What actually changed when Broadcom took over VMware
If you run a small or medium business in Europe and your servers sit on VMware, you have probably already had the conversation with your reseller. The renewal quote arrived, the number was different, and nobody could explain the new product names. Looking at VMware alternatives is no longer a hobby project for the IT team: for many companies it is now a budget decision with a deadline attached.
Here is what has genuinely changed. Since 2024, VMware perpetual licences are no longer sold. Everything is a subscription, priced per CPU core, with a minimum of 16 cores per processor. That last detail matters more than it sounds: a modest two-socket host with 8-core CPUs is billed as if it had 32 cores.
The product catalogue also shrank. vSphere Essentials Plus, the kit that virtualised a generation of European SMBs, can no longer be bought or renewed. vSphere 9 only exists inside the VMware vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation bundles, which are built for larger estates than most 3-host clusters.
And the clock is not theoretical. General support for vSphere 7 ended on 2 October 2025, according to VMware’s own lifecycle page. There is no grace period for late renewals, so a company sitting on vSphere 7 today is running unsupported infrastructure, whatever the contract folder says.
One more piece of news worth tracking: in September 2026 Broadcom announced a new vSphere Standard edition. Pricing and sales channel are not published yet, with details expected in mid-October 2026. If your renewal falls after that date, it is worth waiting for the numbers before signing anything.
Two things the internet keeps getting wrong
Before comparing platforms, clear two myths out of the way. Both are still repeated in articles and forum posts, and both can push you into the wrong decision.
The 72-core minimum order is gone. Broadcom communicated a 72-core minimum per order to distributors in March 2025, then withdrew it for EMEA in April 2025. Plenty of blog posts and even vendor comparison tables still present it as current policy. If someone quotes you 72 cores as an unavoidable floor in Europe, that is out of date, and it changes your renewal maths considerably.
Free ESXi came back, but it is not a plan. Broadcom reinstated the free ESXi hypervisor on 10 April 2025 with version 8.0 U3e. It ships without vCenter, which means no centralised management, no vMotion, no cluster features. It is fine for a lab or a standalone test box. Building production on it, with no support contract and no management plane, is not an alternative to a licensed platform, and treating it as one is how companies end up stuck.
The three realistic roads for an SMB
There are only three honest options at renewal time. Staying, moving to Hyper-V, or moving to Proxmox VE. Gartner estimates that more than a third of VMware workloads will move to another platform by 2028 (reported by The Register, September 2025), so whichever way you go, you are not alone in it.
Option 1: stay on VMware, with your eyes open
Staying is a legitimate choice, not a failure of nerve. If your management software vendor certifies only VMware, if you rely on Site Recovery Manager for orchestrated disaster recovery, or if you have a large estate where retraining costs more than licences, renewal may be the cheapest total outcome.
What you should not do is renew on autopilot. Get the core count in writing, ask specifically whether the new vSphere Standard applies to you once October 2026 details land, and negotiate the term length rather than accepting the first multi-year proposal.
Option 2: Hyper-V, the conservative migration
Hyper-V is a role inside Windows Server. There is no separate hypervisor licence to buy, which is why it often wins on paper for companies that are already Microsoft-heavy. Windows Server Standard grants 2 Windows virtual machines per full licensing of the host’s cores; Datacenter grants unlimited ones. The same 16-core-per-server minimum applies (source: Microsoft).
The appeal is boring, in the good sense. Your team already knows Windows, Active Directory integration is native, and virtually every Italian and European business software vendor supports it. Our page on migrazione da VMware a Hyper-V sets out how that path typically runs for a 2-to-5 host environment.
One trap to avoid on tooling: Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) is still cited by a surprising number of guides, and it has been out of support since 3 June 2017. The current options are the VM Conversion extension for Windows Admin Center, System Center VMM 2025, and StarWind V2V Converter.
Option 3: Proxmox VE, the open source route
Proxmox VE is open source, built on KVM, currently at version 9.2 (May 2026). The subscription is optional and priced per socket per year. Reading the vendor’s own price list on 20 September 2026: Community 120 euro, Basic 370, Standard 550, Premium 1,100. Many comparison sites still quote the older 110 euro figure, so check the source before budgeting.
The limits deserve equal airtime. Several business software vendors certify only VMware and Hyper-V, and you want that confirmation in writing rather than from a support agent on the phone. Your team, or your provider, needs real Linux skills. And there is no disaster recovery orchestrator equivalent to VMware SRM, so recovery runbooks stay more manual. Details on scope and sequencing are on our migrazione da VMware a Proxmox page.
Backup support has matured, which was the main blocker two years ago. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud has performed agentless Proxmox backups since version 25.07 (July 2025). Veeam has supported Proxmox since 12.2 (August 2024), though not LXC containers.
| VMware (renewal) | Hyper-V | Proxmox VE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing model | Subscription per core, min. 16 per CPU | Included in Windows Server, min. 16 cores/server | Open source, optional subscription per socket |
| Windows VM licences | Required | Required | Required |
| Business software certification | Widest | Wide | Check case by case, in writing |
| Skills needed | Existing team | Windows skills | Linux skills |
| DR orchestration | SRM available | Partner tooling | No SRM equivalent |
| Backup vendors | Full support | Full support | Acronis 25.07+, Veeam 12.2+ (no LXC) |
What leaving VMware really costs
This is where most comparisons fall apart. A migration is not “VMware subscription versus zero”, and any quote that implies it is should make you suspicious.
Windows virtual machines must be licensed on any hypervisor, Proxmox included. Moving a Windows-heavy estate to open source does not remove the Microsoft bill, it just separates it from the hypervisor bill. Count your Windows VMs and their host cores before you compare anything.
Then add the project itself: conversion work, testing windows, documentation, staff time, and the training or external support you will need for the first year on a new platform. Build the comparison over three years, not one. A platform that looks 40 percent cheaper in year one can close most of that gap once project cost and a support subscription are in the total.
Also price the hardware honestly. Newer platforms may let you consolidate onto fewer, denser hosts, which changes core counts on both sides of the comparison. If you are refreshing servers anyway, coordinate the two decisions rather than running them separately. Our work on IT infrastructure and virtualization usually starts from exactly this overlap.
A five-step plan to run before your renewal
- Fix the date and count the cores. Find the exact renewal date and the precise core count per socket per host. Everything else depends on these two numbers, and they are wrong in most internal documentation.
- Inventory workloads and get written vendor confirmations. List every VM, its owner, and its business software. Then email each software vendor and ask which hypervisors they certify. Keep the replies.
- Verify the backup with a real restore test. Not a green dashboard, an actual restore of a real VM to a real target. If the backup does not restore, no migration plan is safe. This is the foundation of any backup and disaster recovery posture.
- Build a pilot machine and measure. Convert one non-critical VM on the target platform and time it properly: conversion, boot, application checks. Real numbers beat vendor estimates when you plan the weekend windows.
- Migrate one machine at a time, with VMware still running. Keep the source environment powered and intact so every single move has a rollback. Slower, yes. Also the difference between a controlled project and an emergency.
Frequent mistakes
Deciding in the last month before renewal is the big one. Written vendor confirmations alone can take weeks, so start six months out.
Comparing licence costs only, ignoring the project and skills bill. Assuming free ESXi is a production answer. Migrating the most critical application first because it feels like the priority (it should be last). And decommissioning the VMware environment the same week the migration finishes, which removes your rollback exactly when you most need it. Ongoing monitoring under NOC10 is what tells you the new platform is behaving before you dismantle the old one.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to leave VMware?
No. Staying is reasonable if your software certifications, DR requirements, or team skills point that way. What is not reasonable is renewing without knowing your core count, your total three-year cost, and what the alternatives would actually involve.
Is Proxmox ready for business production use?
For many SMB workloads, yes, and backup support from Acronis and Veeam has closed the main gap. The real qualifiers are business software certification (confirm in writing), available Linux skills, and the absence of an SRM-style DR orchestrator.
Hyper-V or Proxmox?
If your estate is mostly Windows and your team lives in the Microsoft world, Hyper-V is the lower-risk move. If you run mostly Linux workloads, want to avoid subscription lock-in, and have or can buy Linux competence, Proxmox VE is worth serious evaluation.
How long does a migration take?
It depends on VM count, data volume, and how many maintenance windows you can get. That is precisely why step 4 exists: one pilot conversion gives you a measured figure for your own environment instead of a guess.