The cheapest VMware edition came back this week, and Broadcom put a 128 core ceiling on it. VMware vSphere Express runs on vSphere 9 and sells as a per core subscription at a price the vendor declines to publish.
- One 128 core pack per customer. Reseller listings report no capacity expansion, and each instance is discrete with no central management.
- Included are ESX, vCenter Standard, vMotion, High Availability, the distributed switch, vCenter Quick Patch and TPM 2.0.
- Prashanth Shenoy of Broadcom told The Register the product is tested for small implementations and that the company does not want a customer running it on thousands of cores.
- Pricing arrives by reseller quote only. Two sockets of 32 core CPUs already consumes half the pack.
- In the European Economic Area, vSphere Standard 8 and Enterprise Plus 8 stay on sale until 31 October 2027, with support to 31 October 2028.
The ceiling, not the discount, decides whether this brings small VMware customers back. Read the full analysis.
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