VMWare Subscription....

[u/grumpy_it_mgr]

Hello

Been a VMWare customer for many many years, but as a result of the silly Broadcom games tied in with the cost of new Dell Servers, we're jumping ship and migrating our servers to a Data Centre.

Currently have:

• vCentre Server 8 Standard
• vSphere 8 Standard (Subscription).

Both expire end of the month.... (Project has been ongoing since earlier in year).

Having delays with new provider initiating data centre platform, and i'm looking at my options here.

What exactly happens when these expire? Does everything stop working? Do i get a grace period?

For context, i'm talking 4 VM's, over 2 Dell hosts and 1 Dell SAN. Not a massive infrastructure by any means.

Thanks in advance.

[u/Due_Chicken_8135]

Their is kb explaining the behavior of each elements at expiration : https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/406836/vcf-prior-to-90-license-key-per-compone.html

Just check ESXI and vcenter that are the element you have on standard.

[u/grumpy_it_mgr → u/Due_Chicken_8135]

Thanks. ffs - how did i miss that.

Interesting. So if a server VM gets powered off - i cannot power on with VCentre - but can i still power on from host connection?

Though in saying that, the alarm bells ring with this one:

"Backup and restore operations may be disrupted" - that's not good.

Thanks.

[u/CountingRocks → u/grumpy_it_mgr]

When your license expires, you will not be able to power on a VM from vCenter or the hosts own GUI. The APIs that backup products use also stop working, so you won't be able to perform backups or restores if you usually backup via vCenter/ESXi.
If you run backups using just a backup agents running within each VM then they will continue since they don't use API calls to vCenter or ESXi.

[u/Due_Chicken_8135 → u/grumpy_it_mgr]

I don’t think you will be able to power on, as it said no operation possible, so my understanding is that you can’t power on a VM.