Broadcom just can’t stop themselves… Got an email this morning telling me that I have less than 30 days to grab software and licenses to any products offered by VMUG Advantage. As of Decemeber 1, 2024 things like vSphere 7/8 will no longer be available, even though you “bought a license”. In quotes because apparently my $200 bought a community group to chat about things even though it is pretty dead there for my area.
Starts here down near the bottom: VMware Cloud Foundation Delivers a Private Cloud Platform to Accelerate Customers’ AI, Sovereignty and Security Outcomes - Broadcom News and Stories?
Having trouble linking the FAQ and not allowed to upload the PDF. Hope this works:
Can they just leave some of the good things alone? Was $200 per year not enough for a personal license for your lab? It was limited to 16 cores, how much of an enterprise will people try to run on 16 cores? Greedy company.
Looks like the only way forward is to spend thousands of dollars to attend a VCP training session, then pass the exam. There are no learn at home options to allow you to buy and take the exam (unless that changed). You are required to take their training over 4 or 5 days to even have access to the exam. Those trying to gain a foot in the door have no option now to gain experience outside of the maybe 60 day demo window (I bet this drops to 15 days in the near future).
If you have an Advantage “license”, get your downloads cranking and grab your keys, you’ll have about a year to enjoy them! I certainly can’t recommend buying the Advantage service now unless you are ready to take one of the certifications (VCP-DCV or higher) because you get a discount on the tests and training courses. I don’t think the VCTA-DCV (Technical Associate) has a discount, it’s also the only cert. you can take from train at home (to my knowledge, please correct if wrong). I bet they kill this one off soon too, because it lets common scum like us into their elite ecosystem.
Makes me want to work harder to move people off of all of their products.
Rant over, please add your thoughts. I expect the videos to be popping up by the end of the day as the VMware channels all start to get their notices.