Key facts
- VMware said vSphere Express will be sold as a per-core subscription priced significantly lower than the VVF and VCF bundles, without giving a figure.
- IT distributor TD Synnex lists vSphere Express at $9,600 a year for up to 128 cores, a price that does not fall with fewer cores.
- VMware said vSphere Express includes vMotion live migration and high availability for automated restart of failed virtual machines.
- Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product marketing for VCF, said the product supports only discrete instances and cannot be managed centrally, per The Register.
- Shenoy said VMware started listening to lower-end customers who wanted core virtualization capability rather than VVF, per SDxCentral.
- Nick Watson of advisory firm C4C Group told TechTarget that Express exists because customers did the sums on VCF and started leaving.
VMware announced vSphere Express on November 4, a lower-end virtualization offering for organizations that require what the company called cost-effective essential virtualization. The product follows complaints from small and medium-sized business customers that VMware was pushing them toward VMware Cloud Foundation, the flagship private cloud bundle that carries features many of those customers do not need and is expensive.
A VMware spokesperson told The Register that vSphere Express will be sold as a per-core subscription license at a price significantly lower than the VMware vSphere Foundation bundle and VCF, but would not provide a price quote. IT distributor TD Synnex lists vSphere Express at $9,600 a year for running on up to 128 cores. The price does not get cheaper with fewer cores, which the report said still presents a challenge to the smallest use cases.
VMware's announcement said vSphere Express includes basic capabilities including vMotion, described as live migration of running virtual machines with improved migration speed and efficiency, and high availability for automated restart of failed virtual machines. Prashanth Shenoy, vice president of product marketing for VCF, said the product only supports discrete instances and organizations will not be able to manage them centrally, according to The Register. Shenoy said VMware started listening to lower-end customers who did not want VVF but wanted core virtualization capability, per SDxCentral.
The Register reported that vSphere Standard, VMware's prior entry-level offering, has not seen a meaningful update in years, while vSphere Express will be updated as frequently as VCF and VVF. Some SMB users have reported that VMware sales representatives previously told them vSphere Standard was no longer available.
The release marks a return to a streamlined low-end product for VMware, which has focused on enterprise-size customers since Broadcom's takeover. That focus has been visible as the company reduced the number of channel partners it works with and bundled its product lineup into a small number of expensive SKUs. In September, while teasing what would become vSphere Express, VCF chief product officer Paul Turner told The Register that Broadcom issued sales incentives that pushed its sales team to sell VCF and that VMware had too big a focus on VCF.
Nick Watson, chief technologist at UK-based tech advisory firm C4C Group, told TechTarget that Express exists because customers looked at VCF, did the sums and started packing, describing it as Broadcom putting a door back on the building. Dean Colpitts, CTO of Canadian managed services provider and former VMware partner Members IT Group, told Ars Technica in September that even if migrating to the new low-end offering may be easy, Broadcom has already shown both customers and partners they cannot be trusted. The report also cited a Reddit user who said last week that Broadcom had lost all credibility and that the user had two more locations to migrate off VMware.