[German]In my view, there is currently some confusion regarding the announcement by VMWare by Broadcom that products such as VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus, VMware vSphere Standard (VVS), VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) will in future require at least "72 cores for licensing" when ordering. This requirement has probably been withdrawn.
What was the 72-core problem?
In my blog post Next VMWare by Broadcom license hammer: At least 72 cores required I had given the information that VMWare by Broadcom imposes various restrictions on contract renewals. In future, prepaid and multi-year payment offers will only be created from a minimum value of currently €25,000.
Broadcom also intends to introduce penalties for end customers who do not renew their (existing) subscription licenses by the anniversary date. For those who miss the deadline, the price of a renewed subscription will increase by 20 percent in the first year.
New requests may then be rejected by the manufacturer. Above all, a minimum licensing quantity of 72 cores "per command line" will apply in future – which I have interpreted as a minimum value of 72 cores per product line or for orders.
This is based on a letter from VMWare by Broadcom, which I have reproduced above from the distributor Arrow. The whole thing has caused quite a stir, as these changes make licensing very expensive and VMware products would hardly be usable for small customers.
VMware made an U turn
In response to my German blog post Nächster VMWare by Broadcom Lizenz-Hammer: Mindestens 72 Cores für Lizenzierung erforderlich two users commented that this information was no longer correct. There would be no 72 cores minimum in EMEA, it would be 16 cores per CPU as before.
Daniel A wrote that the information was not quite correct and probably referred specifically to the provider "Arrow". In the Veeam R&D forum the topic of Broadcom is being discussed and several people have reported that they have received explicit information from their VMWare Sales Rep that the minimum limit of 16 cores per CPU will remain. There would be no changes in terms of core licensing.
I have just received the above information from German vendor Software Express from their blog (details here). Clear statement from Arrow: The minimum order quantity will not be changed, and the licensing of at least 16 cores per CPU will continue. So VMware must have "backpedaled", because I had the information about the 72 cores from three distributors.
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