 months, following Broadcom's January 2024 decision to terminate partners operating VMware-powered clouds with fewer than 3,500 processor cores.
Greed (Score:2)
"If you are not shoving a million bucks a year in our pockets we don't want to look at you, let alone hear from you."
Who is the winner? (Score:5, Funny)
I think there's a contest between Broadcom and Automattic to see who can piss everyone off fastest.
Re: (Score:2)
Oracle has entered the lead with audits for both their SQL database and their bytecode tooling.
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Oracle entered the lead decades ago...
Or if it's pissing everyone off the fastest, they are near the bottom as people are already as pissed off as they could get, there is no pissing further off.
Re: Who is the winner? (Score:2)
SAP was the poster child before Oracle.
I'd like to also nominate Accenture.
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SAP was the poster child before Oracle.
I'd like to also nominate Accenture.
Salesforce has entered the chat.
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SCO was indeed the worst, but are thoroughly dead as a result of their aggressive stupidity.. They didn't even have any customers to fuck over, so they decided to fuck over non customers. Thats end-boss scumbaggery.
The writing is on the wall (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone who hasn't at least planned their escape from VMware deserves whatever happens to them.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a happy user of VirtualBox.
I also like FreeBSD Jails.
I've heard good stuff about KVM, but haven't used it.
What other free options are out there?
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Much as I like VirtualBox, they have a big problem... named Oracle. We've seen what Oracle has done with Java. Who is to say they won't do the same to VBox?
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Proxmox is my VM host of choice, but there are plenty of others with different strengths and weaknesses.
Re:The writing is on the wall (Score:4, Interesting)
So VirtualBox is akin to VMWare Workstation, which is about as free as VirtualBox, both with parent companies that I wouldn't personally trust to keep the bargain, though VMWare is a lot more in flux now than VirtualBox. Broadly speaking, no business cares about desktop virtualization except *maybe* as an on-ramp to infrastructure virtualization.
FreeBSD Jails are in the neighborhood of containerization. While VMWare has tried to pretend to be relevant, they really aren't to that. That isolation is of course much more lightweight and manageable compared to trying to do something similar with virtualization. However some contexts are served better by a full fledged virtualization.
KVM is a low level implementation detail, that is important but not really the level that folks would consider competing with 'VMware'. You have libvirt based management stacks (ovirt, which should be pretty much considered abandoned), openshift (which is first and foremost a container platform, but RedHat kind of sort of trumpets the fact you can run QEMU as a container in it, a bit 'weird' for a vmware user), or openstack (not personally a fan, a bit chaotic and ultimately not a solid experience). You also have things like just using virsh from command line, virt-manager from gui, or cockpit over web to manage virtual machines, which can capably compare with using ESXi as a standalone thing.
Probably the closest in nature to 'vCenter' I've seen is ProxMox VE. Simple and to the point to deploy (unlike most of the other multi-node virtualization stacks) and sidesteps libvirt (which in the fullness of time has kind of constrained stacks built on it as qemu has grown up).
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Is anyone using the Xen hypervisor [xenproject.org]? I tried it out and it had some interesting features, like a CPU emulation layer, it ran sparc cpu stuff on intel, slowly but I also did not have a huge amount of CPU time to throw at it. Here is the the Xen wiki [wikipedia.org], from my understanding Amazon, Citrix and Cisco are users of this in their infra.
I'm working a migration project away from VMware, thanks for all the extra work broadcom.
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Looks like Citrix smells blood. [theregister.com]
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I've used Proxmox for years, both professionally and for my home lab. It runs Debian under the hood and is rock solid.
Right now I'm only using it privately so my experience in the enterprise is limited to earlier versions. There are additional components nowadays for automated backups and the like, which are overkill for my setup.
At the time the web management tool was perfectly fine for a small setup, but it didn't have the sophisticated look and feel of the vCenter approach with dedicated ESXi hypervisors
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I'm not sure that I'd consider vCenter to look more sophisticated than vCenter, just different. I will say that at least once the WebUI got a VM into a state it didn't understand how to come back from, and had to log in and directly run a qemu command, which would probably be a deal breaker for a vmware shop, but it *looked* fine at least.
I'd say the distinction between 'dedicated ESXi hypervisors' versus 'full Debian' is actually a bit arbitrary, ESXi is a 'full OS', just VMWare wants to pretend very hard
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Proxmox
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VMWare workstation is the best you can get for a desktop virtual machine host
Damn... (Score:3)
They're taking the Pareto principle to the extreme. I guess firing 95% of your customers and squeezing the remaining 5% might work. I don't think I'd do it with my business.
Re:Damn... (Score:5, Interesting)
The fallacy in that strategy is that the big guys used to be little guys.
The next generation of big guys will grow up without VMware because VMware drove them away when they were little.
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They don't care. It's that simple; their strategy is all about maximizing short term profits and there is no interest in "next generations" or any other kind of market growth.
Who do they think they are? (Score:2)
Ferrari?
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Broadcom's mission (Score:2)
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They seem to working really hard to become one of the most obnoxious, despicable companies in existence.
On the bright side, they picked the right time to do it. Competition is fierce in this particular race.
Who cares (Score:2)
Using VMWare is not professional at this time. Anybody that has not managed to move to something better deserves what they get.