Broadcom has not been known for making customers happy in 2024 and now into 2025. They have made so many changes to the licensing of VMware that it is hard to keep up. Well, just as we thought the shakeup from Broadcom with VMware had started to settle into the new normal, they have announced that the minimum core count required for license renewals is 72 cores.
This has drastic implications for VMware customers who have small environments as it means that even if you only need 8 cores, 16 cores, or 32, the minimum licensing you can get is 72 cores, whether you use it or not. Many consider this to just be another money grab and it very well may be. Broadcom continues to mercilessly show no regard for small organizations, SMBs, etc. Rather, they are really targeting the biggest customers they have and they aren't concerned whether or not small customers jump ship or not.
This is at least the take that many analysts have had with the recent changes they have made to pricing and new requirements. I think we are starting to accept the new reality that VMware will never be what it used to be, the hypervisor that EVERYBODY uses. It will now be relegated to only the richest customers who want to keep the flagship hypervisor for its features or are so locked into the ecosystem that it would cost even more to move to something else compared to just staying with VMware for their private datacenter.
So many in the home labs are done with VMware due to Broadcom. However, again, I think Broadcom is missing the value of the community around VMware and that this is what has made VMware what it is today. It would seem though that Broadcom is not so worried about the longterm though and maybe this is just another Symantec acquisition to them, where they will extract everything they can from it until the next purchase they go after comes along.
According to CRN they are also levying penalties for customers that are late on their renewals by as much as a 20% penalty. Take a look at the article here: