A Guide to Extended Support, Proactive Security and Informed Decisions for VMware: Why Companies Are Making the Switch

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has left many organizations facing steep price increases, along with unexpected license changes and reduced vendor flexibility. Their push for a subscription-based model is often resulting in 3 – 10x price increases — a spike that most IT executives haven’t planned for. These unexpected costs divert budget away from initiatives that deliver real business value.

The good news — if you’re using perpetual VMware licenses, you don’t have to give them up.

In Rimini Street’s recent hypervisor market survey, 79% of IT leaders said their existing VMware licenses still meet their business needs, and 99% would keep using them if they had a way to support them.

And there is: Rimini Street gives you the option to keep leveraging your perpetual VMware licenses while buying time to see how the hypervisor market shapes up.

With independent, expert-led support for your perpetual VMware licenses, you can keep your costs under better control, dedicate your budget to high ROI projects, strengthen security and prevent disruptive migrations to Broadcom’s subscription model.

In this eBook, you’ll gain an understanding of how Rimini Street can help you:

• Keep your perpetual VMware licenses supported with expert-led, independent support that keeps you in control.
• Strengthen your security posture with Advanced Hypervisor Security, designed to guard against ransomware, misconfigurations and emerging threats.
• Rely on experienced and dedicated VMware support experts to resolve real-world, high priority VMware cases.
• Maximize the value of your existing VMware investments while creating space to innovate on your own timeline.
• Build a future-ready hypervisor roadmap aligned to your business goals, not vendor mandates.

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware is doing more than shaking up the hypervisor market — it’s putting real pressure on budgets and long-term IT planning. The shift to subscription-only licensing, forced bundling and significant price increases is forcing organizations to reexamine their hypervisor strategies.

Many organizations are already feeling the squeeze. In Rimini Street’s hypervisor survey, 92% of IT leaders indicated they anticipate further price increases within the next 12 to 18 months. Left unchecked, these changes could consume a significant portion of technology budgets, lock businesses into rigid subscription models and ultimately stifle innovation. It’s no surprise that 95% of respondents view roadmap services as critical to navigating this shift with clarity and confidence.

Organizations want to keep what’s working, stay flexible and make changes on their own terms, not on a vendor’s timeline. Rimini Street makes that possible.

Wondering how much your Broadcom VMware renewal might cost? Use our VMware Renewal Estimator to get a quick estimation based on current pricing trends and contract shifts. It’s the first step toward making a more informed, cost-effective decision.

Your VMware environment is part of a complex, mission-critical ecosystem that keeps your business running. When issues arise, they don’t just impact virtualization, but the effects ripple across infrastructure, applications and operations.

Rimini Street delivers more than just break-fix support. We provide end-to-end expertise and strategic guidance, with VMware professionals available 24/7/365 for P1 and P2 issues to help ensure business continuity and support. Our experienced team of VMware support professionals can help you extend the life of your perpetual licenses without costly migrations to subscription bundles.

Rimini Support ^TM for VMware includes:

• Advanced hypervisor support: Coverage for performance tuning, configuration optimization and interoperability.
• Named expert engineers with deep VMware and multi-platform expertise.
• Guaranteed response SLAs: 10-minute response time for critical P1 issues.
• Proactive services like configuration reviews, patching guidance and custom alerts.
• Dedicated service delivery teams that understand your environment, business goals and support history.

Our model is built around high-touch support, deep product knowledge and the flexibility to support each of our clients’ long-term goals.

When it comes to virtualization, security is mission critical. Yet, most organizations are left exposed by slow vendor patching cycles, increasingly complex threats and rising ransomware risks targeting VMware ESXi environments.

Rimini Protect™ for VMware is embedded within our Advanced Hypervisor Support (AHS) offering, giving you a powerful, proactive defense layer.

Designed specifically for VMware’s ESXi and all Linux-based hypervisors,  Rimini Protect AHS includes:

• AI/ML Technology. Real-time runtime protection using AI/ML to detect and block file-based and in-memory malware. Automatically remediates damage without human input, stopping threats before they disrupt the business.

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Adds critical protection against credential theft in both connected and air-gapped environments. Helps prevent unauthorized access and alert teams to suspicious login attempts.
• Process Control. Blocks process escapes from VMs or containers to stop attacks from reaching the hypervisor. Prevents encryption or data exfiltration at the core system level.

Our clients gain peace of mind knowing that their VMware environments are not only supported by named expert engineers and guaranteed SLAs but are also protected from the growing list of threats targeting hypervisors.

_{“We continuously assess new strategies and solutions to safeguard our clients, and we are extremely excited to bring this new solution and partnership to the market. Rimini ProtectTM Advanced Hypervisor Security offers highly effective protection for hypervisors, which are commonly prime targets for threat groups due to their valuable data and the challenges associated with developing secure code around sandboxing compute resources. Technology for this solution is powered by our nimble partner, Vali Cyber® providing a novel approach to address the aforementioned emerging security challenge.”}

_{-Gabe Dimeglio, CISO, SVP & GM Rimini Protect and Watch Solutions, Rimini Street}

Unlike vendor support models that rely on tiered escalation processes and long wait times, our expert VMware engineers engage directly. We proactively monitor your environments and resolve complex issues that traditional support teams often overlook, helping ensure robust security and continued high performance.

When issues arise, our engineers investigate the root cause, not just the symptoms, and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence. It’s this level of accountability and technical depth that enables us to consistently deliver results.

_{A Real-World Client Example: Resolving PSOD on ESXi 7.0 Due to NUMA Race Condition}

_{After a memory upgrade triggered a critical crash (PSOD) on an ESXi 7.0 host, Rimini Street engineers stepped in to investigate. By analyzing dump files and memory allocation patterns, the team traced the issue to a NUMA race condition during memory plug module operations. They advised disabling hot add for virtual machines that didn’t require it, preventing further outages. Thanks to proactive support, the client’s environment remained stable, with vSphere HA seamlessly recovering VMs and maintaining service continuity.}

According to Rimini Street’s survey, 98% of IT leaders are actively exploring or have already adopted alternatives to VMware, and 36% have already transitioned to alternatives. This level of momentum signals a major turning point driven by the need for innovation and competitive pricing, but making the right move takes time, planning and clarity.

That’s where Rimini Street comes in. We give finance and IT leaders and CIOs the stability and flexibility to pause, evaluate and plan, without being locked into vendor-driven timelines or costly subscription models.

Alternatives to VMware are no longer just emerging; 81% of IT leaders say strong alternatives already exist, and many are mature enough to meet enterprise requirements today.

Most organizations also believe their existing VMware perpetual licenses meet their business needs. Rimini Street’s support model enables you to maintain full operational continuity while giving you the time to explore options, negotiate smarter and make future-ready decisions on your own terms.

Making Informed Decisions with Rimini Street as Your Trusted Partner

As Broadcom’s pricing pressures intensify and changes in the hypervisor market continue to accelerate, the need for stability and clear direction has never been greater. With Rimini Street, you buy the time you need to evaluate your future hypervisor strategy, without sacrificing security, uptime, or control.

Rimini Street’s unique support, security and consulting services will enable you to keep your VMware environment running at a fraction of the cost in comparison to the new subscription pricing. These savings can be reinvested in innovation projects and other strategic priorities, ensuring that your organization stays agile and competitive.

Making strategic IT decisions requires more than just reactive support — it demands foresight, expertise and independence from vendor pressure. Rimini Street delivers a smarter path forward with expert-led support at a fraction of the cost, so you can reinvest in innovation initiatives like AI, automation or cybersecurity.

Whether you’re evaluating hypervisor alternatives or looking for alternative support models to keep your perpetual licenses running, Rimini Street can help you stay in control. Contact us today to explore how you can reduce costs, mitigate risk and move forward on your terms.