Editorial Note: This blog post updates and replaces the original KB article (KB 96168) published on January 15, 2024. The intent is to bring further clarity to some of the communications contained in the original article related to the End of Availability of certain VMware offerings. We are also clarifying how customers can continue to acquire solutions they are currently using if a standalone SKU for their product has reached End of Availability. We appreciate our customers and partners who shared their input on the communications to help us bring more clarity to this topic. Thank you.
As announced on December 11, 2023, VMware reached a new milestone in its journey over the last two years to streamline and simplify its portfolio and transition from perpetual licensing to a subscription model. VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation, available as subscription software only, are now our two new offers. We also offer optional advanced add-ons which can be used with these solutions.
As an outcome of this portfolio simplification, many VMware software solutions will only be offered as part of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). They will not be available for purchase as standalone point solutions.
In the interest of clarity, presented below is a recap of the changes we have brought to our portfolio:
- VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware’s new solution for customers looking to capture the value of full stack infrastructure with a platform that offers vSphere, vSAN and NSX with the full Aria management and orchestration suite with new services included.
- VMware vSphere Foundation is VMware’s solution for data center optimization in traditional vSphere environments. It includes Tanzu Kubernetes Grid in addition to Aria Operations and Aria Operations for Logs as part of its standard suite of features. Additionally, customers with lighter requirements such as basic hardware consolidation or virtualization on a very small number of servers can still purchase subscriptions to vSphere Standard and vSphere Essentials Plus Kit.
- VMware add-on services are available for VMware vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation to further enhance the customer journey and address additional storage, security, disaster recovery, Generative AI and other specific use cases.
This portfolio simplification will allow customers to extract more value from their VMware investment, and enable VMware to accelerate delivery of new innovations and ease both deployment and management for customers.
Additionally, VMware by Broadcom also plans to offer “Bring Your Own License” capability that will allow customers to purchase subscriptions of VMware Cloud Foundation from Broadcom and flexibly deploy those subscriptions to VMware validated hybrid cloud endpoints, as well as their own on-prem data centers.
The other outcome of this transition is that the products listed in the table below are now at End of Availability (EOA) as standalone offers. Some offerings may still be available for consumption as part of VMware Cloud Foundation or VMware vSphere Foundation offers, which we have noted.
As detailed in this blog, VMware is also announcing EoA of the Aria SaaS services, but will continue to support those customers currently using Aria SaaS services until the end of their subscription term. At the end of the subscription term, customers will need to transition to either VCF or VVF. Also note that Aria SaaS Services are in maintenance mode, meaning no new features will be published, although security and critical updates will be provided during the active subscription period.
This announcement encompasses all licensing options, including Perpetual, Support & Subscription (SnS), SaaS/hosted and other subscription types. It also covers every edition, suite, and pricing metric for each product including affected academic SKUs. Any exception to this coverage will be specified separately.
| Products no longer available as standalone (all editions and pricing metrics) | Replacement Product Included in VCF/VVF/Add-on? (Y/N) | Which Product or Add-On? |
| VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus | Y | VCF, VVF |
| VMware vSphere+ | N | |
| VMware vSphere Enterprise | N | |
| VMware vSphere Standard (excluding subscription) | Y | Replaced with new vSphere Standard |
| VMware vSphere ROBO | N | |
| VMware vSphere Scale Out | N | |
| VMware vSphere Desktop | N | |
| VMware vSphere Acceleration Kits | N | |
| VMware vSphere Essentials Kit | N | |
| VMware vSphere Essentials Plus (excluding new subscription offering) | Y | Replaced with vSphere Essentials Plus Kit |
| VMware vSphere Starter/Foundation | N | |
| VMware vSphere with Operations Management | N | |
| VMware vSphere Basic | N | |
| VMware vSphere Advanced | N | |
| VMware vSphere Storage Appliance | N | |
| VMware vSphere Hypervisor (free edition) | N | |
| VMware Cloud Foundation/VCF+/VCF-S (excluding new VCF subscription offering) | N | Replaced with VMware Cloud Foundation (new) |
| VMware Cloud Foundation for VDI | N | |
| VMware Cloud Foundation for ROBO | N | |
| VMware SDDC Manager | Y | VCF |
| VMware vCenter Standard | Y | VCF, VVF and vSphere STD |
| VMware vCenter Foundation | N | |
| VMware vSAN | Y | VCF, VVF, vSAN add-on |
| VMware vSAN ROBO | N | |
| VMware vSAN Desktop | N | |
| VMware vSAN+ | N | |
| VMware HCI Kit | N | |
| VMware Site Recovery Manager | Y | SRM Add-On Service |
| VMware Cloud Editions/Cloud Packs | N | Replaced with VCF, VVF |
| VMware vCloud Suite | N | Replaced with VCF, VVF |
| VMware Aria Suite (formerly vRealize Suite) | Y | VCF, VVF |
| VMware Aria Universal Suite (formerly vRealize Cloud Universal) | N | |
| VMware Aria Suite Term | Y | VCF, VVF |
| VMware Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight) | Y | VCF |
| VMWare Aria Operations for Networks Universal (formerly vRealize Network Insight Universal) | N | |
| VMware vRealize Network Insight ROBO | N | |
| VMWare Aria Operations for Logs (formerly vRealize Log Insight) | Y | VVF, VCF |
| VMware vRealize Operations 8 Application Monitoring Add-On | N | |
| VMware Aria Operations | Y | VVF, VCF |
| VMware Aria Automation | Y | VCF |
| VMware Aria Suite Cloud for US Public Sector | N | |
| VMware Aria Automation for Secure Hosts add-on (formerly SaltStack SecOps) | Y | Tanzu Guardrails Add-On |
| VMware vRealize Automation SaltStack SecOps add-on | Y | Tanzu Guardrails Add-On |
| VMware Aria Operations for Integrations (formerly vRealize True Visibility Suite) | Y | VCF, VVF |
| VMware Cloud Director | Y | VCF (CSP only) |
| VMware Cloud Director Service | N | |
| VMware NSX | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall (with ATP) |
| VMware NSX for Desktop | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall (with ATP) |
| VMware NSX ROBO | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall (with ATP) |
| VMware NSX Distributed Firewall | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall |
| VMware NSX Gateway Firewall | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall |
| VMware NSX Threat Prevention to Distributed Firewall | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall (with ATP) |
| VMware NSX Threat Prevention to Gateway Firewall | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall (with ATP) |
| VMware NSX Advanced Threat Prevention to Distributed Firewall | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall (with ATP) |
| VMware NSX Advanced Threat Prevention to Gateway Firewall | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall (with ATP) |
| VMware Advanced Load Balancer | Y | VMware Avi Load Balancer Add-On (also standalone) |
| VMware Container Networking Enterprise with Antrea | Y | VCF and VMware Firewall |
| VMware HCX | Y | VCF |
| VMware HCX+ | N | |
| Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (vSphere with Tanzu) ** | Y | VVF and VCF |
Next Steps
If you are an existing customer and purchased the above End of Availability products, but are not up for renewal there is no immediate action required at this time. VMware will continue to offer active support through the duration of your support contract. In the future, at the time of renewal, you can work with your VMware representative or VMware partner to align your go forward requirements to VMware’s updated portfolio of offerings.
For additional details surrounding this, please reach out to your VMware Account team and Sales Representative.
