It was maybe a year ago that Broadcom announced (or let slip) that they were going to concentrate their VMware business on their, I think it was, 600 largest customers. That left a lot of small and mid-size shops wondering if they have any kind of future with VMware.
Another issue for VMware users is the migration from perpetual licensing to subscription licensing. It's going to cause trouble when products that you don't expect to stop working run the clock and stop, until you update a license key or something. I guess VMUG users are used to that, but many businesses/data centers probably aren't.
CPUs... it seems Intel is stuck on the 10nm process, which they call Intel 7. (Liars!!). AMD ran away with core counts, so Intel is shoring up their side of the shop with onboard accelerators. Have you looked at a list of SKUs for some of the latest processors? You can get them with a Chinese smorgasbord of integrated add-ons.
I posted a comment on one of your last videos mentioning that I recently purchased a couple of GMKtec G3 mini PCs. They turned out to be nice little machines. I got one for $99 (bare bones, added a 32GB SODIMM and 512GB M.2) and another for under $130 via Amazon (8GB RAM, 256GB M.2). They have a single 2.5Gb Intel NIC onboard that ESXi 8 recognizes out of the box. (Oddly Windows Server 2022 doesn't recognize the NIC). They are Alder Lake N100-based, so performance is okay for everyday office tasks. They top out at 32GB RAM (single SODIMM/single channel), so not going to run a whole home data center. They draw 6 watts at idle. So, really cute machines. But back in their boxes now, until I find a use for them or gift them to someone. Are they a substitute for something 60 times more expensive? Nope.
All of the mini machines, 1 liter boxes, single board computers, etc., even the ones with a PCIe slot, like the ZimaBoard, won't power a 25Gb card or fill the bandwidth available from a 10Gb card. Most of those machines are based on older processors as well. By the time the design of the machine is done and they are manufactured, they're already a couple of generations old. The GMKtec is nearly up-to-date, with a 12 gen Intel, but the NIC is the older v-225, not v-226. And there's only one.
My goal at home was to emulate what I support at work, so there is no substitute for enterprisey, as you call it, stuff. My first Dell, the T620 was in response to my getting a job where half the data center was Dell blades. Except for the blade chassis, which I couldn't support at home, a PowerEdge is a PowerEdge, and the T620 was very very close in maintenance and operation to the M620 blades.
I noticed the split/ductless blower on the wall behind you. I would love one, but the coop board told me no. No holes through the building's outer walls. I figure I could do it anyway if I run the piping through the air conditioner sleeves already present. Someday, maybe. Leaks from the attic are no fun, but... no attic here. Though some years ago the upstairs neighbor caused a ceiling collapse in the bathroom, necessitating a complete demolish and redo.
My company has almost a thousand ESXi servers on prem. We just recently configured a permanent AWS Cloud Connector, and we have a "cloud team" now too, but there's no move imminent, and we get new orders of servers coming in from Dell every few months. Sapphire Lake now. I mentioned the power and heat issue. Cloud is way too expensive for large scale everyday use.
Regarding your post, I can see Broadcom whittling down anything that has to do with VMware that doesn't come directly from them, including their partner network. I am wondering if that might be an improvement over the way things are now. I've heard horror stories from small organizations trying to get a quote on VMware products, only to hear crickets chirping when they reach out to a reseller.
Times, they are a-changing. But that never stops. 2024 will be the start of my 40th year in IT. Not sure if I want to retire, but it sure is on my mind a lot!
