VMware per core licensing, worked through. The calculations and the cost pitfalls.

VMware is licensed per physical core by subscription, at least 16 cores per CPU, in bundles. Your cost depends on the licensed core count after that floor and on which clusters need VCF and which can run on VVF.

Broadcom now sells VMware on a single metric: physical cores, by annual subscription, with a floor of 16 cores per CPU. The reset that followed the acquisition ended perpetual sales and folded 168 SKUs into four primary bundles plus several add ons. Two of them carry most enterprise spend: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF).

This page shows how the count works, what it costs at the list rates buyers are quoted, and where quotes go wrong. For the history, read the licensing changes explained. If you are weighing an exit, the Hyper-V versus VMware comparison and the VMware alternatives guide cover the options, and the Broadcom hub collects the rest.

What did Broadcom change about VMware licensing in 2024?

Broadcom switched VMware from perpetual licenses plus support to subscription only, and from individual products to bundles. It completed the acquisition in November 2023, announced the portfolio changes on December 11, 2023, and put the new product line in place in February 2024.

The five changes that reset the price

• Perpetual sales ended. Licenses you already own keep running, but they get no new feature releases, and support and updates now come only with a subscription.
• 168 SKUs became 4 primary bundles. VCF, VVF, vSphere Standard and vSphere Enterprise Plus.
• A 16 core minimum per CPU. It applies across all bundles.
• The Pinnacle channel restructure. Most resellers lost the right to quote VMware, so fewer partners can compete for your order.
• A renewal price reset. Existing customers faced uplifts of 50 to 200 percent at renewal.

How do the VCF and VVF bundles compare?

VCF is the full private cloud stack, aimed at tier one production. VVF covers compute virtualization with a smaller storage allowance, which suits tier two workloads and edge sites. The components below follow Broadcom's current program documentation, and the prices are the typical list rates quoted to buyers.

How much vSAN does each bundle include?

Storage comes with the cores. VCF includes 1 TiB of vSAN for each VCF core purchased, and VVF includes 0.25 TiB per core, with the total rounded up to the next TiB. A 256 core cluster therefore brings 64 TiB of vSAN on VVF and 256 TiB on VCF.

A cluster that holds more vSAN data than its VVF allowance needs a vSAN capacity add on, or VCF. VVF storage can only be pooled across cores running VVF vSphere, so spare capacity on VCF hosts does not help. Size each cluster separately before you decide which bundle it gets.

How does the VMware 16 core minimum change the licensed core count?

Every CPU in a licensed host counts as at least 16 cores. A 12 core CPU is licensed at 16 cores and a 24 core CPU at 24. The floor applies per CPU, not per host, so the gap compounds across sockets, hosts and clusters.

Which cores count toward the license?

• Every physical core on a host running ESXi. Broadcom's program documentation includes cores deactivated in the BIOS, so switching cores off does not lower the count.
• Standby hosts. A DR or test host with ESXi installed is licensed like a production host. The program documentation allows recovery and testing activities for up to 15 days a year per environment, so read that clause before you assume a DR site is covered.
• Not hyperthreads. The unit is the physical core, never the logical processor.
• Not virtual machines. Adding guests to a host changes nothing on the license.

Watch for a second minimum. In 2025 Broadcom published a 72 core minimum per order, and partners have applied it unevenly since. The current VCF and VVF program documentation states only the 16 core per processor floor, so if a quote rounds a small site up to 72 cores, ask for the clause in writing before you accept it.

Do you license VMware per vCPU or per physical core?

Per physical core. The vCPU count that guests see is a virtualization construct and has no role in the license, so any VMware quote priced on vCPUs is built on the wrong unit.

Three ways a vCPU quote inflates the price

• Hyperthreads counted as cores. A 16 physical core CPU exposes 32 logical cores. The quote should price 16.
• VM density counted. The number of VMs on a host does not change the per core cost, however densely you pack it.
• A cloud broker quote. A reseller cloud quote priced on vCPUs is treating the workload as IaaS and pricing it as a hosting service rather than as VMware.

Send any such quote back with your host inventory attached. Ask for a restatement in physical cores per CPU, with the 16 core floor applied socket by socket, so both sides argue from the same count.

What does VMware per core pricing look like on real hosts?

Multiply licensed cores, after the floor, by the per core rate. The three cluster shapes below use VCF list at $350 per core per year and VVF list at $135 per core per year.

The small cluster pays for 24 cores it does not have, a third more than its physical count. On VCF that is $8,400 a year for capacity that does not exist. The medium and large clusters license exactly what they run.

Example: rebuilding the small cluster on single socket hosts

Say the three small hosts are due for refresh, and you replace each with a host carrying one 24 core CPU. Physical cores stay at 72, and licensed cores fall from 96 to 72 because 24 is above the floor. VCF drops to $25,200 a year and VVF to $9,720.

That saves $8,400 a year on VCF, or $25,200 over a three year term, and $3,240 a year on VVF. Check that the single socket design gives the memory and I/O the workloads need. When hosts are due for refresh anyway, the CPU choice costs little to change.

Example: splitting the large cluster by tier

Now take the 20 node cluster and suppose 8 hosts run workloads that need NSX, while the other 12 run only vSphere and vSAN. Split them into two clusters and license each on the bundle it uses.

Against $448,000 for all VCF, the split saves $165,120 a year at list, about 37 percent. The condition is storage. If the tier two cluster holds more than its 192 TiB VVF allowance, price the vSAN add on before you count the saving.

How do you count your own VMware cores before Broadcom does?

Run Broadcom's own counting tool against vCenter, then reconcile the output with your hardware records before any quote arrives. Broadcom KB 313548 publishes the License Counting PowerCLI Tool as FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage.psm1 for a single vCenter, with a separate module for several vCenters.

1. Run the script. It needs PowerCLI 13.3 or later and PowerShell 7.4.6 or later. Per host it reports sockets, cores per socket and a FOUNDATION_LICENSE_CORE_COUNT with the 16 core floor already applied, plus the vSAN TiB required per cluster.
2. Check the host list. Remove hosts that were retired but still sit in vCenter, and add any ESXi host outside vCenter that the script cannot see.
3. Check BIOS settings. Cores disabled in firmware still count, so a host tuned down for another product's licensing is still licensed at its full core count.
4. Tag each cluster by tier. Note whether it runs NSX, VCF Automation or HCX today, since that decides VCF or VVF.

What have we seen in recent VMware renewals?

First quotes ran far above what customers paid before. Morten Andersen, my co founder, benchmarked roughly 30 to 40 Broadcom VMware renewals in 2024 and 2025, and the first quote landed 60 to 150 percent above the prior perpetual support line. Most of that came from the shift to VMware Cloud Foundation bundling.

• Bundle inflation. Buyers paying for NSX, Aria and Tanzu they would not deploy in year one, which added 25 to 40 percent to the line.
• Core minimum drag. On smaller hosts the 16 core floor lifted licensed cores 10 to 30 percent above physical need.
• Term pressure. One year quotes priced 15 to 25 percent above three year commitments, to push customers into longer lock in.

Why we do not accept VCF as the default answer

The usual reseller pitch says VCF is the only sensible path because the bundle costs less than buying the components. We disagree. In roughly 22 of the 35 environments Morten benchmarked, the customer ran vSphere and vSAN but not NSX, Aria or Tanzu, so 30 to 45 percent of VCF spend paid for software that was never deployed.

The better course is to price VVF and a vSphere only renewal alongside VCF, then ask Broadcom to justify the VCF premium against what you actually run. Read the official component list before you accept any bundle comparison.

Your VMware budget should follow the deployment you actually run, whatever bundle Broadcom would prefer to sell you.

What are the VMware cost pitfalls and how do you control them?

Most overspend under the per core model comes from six predictable errors, and each has a specific fix you can apply before signing.

Check every quote against Broadcom's own terms. The VCF product page and the VCF support documentation set out the per core model and the 16 core floor in writing.

What the account team will say, and how to answer

• "VCF costs little more than VVF once you add up the components." Reply: quote VVF for the clusters that run only vSphere and vSAN, and VCF only where NSX is deployed. We will compare the two totals.
• "Your core count comes from our records." Reply: here is the output of Broadcom's own counting tool from KB 313548, host by host. Reconcile any difference against it before we discuss price.
• "The discount only applies to a three year term." Reply: show one, three and five year prices on the same core count. We will take a longer term only with a price hold and a right to reduce cores.
• "This price expires at quarter end." Reply: we sign when the core count and bundle match our inventory, and we are pricing an alternative platform in parallel.

Contract wording to ask for

• A core schedule by cluster. It fixes the licensed baseline, so a later compliance review starts from an agreed count.
• Mixed edition rights. VCF on some clusters and VVF on others in the same agreement keeps the tier split from the example above.
• A reduction right at each anniversary. Consolidation and host retirement then lower the bill during the term.
• A cap on the per core rate at the next renewal. Without it, the renewal after this one starts from scratch.
• Fixed prices for added cores and vSAN capacity. Growth during the term is billed at the contracted rate.

When should you start a VMware renewal?

Start nine to twelve months before the term ends. Broadcom quotes tend to arrive late, and a credible alternative takes months to scope, so the count and the tiering need to be done before the first quote lands.

How does Redress work on VMware per core renewals?

We count the cores, split clusters between VCF and VVF, and run the parallel Pinnacle quotes for you. The result is a core count, a bundle mix and a renewal price across the term that you can support line by line when Broadcom pushes back.

See the Vendor Shield subscription, the Renewal Program, the Benchmark Program, the Software Spend Assessment and our benchmarking service. You can also read about us, meet the management team, find our locations or contact us directly.

What to do next

The eight steps below cover the per core sizing, and the work fits inside a 60 day window before the renewal talks start.

1. Inventory the VMware environment. Hosts, sockets, cores, clusters and the current license SKU for each.
2. Apply the 16 core minimum. Flag the hosts that pay for more cores than they physically have.
3. Tier the workloads. Tier one production that needs NSX and the full Aria suite (now VCF Operations and VCF Automation), tier two that needs only vSphere and vSAN.
4. Map each tier to a bundle. Tier one to VCF, tier two to VVF, and check vSAN capacity against the VVF allowance.
5. Find consolidation candidates. Small hosts whose workloads can move onto larger hosts before renewal.
6. Get parallel Pinnacle quotes. Two independent quotes from the channel on the same core schedule.
7. Model the term options. One, three and five years, each with the discount you expect.
8. Negotiate the remaining gap. Use a priced alternative platform to set your target price.

Frequently asked questions