Broadcom has transitioned VMware from a perpetual licensing model to a subscription-based one. This shift aligns better with today’s “everything-as-a-service” (XaaS) approach, where pay-as-you-go and pay-per-use models dominate. Depending on previous usage levels, this change has had varying impacts on companies’ VMware budgets—some positive, some negative.
However, as I often tell customers: If I present you with a similar or even better economic proposal, would you continue using VMware? The answer is always yes. VMware remains their preferred and trusted hypervisor.
Why the New VMware Model Works 👨🏻💻
The new licensing model for VMware Cloud Foundation brings several advantages, including access to new tools. When combined with the flexibility of IBM Cloud’s pay-per-use infrastructure, it becomes a winning combination.
One of these tools is VMware Cloud Director Availability (VCDA), which complements our VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service offering. VCDA leverages VMware Cloud Director to provide a simple, familiar interface for setting up a Disaster Recovery (DR) site—whether from on-premises or other Cloud environments, specially one that has access to all this features, like IBM Cloud.
DRaaS with VCDA: Pay Only When You Need It 📊
With VCDA, your DR infrastructure is synchronized across environments, but you’re not paying for idle resources. You replicate to storage and only pay for compute when you actually use it. This is true Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)—pay-as-you-go, with replication intervals configurable down to every five minutes.
VCDA is a lightweight virtual appliance (we talked before about VApps for VCFaaS) that can be deployed easily on-premises or in any VMware environment. You just need access to the underlying hypervisor, like on IBM Cloud, or a VMware Cloud Director setup—such as the one we use in our VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service.
Simple Setup, Familiar Experience 🦾
Once deployed, VCDA offers a configuration wizard with the same user experience VMware users are accustomed to—creating connections, pairing sites, and more. It’s a simplified process.
Optimizing Your DR Site 🤓
When discussing VMware in traditional infrastructure setups, I often highlight the importance of environment optimization. For example, using your DR site as a pre-production environment. During a DR test or actual incident, you can “turn off” dev/test and “turn on” your DR environment.
With VCDA, you replicate to IBM Cloud and only pay for replication and compute when needed. Even dev/test environments can follow a 5x8 model, further optimizing costs. But that’s a topic for another blog—or a deeper in person/virtual conversation.
Beyond DR: Seamless Migration ☁️
VCDA isn’t just for DR. It also simplifies migration—securely, cost-effectively, and with minimal disruption, but don’t just take my word for it—come test it yourself on IBM Cloud.