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So, we were a VMWare shop up until the Broadcom purchase. As soon as it went through we started planning an exit strategy. I informed our channel partner that we would not be renewing our support contract (We purchased perpetual licensing several years ago), and we made the migration from VMWare to ProxMox. Yesterday, I get a cease & desist letter from broadcom telling me that I am to delete any vmware products from any storage we have anywhere and provide a letter saying as much.
Now, part of me wanted to reply telling them that I bought perpetual licensing and to go pound sand, but I didn’t. I did reply and tell them that we no longer use their product, and I forwarded it all to legal, and our channel partner.
What kind of Mickey Mouse nonsense is this? Even if the renewal hadn’t gone up 300%, this is an absolute sure way to ensure that not only do I never use their products again, but that I will ensure everyone I talk to knows how they do business and will strongly encourage them to look elsewhere.
Sorry about the rant, but this REALLY made me angry.

58 Spice ups
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I hear your frustration and I believe you are entirely justified in your opinion. I am glad to see you kept to a civil interaction. Kudos.

21 Spice ups
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I understand your frustration, as we’re currently looking for our exit strategy from Broadcom. Unfortunately, we renewed our contract last year and we are looking to move to a different platform now. Kudos for being civil, as I’ve been wanting to tell them to pound sand for their renewal pricing.

13 Spice ups
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Is there any evidence in their letter than you are actively using their product, such as the name of the public IP it comes from, the name of the host or product - I expect this came via telemetry data somewhere.

Maybe you have an old install as a lab?

9 Spice ups
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There is not. This is their reasoning:
“The VMware account team has made multiple attempts to contact you regarding your organization’s ongoing use
of VMware software beyond the term defined in your previous Order. As we have received no response, nor are
aware of any attempts to resolve the aforementioned, Broadcom has reasonably concluded that Customer is
willfully acting in direct contravention to the Agreement and is in violation of VMware’s intellectual property rights.”

Zero proof in any way, shape or form. Additionally, despite their claim, I have gotten zero voicemails, emails, etc. - and I informed the channel partner of the intent to move 6 months ago.
Even if we were still running it, the licensing was perpetual licensing purchased prior to the acquisition - they can’t tell me I can’t use it, they can just deny me support and upgrades.
At any rate, we’re a 100% proxmox shop now, and we don’t have any servers anywhere in the org running VMWare. I just don’t understand the strongarm approach. It’s like the a gorilla walking around beating his chest because he’s trying to assert dominance.

27 Spice ups
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Proxmox is the way, my friend.

9 Spice ups
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For your protection, I would check firewall logs for any traffic heading to vmware.com

I believe you by the way, but it may help you to confirm there is nothing they have that they can come back with.

Perhaps a VM or more has recently updated VMware drivers, as Proxmox can use VMXNET3 adapter, this may be a left over from the migration.

16 Spice ups
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This is a possibility; I know we did have some issues removing all of the vmware bits from the windows servers. I don’t see anything in our firewall logs that would indicate any traffic to vmware’s servers. I did get a response from our channel partner and he said from what he’s seeing it’s pretty standard and I just needed to reply telling them we’re not using it anymore (which I did). Seems pretty over the top to me.

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Because they are trying to squeeze out all the “lower tier” customers and only have the top 40 or so customers to support and milk their money then sell the husk later. Classic Broadcom move.

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Scare tactics usually are. McAfee did the same to us a while back.

Hopefully though nothing comes of it.

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VMware sues Siemens for using unlicensed software • The Register

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That is crazy in my book. What better way to improve your customer base than to burn bridges? I wonder if the perpetual licensing is considered void after the purchase…

I have not seen this in the IT world, but in the lumber yard world, I saw a decking company that was bought out and even though the name stayed the same they no longer supported the warranty for the decking sold before the purchase.

5 Spice ups
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You’re guilty because we say so. You’re guilty because you couldn’t just leave us. What a bunch of arrogant bastards. Well deserving of a GFY letter in response.

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Having dealt with Broadcom in the past for other products…yes, they suck, so when we heard they were buying VMware…I got a sick feeling in my stomach. We JUST renewed…it took FOREVER, but the price was about the same as it was 3 years ago so we went with it rather than going through the pain of switching (which is I’m sure what they were hoping for). Am I happy about it? Nope…might it bite us in the a$$ later? Probably. Are we safe for now? I hope so…

10 Spice ups
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I was quite happily a VMware customer from 2009-2015, until a bank merger led to my layoff, and I landed at a job with a much more limited budget. I save money, I went with Hyper-V here. I’ve never needed support, and I’ve never looked back. Hearing all this makes me glad I didn’t have the budget for VMware 10 years ago!

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Ehh, so in a nutshell, you’re not allowed to delete your own data? Kind of wonder what page in the terms and agreements that is on! :expressionless_face:

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My response is basically echoing General Tsao. I just renewed at the very end of 2023 on a 3-year term. We’re only on Essentials Plus. The renewal process took an extra long time with horrible communication but since my pricing didn’t change, I shrugged and continued on my way. Now I’m SUPER glad I did a 3-year renewal, which should give me enough time to figure out what all the fuss is about Proxmox. :smiley:

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So glad we stopped using VMWare years ago. We had a similar situation where the VMWare support renewal was more expensive than getting brand new VM hardware with Scale Computing, that included support.

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Ours is up like 45% for the total and that’s with dropping from 24 sockets to 20 sockets, now cores. Not really in a position to move right now, we’ll see in 3 years.

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I got the same letter today and we had already renewed for a 3 year plan. I’m looking forward to the call with them tomorrow.

3 Spice ups