Simon Sharwood 
Scarcely a day passes without The Register‘s virtualization desk being approached by VMware’s rivals seeking a chance to explain the merits of their products and cash in on assumed dissatisfaction with the licensing regime Broadcom has imposed. But last month, VMware quietly took a swipe at those rivals with an updated virtual machine conversion tool. … Read more
Broadcom has discontinued the free version of VMware’s ESXi hypervisor. News of the change came in a Monday knowledge base article that revealed the tool was removed from VMware.com and offered the following explanation for the change: The free cut of ESXi was only able to run on limited number of cores, addressed a modest … Read more
Microsoft has announced that its Azure Virtual Desktop offering is available on-prem. The descent from the clouds for Redmond’s desktop virtualization (VDI) service is made possible by the formal release of version 23H2 of Azure Stack HCI, Microsoft’s hyperconverged offering that brings a subset of Azure to your bit barn – usually running on clusters … Read more
Disgruntled VMware users contemplating the open source cut of XenCenter as an alternative need to think again. In December the Cloud Software Group quietly canned the offering with an update to the project’s README file. “Please note that as of December 2023 this copy of the XenCenter repository is considered archived,” the December 14 GitHub … Read more
Dell has terminated its distribution deal for VMware products. A regulatory filing in the US today reveals Dell has written to Broadcom terminating a “commercial framework agreement” forged in November 2021 between Dell and VMware, which is now owned by Broadcom. That agreement was struck on the same day Dell and VMware parted ways – … Read more
Broadcom has killed off a VMware software-as-a-service product, despite also moving the virtualization giant’s other wares to subscription-only licenses – the sort of arrangement at which SaaS excels. The axed product is Aria SaaS, a cloudy version of VMware’s Aria management tools (which were previously sold under the “vRealize” brand). VMware by Broadcom last week … Read more
Exclusive Backup software vendor Veeam is doing early research on VMware alternative Proxmox, potentially with a view to creating a product to protect data created using the tool. “We’re researching and doing some prototyping around Proxmox to see what’s possible there as far as backup goes,” Anton Gostev, Veeam’s senior veep for product management posted … Read more
Broadcom has told VMware partners the virtualization champion’s channel program will end in early 2024. News of the changes appears to have been shared with partners on December 21 or 22 and was reported shortly thereafter. The Register requested an interview to explore the change. Broadcom responded with a statement to the effect that “effective … Read more
Broadcom recently revaled it intends to divest VMware’s end-user compute products, which span virtual desktops, app publishing, and device management. Let’s ponder where they might land. The end-user compute (EUC) business unit celebrated its imminent spin-out, with VP and general manager Shankar Iyer writing “We view this as a powerful benefit for our customers and … Read more
VMware by Broadcom, as the former VMware is now known, has in recent days dished out welcome news for its faithful. Earlier this week, Michael Roy, product line manager for the Workstation and Fusion desktop hypervisors, revealed the products will continue. “VMware by Broadcom is committed to our focus on the desktop hypervisor products and … Read more