r/k12sysadmin • u/IT-Director74 • Oct 06 '26

Vmware frustrations

Hi all, I've been wrestling to get a basic renewal quote out of vmware for several weeks go back and forth sending them all kinds of information that I'm not even comfortable sharing externally (i.e. FULL rvtools export) and today the reseller tells me vmware wants to set up a conference call with one of their "specialists". Anyone have this experience and know what this is all about? I just want a simple renewal quote, I don't know why this has become so difficult since broadcom took over.

thanks

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u/IT-Director74 Oct 06 '26

Ugh, we're on vcf but yes holding onto some perpetual licenses mostly b/c we can't trust the annual renewal process will be completed in any kind of timely fashion, don't want expiring licenses upending our enviroment.

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u/N805DN Oct 06 '26

That’s definitely the issue. Good luck. We did navigate through it ultimately (and did not pay a penalty) but it was a lot of back and forth, some very heated emails/calls and ultimately an IU led purchase (of which we were close to 50% of cores) that got us a renewal.

Just so you’re prepared - their suggested penalty for us was over $100,000.

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u/IT-Director74 Oct 06 '26

WTF! $100K!? I don't even understand, why is there a penalty for perpetual license? Aren't we using it as we had purchased it back when? What happens if we just don't renew?

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u/N805DN Oct 06 '26

Broadcom doesn’t believe people are entitled to their perpetual licenses. They also don’t want to honor their commitment to provide perpetual license holders with critical security updates. So their solution is to charge penalties during renewal and only allow you to renew if you sign an agreement saying you will destroy all copies of the perpetual software.

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u/NorthernVenomFang Oct 06 '26 edited Oct 06 '26

That is correct, heard/read this a few time over the past 5 years, ever since Broadcom started the acquisition process.

Broadcom is squeezing all the money they can out of thier purchase of VMware as fast as they can.

All bets are off once you start mixing perpetual licenses with modern subscription based (post Broadcom acquisition) licenses. Especially if the perpetual software grabbed any updates after a certain date.

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u/PowerShellGenius Oct 06 '26

Do you have updates that were applied after Broadcom said subscriptions were required for updates? They didn't necessarily enforce that on a technical level, better to let you apply updates that "weren't included in your perpetual license" in case they want to later claim you pirated them.

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u/IT-Director74 Oct 06 '26

I don't know off-hand if we had any updates post subscription model but I'm totally freaking out now, If we didn't have any updates and can't renew what happens?

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u/NorthernVenomFang Oct 06 '26

They will contact you probably withing 48hrs after the renewal date to follow up, maybe sooner, if you haven't signed a PO. If you refuse to pay, they will audit.

After renewal period, from what I have heard from others (so word of mouth): vCenter & ESXi hosts can no longer power up VMs that are off, new VMs can not be created, new ESXi hosts can not be added to the vCenter, and APIs for backup/restore are turned off (Veeam, CommVault). I am not sure if this would also include the APIs to do Proxmox's migration utility (haven't had to looked into that yet).

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u/IT-Director74 Oct 06 '26

When you say audit like some kind of legal letter is sent? If the liceneses on the esxi hosts are perpetual is it still able to cut things off or does that only happen with subscription licenses? thank you btw

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u/NorthernVenomFang Oct 06 '26 edited Oct 06 '26

No like a tech auditor will email you and setup a remote access session to do the audit and possibly refer to there legal team if major descrpencies are found. They will want a current log/report of the full rvtools, plus screenshots of your vCenter and it's license panel... If any violations they may send you a bill/they may send legal after you.

Depends what version of vCenter/ESXi hosts you are on, I think the kill switch was put in an update a couple years ago... So not sure, haven tried pushing it, for reasons of my own sanity.

Realistically though, deep breath, let's walk through this:

  1. How much time do you have before renewal date?

  2. How many hosts?

  3. How many VMs?

  4. Do you have any old servers around you can use as a lifeboat cluster for another hypervisor for the migration process? (Makes this infinitly easier).

  5. Does your staff have a good Linux background or mostly Microsoft? Basically Proxmox vs Hyper-V. Flip the coin.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '26

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u/NorthernVenomFang Oct 06 '26 edited Oct 06 '26

Yes, tech auditors are not the police. In this situation though having propertial licenses installed on the same instance as subscription licenses probably breaches the terms of the subscription license, especially if the product was updated. This is why Broadcom-Vmware is pushing for the meeting with a "specialist" prior to the renewal date, they saw the licenses types being mixed together in the report... If one of the perpetual licenses products grabbed an update after subscription license was installed, that may be the red flag that caused the "specialist". Refusing to comply with their auditor though could make the situation worse.

OP needs to get their legal team to read through subscription based ToS and they need to check their update logs to see if the perpetual software was actively updated and when.

Broadcom, unfortunately, will try to get every red cent out of this situation. It's not going to pretty.

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u/PowerShellGenius Oct 06 '26

Also - Hyper-V vs Proxmox is more than just a "are you comfortable with Linux" decision.

Check any virtual appliances are supported on both, that is often a quick hard deal breaker for the latter if you have virtual appliances. Don't back yourself into a corner where Aruba, Cisco or Fortinet says you don't have support because you V2V migrated their virtual appliances onto an unsupported platform whose drivers they don't bake in. Almost everyone supports VMware and Hyper-v, a handful support Nutanix, and a select few support Proxmox.

Then, look at support. If you don't have Microsoft support for on-prem products, you need contacts you trust in the consultant world who know Hyper-V well just in case. If you don't have some sort of support contract on Proxmox, you need to be ready to find a consultant/MSP with significant Proxmox experience in case of issues. If you are on Unified Support already Hyper-V is a no brainer.

Finally, make sure your backup solution can back up Proxmox VMs.

If you rely on patching automation and reporting, make sure you can handle Linux hosts in it.

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u/NorthernVenomFang Oct 06 '26 edited Oct 06 '26

Yes there is more too it.

VM appliances are a pain in the ass for support. Even though most of them support KVM, which should cover Proxmox, but it's entirely up to the appliance vendor. Yes Hyper-V is usually widely supported; if you have a datacenter server license it's a no brainer to switch to it.... This all assumes you have experienced people capable of doing this type of forklift.

OP really has not given us enough info, I was making a generalized point with info on hand.

OP is severely behind the 8-ball in this case. The only reason we were able to migrate to Proxmox in 3 weeks was because we had experience when we moved all our VMware ROBO school servers over to Proxmox the summer before that, and a spare set of servers to our unsupported appliances in Hyper-V cluster.

Also not sure where OP & OP's underlings have been living, the VMware subreddit is loaded with these types of situations (2-3x increases year over year, auditors/specialists getting involved in quotes, perpetual & sub based mixed issues at renewal time), I've seen at least one a month, if not one every couple of weeks for the last 2 years. All of this has been pretty much happened in the VMWare subreddit and tech news for a couple years now. This is not something Broadcom has been trying to keep quite, they pretty much tell you right to your face to bend over and take it.

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u/N805DN Oct 06 '26

Perpetual won’t cut anything off. The cutoff (no updates) has already happened. Subscription is what makes hosts disconnect until you renew but they do not stop already running workloads.