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Part 3: VCF Licensing Explained

Series · Part 3 of 10VCF Fundamentals to Advanced
  1. What is VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)?
  2. Why VCF? Business Value & Use Cases
  3. VCF Licensing ExplainedYou are here
  4. VCF Architecture Deep Dive
  5. VCF Hardware Requirements & Bill of Materials
  6. VCF Networking with NSX — Deep Dive
  7. VCF Storage: vSAN OSA vs ESA
  8. VCF Workload Domains Explained
  9. VCF Day 2 Operations
  10. Installing VCF 9.1 Step-by-Step

VCF Licensing — The Broadcom Era

After Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in November 2023, the licensing model for all VMware products — including VCF — changed dramatically. The familiar perpetual licenses are gone. Everything has moved to a subscription model. Understanding this new model is essential before planning any VCF deployment, as it directly impacts your budget forecasting and procurement process.

⚠ Important Note
Broadcom has not published a public list price for VCF subscriptions. Pricing is negotiated directly with Broadcom or through authorized partners. The information here reflects the licensing structure and tiers as of mid-2025.

The New Subscription Model

Under Broadcom, VMware Cloud Foundation is licensed on a per-core subscription basis. Every physical CPU core in your VCF cluster must be licensed — there are no longer per-socket or per-VM metrics.

Key Subscription Characteristics

  • Annual or multi-year terms — 1, 3, or 5-year contracts. Multi-year terms typically offer better per-core rates.
  • Minimum core count — Broadcom enforces a minimum of 16 cores per subscription, regardless of cluster size.
  • Support included — Broadcom Production Support (24/7) is bundled into all VCF subscriptions. No separate support SKU needed.
  • Subscription management — Licenses are managed via the Broadcom Support Portal (support.broadcom.com) and tied to your Broadcom account.

VCF Subscription Tiers

VCF Standard

The base tier. Includes the complete SDDC stack:

  • VMware vSphere (ESXi + vCenter Server)
  • VMware vSAN (both OSA and ESA architectures)
  • VMware NSX (networking and security)
  • SDDC Manager (lifecycle management)
  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) — basic Kubernetes runtime

VCF Standard is suitable for organizations that want the full private cloud stack without advanced automation or observability add-ons.

VCF with Aria Add-ons

Organizations needing advanced cloud management can add the VMware Aria Suite as a separate subscription on top of VCF Standard:

  • Aria Operations — AI-powered performance monitoring, capacity planning, and cost management.
  • Aria Automation — Self-service infrastructure provisioning, infrastructure-as-code, and cloud templates.
  • Aria Log Insight — Centralized log analytics for all VCF components.
  • Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight) — Network visibility, micro-segmentation verification, and troubleshooting.

What Happened to Perpetual Licenses?

Broadcom has discontinued the sale of new perpetual VMware licenses. If you had existing perpetual licenses (vSphere Enterprise Plus, vSAN Standard, NSX Enterprise), you can still use them — they don’t expire — but you cannot purchase new perpetual licenses. All new VMware software purchases require a subscription.

For organizations with existing perpetual licenses, Broadcom introduced the VCF Subscription Upgrade program, which allows you to apply credits for your legacy licenses towards a new VCF subscription. The exact credit calculation varies by license type and term length.

Broadcom VCF vs Cloud Provider VMware Offerings

It’s important to distinguish between:

  • VCF on your own hardware — You buy VCF subscriptions and run VCF on your own servers. You own the hardware and pay Broadcom for the software subscription.
  • VMware Cloud on Public Cloud (e.g., VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solution, Google Cloud VMware Engine) — A managed service where the cloud provider runs VCF on their hardware. You pay the cloud provider per host per hour. Software licensing is bundled in the managed service price.
  • VCF via Broadcom-certified Partners — Some partners and service providers offer VCF as a managed private cloud. Licensing terms vary by partner.

License Compliance and Enforcement

SDDC Manager does not technically prevent you from running more cores than licensed, but Broadcom’s subscription agreement requires self-reporting and compliance. Broadcom may audit license usage. Best practice is to track core counts via SDDC Manager’s inventory report and align subscriptions to your actual deployed core count annually.

How to Purchase VCF

  1. Contact Broadcom directly via the Broadcom How to Buy page or via an authorized VMware partner.
  2. For existing VMware customers, log into your Broadcom Support Portal account — your existing licenses and renewal options are visible there.
  3. Request a quote specifying: VCF Standard, number of physical cores, contract term (1/3/5 years), and any Aria add-ons required.

Broadcom Documentation

Up Next → Part 4: VCF Architecture Deep Dive — We go inside the VCF stack: management domains, workload domains, SDDC Manager internals, network pools, and how all the components fit together.