[Info-vax] VMWARE/ESXi Linux

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/28/2024 3:39 AM, Matthew R. Wilson wrote:
> But ESXi just works. It's solid, it has a huge infrastructure around it
> for vSAN stuff, virtual networking management, vMotion "just works," I
> find the management interface nicer than, say, Proxmox (although Proxmox
> is an impressive product), etc.
> 
> It's sad to see Broadcom is going to do everything they can to drive
> away the VMWare customer base. VMWare will lose its market-leader
> position, FAR fewer people will learn about it and experiment with it
> since Broadcom killed the no-cost ESXi licenses, and popularity of
> Proxmox is going to skyrocket, I suspect. Which isn't a bad thing --
> when open source solutions get attention and traction, they continue to
> improve, and as I said earlier, Proxmox is already an impressive product
> so I look forward to its future.
> 
> But make no mistake: VMWare was -- and I'd say still is -- the gold
> standard for virtualization, both on the server (ESXi) and the
> workstation (VMWare Workstation). VMWare's downfall at the hands of
> Broadcom will 100% be due to Broadcom's business practices, not
> technology.

I don't think the Broadcom prices hike will start ESXi
decline - I think it will accelerate it.

Even before the acquisition and price hike, then ESXi
was heading for decline.

Some years ago then VM's in advanced setups was
what the vast majority of enterprise IT used. And
MS fanatics choose Hyper-V, Linux fanatics choose
KVM, but the majority choose ESXi. So ESXi market
share was huge and VMWare was making good money.

But that is not how the enterprise IT world
look today. Today there are 3 possible setups:
1) public cloud
2) on-prem with containers either on bare metal
    or on VM in very basic setup (because k8s and
    other container stuff provide all the advanced functionality)
3) on-prem with traditional VM's

#1 is not ESXi as the big cloud vendors do not want
to pay and they want to customize. #2 does not need to
be ESXi as no advanced features are needed so any
virtualization is OK and ESXi cost. #3 is all that
is left for ESXi to shine with its advanced features.

So even before price hikes then ESXi was headed towards only
legacy systems and on-prem stateful application that even
though they can be deployed in k8s doesn't really
lean themselves to it in the same was as stateless
applications.

Arne