FAQ for Partners CONFIDENTIAL

Frequently Asked Questions

Partner Business Update – Portfolio & Process Simplification
FAQ for Partners
01/11/24

Table of Contents
1. General Public FAQ
2. VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation Overview
3. VCF and vSphere Pricing and Packaging
4. Support
5. Add-ons and Upgrades
6. End of Availability of Perpetual, SnS and Subscription
7. Product Interoperability

1. General Public FAQ

Q. What is VMware by Broadcom announcing?

A. Today, VMware by Broadcom has reached a new milestone in its journey and announced the following:
● A dramatic simplification of our product portfolio that allows customers of all sizes to gain more value for their
investments in VMware solutions. The portfolio simplification across all VMware by Broadcom divisions stems
from customer and partner feedback over the years telling us our offers and go-to-market are too complex.
● Complete the transition of all VMware by Broadcom solutions to subscription licenses, with the end of sale of
perpetual licenses, Support and Subscription (SnS) renewals for perpetual offerings, and HPP/SPP (generic)
credits beginning today (effective dates will vary). Additionally, we are introducing licensing portability for
VMware Cloud infrastructure to validated endpoints.

Q. How do these changes benefit customers?

A. Over the past two years, VMware has been on a journey to simplify its portfolio and transition to a subscription model,
the industry standard for cloud consumption, and better serve customers with continuous innovation, faster time to value,
and predictable investments.

Q. Why is this good for partners?

A. The industry has already widely embraced subscription and SaaS, and many partners in our ecosystem have already
developed success criteria in this area. Subscription and SaaS models provide an opportunity for partners to engage more
strategically with customers and deliver high-value services and continuous customer success. Partners will benefit from a
simplified model that reduces administrative and financial burdens for participating in the program, a focus on fewer
bundled offerings with add-ons that deliver greater value to customers.

Q. What are the changes to perpetual licenses?

A. As part of our commitment to innovation, ecosystem and simplicity, we have announced the transition to subscription-
focused offerings with a simplified portfolio that addresses our customer requirements. As part of this strategy, beginning
today, we will no longer sell perpetual licenses (effective dates will vary). All offerings will continue to be available as
subscriptions going forward. Additionally, we are ending the sale of Support and Subscription (SnS) renewals for
perpetual offerings beginning today.

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Q. Why make this change from perpetual licenses to subscription?

A. This shift is the natural next step in our multi-year strategy to make it easier for customers to consume both our existing
offerings and new innovations. VMware believes that a subscription model supports our customers with the innovation
and flexibility they need as they undertake their digital transformations.

Q. Can customers continue to use their perpetual licenses?

A. Yes, customers can continue to use perpetual licenses that they’ve purchased.

Q. Can customers still purchase and add additional perpetual licenses after today?
A. After the availability of perpetual licenses ends, customers will not be able to purchase new perpetual licenses.
Customers will be able to purchase subscription software or term licenses to supplement or replace their current
perpetual-licensed install base. Certain verticals, e.g., Public Sector end dates may vary, connect with your VMW partner
business contact for more details

Q. Will VMware by Broadcom continue to provide support for active Service and Support (SnS contracts?
A. We will continue to provide support as defined in contractual commitments and the VMware Software Lifecycle Policy.

Q. Can customers renew their Service and Support (SnS) contracts after today?
A. Connect with your partner business contact for more details.

Q. What will happen to customers’ existing perpetual licenses with active SnS contracts when they are up
for renewal?
A. Customers should contact their VMware account or partner representative for upgrade pricing from perpetual to
subscription.

Q. What can customers with perpetual licenses do now to prepare?

A. This is an excellent time for customers to assess their current state with VMware infrastructure and management
products. We encourage customers to review their inventory of perpetual licenses, including refresh cycles and renewal
dates, and become more familiar with VMware's available subscription offers. Customers should also contact their
VMware or partner representative for more information.

Q. What VMware Cloud Foundation division offerings are available for purchase?
A. The product simplification across the VMware Cloud Foundation division stems from customer and partner feedback
requesting we reduce the complexity of our offers and go-to-market. Going forward, the VMware Cloud Foundation
division will feature two primary offers: VMware Cloud Foundation and the new VMware vSphere Foundation.
Additionally, we will offer VMware vSphere Standard and VMware vSphere Essentials Plus.

Q. What is VMware vSphere Foundation?

A. VMware vSphere Foundation is a new solution that includes intelligent operations management to deliver the best
performance, availability, and efficiency with greater visibility and insights. For customers seeking an HCI solution, we
offer VMware vSAN as an add-on to vSphere Foundation.

Q. What happens to customers that have purchased HPP/EPP credits and still have an outstanding
balance of unredeemed credits?
A. We are honoring existing agreements and will work with our customers to help with the redemption of credits on our
new offerings.

2. VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation Details

Q. What are the changes in the product portfolio?

A. VMware is replacing the perpetual and subscription products offered prior to the close of the Broadcom acquisition
with a simplified product portfolio. Pricing, discounting, and routes to market will be adjusted with the aim of simplifying
the offerings. This is a continuation of the evolution of our simplification journey started a couple of years ago.

Q. What are the new offerings?

A. There are four VMware offers for the SDDC portfolio of products and various add-ons. These are designed to simplify
the product portfolio and streamline the sales motions. The new offers are offered as disconnected subscriptions only.
Perpetual licensing is not available.
● VMware Cloud Foundation
● VMware vSphere Foundation
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● VMware vSphere Standard

● VMware vSphere Essentials Plus
Other products and add-ons:
● VMware vSAN Add-on
● VCDR/RWR, SRM
● VMware Avi Load Balancer
● VMware Firewall
● VMware Firewall with Advanced Threat Prevention
● Tanzu Intelligence
● TMC
● TAP/Spring
● VMware Private AI Foundation; available soon
● VMware Live recovery; available soon

Q. What happens to existing offers?

A. SDDC perpetual, SnS and subscription offerings available prior to the close of the Broadcom acquisition will be
discontinued. Please see the section on End of Availability for more information.

Q. Why are we making these changes?

A. With these changes, VMware is evolving the product portfolio to a small number of offers that have broad customer
appeal. These changes will focus and simplify the Company’s go-to-market efforts while providing customers the best
technology for their needs. This is a continuation of the evolution of our simplification journey started a couple of years
ago.

3. VCF and vSphere Pricing and Packaging

Q. How are the new offerings licensed?

A. Licensing is as follows:
1. Subscriptions only
2. Licensing per physical core with a minimum license requirement of 16 core per CPU
3. Prepaid commitment-based subscriptions
4. 1-, 3- and 5-year terms

Q. What products are included in VMware Cloud Foundation?

A. Component products and quantities per core of VCF:
1. vSphere Enterprise Plus: 1 core with 16-core per CPU minimum
2. vCenter Standard: 1 instance
3. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid: 1 core
4. vSAN Enterprise: 1 TiB of vSAN per core
5. Aria Suite Enterprise: 1 core
6. NSX Networking for VCF: 1 core
7. HCX Enterprise: 1 core
8. AON Enterprise: 1 core
9. SDDC Manager: 1 core
10. Select Support with SRE Essentials: Per Core

Q. What products are included in vSphere Foundation?

A. Component products and quantities per core of vSphere Foundation:
1. vSphere Enterprise Plus: 1 core with 16-core per CPU minimum
2. vCenter Server Standard: 1 instance
3. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid: 1 core
4. vSAN Enterprise: 100 GiB of vSAN per core (Not available on 12/11. Coming Soon)
5. Aria Suite Standard: 1 core
a. Aria Operations ADV: 1 core
b. Aria Operations for Logs

Q. What products are included in vSphere Standard?

A. Component products and quantities per core of vSphere Standard:
1. vSphere Standard: 1 core with 16-core per CPU minimum
2. vCenter Standard: 1 instance

Q. What products are included in vSphere Essentials Plus?

A. Component products and quantities per 96-core kit of vSphere Essentials Plus:

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1. vSphere Essentials Plus: 96 cores with 16-core per CPU minimum

2. vCenter Essentials: 1 instance
Maximum of 3 hosts per license supported.

Q. Does VMware Cloud Foundation include all the features of the component products?
A. The NSX product only includes Networking. Security features, Load Balancing, Gateway Firewall and Distributed
Firewall (Microsegmentation) services can be purchased separately.
For all other component products, the full features are included in VCF.

Q. Does VCF need to be deployed with SDDC Manager?

A. No, the components of VCF can be deployed without SDDC Manager. However, in order for the customer to be
entitled to SRE, the full stack must be deployed.

Q: Which VCF version will the new offerings leverage?

A. The new offerings will be based on VCF 5.1. components.

Q: Is Avi LB integrated with VCF as part of 5.1 release train?

A: No. Avi LB is planned to be integrated into VCF as part of 5.2 release.

Q. How is native public cloud monitoring of Aria licensed in VCF

A. Native public cloud monitoring is included in Aria in vSphere Foundation and VCF.

Q. Is microsegmentation included in VCF?

A. No, only NSX Networking for VCF is included in VCF. Microsegmentation feature can be purchased in the VMware
Firewall as an add-on.
Q. Will existing NSX customers who rely on microsegmentation be able to transition to VCF without
losing this functionality?
A. Yes, these customers will be able to purchase both VCF and the Firewall add-on.

Q. For existing VCF customers who have already adopted the full DFW capability, will these customers
be able to receive legacy entitlement to Firewall?
A. DFW will be supported for current customers who have an existing contract. For future purchases, the customer will
need to purchase both VCF and the Firewall add-on.

Q. Is there a way to extend the capacity of certain components?

A. No. Each offering is licensed as per core of all components. If additional capacity is required, extra cores of the full
offering would need to be purchased.

Q. Is there an option for VCF for External Storage?

A. The VCF offer includes vSAN. You can optionally deploy External Storage Arrays as primary storage in a VCF
environment, but you must still license vSAN for all VCF domains.

Q. Is there an option to replace components with different editions of components?

A. No. The components were selected to provide the highest feature set for each offer. There will be no other editions of
components, only those included in the offers.

Q. What happens if a customer does not renew any of the new subscription offerings? What is the
subscription behavior at expiration?
A. If any of the new subscriptions are not renewed, the customer would not be allowed to continue using the products. If
the customer continues to use the subscription, the customer would be out of compliance with VMware’s EULA and will
not receive support from VMware Global Support.

Q. What is the billing model for the new offerings?

A. The billing model is an upfront Commit billing model, whereby a customer must commit to a specific number of cores
for a subscription term of 1, 3 or 5 years.
If a customer requires more capacity above what they have previously purchased, they will need to purchase additional
cores to support the additional capacity required.
The billing model may be updated during the transition to Broadcom systems in May 2024.

Q. Are there any overage charges?

A. No, the offerings are sold as prepaid commitment. Customers may only deploy and use the service on the capacity that
the customer has purchased. Customers must purchase additional prepaid committed term subscriptions to use
additional capacity.

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Q. What does a customer need to do if they require additional cores of one or several offer components?
A. The customer must purchase the necessary number of additional cores of the entire offering. Except for add-ons,
components are not available separately.

Q. Which products include Termination for Convenience (TFC) clause?

A. VCF, vSphere Foundation, vSphere Standard, vSphere Essentials Plus, and all add-ons are set up as subscriptions with
Termination for Convenience.

Q. What payment methods can a customer use?

A. The subscription offerings can only be purchased using a Purchase Order and invoice process. Credits are not allowed.

Q: Will customers be able to use SPP credits for these new SKUs?
A: We are working towards allowing customers to use the credits for the new offers. We will have more information in the
future.

Q. Does VMware have any tools that can help customers determine how many cores of the products they
need for their environment?
A. Yes, please refer to KB article 89116 that describes the two ways to count cores.

4. Support
Q. What support levels are offered with the new products?

VMware Production Support VMware Select Support

Offer vSphere Customers VCF Customers

Customer Access Single Entitlement Account All Entitlement Accounts

Geo Coverage Regional Global

# of Individual Customer
6 Unlimited
Administrators

Senior-Level Support Engineers N/A ✓

SDK and API Guidance N/A ✓

Root Cause Analysis N/A Severity 1

Severity 1 Initial Response 30 minutes, 24x7 30 minutes, 24x7

Severity 2 Initial Response 4 business hours, 10x5 2 business hours, 10x5

Severity 3 Initial Response 8 business hours, 10x5 4 business hours, 10x5

Severity 4 Initial Response 12 business hours, 10x5 8 business hours, 10x5

Site Reliability Engineering

N/A ✓
Customer must deploy full VCF Stack
and Deploy SDDC Manager

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Q. What is included in Select Support with SRE?

A. Only available to our VCF customers, Select Support provides access to senior level support staff to help keep their
virtual infrastructure up and running 24x7. It includes increased SLA response times, Root Cause Analysis for Severity 1
issues, and unlimited number of support requests.
SRE Essentials is a lifecycle management offering that includes the following:
● Support for the activation and verification of one (1) VMware Cloud Foundation instance based on VMware
prescribed designs only. Custom design and activation are considered out of scope.
● Environmental analysis and guidance on remediation
● Health check and post-deployment verification for the activated environment
● When the customer is upgrading their VMware Cloud Foundation environment, VMware will provide the
following:
o Assess upgrade readiness and provide guidance for remediation for one (1) existing VMware Cloud
Foundation environment
o Support customer development of an upgrade plan per VMware Cloud Foundation instance
o Support customer when customer performs the upgrade
o Health check and post-upgrade verification for the VMware Cloud Foundation environment which has
been upgraded

Note that the customer must deploy the full VCF Stack (Including SDDC Manager) to be entitled to SRE.

5. Add-ons and upgrades

Q. What capabilities are included in vSAN Add-on?
A. The vSAN Add-on provides Enterprise capabilities and features, including vSAN Max.
Component products and quantities per 1 TiB of vSAN:
1. vSAN Enterprise: 1 TiB

Q. What is a TiB?
A. A tebibyte (TiB) is a unit of measure used to describe computing capacity. The prefix tebi comes from the binary system
for measuring data capacity. The binary system is based on powers of two. Therefore, a TiB represents 2^40 bytes of
capacity. Similarly, a GiB represents 2^30 bytes of capacity. See this link for more information.

Q. Can vSAN Enterprise be quoted as an add-on to any of the new subscription offerings?
A. vSAN can be quoted as an add-on for vSphere Foundation or for VCF.

Q. Is there a license minimum for vSAN add-on?

A. vSAN is licensed per TiB and the initial licensing minimum is 1 TiB per Core at the initial GA. This license minimum will
rapidly change to 1 TiB per 2 Cores targeting beginning January 2024 (~1/5/24) to provide customers more flexibility.
Given the typical sales cycle to reach the quoting stage, a majority of the quoting will adhere to the licensing minimums
post the licensing change beginning January 2024. Therefore, examples explaining how the licensing works will
reference the license minimum requirement post January 2024.

Q. How does the vSAN per TiB licensing work?

A. Customers can purchase vSAN on a per TiB basis and are required to license vSAN all physical storage that is “claimed”
by vSAN in a host. Additionally, customers must adhere to the applicable vSAN per TiB licensing minimum
requirement. Therefore, customers and partners will need to know the amount of storage capacity they need and the
hardware configuration they intend to deploy vSAN on in order to determine the appropriate licensing. Here are a
couple of examples to help understand licensing.
vSAN Licensing Examples #1 #2 #3 #4
TiB Capacity Needed 12 16 20 40
Host Config (Total. # of Cores) 32 32 32 64
Min Licensing Requirement 16 16 16 32
TiB Capacity Purchased 16 16 20 40

Q. Are there other options to purchase vSAN other than on a per TiB metric?
A. No, going forward vSAN can only be purchased on a per TiB metric.

Q. Will I still be able to sell VCDR for the Ransomware Recovery use case?
A. Yes, VCDR will continue to be sold as-is. VMware Live Recovery is coming soon.
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Q. Is SRM an add-on? Where will SRM/VCDR/RWR/VLR fit into the new portfolio?
A. Available as add-on. More details on these recovery add-ons will be provided soon.

Q. Can add-ons be sold separately from the main offers?

A. Yes. If existing customers have a need for one of the add-ons while they are still transitioning to the new offers, they can
purchase the add-ons separately.

Q. Are there any pre-requisites for selling add-ons?

A. vSphere Foundation and VCF are prerequisites for selling vSAN and VCDR add-ons. VCF is a prerequisite for selling
Firewall and Firewall with ATP add-on. Other add-ons have no such prerequisites.

Q. Where can I find FAQs for the VCF Add-Ons?

A. These will be added soon.
● You can find the FAQ here.

6. End of Availability of Perpetual, SnS and Subscription

Q. What products are being discontinued?

A. All SDDC perpetual, SnS and subscription products available prior to the close of the Broadcom acquisition are planned
to be End of Availability. That includes the majority of the SDDC portfolio. These products are being replaced with the
new subscription offerings as described in sections 1 and 2 of this document.
As part of the vSphere bundle offering, we will no longer be including Essentials as an option. Customers may renew
Essentials until February 4th, 2024. After this date, only vSphere Essentials Plus will be available as an offering. Connect
with your partner business contact for more details.

Q. What are the options for existing customers?

A. Connect with your partner business manager for more details. The presentation from the vmLive can be found here.

Q. Will the existing renewal quotes be honored?

A. Connect with your partner business contact for details.

Product Interoperability
Q. Can existing customers mix perpetual licenses with the new subscription offers?
A. Yes. Existing perpetual customers that need to purchase the new offers while their SnS is still active for perpetual
licenses, can deploy the new offers.

Q. Can existing customers mix on-prem disconnected term licenses with the new subscription offers?
A. Yes. Existing term license customers that need to purchase the new offers while their disconnected subscription is still
active, can deploy the new offers.

Q. Can existing customers mix connected subscriptions with the new subscription offers? How will we
handle growth/additional licenses needed between now and the renewal date?
A. This is under evaluation. Once the plans are finalized, the details for transitioning from all connected subscription
products (vSAN+/vSphere+/VCF+, etc.) will be shared. Stay tuned for more details.
For now, the following scenarios would apply to existing connected subscription customers who need to expand their
environment prior to the subscription renewal date.
● VCF customers who have deployed SDDC Manager: Will need to deploy a separate SDDC Manager for the new
subscription offers.
● VCF customers who have not deployed SDDC Manager: Will need to deploy a separate vCenter for the new
subscription offers.
● Connected vRealize/Aria customers: Will need to have a new isolated separated vRealize/Aria deployment for the
new subscription offers.
● Connected vSphere customers: Will need to deploy a separate vCenter for the new subscription offers.
In all cases, prior to or at the old subscription renewal date, customers will need to migrate their entire
environment to the new subscription offers.

*****
If you have any questions, please contact the VMware Partner Support at [email protected].
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You may also refer to the VMware by Broadcom Partner FAQ posted to the Partner Connect Portal,
which is being updated regularly.