VMware License versus Subscription ? Keep the License!! - 1364

[@SgtKilgore406]

I abandoned VMware in my homelab as soon as the Broadcom rumors started flying. We are not planning to renew VMware at work when support expires and are keeping our options open for migrating. It's a shame. I really liked VMware but life goes on.

[@andrewnoonan5786]

I migrated my homelab from Esxi 2 years ago now to Proxmox and migrated my employer's systems last year.

[@MyPlayHouse]

It is a shame,,, ESXi is cool,, but it has been going down hill since ESXi5.5

[@svampebob007]

We were quoted around 60% bump in price, during a time where we were aiming towards spending 50MNok they were asking for 80MNok giving the IT team some room to adjust they managed to get the operating cost down to 45MNok without any downsizing.

[@Melpheos1er]

@@svampebob007 We went from $150K to $500K with a 3 years commit at 3500 cpu and it would have been even worse without the commit which gives 43% cut on MSRP. This is absurd. We are looking into other product so the 3 years scam will give us some time to find the best competitor. Proxmox ? Nutanix ? We don't know

[@MyPlayHouse]

I am still working on moving away,, I am slow..

[@rjy8960]

It's typical of the new business model - It's all about profit over everything. Take as much value out of a transaction as possible - support, staff, facilities, training etc. and if you have a captive market, milk them dry. If you can, tie them in with a subscription model so the mugs only pay rental on what they owned and secure yourself an on-going cash revenue. You then have them over a barrel and you can really screw them over due to cost to change. Make as much money as possible with no regard to the future of either your clients or your business long term.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Yes,, and I do not want to get tied to a software subscription, and try to come up with options. :-)

[@stonent]

I was suspect about the Broadcom purchase as we'd had a terrible time with servers with Broadcom 10G cards in them either doing PSODs or dropping pings long enough that we'd start getting downtime alerts on the host. Even though the VMs themselves never stopped pinging. We'd try newer Broadcom drivers and nothing would change. It was very strange. We finally basically banned ordering any more hosts with Broadcom cards and went Intel only and all the problems went away.

[@Darkk6969]

Intel and Mellanox (now Nvidia) have better driver support for everything.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Well we have had bad experiences with Intel NIC,, bought for $2M Servers that did not work for 4 months while Intel was fixing a driver,, we now get Broadcom,,, goes both ways :-)

[@debugin1227]

Ditch VMware altogether

[@MyPlayHouse]

That is an option,, I would like a tool to move VM's between Hypervisors. that would be cool.

[@jackadamsdaniels6719]

To what tho that even similar to VM definitely sucks

[@dasiro]

@@MyPlayHouse that would be awesome like a P2V but then HV2HV I'd love to move VM's from Hyper-V to proxmox or the other way around, but I guess they all have their own little (or bigger) quirks that complicate the proces

[@Chris-hy6jy]

Regardless of what you decide to do with existing instances, move all NEW instances over to a different hypervisor. Gradually over time you can migrate the old VMware hosts over to the new hypervisor.

[@MyPlayHouse]

That would be a way to move over,, and time would be on your side.

[@marcwesterink7742]

I like your statement at 8:45. To me, that statement is not limited to VMware only. It strongly applies to public cloud providers as well like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Such scenarios give me a 'Hotel California' vibe. In my job, I always emphasize that scenarios to leave such environments must always be available when needed. As Broadcom clearly displays here with VMware: what happens when it's no longer available to you?

[@MyPlayHouse]

At the moment the Broadcom/VMware is going on, but as I see it it applies to all your systems.

[@Ozz465]

While not in IT myyself , i do see what broadcom has done and it sadens me as a hobby guy, Ive used vmware back in the day to try out new distrs and such and that brings back good memories . this now saddens me and i hope a better alt is found .

[@MyPlayHouse]

We see this a bit to often,, buy a company, and let the loyal customers pay.

[@GeneralDon7]

Perhaps this was different cause of the product we had, but with vSphere standard, our licenses didn't convert. We got a whole set of new ones, and this was before our perpetual licenses expired. We were told by a VMWare rep this is how they were doing it, and we could keep the licenses running as long as we wanted. We even upgraded the licenses to V8 before the expiration. Our 5 year renewal was a 20% increase but it wasn't worth it to us to look for an alternative and do the lift and move yet.

[@MyPlayHouse]

This is not the same as Broadcom is saying.

[@liptonacer]

to transfer vms from vmware esxi to proxmox I used a solution that I like. Used SystemRescue CD on the virtual machine and we copy the disk via cat /dev/sda for example and put it in ssh to another system rescue CD which would be a proxmox. Otherwise we have the solution to export the vmware ovf and convert it to Proxmox.

[@GeoffSeeley]

I used the VMware ovftool to connect to ESXi from Proxmox and transferred the VMs when I retired ESXi a couple of years ago now. There are multiple ways to do the same thing.

[@Darkk6969]

@@GeoffSeeley Yep, that is the exact method I've used to migrate several VMs over to ProxMox. All worked without an issue.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @liptonacer Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@liptonacer]

@@MyPlayHouse You are for me the reference KZbin channel when it comes to servers so I thank you! Continue your videos!

[@stephenfgdl]

I am working to switch to Proxmox on my home server setup

[@MyPlayHouse]

Me too!!

[@hit-757]

@@MyPlayHouseThere is an easy way of importing VMs from ESXi in recent version of Proxmox. Finally. You do it via Datacenter/Storage, then add ESXi menu.

[@Arachnoid_of_the_underverse]

There was a post on Reddit ( I think) of a users license fee going up 1000 times what it was.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Ahh that sounds a bit unrealistic. Or they was not paying anything.

[@zenja42]

I have migrated to PVE with the "Advanced Migration Techniques to Proxmox VE" manual. Was "only" a 12 Node cluster with 150 VMs, but apart from that 8 or so VMs didn't work and I decided that I just reinstall them fresh. Most things brake with SRV 2008(r2), but all older or newer Windows worked mostly fine, no problem with linux VMs.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Thank You,, I will have to look at that.

[@sybreeder86]

For homelab i'm keep using ESXi. There were probably won't be ESXi 9 anyway. For productin i'm using HyperV and it works just fine. But indeed i don't get that urge move to either subscription or dumping it right away if company owns perpetual license. Support usually from what i heard was poor anyway. Yes updates are nice to have. But to some degree current version will work for long time still. even 7.0x One branch for my company moved to azure from vmware. So in the end probably they will be paying more anyway

[@MyPlayHouse]

Well VMware is pushing there subscription to big companies,, and when you have converted your perpetual license,,, to renting your software. It's hard to get back...

[@davidanderson2436]

keep your license - ride them out as long as you can! Moving from VmWare to something else is not easy - I never actually got an older Windows machine to successfully move from VmWare format to something like KVM or VirtualBox. Linux machines were no issue, and some very new Windows might be better at it, but it was a PITA. I found it easier to rebuild the machines and given your situation - I doubt that is possible. Keep your licenses and move from VmWare - how could you ever even consider trusting them again? I could not see ever purchasing from them again in the future! Any future projects should be with a company you trust and want to continue to do business with - find that new business and build a relationship with them! Commercial ProxMox or Xen or any other open source company that will work with you and help you migrate your environment would be the one to choose and stick with.

[@MyPlayHouse]

They might change their mind,, if money gives them a reason.

[@davidanderson2436]

@@MyPlayHouse Just got a graphic from the TrueNAS folks that shows KVM based Hypervisors is prefered 58.8% over VMWare, Hyper-V and Xen-Based (of course its from the TureNAS community but they do make a good argument for Open Source with a business model that provides confidence!)

[@ff34jmr]

XCP-NG Seems to be investing a lot on easy migration from VMware. I heard xen-orchestra 6 is going o be a game changer. The problem is that xen is considered an old hypervisor and xcp-ng can be buggy at times which they usually fix quite fast. But if VSTES have a massive client increase I’m not sure they would be able to keep up.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Wish ProxMox had an easy to use tool. Little win program that logged in to ESXi and in to ProxMox,, let you choose what VM to move and where you want it. :-)

[@andljoy]

Some clever bugger is going to build a product to auto migrate from vmware to xcp-ng proxmox hyperv etc. The issues is the products around vmware that are hard to move like your backup etc.

[@Darkk6969]

Xcp-ng already have a built-in warm migration tool to move your vms off of vmware without any downtime. ProxMox is bit different but it's not difficult as I've done several of the moves already.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Yes a nices Win tool that loges in to ESXi and ProxMox and moves stuff,, would be nices.

[@lordgarth1]

We moved all of our dev VMs that were in VMC to Hyper-V pretty easily. Dropped vRA since a migration to the new version is a new install anyway so just developed our own IaC solution. The remaining clusters will get moved to something else over the next couple of years before they can stick it to us.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @lordgarth1 Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@BasicITStuff]

Maybe also check the Hypervisor XCP-ng?

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @BasicITStuff Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@brett_rose]

I'm about half done migrating to HyperV. I dropped Symantec as well when Broadcom bought them.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Do you migrate of install from fresh ?

[@brett_rose]

@@MyPlayHouse I needed to buy a new host anyways and then the VMWare thing happened, so I just installed Server 2022 bare metal on the server. I am just using a V2V converter to migrate shut down VMs. It's a bit trickier if no downtime is available, but for me I'll just tell my users the file server will offline over the weekend...

[@pdarrell]

I use VMware for my hypervisor and I am sticking with the licenses I have and versions. I do not plan on upgrading to a subscription for it. I am a small shop but I have around 100 VMs on multiple hosts.

[@MyPlayHouse]

I think that is wise.

[@koma-k]

I know of a place with several (as in ~10) 2-node vSAN based clusters, mostly running on ROBO licenses.... I'm not sure I even want to know what it'll cost to stay with VMware 😕 The most immediate effect is that it put a stop to a proposed minor capacity expansion and reorg of servers, and instead the previously somewhat neglected Netapp is getting a capacity expansion and some TLC, with a view to migrating at least one or two clusters off vSAN.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @koma-k Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@VioletDragonsProjects]

I never went with VMware. I went with XCP-ng which is brilliant got a Cluster, I’ve migrated a few companies over to XCP-ng from VMware. Middle finger to VMware / Broadcom ha.

[@ernestoditerribile]

Allthough I like Proxmox and VMWare a lot more, XCP-ng, Hyper-V and Nutanix are good options too.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @VioletDragonsProjects Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@vp3319]

Thanks, it reminds me of the times when user had to migrate from incredimail to outlook... 😃

[@MyPlayHouse]

Well I do not just smile and cough up the cash.. :-/

[@stonent]

I can't remember if it's ProxMox or XCP-NG has native support for VMXNET3 and VMWare Paravirtual SCSI out of the box. So that could really help people with the transition process.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @stonent Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@Jiggs224u]

Yes I talked to the XCP-NG general manager and they have a tool to migrate from VMware to XCP-NG. His name is Mike and the company XCP-NG, Vates, runs on full open source software such as nextcloud etc. I thought that was super cool!

[@orionfl79]

VMWare is selling an operating system. What they're dong is like Microsoft saying - "Hey, if you want to use Windows on your PC you have to pay for a monthly subscription." Meanwhile, on the home lab front I'm at a tossup between Proxmox or XCP-ng since they gave me the middle finger by taking away the free version of ESXi.

[@orionfl79]

As for migrating, its basically a matter of converting the disk image from vmdk over to something standard like qcow, From there, in Prox just setup a new VM with hardware specs that match the one in VMWare and attach the converted disk image. Its basically like a motherboard transplant on a physical machine where on boot the OS will detect the new hardware for Prox and remove the old from VMW.

[@MyPlayHouse]

It's a big move for a company with 2-3000 VM's :-/

[@TKomoski]

You might want to call a lawyer to review the agreements

[@MyPlayHouse]

Maybe...

[@tomaszw5086]

I heard that VMUG will still be around. Hope that it will. Proxmox is okay, but does not work with Veeam out of the box. So the only real alternative would be Hyper-V

[@MyPlayHouse]

There is many shortcomings with ProxMox,,

[@Jiggs224u]

Proxmox already does snapshots and backups out of the box. You wouldn't need veeam with proxmox or XCP-NG

[@eman0828]

Nutanix is probably going to be the new industry standard that will replace VMware as the market leader. AHV is probably the best closest thing to VSphere as a commercial hypervisor. Hyper-V works best with only Windows shops not so much with mixed Linux.

[@leo_craft1]

We all agree that we are not going to use esxi anymore

[@MyPlayHouse]

Slowly moving out!! :-)

[@1990Cookie]

We move our 8000 Workloads to Openstack for example.

[@MyPlayHouse]

That was a big move,,, ware they all similar?

[@CompuWhizz]

Use the time to find a new hypervisor

[@MyPlayHouse]

Yes,, that would be smart.

[@ajama1335]

Thank god I went with XCP-NG

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @ajama1335 Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@ajama1335]

@@MyPlayHouse it's an excellent video that clearly articulates the situation regarding VMware. I don't think they will back down from this.

[@sgladiadis]

Can’t agree more

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @sgladiadis Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@TKomoski]

Morten tell me who is not paying more for anything nowadays

[@MyPlayHouse]

Well I do try not to tell you anything that is stupid money wise,,, I want us to spend our money wisely.

[@nachoorozcog]

@myplayhouse I need to get a VMware license as I used to have a 1yr trial in two weeks for 2cpus v sphere7 any suggestion 😢?

[@MyPlayHouse]

See if you can use the free version of ESXi,, or look at alternatives,, I have a video later today,, that might help you on your way.. in 5,5 hours.. :-)

[@lordgarth1]

Is third party service going to provide patches?

[@MyPlayHouse]

Are they not obligated to supply the important patches to everyone... You will not get fixes and new features (trees does not grow in to heaven) I still use ESXi 6.7 it works great,, they mostly F**up the new versions and then spent a few years fixing them,,, older versions are mostly okay.

[@leo_craft1]

2:00 can't you export the vms on ovf (or ova) and import them in new hypervisors? Using the same machine

[@tomaszw5086]

Apart from VMWare Tools, there can be issue with drivers or different technology for disk interfaces.

[@MyPlayHouse]

There is a way to move the disk file : .vmdk over and import it into virtual hardware in ProxMox,, but not easy if your not a linux ninja.

[@leo_craft1]

@@tomaszw5086 Ovf also imports hardware configurations of the VM (disk, nics, cpu, ram)

[@Saukaron]

For us it would double the price staying with VMware as we do not have 3500 cores and they will remove vRAM/h based models. As of Mar 6,2024 VMware told us to wait for White Label Partners and until then keep reporting via UsageMeter. Citrix is expensive as well, Hyper-V is a joke, Proxxmox is garbage if you have maaany nodes so we’ll take a closer look at Vates XCP, Nebula and Harvester. Migration is a problem though

[@MyPlayHouse]

Migration is a huge problem 😳

[@captainhappy]

It is time to use at least part of those millions the new subscription costs, to a process transforming the virtual infrastructure to something else. It is not easy, but if there is millions of USD in stake, those millions can do the hard things. Easy things are for poor people, hard things are done with money.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Yes,, I would be looking to move.

[@adolfocoelho]

Olá Morten! Realmente gostaria de vê-lo migrar tudo para Proxmox.

[@MyPlayHouse]

HI @adolfocoelho My channel is English, and to make sure as many as possible, can also enjoy the comments, they are also English. Please keep to English. Thank you for watching! :-)

[@SpookyLurker]

Can't you rip the VMDK file outta the OVA file with 7z and launch it with Proxmox?

[@MyPlayHouse]

That is if you have a OVA virtual machine to install..

[@ronwatkins5775]

Will existing vmware licenses still work going forward?

[@eman0828]

Of course as the activation is offline. Your ESXI host doesn't connect to a licensing server over the internet. You just won't get any updates as you will be just be running an EOL software indefinitely.

[@MyPlayHouse]

I do believe so.

[@Polo4413]

Unable to deploy some important OVA files into Proxmox :(((((

[@GeoffSeeley]

qm importovf .ovf

[@Darkk6969]

@@GeoffSeeley Gotta love command line to get the job done. Thanks for pointing that out to the users. I've used this as well.

[@MyPlayHouse]

that is irritating :-/

[@skynetcybersystem3tech]

👍

[@MyPlayHouse]

Playing catch up,, Thank You!! :-)

[@ernestoditerribile]

You can directly import the .vmdk files

[@ernestoditerribile]

qm importdisk [OPTIONS] Import an external disk image as an unused disk in a VM. The image format has to be supported by qemu-img(1). : (1 - N) The (unique) ID of the VM. : Path to the disk image to import : Target storage ID --format Target format

[@ernestoditerribile]

for .ovf use qm importovf .ovf

[@MyPlayHouse]

I did actually try to do this,, and ran into issues,, was moving a 80GB on thin disk,, and moving it made it thick, and taking up 200GB,, then I could not figure out where to put it in ProxMox for the system to be able to import that .vmdk file. I had spent all day by then,, took me way to long to figure out the 200GB issue... like in copy data for an hour,, and it would not fit on a 160GB disk ??? try again... :-/

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

What about UBUNTU Server latest version?

[@MyPlayHouse]

I do not have a clue :-/

[@Ohmygodbruh]

No support - no security patches :(

[@MyPlayHouse]

I believe we get critical ones here in EU..

[@damianmusiaowski3480]

I had a problem, it disappeared in the stage bios and it shows how I want to create a raid config speed and duplex adapter What in this case

[@MyPlayHouse]

Sorry I do not know this issue :-/

[@johng.1703]

or just move to another hypervisor with new systems.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Yes,,, that is a good plan.

[@EmmanuelRAYMOND69]

the beginning of a solution: FORMAT C: /S :)

[@repairman2be250]

Very clever indeed you are! What comes after that?

[@MyPlayHouse]

Where did I put that DOS floppy....

[@theshuff]

Broadcom is going to kill vmware... everyone is going to leave this product or already did it.... that's sad to see..

[@MyPlayHouse]

Or,, they start losing money, and change their minds. :-)

[@theshuff]

​@@MyPlayHouse maybe, but trust is loose forever...

[@debasishraychawdhuri]

Start moving over now.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @debasishraychawdhuri Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@shephusted2714]

just leave vmware - you have options

[@MyPlayHouse]

When you have 3000 VM's and they all run different systems, and will need a project and planned down time to move one,, it becomes a big deal.

[@markammain]

VM Migrantion made easy: kzbin.info/www/bejne/apezXpyidtSSgdUsi=9R7BHSi4UFquw1i6 You can use this physical to VM, VM to VM and so on...

[@MyPlayHouse]

Okay,, thank you,, I will have to give that a watch :-)

[@klausbachfrederiksen8174]

Meget oplysende video om vmware licen$er.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Hi @klausbachfrederiksen8174 Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)

[@bocci572]

I was using ESXi and switched to Proxmox. I used 45 drives Tuesday Tech Tip using OVF to Migrate Virtual machines ESXi to Proxmox. Worked awesome. Had blue screen with windows had to tell it to use SATA instead of SCSI in the conf file. But was easy peasy. Link to the video is here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJumdphqqMuYlck Really loving Proxmox.

[@GeoffSeeley]

I used ovftool as well with an additional step of writing the raw file to a ZFS sparse (i.e. thin) volume. Worked well! I used ESXi professionally and at home for years but I don't miss it as Proxmox is more flexible.

[@bocci572]

@@GeoffSeeley I am new so didn't know that was an option. Still learning stuff but can say yeah. Not missing ESXi either.

[@Darkk6969]

Yep, that video gave me an idea on how to move the VMs off of vmware to ProxMox. Worked like a champ.

[@MyPlayHouse]

Okay,, yes that did not look to bad!!