VMware releases vSphere Express for virtualization on up to 128 cores

After alienating many long-time small- to medium-sized business (SMB) customers, Broadcom’s VMware is trying to appeal to its smaller customers.

Today, the virtualization company announced vSphere Express, a lower-end virtualization offering for organizations that require “cost-effective essential virtualization.”

vSphere Express comes after many customers reported that VMware was pushing them to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the flagship private cloud bundle that has many features SMBs don’t need and is expensive. Some SMB users have reported that VMware sales representatives previously told them that vSphere Standard, VMware’s prior entry-level virtualization offering, wasn’t available anymore.

A VMware spokesperson told The Register that VMware will sell a per-core subscription license at a price that will be “significantly lower” than the VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) bundle and VCF but wouldn’t provide a price quote.

IT distributor TD Synnex lists vSphere Express as costing $9,600 a year for running on up to 128 cores. The price doesn’t get cheaper with fewer cores, which still presents a challenge to the smallest use cases.

vSphere Express includes basic capabilities, like vMotion, for “live migration of running virtual machines with improved migration speed and efficiency,” and high availability for the “automated restart of failed virtual machines,” VMware’s announcement said.

The product only supports discrete instances, and organizations won’t be able to manage them centrally, Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product marketing for VCF, said, according to The Register.

“We started listening to a lot of our lower-end customers who didn’t really want the VVF but wanted the core virtualization capability, and [vSphere Express is] really meant for that market,” Shenoy said, per SDxCentral.

Whereas vSphere Standard hasn’t seen a meaningful update in years, vSphere Express will be updated as frequently as VCF and VVF are, The Register reported.