VMWare Support

[dbaum22101]

Why does VMWare abandon its loyal users by refusing to offer the one year support options to existing users, and only offer it with new license purchases?  I chatted with two reps on the online chat and was told that per incident support for broken systems was the only support option available.

[Ray_CJ]

An individual license for VMware Workstation retails for about $199 (USD).  It is frequently used by inexperienced users who tend to need a lot of support.  It's my observation that many of those users lack the basic technical skills needed to use a moderately sophisticated program like this.  As such, to break even, VMware would need to charge a LOT of money for a maintenance program because the labor cost would be astronomical.   Not many people are going to pay $600/year for a $200 program.

If you were a large business with hundreds (or thousands) of VMware deployments and if you were paying more than 6 figures a year for annual maintenance contracts, you could probably get them to throw-in dedicated support for Workstation for free.   Anything short of that, and you'll have to figure things out for yourself and surf these user-driven forums.  This is how most companies operate now.

I have been assisted by some good volunteers here -and my thanks goes out to them.  Relying on the good nature of volunteers is not a good plan though.  If I could have 1 wish, it would be for VMware to provide 1 paid and qualified service technician read this forum once a week and provide feedback on the technical problems that warrant attention.   

Ray

[wila]

Ray,

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Relying on the good nature of volunteers is not a good plan though.

Seems that is working well for them for 15+ years.
Why burn money when someone helps out for free 😜

Joking aside, they had some of their support staff helping out on the forums a year or so ago.
But to be honest I wasn't impressed by their answers. A lot of the volunteers gave better answers than they did.

What they are doing now for the forums is to encourage some of their technical staff -who work on the core product and have deep knowledge- to help out. I doubt that they get compensated for that, but hopefully they can do so in working time. There's some _really_ good advice and troubleshooting in there.
They regularly pick up some of the more difficult topics.

It certainly has been worse.

TS: If at all possible then post your question here. Quite a few of the issues get resolved via help from either volunteers or VMware employees helping out.

--
Wil

[Ray_CJ]

The real problem, is that a virtual machine running under a Type 2 hypervisor (aka Workstation) is inherently tied to the hardware it runs on.  Since Workstation is commercial software (available free or to anyone with $199 to spend) it will be used on any-and-all kinds of hardware.  Since there are so many kinds of PCs and since common operating systems (Windows, Linux etc) are constantly evolving, there is no way VMware will ever make it work in all cases.  There will always be more questions than answers.

In the "industrial" use cases, VMware products are only guaranteed/supported if used on approved hardware platforms.  In that kind of environment, VMware stands a chance of making their product work well.

So far, VM Workstation is better than other VM solutions I've tried.  I don't put too much stress on the product and I understand it's limitations.   I only use VMs because I'm sick/tired of how OS's and commercial software eventually devolve into the back hole of "Software Entropy".   I like being able to make copies of a well working system.  This has helped me many times and is worth the $199 and frustration that goes along with it.

But yeah, if VMware is going to make a "lightweight" product that people pay for, they should at least provide some paid (albeit "lightweight") support.

Ray

[wila]

Ray,

You can now buy support for VMware Workstation 16... it's one of those things that changed.
With earlier versions one could also buy a support, but it wasn't in the normal webshop area and was very difficult to find and the default option was only 30 days.

Now when you go buy Workstation you can choose to buy additional support for up to 3 years.
https://store-us.vmware.com/workstation_buy_dual_new

So they fixed that already 😉
--
Wil

[Ray_CJ]

Thank you.  I was not aware of this support package.  It's availability negates many of the things I previously mentioned; specifically, the upgrade cost of about $150 (USD) is well worth it.  Currently, I have a Support Request open from the 30 day coverage that was included in the package.  It will soon expire if hasn't already.  I encountered a couple more issues that would be nice to resolve.  If those become too difficult to solve myself, I will indeed get the extended support package.  

Thanks for letting me know about this.

Ray

[wila]

dbaum22101,

I might misread your question, but when I choose to upgrade an existing Workstation license then I can also add additional support for up to 3 years on that same page.

You'll have to change the "complimentary" drop down to either "Basic" or "Production" in order to choose more than 30 days of support.

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Wil