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What are the options when migrating from VMware?
Broadcom’s changes to VMware licensing means some people are facing big price increases – we look at how these can be avoided
It has been widely reported that Broadcom has set its sights on VMware’s 1,500 most profitable customers. In organisations that spend less, negotiating new contracts may be difficult and costly, given that the new pricing bundles for VMware include products some IT departments may never use.
This has been combined with a switch to a subscription-based licensing model, which is reportedly as much as 300% more expensive than the on-premise licence customers have been accustomed to paying prior to the Broadcom acquisition.
Microsoft is among a number of companies that has begun offering VMware migration. During the company’s recent earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella spoke about the opportunity, saying: “With our Azure VMware Solution, we offer the fastest and most cost-effective way for customers to migrate their VMware workloads.”
AWS has a VMware Migration Accelerator (VMA) offer, running until December 2024, which it said provides customers credits when migrating VMware Cloud on AWS workloads to Amazon EC2.
Red Hat offers KubeVirt, which enables VMware virtual machines to be migrated into a Kubernetes container on its Openshift platform, which it positions a stepping stone to migrate from virtual machines to a microservices architecture.
The Linux virt-v2v tool can be used to convert virtual machines (VMs) to Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) format that is available on Linux distributions including Red Hat Linux, SuSE and the Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager.
Nutanix offers the Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) as part of its hyperconverged infrastructure. It too has an offer, which is open to new Nutanix customers, providing free Nutanix licensing for organisations that commit to spend $100,000 a year and agree to be customer references. Prior to the Broadcom acquisition, most of its customers ran VMware, but the company has now positioned AHV as an alternative, which existing customers already own.
One of its existing customers is Mid Cheshire NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust. Discussing the reason to switch hypervisors, Matt Palmer, deputy CIO at Mid Cheshire NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust, said: “Traditionally, we’ve been a VMware estate for hypervisors, but due to costs we’re moving across to AHV because it’s efficient and a cost saving for us.”
Third-party support
Organisations assessing whether to migrate away from VMware need to consider how they maintain their existing VMware footprint as they move workloads into the new environments.
They may choose only to put new workloads on the hypervisor they are switching to and continue using VMware for existing workloads. If they are set on migrating, they will need to consider paying for support during the migration.
Some may take the hit with the VMware price hike to purchase a support contract while they migrate, while others are considering new third-party support offerings.
But there is also the option of using a third-party support provider, which enables organisations to continue receiving support while they carry on using the version of VMware they have deployed.
Spinnaker Support is one such third-party support company, which has used the Broadcom changes to provide an alternative support service for disillusioned VMware customers. The new service provides security support and access to VMware expertise.
Discussing the changes, Martin Biggs, vice-president and general manager EMEA at Spinnaker Support, said: “Responding to market demand, we’re very pleased to be launching our VMware support offering. Comprehensive support and maintenance is a cornerstone of enterprise IT.
“Unfortunately, when vendors get caught up in visions of lucrative price restructuring and strategic enhancements, product support for what clients are using today is often relegated to an afterthought. This jeopardises security, compliance and alignment with digital transformation objectives.”
Swapping VMware for AHV
Mid Cheshire NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust has been a Nutanix customer since 2017, running on Dell servers. Virtualising the environment was a challenge, according to Palmer, as the majority of software providers the hospital used only supported physical hardware. Taking a risk-based approach, he said Mid Cheshire NHS Foundation Trust was able to run 70% of the applications on VMware.
When he started hearing of the 300% increase in VMware licence fees and a deadline of July 31st to renegotiate a support contract, Palmer initially worked with the hospital’s VMware reseller to arrange a call with Broadcom.
But as Palmer recalls: “It was a really badly timed call with Broadcom because it was the day after they made half their UK workforce redundant, and the guy who was on the call was working out a 30-day notice.”
Palmer said the hospital had three choices: accept the price hike; wait for Broadcom and the NHS to negotiate a regional agreement; or migrate to another hypervisor. With no schedule as to when a regional deal would be available, the hospital would have needed to pay the increased VMware costs for a year and hope Broadcom would deliver more cost-effective licensing for the health service. Following a discussion with a Nutanix reseller, the hospital decided to migrate from VMware onto Acropolis.
Biggs said he has been meeting a number of Spinnaker Support customers over the past few months to understand what VMware support means to them. The company has also been recruiting VMware skills.
“Our chief customer officer was responsible for VMware’s strategy and operations of its professional services division for five years before joining us, so he’s incredibly well connected,” he said. “We’ve also been working with a lot of VMware executives and engineers who’ve all recently left [VMware].”
Like other organisations offering third-party support, Spinnaker does not have access to the VMware code. According to Biggs, speaking to the people who used to work in VMware’s support organisation, he learnt that they did not have access to the code either. “They had to work on the problems themselves in very much the same way that we do,” he added.
Biggs said that although Broadcom issues security patches for high-risk vulnerabilities in VMware to everyone, only those customers with a Broadcom support contract or subscription receive all security patches. Without access to the latest patches, irrespective of the severity level of vulnerability, organisations in regulated sectors could fail security audits, Biggs warned.
In effect, Spinnaker puts in place IT security that prevents unauthorised access to virtual machines. “We’ve had to evolve the way that we approach security,” he said. “We are very clear that we can support the core VMware products without code changes, but also there are some products, like VMware NSX, which we cannot support.”
Third-party support company Rimini Street also offers support for VMware. The service is designed to allow perpetually licensed VMware customers to continue running their current systems for years into the future. According to Rimini Street, the standard pricing for Rimini Street Support for VMware products is similar to the current support fees each perpetual licensee is paying VMware.
Seth Ravin, CEO Rimini Street, said: “Many organisations are perpetually licensed to use VMware products and are now facing significant annual fee increases demanded by VMware. These organisations are now looking for an alternative, comprehensive annual support program that can enable them to continue implementing, changing and running their perpetually licensed VMware software infrastructure smoothly and reliably for years into the future.”
While IT leaders may decide sticking with Broadcom is right for their organisations, the new support services and customer discounts now available show that there are alternatives, and the companies offering rival hypervisors or third-party support are ready to take away business from Broadcom.
Read more stories about Broadcom/VMware
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- It may take several years to move off VMware. In the meantime, Nutanix and Rimini Street have ramped up efforts to target unhappy customers.
