Establishing a guide for licensing involves navigating significant changes introduced by Broadcom

  • Perpetual licenses phased out (only subscription)
  • Free ESXi remains but with reduced entitlements (no backup APIs)
  • vCenter no longer available standalone – must be bundled

Part 6: The Future of ESXi Licensing Under Broadcom

Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, licensing has undergone major changes. Most notably:

End of Perpetual Licenses: Broadcom has transitioned VMware to a subscription-only model. You can no longer buy a one-time license for ESXi.

Enhanced Scaling: Better support for high-core count CPUs and massive RAM configurations.