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VMware Kills Off 56 Products

thestack.technology

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Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#61
post #10

I wonder how this will cut into the hobbiest/learn-at-home crowd with our half width, 1U free-tier-license ESXi servers we learn our skills for our day jobs on.

I'm already not going to renew my VMUG membership, and am planning to switch my VSphere cluster over to Proxmox.

[dead]

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#62

@Dang the current title, and maybe article linked, is going to cause a titanic misunderstanding in what's happening. The 1st party link has a much clearer title "VMware End of Availability of perpetual licensing and associated products" https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/96168?lang=en_US&ref=thestac... E.g. it's not that NSX as a whole is discontinued it's that NSX perpetual licensing is discontinued and you must buy th…

I don't pretend to know the true actual reality of what's going on here, but an article about the end of non-subscription licensing from December of last year is linked in the original article. The current article is about the KB article you linked that lists 53 products which it says are, as of today, no longer available under any license and have been entirely discontinued. Again, not claiming that's what's really…

Yeah, this is a really unclear announcement.

It sounds like they are saying the products are entirely discontinued, including subscriptions, but then they say: "In the future, at the time of renewal, customers will be offered the best subscription products to fit their needs."

What does that even mean?

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#63
Proxmox [1] will see a boost in popularity, good. I'm using the free version in combination with the backup server on both small (several RasPi 4's spread over several countres running the 'PiMox' [2] port) as well as medium (DL380) sized systems and find it to be a stable as well as practical platform.

[1] https://proxmox.com/en/

[2] https://github.com/pimox/pimox7

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder who vSphere users can even go to

Proxmox? (I appreciate that this is a significant change)

I see Proxmox like an alterative to ESXi rather than vSphere. I'll either go xcp-ng with Xen Orchestra or Nutanix as an alternative to vSphere.

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#65

@Dang the current title, and maybe article linked, is going to cause a titanic misunderstanding in what's happening. The 1st party link has a much clearer title "VMware End of Availability of perpetual licensing and associated products" https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/96168?lang=en_US&ref=thestac... E.g. it's not that NSX as a whole is discontinued it's that NSX perpetual licensing is discontinued and you must buy th…

I don't pretend to know the true actual reality of what's going on here, but an article about the end of non-subscription licensing from December of last year is linked in the original article. The current article is about the KB article you linked that lists 53 products which it says are, as of today, no longer available under any license and have been entirely discontinued. Again, not claiming that's what's really…

Good point to highlight that it's really subscription bundles rather than maybe the individual subscriptions some had switched to before.

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#66
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee vSAN and NSX are not canceled; they're critical components of the VMware stack.

Here's the actual article from VMWare: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/96168?lang=en_US It sounds pretty unambiguous; they go out of their way to note that these products are no longer available by any means and are discontinued, and they list both vSAN and NSX. But, yeah, just because a company says something doesn't mean it's true, I guess - wouldn't put it past them to say "oh, all these products have been replace…

When they say "products" they mean the specific licenses available to purchase. The original announcement linked on that page has all the details:

> For customers seeking an HCI solution, we offer VMware vSAN as an add-on to vSphere Foundation, which includes all the capabilities of vSAN including vSAN Max.

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#67

I wonder how this will cut into the hobbiest/learn-at-home crowd with our half width, 1U free-tier-license ESXi servers we learn our skills for our day jobs on.

I think people underestimate the long term impact of this kind of thing. Giving the people who use and maybe more importantly influence the purchasing of expensive commercial products the ability to easily play with them on their own is essentially free advertising. And taking that away after you've offered it is even worse since now those same people not only can't experience your product firsthand as easily, but they now actively dislike your company for screwing up their home lab.

Maybe the bet here is that VMWare is so entrenched or the time horizon of the people making the decisions is so short that it won't matter to them personally. But I bet long term it has significant impact and makes room for competitors with more foresight.

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't pretend to know the true actual reality of what's going on here, but an article about the end of non-subscription licensing from December of last year is linked in the original article. The current article is about the KB article you linked that lists 53 products which it says are, as of today, no longer available under any license and have been entirely discontinued. Again, not claiming that's what's really…

Yeah, this is a really unclear announcement. It sounds like they are saying the products are entirely discontinued, including subscriptions, but then they say: "In the future, at the time of renewal, customers will be offered the best subscription products to fit their needs." What does that even mean?

It's very unlikely you cancel an existing contracted subscription in this space, but you need to send a really strong message to get your customers to move, so I actually think this is intentional to scare them but not get them mad enough to lawyer up.

Re: VMware Kills Off 56 Products

#69
Inaccurate. VMware is consolidating its ABSOLUTELY INSANE list of SKUs down to a handful. Yes, some products are getting put down (I.e. no longer maintained, with support ending way later), but not 56 of them, and definitely not NSX (makes HUGE money for VMware).

Source: I work at VMware in presales

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