Krish Prasad, VMware Cloud Foundation division General Manager, published this blog a few hours ago: https://news.vmware.com/company/vmware-by-broadcom-business-transformation
He announced a massive simplification of the VCF division’s product portfolio, which should help customers get more value for their investment in VMware solutions. To summarize Krish’s announcement:
- There are going to be two primary standardized offers only from now on: vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
- End of sale of perpetual licenses and Support and Subscription (SnS) renewals
- Bring-your-own-subscription license (BYOL) option, which provides portability to VMware-validated hybrid clouds running VMware Cloud Foundation
Disclaimer: This blog should provide customers and partners with a summary and some additional information from Krish’s announcement. There is also a chance that some of my understanding is incomplete or wrong. This article reflects my personal opinion and understanding, not Broadcom’s.
I will update the blog over the next few days and weeks.
vSphere Editions
The primary vSphere edition moving forward is called “vSphere Foundation”:
The new VMware vSphere Foundation delivers a more simplified enterprise-grade workload platform for our mid-sized to smaller customers. This solution integrates vSphere with our intelligent operations management to provide the best performance, availability, and efficiency with greater visibility and insights.
In other words, from now on vSphere customers get Aria Operations Advanced (formerly known as vRealize Operations) and Aria Operations for Logs (formerly known as vRealize Log Insight) together with vSphere (which has vCenter and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid included).
vSphere Essentials Plus Kit
Components:
- vSphere Essentials Plus
- vCenter Essentials
- Per 96-core Kit (3 host max. / 6 CPU limit / 192-core limit; a host can have either 1x 64 cores or 2x 32 cores max.)
- Includes Production Support
vSphere Standard
Components:
- vSphere Standard
- vCenter Standard
- Includes Production Support
vSphere Foundation (VVF)
Components:
- vSphere Enterprise Plus
- vCenter Standard
- Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG)
- vSAN Enterprise 100 GiB free (see FAQ below)
- Aria Suite Term Standard
- Includes Aria Operations Advanced and Aria Operations for Logs
- Includes Production Support
- Plus Available Add-ons
Add-on Offerings
VMware vSAN Enterprise (add-on for VCF and vSphere Foundation only)
VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery / Ransomware Recovery  (add-on for VCF and vSphere Foundation only)
Site Recovery Manager Enterprise
VMware Advanced Load Balancer (aka Avi)
VMware Firewall (add-on for VCF only), aka NSX Distributed Firewall
VMware Firewall with Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (add-on for VCF only)
Tanzu Intelligence (details not clear yet)
Tanzu Mission Control (SaaS and self-managed)
Tanzu Application Platform / Spring Runtime (details not clear yet)
More add-ons coming in future (for example Private AI Foundation)
VMware Cloud Customer Journey
Existing VCF or future vSphere Foundation customers would go for the new VMware Cloud Foundation now, which can now be considered a true full-stack private and hybrid cloud stack:
VMware Cloud Foundation, our flagship enterprise-class hybrid cloud solution for customers to run their business critical and modern applications – in a secure, resilient and cost efficient manner. To allow more customers to benefit from this solution, we’ve reduced the previous subscription list price by half and added higher support service levels including enhanced support for activating the solution and lifecycle management.
Very important in case you missed that from the vSphere Foundation section above: Moving forward, VMware Cloud Foundation only includes NSX for network virtualization (overlay), with no more micro-segmentation or distributed firewalling (DFW) capabilities.
In other words, customers who need NSX’s DFW (VMware Firewall add-on) capabilities, need a VCF subscription first, which includes NSX.
Note: Currently, all new licensing bundles are coming in a “disconnected” fashion (no VMware Cloud connectivity)
While Krish mentioned BYOL and license portability in the future, there seem to be no immediate changes about the VMware Cloud and other hyperscaler offerings.
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
Components:
- vSphere Enterprise Plus
- Includes TKG and vCenter Standard
- vSAN Enterprise per TiB per X amount of cores
- Aria Suite Enterprise
- Aria Operations Enterprise (includes Aria Operations for Logs)
- Aria Automation
- NSX Networking for VCF
- HCX Enterprise
- Aria Operations for Networks Enterprise (formerly known as vRealize Network Insight)
- SDDC Manager
- Includes Select Support
- Includes SRE (customers must deploy SDDC Manager to be entitled to SRE)
- Add-ons: See above
Note: Going forward, standalone offerings are being EOA-ed (end of availability) – no more VCF components “a la carte”
VMware Cloud on X
We can expect that long-term these VMC or hyperscaler subscription offerings will converge to VCF.
Final Comments
Look, I do not have all the answers and information yet, because it is a lot to unpack. That is all I can share with you right now. Be patient. 🙂
But, this announcement from Broadcom (Krish) was an unexpected surprise since almost everyone was expecting price increases after the acquisition. Instead, Broadcom is cutting the subscription pricing in half!
An update of the above content can be found here: VMware vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation Overview
Additional Resources
- Desktop Hypervisor Products (VMware Workstation and Fusion) are going to stay
- NSX Feature Entitlement (NSX Networking for VCF, VMware Firewall, VMware Firewall with ATP)
- VMware End of Availability of perpetual licensing and associated products (96168)
Unofficial Licensing FAQ
- Q: What if I am a vSphere Essentials customer?
- A: I would recommend the vSphere Essentials Plus Kit
- Q: What if I only need vSphere Enterprise Plus?
- A: Your best option is vSphere Foundation. There are no more standalone products.
- Q: Do I need VCF if I want NSX distributed firewall?
- A: Yes, at the moment this seems to be the case that the “VMware Firewall” (distributed firewall aka micro-segmentation) add-on cannot be subscribed as a vSphere Foundation customer. The same is true of other features like security or gateway firewall.
- Q: What if have/need vSphere for Desktop?
- A: The recommended solution is vSphere Foundation
- Q: What if I am a vCloud Suite customer?
- A: VMware Cloud Foundation makes sense for vCloud Suite Enterprise and Advanced editions. If you have vCloud Suite Standard I recommend vSphere Foundation going forward.
- Q: How many vCenters are included?
- A: To my knowledge, it is one vCenter per core. So, one could say that this means “unlimited”.
- Q: What happens to the Avi (NSX ALB) Basic edition?
- A: It seems there will be no Avi Basic anymore. Customers need to go for the add-on.
- Q: Do customers from now on need to deploy SDDC Manager as part of VMware Cloud Foundation?
- A: No, they do not. But to be entitled to SRE, you need to deploy the full stack.
- Q: How is Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Enterprise licensed?
- A: Per protected 25-VMs
- Q: What about the True Visibility Suite (TVS)?
- A: These management packs will be enabled as part of the Aria Suites which are included in vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation.
- Q: What about (vSAN) ROBO licenses?
- A: ROBO licenses are EOA as well, but all vSphere Foundation customers will receive vSAN Enterprise 100 GiB (for free) for every core purchased.
- Q: What is included in the Tanzu Intelligence add-on?
- A: Tanzu Guardrails (Advanced or Enterprise), Aria Operations for Apps (formerly known as Tanzu Observability (aka Wavefront)), Tanzu Application Catalog, Tanzu CloudHealth Enterprise, Tanzu Insights
- Q: What happened to SaltStack Cionfig and SecOps?
- A: Both are part of the Tanzu Guardrails Enterprise add-on
- Q: Can customers mix perpetual and new offerings?
- A: In general yes.
- Q: Can you tell me more about the vSAN free tier included with vSphere Foundation?
- A: It seems you are going to be entitled to a maximum of 100GiB per core in the vSAN storage cluster. Example: 4 hosts with 32 cores each * 100GiB = 12.8TiB (without paying for any vSAN add-on!).
- Important: This feature will be available in one of the upcoming releases. Hopefully in vSphere 8.0U3 🙂
- A: It seems you are going to be entitled to a maximum of 100GiB per core in the vSAN storage cluster. Example: 4 hosts with 32 cores each * 100GiB = 12.8TiB (without paying for any vSAN add-on!).
so for automation vcf is mandatory now ?
I would rephrase it, and I consider everything as “version 1” for now. It seems, for now, that you’ll get Aria Automation as part of VCF only, yes.
Great information. You mentioned vSAN for ROBO licensing going away. Any word on ROBO ESXi licensing? We have 20+ ROBO hosts with only 1-2 VMs each, and that will hurt to move to per-core licensing for those.
Hi Ash! There is nothing official yet that I can share. Please discuss this topic with your VMware rep or partner.
Hi Michael, great breakdown here. Do you have any suggestions on how to get a vSphere license? I don’t have a rep and it seems like there is no response from VMware website or contact form due to all of the layoffs and changes in the sales department. Would appreciate some pointers on how to get started. Thanks!
Hi Sundeep, I would recommend getting in touch with one of the local VMware partners in your country
Is it true that the new, subscription based, VMware Essentials Plus will require each socket to have a MINIMUM of 16 cores?
Hi Randy
Yes, each socket has the minimum requirement of 16 cores per CPU; 3 hosts maximum and if I am not mistaken a 192-core maximum for these 3 hosts
Hi Michael, I appreciated the breakdown here as well, very helpful!
Question: If I currently have 3 Hosts with vSphere Enterprise Plus and 3 running vSphere Standard, do I have to purchase vSphere Foundation for all 6 hosts or can I buy Foundation for the 3 Hosts and Standard for the other 3?
Hi Chip!
Since there is no more vSphere Enterprise Plus standalone or vSphere Standard, you would need to buy vSphere Foundation for all 6 hosts, I guess. Except, if they are separate environments resp. clusters, you can still buy vSphere Foundation for 3 hosts, and still have the existing licenses assigned to the other 3 hosts. You can mix existing perpetual and new subscriptions licenses since the licenses are assigned on a host level.
Hi Michael,
Question… We currently have licenses for 8 CPUs in vSphere Standard. We also have a standard vCenter server license to go along with it. They are perpetual licenses and support is slated to end sometime in June this year. What is the best way forward with the new licensing? Also, once the support ends we will still be able to use the licenses with no support and upgrades, right?
Hi Luke! Yes, software products with perpetual licenses are “yours” and you can keep using this software for as long as you want – even without support and maintenance (upgrades, patches), that is correct. The best way to move forward with vSphere Std and vCenter Server would be “vSphere Standard” (subscription) in my opinion. But it always depends on the customer’s size and other licenses for example. Sometimes the obvious choice is also not the cheapest or best choice. 🙂 Talk to your VMware account manager or partner. Hope that helps.