Interesting -- none of the major VMWare customers had a second/alternative vendor/product? I hope they learnt the lesson.
Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
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Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#72[dead]
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#73Spoke to a senior guy at a large national bank recently
who swore that they will never again get any Broadcom hardware.
He talked about "Broadcom lies.."
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#74If Tesco needs character witnesses that Broadcom has done this to many other customers, I think they’ll find plenty of willing participants. Broadcom’s marketing for Proxmox is extremely effective.
Looks like proxmox has well-fleshed-out documentation for migrating from vmware:
"Although it was written with VMware as the source in mind, most sections should apply to other source hypervisors as well."
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Proxmox for 40k vm would be surprising also veeam support Proxmox.
I'd would assume that this is not a monolithic cluster of 40k vm's but at least tens of clusters. Which puts it in the realm of capabilities of Proxmox.
I’d guess thousands of clusters. They have over 3k retail stores in the UK, so that could be a 2-3 node cluster in every one.
I’ve worked with a few major US grocers on very similar projects (some hardware only refreshes and one VMware to HyperV/Azure Local migration).
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#76> Tesco is also dealing with migration challenges related to data security because its new, unnamed virtualization software is incompatible with the Veeam and Zerto products it uses. What is a VMware alternative, that isn't compatible with backup software? I'm guessing it's not nutanix?
Nutanix has served us well over the last 8 or so years.
How has pricing been?
I’ve heard their renewals can get expensive.
Have lots of customer who run it and would echo your same positive review.
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#77Interesting -- none of the major VMWare customers had a second/alternative vendor/product? I hope they learnt the lesson.
The ecosystem existed - Red Hat OVE, Nutanix were mature in the enterprise market, but VMware had such a grip with low cost (honestly, it was a smart Broadcom play despite infuriating customers), ease of use, feature rich, big software/support/consultant ecosystem. It was almost like the Windows of virtualization, in that it bred complacency.
I know nothing about Tesco, but sometimes ops cultures lack the skills or mandate to successfully switch tech stacks.
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#78My hope from this headline was that some open source solution was functionally equivalent from a business perspective. But then I read that Tesco has had to: > procure alternative solutions with reduced functionality meaning VMWare is still basically the only option if you need something that works out of the box. Hopefully this changes in the mid term as other customers migrate away.
>VMWare is still basically the only option
The competition is compelling, actually. Red Hat OVE, Nutanix for those who want support, and Proxmox is emerging as a possibility in the ent space.
I read "reduced functionality" as they married themselves to something specific and non-portable, like oh, pick a card from VMware - NSX networking, VSAN storage, maybe something in Tanzu, and that phrase reflected their difficulty escaping the lock-in quickly enough. (This was all speculation)
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#79i just had to spend a bunch of time (not for work, for hobby purposes) bc broadcom acquired bitnami or something and then decided to kill off the free docker images for various software. very very annoying. can't believe they did this by just yanking the images from the registry too, leaving nodes to fail if they lose their image cache and have to restart
Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct
#80Why would you self sabotage such a considerable contract? Are Broadcom stupid?
I think it's a cultural thing over there. They came loaded for bear with their customers to convert them to the new ARR-based, non-perpetual product lineup.
I've negotiated a lot of contracts and renewals. I've been threatened twice - Oracle, and then Broadcom. We had perpetual licenses, but that didn't matter, according to them we were out of compliance and as a "courtesy" they delayed sending C&D as a precursor to suing us - this was the intro meeting call. There was no budging on price, and they actually priced the cheaper alternative we could have considered ("VVF") at like a 0.1% discount from their core "VCF" product, I think as a fuck-you. It was a great time, our reseller and I shared a drink over that one.