Vmware is over soon for schools

[browolf]

Broadcom have ditched the small resellers and we have to renew with a larger UK supplier. The cost of Vsphere standard has gone up to ~ £60 per core minimum 96 which we are renewing this month. After October they will only offer Cloud Foundation licenses which costs around £125 per core.  No one is going to agree to that. Our service partner that supports Vmware in schools is already developing a migration to Hyper-V solution. 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 9 by browolf

[3s-gtech]

The warning signs have been there for a few years now - most have got out. Shame that they took a great product and nerfed it, but isn't that the trend?

 

You also have Proxmox as an option, but I haven't used it as we started using Hyper-V back in 2012 or so and it does the job (at reasonable cost).

[synaesthesia]

Yup, this has been on the cards and surprised anyone is still left on it, it's been nearly 3 years I think which should have been enough time for most people to jump to something else. HyperV is the easiest bet although might not be the best.

[BOOT]

Until you do updates and your HyperV host will only boot in safe mode 😕

Anyone using XCP-NG?

[altecsole]

1 hour ago, browolf said:

Broadcom have ditched the small resellers and we have to renew with a larger UK supplier. The cost of Vsphere standard has gone up to ~ £60 per core minimum 96 which we are renewing this month. After October they will only offer Cloud Foundation licenses which costs around £125 per core.  No one is going to agree to that. Our service partner that supports Vmware in schools is already developing a migration to Hyper-V solution. 

That is concerning, although Broadcom appears to have changed direction very recently.

 

At VMware Explore last week, Broadcom acknowledged that it had placed too much emphasis on pushing customers towards VMware Cloud Foundation and said that the sales incentives responsible had now been corrected. It also confirmed that an updated version of vSphere Standard is being developed, with more information expected at VMware Explore Frankfurt in October:

 

https://www.theregister.com/2026/09/02/vmware_swings_its_focus_back_to_lowend_server_virt_promises_vsphere_standard_upgrade/

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/09/trust-not-features-is-the-real-deficit-vmware-tries-to-appease-smbs/

 

That seems to conflict with the information that VCF will be the only option after October. It may be that the reseller was working from Broadcom’s previous position, or that the existing vSphere Standard 8 SKU will be withdrawn and replaced by the newly announced Standard product.