I'm convinced VMware started downhill when they dropped the hard windows client for the web based admin panel.
They claimed it was for multi os compatibility.... But they wrote the thing using ActiveX.
For the youngsters, ActiveX shit was Internet Explorer and M.S. only. So the idiots wrote a UI that still only worked in Windows, and was now 5 times slower than the thick client.
BTW, I run proxmox clusters in my garage. Its awesome
I don't understand diddly about the specifics of this article (I'm a member of the normie minority on this site who is neither working in IT, nor interested in the field), but I gotta say, I loved how it was structured and written. In a sea of AI generated crap, or simply parroting talking heads and calling it news, I found the way they laid out the article in two parts ("this is what happened, followed by "this is our subjective opinion on those events based on the wider context") to be very refreshing.
In my workplace we worked tirelessly to get rid of all VMware VMs as fast as possible when new pricing became clear. Thousands migrated. What a huge fuckup by broadcom.
Fuck Broadcom. I liked VMware and their products and actually paid for them as a consumer. Broadcom is a had fisted money grabber and care little about anything else. This will not end well for any businesses they serve to. Why? Because they’re focused on milking the cow dry, not spending money on anything. Despite their R&D claims. They have a history and have shown who they are before, and said who they’re planning to continue to be. Flee while you can.
Because up until Broadcom bought them, it was a good product with a ton of useful features, endless supported integrations with 3rd party software and hardware, relatively easy to learn/use, with good support, all at reasonable and flexible price points depending on your needs.
Of course Broadcom has now thrown all of that into the toilet...
Because if you throw enough money at them, they'll trip over themselves trying to fix your production critical issue in 4 hours or less, and that's valuable to business because they get to go "it's not our fault the site was down and we lost $2 million, it's our vendor's support team that was inadequate"
Steve McDowell, chief analyst at NAND research, told The Register that VMware by Broadcom is “laser focused on high-revenue, high-margin business” and has priced its wares “just below the pain threshold for customers they care about.”
Interesting way to word "we charged as much as we could possibly get away with"
That analyst doesn’t work for Broadcom; it’s a third party. It could say, “they charged as much as they could possibly get away with” but I think “prices just below the pain threshold” is stronger language in a business setting.
It will be probably more. I talked with sysadmin from some smaller provider in my country few months ago. And he told me that the migration will take them for most systems about 2 years (depreciation of hardware) and for some machines about 5 years.
So lot of customers are in process of replacing it but it will take multiple years.
We're currently testing Nutanix and Proxmox for smaller clients.
Proxmox support is similar (~65%) in cost to VMware licensing, but it's not likely to pull this sudden increase BS. Plus it's capabilities are significant for SMB.
I wouldn't be afraid to use Proxmox for small and middle size business. It's solid and based on solid, opensource tech. As long as people make sure they get paid, I'm sure they'll get even better.
Good on you for making sure your clients pay for support, that's how opensource thrives.
That’s the point. Broadcom focuses on only the top consumers and desire everyone else to go away. They then focus only on what those top consumers want and their support staff can be cut down considerably.
It’s an interesting tactic that they have mastered.
I used to work for a company that made software built on VMware. The biggest customer was using hundreds of thousands of VMs. Pretty sure they're working on moving off VMware now because of all this bullshit.
But yeah, it's gonna take a long time to move off.
