Guide
Leaving VMware after Broadcom: a practical guide for small estates
Published · 10 min read
Short answer
Since Broadcom completed its purchase of VMware in November 2023, VMware has stopped selling perpetual licences and moved to subscription bundles priced per core. For small estates that often means paying more for features they do not use. Leaving is not automatically cheaper: compare the renewal quote with the full cost of an alternative (licences, support, backup tooling, migration effort and skills) over three years. The common alternatives are Proxmox VE, Microsoft Hyper-V, managed servers and selective use of public cloud.
What changed, in plain English
- Ownership. Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware on 22 November 2023.
- No more perpetual licences. On 11 December 2023 Broadcom announced it would stop selling perpetual licences and support renewals for perpetual products, moving everything to subscriptions. Licences you already own can still be used.
- Bundles instead of products. The catalogue was folded into a few offers, chiefly VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation, with add-ons. Many standalone products and editions disappeared.
- Per-core pricing. Subscriptions are priced per CPU core, with a minimum number of cores counted per processor, so a host with few, fast cores can cost more than its core count suggests.
The detail continues to shift, and resellers quote differently, so treat any renewal figure as something to verify. The original announcement is on Broadcom's news site (opens in a new tab).
Should you leave? Work it out over three years
A renewal quote is a single number; a migration is many. Put both sides on one page before deciding.
| Cost | Stay on VMware | Move to an alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Licences or subscriptions | Renewal quote x 3 | Alternative's licence or support subscription x 3 |
| Backup software | Usually unchanged | Check your backup product supports the new platform |
| Migration effort | None | Engineer days per VM, plus testing and cut-over |
| Hardware | Unchanged | Usually reusable; check the hardware compatibility list |
| Skills | Existing | Training or a managed provider |
| Risk | Further price changes at renewal | Migration risk, mitigated by testing and rollback |
If the three-year totals are close, staying and renegotiating is often sensible: migrations have costs that do not show on a quote. If the renewal is far above what you paid before and you use little of the bundle, leaving usually wins.
The realistic alternatives
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE (opens in a new tab) is an open source virtualisation platform built on KVM, with clustering, live migration and a web interface. The software is free to use; paid support subscriptions give access to the enterprise repository and the developer's support. It suits small estates well, provided your backup tooling supports it.
Microsoft Hyper-V
Included with Windows Server. If you already license Windows Server Datacenter for all host cores, Hyper-V may cost nothing extra and covers unlimited Windows guests on those hosts. Management at scale is less polished than vCenter.
Managed servers
Many small estates run a hypervisor only because they need servers. Moving those workloads to managed servers removes the hypervisor, the host hardware and the licence question altogether; you pay a monthly fee per server and the provider handles patching and monitoring.
Public cloud
Good for workloads with spiky demand or that benefit from managed databases. Rarely cheaper for steady, always-on virtual machines lifted as they are. Size from measured use, not from the VM's allocated resources.
How a small migration usually runs
- 01
Inventory
Export the estate (RVTools is a common free tool) and list every VM with its owner, purpose and real CPU, memory and disk use.
- 02
Classify
Mark each VM: move as is, rebuild, retire or keep. Retire more than you expect; most estates have forgotten VMs.
- 03
Pilot
Move two or three low-risk VMs first. Check drivers, backup jobs, monitoring and licences that bind to hardware IDs.
- 04
Move in waves
Group VMs by dependency and move each group in a planned window, with the old VM kept switched off but intact until sign-off.
- 05
Decommission
Remove old hosts and cancel the renewal only after backups and restores on the new platform are proven.
Sources
Facts were checked against these sources on 21 October 2026. Vendor terms change; check the source before relying on a detail.