Broadcom is removing expired VMware licences from its portal - take action now!

ITAM News & Analysis

Broadcom is removing expired VMware licences from its portal - take action now!

Hot on the heels of Broadcom’s announcement of the end of perpetual licences for VMware it has given customers barely a week to download any keys for licenses from its portal with expired support. This is due to Broadcom migrating all licence keys from the VMware portal into its own software management portal.

There are several impacts here affecting multiple stakeholders. Firstly, if you don’t keep your own records of licenses with expired support, you will lose the ability to reactivate the software should you need to reinstall or perhaps migrate to a different host. Secondly, if Broadcom no longer have records of your licenses this may cause issues during an audit. Additionally, folder structures from the VMware portal, which infrastructure teams often create to keep track of which keys are assigned to which server farms and clusters, will be transitioned to a flat structure. Furthermore, any notes associated with license keys will be lost.

Actions to take 

1. Inform key stakeholders of this imminent change. At a minimum, contact your server or infrastructure team. It may also be appropriate to notify Service Desk, Architecture, and Project teams. 

2. Have the team(s) responsible for managing VMware download reports relating to any license notes and labels they’ve created 

3. Download and store safely all license keys, regardless of whether they have expired support contracts. You’ll need this in order to verify that your licenses have been migrated successfully to the new Broadcom portal 

4. Generate an ELP for your VMware estate. At the very least match purchases with license keys. In my experience there are often issues relating to upgraded and split license entitlements. It was also my experience that such issues took months to resolve with VMware support. That’s unlikely to change given Broadcom’s tactics with regard to their VMware acquisition so it’s important you maintain your own records. 

Key Dates 

Broadcom start the transition on Tuesday April 30^th at 5PM PDT. You must take all actions listed above prior to that date as it appears that the VMware systems will no longer be accessible after that time 

Broadcom estimate that the transition will complete by Sunday May 5^th 7:30PM PDT 

During the transition phase (April 30^th to May 5^th) your VMware teams will not have access to license keys unless you’ve downloaded them. This could have an operational impact should servers need rebuilding or reactivating in that time. 

Further Reading 

Broadcom announcement: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=282163 

VMware support note on generating license reports: https://kb.VMware.com/s/article/2043472

Article: Who Loses When Broadcom Wins?

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