VMware licensing what are the options

[virtualqc]

good morning, i was wondering about the options with the arrival of VCF, we have only 6 esxi servers and planning to move to the cloud. We don't want to loose our investment on vmware but we price rise on the licence hurts a little bit. We use ESXi, vsphere, aria suite but no vsan and no nsx at this moment. A little bit of kubernetes. We plan to move to AWS or Azure or Google in the coming year. What will be the best options. Our company is learning cloud adoption.

[markey165]

It sounds like VVF rather than VCF would be a better fit for you. VVF (or VMware vSphere Foundation) is a new package offering under Broadcom, and includes both Aria Suite and Tanzu (with TKG (kubernetes) runtime)

If you are looking at moving to AWS or Azure, there is also VMC to consider (basically a vSphere environment exactly as you know it now, but hosted in the Cloud. The platform is also managed for you, you just consume it). Might be a bit more expensive, however this is offset by not having any Datacenter/power/cooling/hardware or maintenance costs.

Have a read of Williams Lam's excellent blog article on the new offerings and speak to your account rep for pricing. Bear in mind also for existing kit, that all sockets now have to be licensed for a minimum of 16 cores regardless of how many cores they actually have.

HTH