Broadcom VMware cease or desist or be Audited

[loxford01]

Has anyone using VMware ESXi received an email from Broadcom urging them to transition from perpetual licensing to a subscription-based model once their current support contract expires?

 

It seems that if you don’t respond, Broadcom may follow up with a cease-and-desist letter, which could eventually lead to an audit—a process that’s mentioned only deep in their terms and conditions.

 

I’m quite concerned about the tone Broadcom is using, especially as many of us simply cannot afford the new licensing costs they’re proposing. This is particularly challenging for schools that rely on VMware but operate under tight budgets.

 

Is anyone here considering moving away from VMware and exploring alternative solutions? If so, what are the alternatives that you are considering? 

[Olliedawg]

Quote

Is anyone here considering moving away from VMware and exploring alternative solutions? If so, what are the alternatives that you are considering?

 

Yes, we're looking at moving to HyperV. Licences are already paid for with our MS licencing so makes sense.

 

We're in the same boat, still using ESXi 8.0.x however we're out of contract for support. (previous perpetual).

 

Broadcom could have kept a lot of customers if they offered some discounted Edu pricing, but they're either too greedy, or they want rid of the smaller organisations

[networkmangler]

I have read a few horror stories about this and Broadcom being very aggressive towards companies (I haven't heard about them going after a school).

 

We previously used VMware but our servers hardware was due for a refresh last summer. When I heard Broadcom had bought them out and introduced an new expensive subscription model we went with Hyper-V on our new servers.

[psydii]

Push it up the chain to DfE Procurement / Cabinet Office. They are the only orgs of sufficient scale and power to get this sorted.

[Sephiroth]

Personally I think that Broadcom's policies have made VMWare a very hard sell and would recommend migrating away, especially with the current turbulence and sudden changes that are coming about.

 

We moved to a Hyper-V Hyperconverged cluster 5 years ago which was the best move we've made, going from 3 hosts, a controller, and a SAN to 2 cluster nodes. Windows Server Datacenter is already in our licence so made financial sense.

 

I would strongly recommend looking at Proxmox as an open source alternative though, especially if your Microsoft licencing isn't in your favour for Hyper-V.

 

Out of interest, what is your current physical infrastructure setup?

[DrCheese]

I moved us to Hyper-V last summer because of this. It's.. ok but I really really miss VMWare.

 

Just did Starwind V2V to a separate Hyper-V server, ran the network off that, reformatted the cluster & migrated back over.

In hindsight, I would now just use Veeam to do the full migration - I had it backing up the temp server anyway so could have just done the lot via that (It can convert Vmware to Hyper-V) - Can even be done with the 30 day trial.

 

Seeing VMWare be killed off in this way has to be one of the saddest things I've seen in my career.

[PotNoodleTech]

If your still using Vmware then you've been burying your head in the sand - get your credit cards out and get the credit limits increased as you're gonna be monumentally screwed over on contract renewal.

 

I dumped Vmware years ago as soon as they got rid the he large edu discounts and went comercialised - because we couldnt afford those price increases back then - but that is nothing compated to what Broadcom are gonna do to you guys.

 

It reminds me of when Oracle took over sun microsystems - 10x'd the support costs 10x's the licences and insisted on multi thousand pound site audits absoutly smashing existing customers in the wallet, driving their entire cutsomer base away and then destroying the company.  I literally read all the PR, got a quote from Oracle then told them to shove it  bought £10k of Dell Poweredge and threw all the Sun stuff in the WEEE skip. 

 

Very sad end to an amazing company.

 

I honestly think Brroadcom are going to kill vmware in exactly the same way.

 

 

Edited June 27, 2025 by PotNoodleTech

[loxford01]

As I understand it, we can keep using VMware under our perpetual license as long as we don't upgrade or patch it beyond the version our license covers. However, knowing Broadcom's tactics, they will go all the way in auditing current setups for those that stick with perpetual licensing just so they can extract that extra money from you. It's a greedy tactic. 

 

Our current setup is an ESXi cluster with 2 hosts, high availability, SAN storage, and 12-14 VMs. 

 

Proxmox is something that seems a good alternative or its HyperV, but it depends on our licensing for it. 

[mikes]

We too are using VMWare on our perpetual license, and yes as long as it isn't upgraded or patched you should be good to go.  We haven't had any threats and I wonder what legality they would even cover in the UK.  In the USA they can literally send suits into a customers business and demand to check machines for compliance. Somehow I don't think that would fly here.

When we do our next server refresh which hopefully will be soon, there's no way we are paying yet another company exorbitant subscription fees...    

[paulkerton]

On 27/06/2025 at 10:07, loxford01 said:

especially as many of us simply cannot afford the new licensing costs they’re proposing.

This is kinda the whole thing Broadcom do. They price customers that they don't want out anymore of the picture. They've done it before, and they'll do it again.