VMware licensing has changed a lot since the Broadcom acquisition. Licences are now subscriptions, counted per CPU core and sold in bundles. Many renewals cost more than expected because nobody checked the estate first. These five checks take a few days and can change the number on the quote.
1. Count Your Real Cores
Licences are counted per physical CPU core, not per CPU socket as before. Broadcom also counts a minimum of 16 cores for every CPU, so a CPU with 8 or 12 cores is billed as if it had 16.
Make a simple list of every ESXi host with its CPU model, number of CPUs and cores per CPU. Include hosts in test labs, DR sites and branch offices. Hosts that were added years ago and forgotten are the most common surprise.
2. Decide Which Bundle You Actually Need
The main bundles are VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). VCF includes the full private cloud stack: compute, vSAN storage, NSX networking and automation. VVF is a smaller bundle built on vSphere and vSAN, with operations tools, but without NSX and the full automation stack.
If you do not use NSX, large-scale automation or the other parts of VCF, ask whether the smaller bundle covers you. Advanced services are licensed separately on top of the bundles, for example the vDefend Firewall (which includes the NSX distributed firewall) and VMware Live Recovery, so check those line by line as well.
3. Find Features You Pay For but Don't Use
Look at the add-ons on your current contract and compare them with what is really switched on. Unused add-ons are the easiest saving because removing them changes nothing for your users.
4. Remove or Consolidate Hosts
Because the bill is per core, every host you remove saves money every year of the subscription. Many clusters run at 30 to 40 percent CPU use. A short right-sizing study often shows that one or two hosts can be retired, or that older hosts can be replaced by fewer, newer ones.
Right-sizing has to keep enough spare capacity to survive a host failure. We always check that the cluster can lose one host and still run every workload before recommending a smaller design.
5. Know Your Dates
Note the renewal date, the support end date and any notice period in your contract. Start the review at least three months before renewal. That leaves time to compare options, get quotes and make changes without being rushed.
A Simple Example
Take a cluster of six hosts, each with two 24-core CPUs. That is 288 licensed cores. If monitoring shows the cluster at 35 percent CPU and 50 percent memory, five hosts can often carry the load and still survive a host failure, once memory has been checked. Removing one host saves 48 cores on every year of the subscription, before any discount.
Common Questions
Can We Keep Our Old Perpetual Licences?
Perpetual licences you already own keep working. Without an active support contract, Broadcom still provides critical security patches (CVSS score 9.0 or higher), but not other updates, bug fixes or support. Running without regular patches is a real risk, so plan for it rather than drifting into it.
Should We Move Away From VMware?
For some workloads it can make sense, for others it does not. Moving has its own cost: new skills, new backup and DR tooling, testing and migration time. We compare the full cost of staying, consolidating or moving part of the estate, so you decide on facts.
A Quick Checklist
- List of every ESXi host with CPU model, sockets and cores
- Current bundle and add-ons, compared with features in real use
- Cluster CPU and memory use over the last 3 to 6 months
- Hosts that can be retired or consolidated, with failover headroom kept
- Renewal date, support end date and notice period
How We Help
We review your VMware estate, collect the real core counts and usage, and give you a clear licence position before you sign. If a smaller or consolidated design makes sense, we plan it and carry it out with you.
