Choosing the Right VMware Bundle: Core Counting, Tiers and Common Mistakes

A colleague of ours recently reviewed an organization that runs about sixty virtual machines on six servers. The quote they had received was for the full private cloud bundle, which is designed for large data centers with software-defined networking and automation. When we asked whether they used any of those capabilities, the answer was no. They needed stable virtualization, high availability, backup, and a monitoring dashboard. After a simple review, a large part of the renewal cost was paying for features that would never be switched on.

VMware no longer sells its products separately under perpetual licenses. Everything is sold as an annual subscription priced per physical CPU core, in a few fixed bundles, so the central decision for most organizations is choosing between VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF).

What Actually Separates VCF from VVF

VVF is a complete virtualization platform: high availability, automated load distribution, live migration, central management, capacity and monitoring tools, a Kubernetes service, and a limited software-defined storage quota. VCF includes all of that and adds software-defined networking, a much larger storage quota per core, automation and self-service provisioning, tools for moving workloads between data centers, and lifecycle management for the entire infrastructure.

An important point is often overlooked: distributed firewalling and micro-segmentation, software load balancing, and recovery from ransomware and disasters are not fully included in either bundle. They are sold as separate add-ons.

Which Bundle Fits Which Organization?

• A mid-sized organization with one or two data centers, physical network and firewall appliances, and a small team: VVF is usually sufficient.
• A bank or large organization with several data centers and hundreds of hosts: VCF makes sense, provided you have a real plan to use software-defined networking and automation.
• Hyperconverged infrastructure with software-defined storage: Compare the storage capacity you need with each bundle's quota. Sometimes the extra capacity required under VVF makes VCF the more economical option.
• A mix of both: VCF for the primary data center and critical systems, and VVF for branch offices, a backup site, or development and test environments.

Counting Cores Correctly, and Four Common Mistakes

Under the new model, licensing is calculated from the physical cores in each processor, with a minimum of 16 cores per CPU. A dual-socket server with 8-core processors therefore needs 32 cores of license, not 16. To avoid unexpected costs:

• Export an exact inventory of hosts, processors, and cores from your management console.
• Identify low-utilization hosts, and consolidate virtual machines onto fewer, newer servers.
• Do not forget backup-site hosts, test clusters, and recently added servers. Missing them is a common audit surprise.
• Start negotiations at least three months before the contract ends, not in the last minute.
• Saving money by skipping micro-segmentation and ransomware recovery is not real savings, because the hypervisor is one of attackers' main targets.

For the full guide, checklist, and details, read the English edition: VCF or VVF: Choosing the Right VMware License and Avoiding Overspending

— Kazem Mortazavi, independent network-security consultant