vSphere is no longer sold the way it was under VMware. The old per-CPU model, the perpetual licence, the standalone vSphere Enterprise Plus product — all gone or repackaged. This article walks through what vSphere licensing means in 2026, why nearly every renewal proposal lands in either VVF or VCF, and the entitlement details that decide whether a customer is over-buying.
The vSphere product line as it existed under VMware — Standard, Enterprise Plus, ROBO, Essentials, Essentials Plus — has been retired as a stand-alone purchase. In its place, Broadcom sells two bundles that contain vSphere as one entitlement among many: VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). vSphere is no longer something a customer licences by itself in any enterprise context. The implication is straightforward but worth saying: every renewal conversation now starts with bundle selection, not with vSphere edition selection.
Pricing is per physical core, with a 16-core minimum per CPU socket. The 16-core minimum is the single most consequential change for any customer running low-core processors. A dual-socket host with two 8-core CPUs — perfectly viable hardware — now requires 32 core licences under the minimum rule, even though the physical core count is 16. Customers who built out density on low-core SKUs to optimise per-core software costs under the old model are now paying for cores they don't have.
VMware vSphere Foundation includes vSphere (compute virtualisation, vMotion, HA, DRS), vCenter Standard, vSAN at 100 GB per core entitlement, Aria Operations for management, and a basic tier of Aria Operations for Logs. It is the right bundle for any customer who is not consuming the network virtualisation, automation, and lifecycle components of the broader VMware stack. In our experience across 340+ engagements, somewhere between 35% and 55% of customers default to VCF when their actual workload mix would fit VVF.
VMware Cloud Foundation includes everything in VVF plus NSX (network virtualisation), Aria Automation, Aria Lifecycle, HCX, and the full vSAN entitlement at 1 TiB per core. VCF is the right bundle for customers running network virtualisation in production, doing automated multi-cluster provisioning, or running VMware Cloud Foundation as the platform standard. It is the wrong bundle for customers using vSphere as a hypervisor and nothing more.
The first question is whether the workload mix justifies the bundle. The second is the data needed to prove it.
The minimum applies per CPU, not per host. A single-socket host with a 12-core CPU still requires 16 core licences. A dual-socket host with two 12-core CPUs requires 32 (16 per CPU minimum). Hardware consolidation onto higher-core CPUs reduces the impact: a single-socket 64-core host requires 64 core licences, no minimum padding. Customers planning a refresh cycle in the next 12–18 months can materially reduce subscription consumption by choosing higher-core SKUs before the renewal lands.
Perpetual licensing is closed. Existing perpetual licences continue to function in deployment but cannot be expanded, and Support & Subscription Services renewals on perpetual licences ended on a rolling basis through 2024. Customers running perpetual vSphere with active SnS face a binary choice at SnS expiry: convert to subscription (with the bundle selection that implies) or run the existing footprint without vendor support. There is no third option Broadcom offers.
VVF includes vSAN at 100 GB per core entitlement; VCF includes it at 1 TiB per core. For customers running vSAN at scale, the entitlement difference is one of the strongest arguments either for VCF or for buying additional vSAN capacity on top of VVF. The arithmetic to compare is straightforward but rarely surfaced in default proposals: model the actual vSAN consumption per core, compare against the included entitlement under each bundle, and price the delta against the bundle uplift to VCF. Many customers find the math favours VVF plus add-on vSAN; some find the math favours VCF. The answer is workload-specific.
VVF includes Aria Operations and a basic Aria Operations for Logs entitlement. VCF includes Aria Operations, Logs, Automation, and Lifecycle. Customers who run only Operations and Logs are paying for Automation and Lifecycle inside VCF whether they deploy them or not. The carve-out conversation — whether Aria Automation can be optional inside a VCF deal — is open in commercial terms but rarely volunteered by Broadcom. It needs to be raised.
VMware's old ROBO (Remote Office, Branch Office) licensing has not been replaced cleanly. Customers running small-site clusters of 3–5 hosts now face the 16-core minimum at every site, which radically changes the per-site economics. The pragmatic workaround in most engagements is to consolidate small sites into regional clusters or to run unmanaged hypervisors (Proxmox, KVM) at small sites and reserve VVF/VCF for the regional core. Broadcom does not offer a ROBO replacement product at this time.
Full breakdown of VVF vs VCF economics, edition entitlements, and the eight renewal levers.
For customers consuming VMware through a service provider (Rackspace, OVH, VMC on AWS-equivalents), the licensing economics sit one layer removed. The service provider holds the licence; the customer pays the service. Broadcom has restructured the VCSP programme aggressively, and the pricing service providers receive has changed enough that most are passing through significant uplifts. Customers consuming VMware-as-a-service should benchmark the all-in cost against a direct VVF or VCF deployment; in many cases the direct deployment is now cheaper.
Customers transitioning from perpetual to subscription receive a mapping from old SKUs to new bundles. The mapping is sometimes generous and sometimes unfavourable, and the customer-facing documentation does not always make the choice clear. vSphere Standard typically maps to VVF (an uplift in entitlement). vSphere Enterprise Plus also maps to VVF unless NSX or Aria Automation are in use. vRealize Suite Standard or Advanced typically maps to VCF. The mapping conversation is one of the few places customers consistently leave money on the table because they don't model the alternative.
In our experience across 340+ engagements covering VMware renewals, three patterns consistently produce the best outcomes. First, model the actual workload mix against bundle entitlements with telemetry — not assumptions. Second, plan host consolidation onto higher-core CPUs before the renewal lands, not after. Third, treat the bundle selection question as the primary commercial lever; once VCF is signed, the price-per-core conversation is the smaller battle. The bundle is the war.
Our VMware practice is led by former VMware and Broadcom commercial veterans. We work for buyers only.
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