comador , (edited )
@comador@lemmy.world avatar

I manage 30 Esxi hosts with around 800 VMs currently on vSphere Enterprise licensing. Our company is preparing for the worst case by employing a 3yr plan involving:

  • Upgrading all perpetual lics still under contract to vsphere 8

(So we can run on unsupported vsphere 8 for up to 3yrs. if needed or until a resolution is found)

  • Assigning members from QC, Cyber security and Systems as an exploratory solutions planning group who report to the CIO and CTO.

(So we can explore different hybrid solutions, assign them for evaluation and give feedback based on those findings annually)

  • Hiring a Reseller partner of ours to do an audit plus an impact analysis in moving our environment from VMware to one of the exploratory solutions planning group recommendations.

(My company fancies getting ‘non-biased’ opinions from external sources, so we tolerate it)

  • Building active-active, multi -master, active-passive and active-failover hybrid solutions including those with SaaS vendors for our highest value systems.

(While expensive to do, this option gives us a clear nuclear level fuck you to VMware should pricing become too outrageous and we decide to pull out of renewal)

In the end, we will probably give VMware a 3yr probation period, regardless of cost and have a clear migratory path before that time should we decide that VMware’s TCO is no longer viable.

Mautobu OP ,

Definitely the best thought out plan I’ve seen yet. Solid.

nickwitha_k ,

I’ve kept away from VMWare most of my career. I’d personally push for something KVM/QEMU based, if possible, whether it be Proxmox, LXD, or a RHEL offering. If you are in a fully MS shop, probably Hyper-V.

Mautobu OP ,

I use KVM personally and have experience with hyperv too. I’m not really averse to anything.

TORFdot0 ,

When Broadcom acquired Symantec our pricing and customer service for SEPM went to shit. I’d be looking to switch if I was on VMWare. If it’s a small deployment, probably to native hyper-V and windows. Larger deployment, I’d be looking to change careers

Mautobu OP ,

Like 30 servers and 150ish VMs. Not a huge deployment.

WASTECH ,
@WASTECH@lemmy.world avatar

We are an enterprise manufacturing company. We have lots of hosts on process networks not connected to the internet. Seems like the subscription license won’t be compatible, so we plan to seriously look at Proxmox for those in the coming years as we replace hosts.

For our datacenter, we decided to move everything to Azure. This decision was in the works before the license change, but the acquisition by Broadcom and their track record certainly played a part in the conversation.

For our site hosts, we are looking into Azure HCI or possibly Hyper-V, especially since these sites don’t have many VM’s and don’t need features offered by VMware.

If you’re an Azure expert and are looking for a new job, send me a message. We’re hiring.

Mautobu OP ,

I have experience with Azure IaaS, but am certainly no expert. Managed like 5 VMs max. Great with PowerShell. Wrote a script for all of our on prem servers backed up to blob storage to recover to Azure in case of natural disaster. Fun project.

Urist ,

I work for Disney and we're in the process of migrating all VMware boxes in our 3 data centers over to azure. We decided not to renew our contract with them. Guess it wasn't just us?

Mautobu OP ,

Nope, certainly seems to be a broad issue. Surprised that Disney would switch. I suppose the savings is there though.

comador ,
@comador@lemmy.world avatar

Have your group ask microsoft what the charges for Azure will be for your year 3 year 4 and year 5 commitments.

100% sure the Azure rep will gag on whatever they have in their mouths at that moment and start deflecting. If MS can fuck the US Government in a 10yr Azure contract, odds are pretty high they’ll do the same to Disney.

Source: Our company bought into O365+Azure+ADFS at a good rate for 3yrs, then got burned by MS once the honeymoon was over. They’re not going to make it fun for you all once your contract ends.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble ,

Unfortunately the boss man decided to stick with VMware instead of migrating to proxmox. Sadly there’s no good migration solutions for proxmox unless you’re ok with a lot of down time.

Maybe if they can make a live convert tool I can convince him to make the switch. But until we can get past the hurdle of converting everything painfully we’re stuck.

wintermute_oregon ,

I work in sales. I don’t sell anything related to VMware directly but customers bring it up. They are looking at other alternatives. Not sure what changed In the last two weeks but there has been an uptick in my customers talking about it. It’s early stage, so they haven’t decided on the path but they’ve decided they need to leave.

Mautobu OP ,

Broadcom acquired VMware and has a reputation for making good value products into poor value product in the industry. They seem to be doing just that.

wintermute_oregon ,

That was months ago. Two weeks ago all my customers seemed to come to the conclusion, it’s time to leave.

I would have planned to leave as soon as I heard the announcement. Broadcom just raises prices, cuts support unless you’re their target customers.

Mautobu OP ,

I think the penny dropped when layoffs were announced and channel partners were cut off.

elvith ,

They canceled the ability to sell new licenses for all partners. For licenses ordered in time but not delivered before this it’s unknown whether you’ll get them. Their license activation portal went offline, so when you bought a license and got it, you couldn’t activate your software. Also they basically “fired” all of their partners and told them that they’re not eligible to offer VMWare hosting anymore unless they’re joining the new partner program and are accepted there. But it is unknown when the new partner program starts and what you hoops you have to jump through to get accepted.

So… they basically fucked most of their direct and indirect customers and didn’t provide a way forward while doing so. No wonder everyone mistrusts them now and is looking for an alternative

wintermute_oregon ,

They canceled the ability to sell new licenses for all partners.

Ah that must be the new nail in the coffin.

elvith ,

From what I gathered from news articles it looks like they want more control over how and where you host and will be moving everything to subscription based licenses. So it somewhat makes sense to stop handing out the current licenses and offer new ones. Problem is that it doesn’t seem to be clear which licenses you can get, which conditions apply to those, where and when you can get them,…

I think it would have been mostly fine if they had allowed for more ti.e to transition and had everything in place for the future. Then add some communication and there might have been a shitstorm, but not the mess that happened now…

wintermute_oregon ,

will be moving everything to subscription based licenses.

That is how the industry is moving. Everything I sell is a subscription model. If it’s SAAS, it makes sense. For on premise, not always but I get why companies are pushing it.

When it was announced, not many customers were talking about it. All of a sudden, about 2-3 weeks ago, customers started moving meets because getting off VMware became a priority. Something freaked them out.

When Broadcom bought symatec it took a year for people to start freaking out. That is when they got their first new bill and I saw bills tripple.

elvith ,

I don’t mind it with SaaS. Also for enterprise software, you used to pay for the license and then a support package, which basically is a subscription, on top. So there’s nothing changing per se.

Problem for partners is, that they don’t know whether they’ll stay partners and whether they’ll be accepted in the new program. If not, they cannot provide their SaaS solution to their customers.

Imagine your company gets a letter from its MSP that basically reads: “Hey, VMWare doesn’t give us information about our way forward, we may be unable to continue to provide you with VMs. This happens to all partners, so no need to ask other MSPs, as those will tell you the same. We currently don’t know how to proceed, but in three months all VMs that you have hosted with us might be toast and the only people who can tell you what to do are at broadcom and don’t give out any information”

satanmat ,

Not sure what or how it will affect us.

We’re a mid sized org we may stick unless it gets to crazy

It is kinda amazing that I’m assuming they did the math ; that so many smaller orgs just don’t matter

Mautobu OP ,

I’m kind of in the same boat. Mid sized with enough cash to deal with the new status quo.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I’m not affected by the change but I heard Proxmox and Xen brought up frequently as alternatives.

Of course there are always cloud providers but that’s not really a good option for many.

Mautobu OP ,

I feel like Broadcom is aiming for cloud-like pricing for on prem services with none of the other benefits inherent to an Azure or AWS deployment. Not exactly the way to hold onto clients.

I’m familiar with proxmox and the broader KVM ecosystem. I’m also a huge fan of Veeam, who have said they’re exploring support for proxmox. Shouldn’t be too difficult to implement, given they have a RHEL backup product already.

Exciting stuff.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I think Broadcom intends to dig VMware out of dept to turn it into a profitable company. This means killing off the smaller customers as 90% of the business comes from enterprises that will never switch to anything else no matter the cost.

Mautobu OP ,

This is probably where my shop will end up. Sticking with it and dealing with the higher price.

knobbysideup ,
@knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works avatar

Instead of veam there’s also www.proxmox.com/en/…/overview

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

PBS is an excellent backup solution. I wouldn’t let the lack of Veeam support on Proxmox hold you back.

Mautobu OP ,

It’s really difficult to move away from a backup software you just switched to and paid > 100k to license for the next 3 years from a leadership standpoint haha. PBS, zfs snapshots and send, Ceph duplication. It all does more or less the same thing.

Nollij ,

Proxmox is missing a lot of enterprise features. If you run a virtualized data center, it’s really not going to cut it. OTOH, if you are a small operation with just a handful of virtual servers, it might be “good enough”.

The obvious alternative was Hyper-V, but it looks like MS is already killing it to force people into Azure.

When you look at enterprise-level hypervisors, there really aren’t a lot of options.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

What enterprise features is it missing? The only problem I see is the limited support plans.

You999 ,

The two big ones I see is no official vGPU support (you can get it to work unofficially but it’s not prod ready) and the clustering scheduler is still in active development while still missing several features that vSphere’s scheduler offers.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Ah, my experience with Proxmox comes from my homelab. I use virtio to pass though things like a USB controller, sata controller and my GPU.

I’ve never really used the scheduler and and I only have one GPU.

GrundlButter ,

I’ll tack on just a bit from here, and maybe someone can correct me if I am wrong.

  • VMware’s HCI clustering is far better than proxmox + ceph/other.
  • VMware’s NSX network virtualization enables their fancy HCX site orchestration.
  • Even without NSX/HCX, Site Recovery Manager makes for a slick redundancy/fail over option.
  • VMware’s EUC option, Horizon, beats the absolute pants off of Citrix. And that was Citrix’s whole game.
  • The vGPU option first lived in EUC, but turns out scalable GPU sharing is just plain useful.
  • And then there is the orchestration management, allowing for power savings, automatic balancing, and more.

Basically, every high level solution they had on their platform was without a true parallel, and was built on a rock solid foundation. Even if their support is shit(it is), the platform is so ubiquitous and approachable that you could just use their support as an insurance of sorts, and it gave upgrade rights through the years.

Broadcom knows who uses those high level features, and knows they’re stuck. Our options are a full cloud migration, loss of features, or pay up. They’ll disregard every customer small enough to not need any of that, and they will milk every customer that’s too big to go anywhere else.

If you’re one of the small folks, I’d say look into proxmox, openstack, xcp-ng, or have a path to cloud in mind. If you’re one of the big folks, I recommend Balvenie, Macallan, or Johnnie Walker, cause you might as well enjoy a good drink if you’re gonna get fucked.

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