‘Infuriated’, ‘disappointed' ... Ex-VMware customers explain why they migrated to Nutanix
As Broadcom flings legal nastygrams at its own punters
Next Dominic Johnston is fed up with VMware.
A couple of years back, that wasn’t the case. Johnston, an IT manager at Australian civil construction and mining contractor Golding, used VMware Cloud on AWS to host some workloads and for disaster recovery.
After Broadcom acquired VMware, Johnston noticed “a couple of support failings” and other incidents suggested Virtzilla's standard of service had fallen after the deal.
Then came the bust-up between Broadcom and AWS, which ended the ability to spin up on-demand servers in VMware Cloud on AWS.
Golding’s disaster recovery rig relied on elasticity, so Johnston “started getting very nervous”. VMware reassured him that disaster recovery would still work as required, but after a risk assessment and a chat with his boss, Johnston decided Golding would be better off moving to another platform, despite the work required to do so.
Johnston told us he is “pretty infuriated” with Broadcom for making changes that brought no obvious benefit and made him replace a system that worked.
Yew Wei Kee's reaction to VMware? "Disappointment." The assistant VP at MSIG Insurance Asia told us the biz had been using VMware since the days of 2007's ESX 3.0. But following Broadcom's takeover, MSIG was offered a new license that would have hiked up prices by 300 to 400 percent. Kee understood the offer was for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), a bundled suite covering compute, storage, and networking.
MSIG didn’t want that bundle. Kee said VMware suggested one of its smaller bundles focused on server virtualization, but didn’t offer the 24x7 support MSIG needs.
The insurer’s long history with VMware counted for nothing, and Kee felt MSIG would not be able to strike an appropriate relationship with Broadcom.
MSIG was also a Nutanix user and has now moved its entire fleet of 1,500 to 2,000 Nutanix virtual machines.
Golding moved to Nutanix too, adopting NC2 clusters in AWS. The outfit has done so for just a year or two, as it plans a full migration to EC2, but feels the temporary arrangement is worth it.
- VMware sues Siemens for allegedly using unlicensed software
- VMware revives its free ESXi hypervisor in an utterly obscure way
- VMware opens beta for an upgrade to its midrange vSphere Foundation bundle
- Hyperconverged infrastructure is so hot right now it needs liquid cooling
Johnston told The Register the migration process was simple, and that he was even able to stay hands-off over the weekend when it took place.
Ironically, shortly after the migration was complete, he got a call from a VMware account manager who introduced themselves as his new point of contact - unaware that Johnston had already planned to end Golding's relationship with the Broadcom business unit.
Storage matters
The Register met Johnston and Kee at Nutanix’s Next conference this week, where the US Navy and financial services company Moody’s recounted their VMware migrations.
Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami told The Register that Nutanix was only able to win Moody's after deciding to change its tune and start supporting external storage.
Ramaswami said that Nutanix still believes software-defined storage is superior, but the move reflects the fact that users don’t quickly change their infrastructure architectures. For Nutanix to be relevant to more customers, including those disappointed or infuriated by VMware, it needed to address external storage.
Nutanix is also courting VMware users with enhanced migration tools, including the ability to replicate firewall rules from Virtzilla’s NSX software-defined networking stack, and moving workloads without requiring “swing hardware” to host VMs during a move.
As a direct competitor of VMware, Nutanix is of course keen to throw shade on its rival and is using its conference to do so.
But VMware is also doing a decent job of annoying customers all by itself. We hear of slow or poor support, and that Broadcom’s support portal remains flaky.
The Register’s virtualization desk has also heard from VMware customers who say that distributors have been told not to quote prices for its low-end products, or can only do so after Broadcom approves the quote. We understand that quotes for vSphere Standard, VMware’s bundle focused on basic server virtualization, are hardest to secure. Others complain that quotes arrive slowly, sometimes a handful of days before existing contracts are set to expire.
Users feel such practices are designed to pressure them into purchases, or a signal they’re not wanted unless they adopt VCF.
Many VMware users have decided not to subscribe to Broadcom’s software bundles and rely on their existing perpetual licenses. But Broadcom won’t sell support to those customers and will only provide them with critical security fixes.
Some users in that position have recently reported receiving cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom ordering them to roll back patches installed after their support agreements ended.
Such requests are legally OK - after all, a contract is a contract.
But Broadcom could've made it easier for customers to stay in compliance by removing access to those patches once the support contract ended. We’ve heard many reports from paid-up subscribers that Broadcom’s support portal remains flaky, which is perhaps why out-of-contract customers can still access patches.
Nutanix is not alone in seeing an opportunity in Broadcom's intransigence. Red Hat and HPE have both created server virtualization products, Citrix has re-entered the market, smaller HCI players like Scale Computing are frisky, and open source projects like XCP-NG and Proxmox are on the march.
Broadcom continues to maintain that adoption of VCF quickly pays for itself, says most of its customers have adopted VCF, and that VMware revenue is growing fast, and that the forthcoming VCF version 9 will prove it by delivering many new features and enhancements. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
