Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover • Hacker News Board

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#41

Post by samsk » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

hitpointdrew wrote: post #32

miohtama wrote: post #29

Another story on why vendor lock in is bad and you should only build your business on the top of open source products.

Like what? There is no real open source comparable option to VMware if are running your own hypervisors. KVM? Not even close, you need a host of other tools to get what you have with esxi and vcenter. You’ll spend months just finding and configuring a disjointed hodgepodge of tools to get what you could have setup in a day. And even then you have a fargile system that is likely to break any time you update one tool i…

Proxmox is quite good, it's not VMWare, but hey, it's not VMWare ;-)

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#42

Post by jandrese » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 4:49 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #37

mschuster91 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're large enough (i.e. you have the compute demand and the staff to justify the expense for the latter), OpenStack - you should be able to keep most of your hardware, OpenStack supports everyone and their dog, which is what makes the "find capable operations staff" and "get it running" parts so much more difficult. Desktop? Learn to live with Oracle's VirtualBox and pray you never ever get audited for the guest…

>pray you never ever get audited for the guest toolkit acceleration. Worth mentioning that the Extension Pack is distributed separately[1] from VirtualBox itself and requires deliberate installation. Put more simply, it's an opt-in. I'll also mention that, at least for most personal and even small business use cases, you probably don't need the features provided by the Extension Pack[2]: * VirtualBox Remote Desktop P…

For what it is worth I get a lot of use out of VirtualBox and I've never seen much point in installing the extension pack.

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#43

Post by athorax » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 4:57 PM UTC

hitpointdrew wrote: post #32

miohtama wrote: post #29

Another story on why vendor lock in is bad and you should only build your business on the top of open source products.

Like what? There is no real open source comparable option to VMware if are running your own hypervisors. KVM? Not even close, you need a host of other tools to get what you have with esxi and vcenter. You’ll spend months just finding and configuring a disjointed hodgepodge of tools to get what you could have setup in a day. And even then you have a fargile system that is likely to break any time you update one tool i…

OpenStack is pretty okay these days

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#44

Post by newsclues » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 5:02 PM UTC

mixdup wrote: post #40

newsclues wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wait? Just do it and deal with the ill effects as soon as possible. This way they get to slash costs with less staff and effectively fire the clients they don’t want. They expect backlash and thinks it’s worth the cost, because they plan on milking the remaining customers asap.

But they're cutting off customers who have paid and are under contracts I'm not talking about ripping off the bandaid on the new sales channels, I'm talking about the fact that customers who have active licenses they've paid for can no longer activate them because they've shut these systems down That inevitably is going to lead to a class action against them

They have budgeted for lawsuits and don’t care. It’s a feature not a bug to get rid of clients who won’t be milked to the bone.

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#45

Post by Teever » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

hitpointdrew wrote: post #32

miohtama wrote: post #29

Another story on why vendor lock in is bad and you should only build your business on the top of open source products.

Like what? There is no real open source comparable option to VMware if are running your own hypervisors. KVM? Not even close, you need a host of other tools to get what you have with esxi and vcenter. You’ll spend months just finding and configuring a disjointed hodgepodge of tools to get what you could have setup in a day. And even then you have a fargile system that is likely to break any time you update one tool i…

Well yeah, this is at least as much a side effect of people not using open source solutions in the first place as it is the reason that people don't use open source VM solutions.

If more people had used open source solutions in the first place then they wouldn't be in this situation that they find themselves in now.

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#46

Post by sofixa » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #38

mixdup wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't get why they just did the Elon thing of slash and burn without any plan. I get that they want to upend the business model, focus on whatever end of the market, etc. Why not do that in a planned out, measured way? Why confirm literally every concern people had when the acquisition was announced? Why get yourself into what will obviously be a ton of lawsuits over people who can't use the product they alre…

Why wait? Just do it and deal with the ill effects as soon as possible. This way they get to slash costs with less staff and effectively fire the clients they don’t want. They expect backlash and thinks it’s worth the cost, because they plan on milking the remaining customers asap.

> They expect backlash and thinks it’s worth the cost, because they plan on milking the remaining customers asap.

Why would they think that after that disaster said customers will still be with them? I no longer have the displeasure of being a VMware customer, but if I saw what they're currently doing while jacking up prices and trimming support, what possible reason would there be to remain as a customer? Inertia? At some point you know the bill will be too high, so might as well move before it gets too bad.

VMware will end up like Symantec or similar, a shell of a company that people know of, but nobody actually uses on purpose.

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#47

Post by mixdup » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #44

mixdup wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're cutting off customers who have paid and are under contracts I'm not talking about ripping off the bandaid on the new sales channels, I'm talking about the fact that customers who have active licenses they've paid for can no longer activate them because they've shut these systems down That inevitably is going to lead to a class action against them

They have budgeted for lawsuits and don’t care. It’s a feature not a bug to get rid of clients who won’t be milked to the bone.

I am suspicious that they even thought about it that far. There's no way it's cheaper to let the active customers sue them rather than just leave the license activation servers up

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#48

Post by toast0 » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 5:11 PM UTC

thayne wrote: post #39

Why does the SEC keep allowing acquisitions like this? And why are there not more legal consequences to this kind of behavior after an acquisition?

Why would the SEC care? Shareholders of VMWare were properly compensated, and shareholders of Broadcom should know by now that Broadcom management seeks to buy companies and ruin their products. Nothing securities fraud about that.

DOJ and FTC enforce anti-trust and are more likely to be gatekeepers fo acquisitions, but while Broadcom is big and VMWare is big... Broadcom is going to ruin the product and that's not going to increase their marketshare and market power, so what's the problem?

It's like complaining about PE buying a failing company and then it goes bankrupt 3-7 years later. PE just accelerates the path, Toys R Us was already dead.

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#49

Post by sofixa » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

hitpointdrew wrote: post #32

miohtama wrote: post #29

Another story on why vendor lock in is bad and you should only build your business on the top of open source products.

Like what? There is no real open source comparable option to VMware if are running your own hypervisors. KVM? Not even close, you need a host of other tools to get what you have with esxi and vcenter. You’ll spend months just finding and configuring a disjointed hodgepodge of tools to get what you could have setup in a day. And even then you have a fargile system that is likely to break any time you update one tool i…

> There is no real open source comparable option to VMware if are running your own hypervisors

Well the first question is, do you actually need hypervisors? In a lot of cases, the answer is no, or not for many of the workloads. In others it's 100% yes.

Then, after you've decided you actually do need a hypervisor, there's actually tons of choice - Proxmox (very good and advanced KVM wrapper), Nutanix's AHV, oVirt (future kind of up in the air), OpenStack, KubeVirt, XCP-ng.

Problem is, many VMware users are set in their ways and want an exact and 1:1 replacement, without even considering they were only doings things that way because that was the only tool they knew and had at their disposal, not because it's actually a good way of doing things. Virtual Machines are just a means to an end, and a clunky one at that. VMware are actively pushing you away, time to start paying attention and considering what the organisation's actual needs are, and how are they best served. (And unless you're doing VDI, or almost exclusively using third party appliances delivered as VM images, that's not virtual machines).

Re: Order/license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover

#50

Post by sofixa » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #16

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much of shit show, but the speculation back then what that BRCM will split VMware into pieces, keep the most profitable parts and milk them as much as possible. So far two things happened: - a lot of people were laid off - VMware will turn into a subscription service, no more perpetual licenses on which you can bolt a support contract for updates.

So… what are the alternatives?

Evaluate what workloads you have and what is the best way to deliver them instead of searching to replace VMware with the exact same thing. Virtual Machines are nothing more than a means to an end, and nobody on the business side actually cares about them.

You might find that some workloads are best fit for a modern orchestrator running containers such as Kubernetes or Nomad, or a SaaS, or a PaaS/IaaS, or a different hypervisor such as Proxmox or full infrastructure management platform such as OpenStack.