welp, VMware is dead to me...£3920 per year! 5x the old cost!

[chazzy2501]

I used to pay £750 a year for support and licence for the Academic VMware essential plus (6 socket) The NEW Broadcom price is a minimum 96 core licence with another minimum 16 cores per socket.... So now it is.....drum roll.

 

VMware vSphere Essentials Plus - 1-Year Prepaid Commit - Per 96 Core Pack VMware vSphere Essentials Plus includes vSphere Essentials Plus and vCenter Essentials. VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Subscription includes Production Support and is licensed Per 96 Core Pack with a minimum of 16 Cores per CPU required and 3 hosts maximum. VSP-ESPL-TD-TL-1P-C £3,920.00

[synaesthesia]

Yup, they've (Broadcom) made their position very clear, that they only want certain enterprises to be using their products and so pricing everyone else out. Huge shame as IMO ESXi is still way ahead of HyperV. But money talks - and at least Veeam still works just as well with HV

[Aprice]

Always preferred VMWare, Broadcom just had to ruin it for everyone.

[DavR]

Tbh, I know VMWare are the original and probably best in virtualisation, but we moved to Hyper-V two years ago and it's been a breeze ever since. None of the weird little problems we used to get with VMWare, no third party updates, zero ongoing support costs, and zero licensing beyond our Server Datacentre licenses.

 

Sorry, I realise that doesn't help you out with your immediate eyewatering bill. Drop support for this year, and port everything over to Hyper-V in the summer?

[Olliedawg]

Ouch.

 

We have VMware vSphere 8 Essentials kit for 3 hosts (perpetual, 1yr support), which was purchased Oct 2023.

 

Before the transfer from Vmware > Broadcom I backed up our keys. I registered a Broadcom account for the remainder of our 1yr support.

 

I'm planning on sticking with ESXi for a little while longer & then switching over to HyperV eventually.

 

Has anyone done a transition from ESXi > HyperV somewhat recently? Is it a headache inducing process, or not too bad?

[PotNoodleTech]

Saw this coming a mile off. I originally moved from Vmware when they bumped their education prices way back when but that was nothing compared to broadcom.

 

Sad times. Looks like hyperv it is for you one datacenter license per rig and unlimited VMs!

Edited May 9, 2024 by PotNoodleTech

[MrEprise]

Tbh, I know VMWare are the original and probably best in virtualisation, but we moved to Hyper-V two years ago and it's been a breeze ever since. None of the weird little problems we used to get with VMWare, no third party updates, zero ongoing support costs, and zero licensing beyond our Server Datacentre licenses.

 

Sorry, I realise that doesn't help you out with your immediate eyewatering bill. Drop support for this year, and port everything over to Hyper-V in the summer?

 

VMware certainly are/were the best but not necessarily the original in virtualisation. VMware commenced their operations in February 1998 and brought their first Virtualisation product (VMware Workstation) out in May 1999, whereas Connectix Virtual PC (on which Hyper-V is based) was originally created back in June 1997, though admittedly on Mac first before eventually being ported across to PC in 2001. Mind you, VMware were probably the first to bring Virtualisation to the x86 platform.

[chazzy2501]

Tbh, I know VMWare are the original and probably best in virtualisation, but we moved to Hyper-V two years ago and it's been a breeze ever since. None of the weird little problems we used to get with VMWare, no third party updates, zero ongoing support costs, and zero licensing beyond our Server Datacentre licenses.

 

Sorry, I realise that doesn't help you out with your immediate eyewatering bill. Drop support for this year, and port everything over to Hyper-V in the summer?

 

I'm quoting for new hardware this year anyway. As you said I already have a datacentre licence from M$ for my virtual machines, so I'll pay someone to migrate from VMware and purchase a new backup solution.

 

It'll still cost less that continuing with VMware.

[DavR]

Will you need a new backup solution? When we moved from VMWare to Hyper V, we kept Veeam and now use it to backup our Hyper-V estate.

[rogerdnixon]

Most stuff is in the cloud now for our schools - but where we do have hypervisors still, we will probably switch VMware for XCP-NG. Seems to work great and all the built in backup you need. Fully featured for free or you can pay for support. Removes the need for Veeam. Has the features of VCentre and way more features than Hyper-V. Lawrence Systems YouTube channel is a great place to find out more. Just a thought.

[FN-GM]

We have quite a large farm. We ended up replacing all our hardware with appliances (VXrail) that are on the old model. This saved us nearly $1,000,000 in licensing over 5 years. Managed to get the order in a days before they killed that avenue. We aren't going to leave yet, due to specialist software not supporting other hypervisors (yet). Edited May 9, 2024 by FN-GM

[chris11256]

We're in the same boat. Not paying the rip off renewal price and considering swapping to Hyper-V. Not doing a hardware refresh through, so would need to be done in place.

[mavhc]

VMware certainly are/were the best but not necessarily the original in virtualisation. VMware commenced their operations in February 1998 and brought their first Virtualisation product (VMware Workstation) out in May 1999, whereas Connectix Virtual PC (on which Hyper-V is based) was originally created back in June 1997, though admittedly on Mac first before eventually being ported across to PC in 2001. Mind you, VMware were probably the first to bring Virtualisation to the x86 platform.

 

Turns out my KVM virtualisation on Proxmox is the newest then, also on the newest file system I bet, zfs is from 2005

[dmj]

Turns out my KVM virtualisation on Proxmox is the newest then, also on the newest file system I bet, zfs is from 2005

 

Most stuff is in the cloud now for our schools - but where we do have hypervisors still, we will probably switch VMware for XCP-NG. Seems to work great and all the built in backup you need. Fully featured for free or you can pay for support. Removes the need for Veeam. Has the features of VCentre and way more features than Hyper-V. Lawrence Systems YouTube channel is a great place to find out more. Just a thought.

 

You guys should know by now that Edugeeks only want to use what everyone else is using!!

 

My money would definitely be with KVM on ZFS to be honest, it's what all the major players are using.

Interestingly, whilst on the subject of history, Xen (the underlying system for XCP-NG, Citrix et al) was originally developed at Cambridge University in 2003 with sponsorship from Microsoft.

[Roberto]

Tbh, I know VMWare are the original and probably best in virtualisation

 

IBM would like a word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system)

 

Totally agree with your comments on HyperV - @Norphy and I did this quite some time ago for our then employer, and while I think it was hard work and should not be taken for granted, I wouldn't say it wasn't a problem per-se.

Edited May 9, 2024 by Roberto

[DrCheese]

Yes we're in the same boat - My essentials plus license is shooting up to £3700 ish.

 

I've justified the £2200 or so we used to pay as cheap enough that it outweighed the inconvenience of migrating everything over to Hyper-V (That and I utterly love VCentre & auto DFS etc) - But now I think I'll be pushed hard on this cost when we already get Hyper-V under our datacentre licenses. It's just a massive headache to convert over the Summer that I really don't want to be forced into doing :/

[Norphy]

I did it again a few years later at the MAT I was working for at the time. The MAT had VMware Essentials, so going to Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager was actually something of a step up in functionality as I could now do live storage migrations and other things.

 

In terms of hypervisors, I'd say that ESXi and Hyper-V are pretty close. The management tools that VMware offer with vSphere Standard and above are considerably better than what's built into Windows or what you can get with Virtual Machine Manager. That said, considering Hyper-V is part of a Windows license that you have to buy anyway and System Center costs almost nothing for education, the value proposition for VMware arguably wasn't there when I did the work four years ago. These days, it's even harder to justify it. I'd go Hyper-V, XCP-NG or Proxmox if I were doing on-prem virtualisation these days.

[DavR]

Yes we're in the same boat - My essentials plus license is shooting up to £3700 ish.

 

I've justified the £2200 or so we used to pay as cheap enough that it outweighed the inconvenience of migrating everything over to Hyper-V (That and I utterly love VCentre & auto DFS etc) - But now I think I'll be pushed hard on this cost when we already get Hyper-V under our datacentre licenses. It's just a massive headache to convert over the Summer that I really don't want to be forced into doing :/

 

Could you argue that, because you're making a saving by not renewing the VMWare license, you could use the £2200 you would have spent there on some external support to help with the migration?

[mthomas08]

OUCH OUCH.

 

Have they said why the costs went up so much? That isn't a slight jump.. surely that doens't even match inflation? Did they magically give everyone a 400% pay rise? Do they hire large offices and those costs went up by 400%?

 

Sorry I can't help but glad we are using HyperV. May not be perfect but for us it does the job and we have very little issues.

 

OUCH OUCH

 

I can imagine what our SBM would say if I told him that.......

[Norphy]

 

Have they said why the costs went up so much?

 

Because Broadcom bought VMware for $61B and they want to recoup their investment as quickly as possible. I suspect it's also because on-premise virtualisation is becoming legacy for a lot of clients and they're losing their lunch to the likes of AWS and Azure. Which, ironically, raising their prices will probably accelerate their losses here.

[DrCheese]

Could you argue that, because you're making a saving by not renewing the VMWare license, you could use the £2200 you would have spent there on some external support to help with the migration?

 

ah I'm too much of a perfectionist to let someone else do the work for us

It's not needing support that's the issue, it's needing to do the work in the first place & migrating to a (in my view) worse solution. Hyper-V is fine of course, I'd just.. rather not have to move to it.

[mavhc]

You'd hope it was worse, based on the price difference

[PotNoodleTech]

It's not really worse to be honest, it is just as reliable and performant i.e 100% uptime if you've got your hardware right.

[jbunoomally]

There was a great webinar yesterday run by Crown commercial, where they had a couple of guys from VM/Broadcom on the call. My question was read out first;

"VMWare have totally thrown schools under the bus - how will VMWare or Crown support schools with this massive burden?"

I got a stock answer, but guys from Crown were good saying they are pushing them on pricing and Education is on their radar. they also said that a Broadcom President is coming over next week, and will be having significant discussion with commercial colleagues.

VM were only allowed on for half the webinar then after they left the guys from commercial had a frank discussion, which was good to hear their perspective and thoughts (i won't disclose info here). not sure if you can register and play back the webinar, but worth keeping your eyes peeled on https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/events for any future ones.

 

Also caught the end of another webinar from the new(ish) .Gov - Get help buying for schools service; that might be another useful avenue to progress licensing and support if you're sticking with VM, or migration, professional services and wider strategy if you're thinking of rm -rf'ing!

 

(no affiliation with Crown/frameworks/DPS, etc. - just thought it relevant/timely.)

 

JB

Edit - Email with slide deck and Q&A arrived shortly after posting, so have included.

VMware Webinar slide deck.pdf

VMware Q&A 9th May.xlsx

Edited May 10, 2024 by jbunoomally

[DrCheese]

^ The above is good, but I think Broadcom are going to have to make changes pretty sharpish as I expect we'll see a mass exodus over the summer if schools decide not to renew.