Overview

Since VMware changed its licensing policy from perpetual to subscription, and more recently increased the minimum license quantity and prices, we have developed a few solutions to optimize costs

Evaluate System Needs and Configuration

• Before deciding on a solution, assess the system's usage and technical requirements. Identify the number of VMs, resource usage, and the necessary VMware features.
• Optimizing the configuration can help reduce VMware license costs by eliminating unnecessary features or simplifying resources.

• If the organization already has a robust infrastructure, implementing domestic cloud (on-premise cloud) can help reduce VMware license costs.
• Licensing can be more flexible when deployed in an internal environment, while utilizing existing hardware, thus lowering external rental fees.

• Another option is to move VMware workloads to the public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
• Public cloud services, such as VMware Cloud on AWS or vSphere on Azure, offer flexible payment models (pay-as-you-go), which reduces upfront costs for hardware and software.
• Although public cloud incurs monthly operational costs, it helps save on hardware maintenance.

• With VMware's changing policies, it’s important to track and take advantage of any new licensing offers or discount programs VMware provides, optimizing costs. Sometimes VMware offers price reductions for customers upgrading to new versions or for long-term partnership programs. Consider Alternative Virtualization Solutions
• If costs are still too high, alternative virtualization solutions like Hyper-V or KVM can be considered, which could reduce licensing costs.
• However, this requires reassessing compatibility and scalability of the system.