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> Revenue may be increasing, but their customer base is decreasing, and any customer who's paying attention is now looking for an exit strategy. VMware in 2024

> Revenue may be increasing, but their customer base is decreasing, and any customer who's paying attention is now looking for an exit strategy. VMware in 2024 had 96% of the virtualization market and 500k customers. The above is somewhat true but also kind of like saying "the USA is in decline"... okay, but it's so big that it's going to take a very long time, and not every arrow is pointing down. Broadcom focusing on higher margin larger customers hurts the 10+ year horizon but at the same time they're closing massive (9 figure) deals 5 years out including some very large expansions. Everyone is going to look for an exit - as they should! - but that doesn't mean they actually WILL exit. (I don't work for VMware, though I did years ago, I am an independent). > I spec'ed, installed, and ran a VMware cluster for a few years and it was never very stable. After a while I stopped installing the software updates because they would usually break something. I would gently suggest this isn't really much of an anecdote. This is like saying "I ran Linux once and it never seemed stable, so I stopped updating it". There's VMware customers that range from a dozen VMs on a cluster to literally hundreds of clusters each with 10-20 hosts each with 100+ cores and 2 TB+ RAM and thousands of VMs... adding up to 500k+ VMs at the largest customers. > More than once, after applying an update, I had to re-install the licenses for each server and its associated CPUs, which is a painful process. This is not something I have encountered in 20+ years or could find an KB about online to indicate it was a widespread issue (though maybe it was if you have a link). Broadcom moved all licenses to subscription recently, which caused issues here but otherwise this feels odd. > We initially installed using an external DNS, but the cluster was so flaky that we had to switch to their recommended configuration of local DNS. I am not sure I understand, What do you mean by local vs external DNS? I am familiar with Kubernetes clusters having local CoreDNS and a plugin for plumbing external records called External DNS, however these aren't vSphere concerns. Vsphere uses standard NTP and DNS and doesn't ship with a DNS server, it doesn't have any recommendations on where or how it runs other than it being highly available.

anonymousiam 3mo ago
You said; 'I would gently suggest this isn't really much of an anecdote. This is like saying "I ran Linux once and it never seemed stable, so I stopped updating it'. I've been running Linux since 1991. I haven't done so for decades, but I contributed several patches to early Linux development, and I'm quite able to use and maintain Linux in most any circumstances. As the sole administrator of the cluster, I was capable, but not necessarily an expert in all areas. I never had trouble solving the problems that came up, but I was often annoyed that they happened at all. It struck me as an immature product under constant development and refactoring, which often introduced new problems. Through several major releases, lots of important system elements were refactored and deprecated. I should have been more focused on actually using the cluster rather than maintaining it, but it needed a lot of attention. My reference to external DNS means a DNS server not on the LAN, but outside, and only accessible through the WAN. Some of the internal VSphere services and operations are DNS intensive, and cannot tolerate the latency you would get over a 10Mbps WAN connection. I eventually set up a local DNS, which solved most of those problems. When the HPE team came to our site, I worked shoulder-to-shoulder with them for about 20 hours to get the cluster up. At the time, they recommended using a local DNS, so they knew about the issue, but they stopped short of warning me to not go external, probably because they were embarrassed, or more likely because they didn't want liability for any product defects.
- parasubvert 3mo ago
  Yeah I don't doubt your lived experience with the product. And I too have run Linux for a long time (1995). A vSphere cluster (in comparison to say KVM) has been easier to run in my perspective, but I do think it helps a lot to be a part of the VMware tech community to learn the best practices since there are historical quirks that are not always intuitive. Thank you for your response on the external DNS, that makes sense in retrospect.

anonymousiam 3mo ago

You said; 'I would gently suggest this isn't really much of an anecdote. This is like saying "I ran Linux once and it never seemed stable, so I stopped updating it'. I've been running Linux since 1991. I haven't done so for decades, but I contributed several patches to early Linux development, and I'm quite able to use and maintain Linux in most any circumstances. As the sole administrator of the cluster, I was capable, but not necessarily an expert in all areas. I never had trouble solving the problems that came up, but I was often annoyed that they happened at all. It struck me as an immature product under constant development and refactoring, which often introduced new problems. Through several major releases, lots of important system elements were refactored and deprecated. I should have been more focused on actually using the cluster rather than maintaining it, but it needed a lot of attention. My reference to external DNS means a DNS server not on the LAN, but outside, and only accessible through the WAN. Some of the internal VSphere services and operations are DNS intensive, and cannot tolerate the latency you would get over a 10Mbps WAN connection. I eventually set up a local DNS, which solved most of those problems. When the HPE team came to our site, I worked shoulder-to-shoulder with them for about 20 hours to get the cluster up. At the time, they recommended using a local DNS, so they knew about the issue, but they stopped short of warning me to not go external, probably because they were embarrassed, or more likely because they didn't want liability for any product defects.

parasubvert 3mo ago
Yeah I don't doubt your lived experience with the product. And I too have run Linux for a long time (1995). A vSphere cluster (in comparison to say KVM) has been easier to run in my perspective, but I do think it helps a lot to be a part of the VMware tech community to learn the best practices since there are historical quirks that are not always intuitive. Thank you for your response on the external DNS, that makes sense in retrospect.