When Broadcom acquired VMware, it didn't just change the licensing model — it fundamentally restructured VMware's support offerings. Production and Premier support were replaced with new tiers, pricing increased significantly, and the rules around what constitutes a "supported" configuration became stricter. This guide explains the new support model and how to manage costs.
Before Broadcom acquired VMware in November 2023, VMware offered two primary support tiers for on-premises products: Production Support and Premier Support. The distinction was clear and commercially transparent: Production Support provided standard business-hours and off-hours support with defined response times (typically 4 hours for critical issues), while Premier Support offered premium 24/7 support with faster response times (1 hour for critical issues) and named technical account managers. The pricing difference was straightforward: Premier Support cost approximately 25% more than Production Support as an annual premium over licence cost.
Under Broadcom's ownership, the entire support model has been restructured around a "success" narrative. Production and Premier have been renamed — and in many cases replaced — with Active Success (basic, often included in subscription licences) and Premier Success (premium, significant add-on cost). The restructuring was ostensibly about providing "adoption and success guidance" rather than break-fix incident response, but the practical effect is a pricing increase, a shift of support costs from optional add-ons to mandatory inclusions, and significantly tighter lifecycle support windows for older product versions.
Organisations operating on perpetual VMware licences purchased before 2024 who have not renewed to the new Broadcom subscription model may be operating in an unsupported configuration. Broadcom's position is that perpetual-licensed environments no longer qualify for Production or Premier Support — only subscription licence holders are eligible for Active and Premier Success support. If you are operating perpetual vSphere, vSAN, or NSX licences without subscription renewals, you are technically unsupported and at risk in an audit.
Broadcom's new support offering is structured around two primary tiers that apply to all subscription-based VMware products (vSphere, vSAN, NSX, Aria, etc.). Understanding what is actually included in each tier is essential for budget planning and for negotiating whether the premium tier is justified for your environment.
| Support Tier | What's Included | Response Time (Critical) | Availability | Typical Cost as % of Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Success | Bug fix support, Broadcom Support Portal access, community forums, Broadcom guidance on system design and optimization (via portal, not dedicated TAM) | 4 hours (business hours) | Business hours only (Mon–Fri, 08:00–17:00 local time) | Included in subscription |
| Premier Success | Everything in Active Success, plus: 24/7 phone support, dedicated technical account manager, named escalation path to Broadcom engineering, proactive system health monitoring, priority queue | 1 hour (24/7) | 24/7 worldwide | 15–25% of annual licence cost |
The distinction is important: Broadcom considers Active Success to be "included" in the subscription price, meaning there is no optional support choice for organisations on subscriptions — you automatically have Active Success. However, for practical production environments with any business criticality, Active Success is materially inadequate due to the business-hours-only support window and lack of named account support. This creates commercial pressure to purchase Premier Success as an "optional" upgrade — which in practice feels mandatory for most enterprise customers.
Under the old VMware model, organisations could choose Production or Premier based on business need and budget. Under Broadcom's model, everyone gets Active Success (business-hours-only) by default, and Premier Success is a separate, significant add-on. The effect is to increase the baseline support cost for the vast majority of production environments, which now must pay for Premier Success to achieve the equivalent of pre-acquisition Production or Premier Support.
Broadcom's published list prices for support are relatively opaque — there is no published schedule showing exactly what Premier Success costs as a percentage of licence. However, customer reports and negotiation data from 2025 and early 2026 indicate the following ranges for subscription-based support pricing:
Premier Success add-on pricing: For organisations renewing vSphere, vSAN, NSX, or Aria subscriptions, Broadcom is consistently quoting Premier Success add-ons at 12–22% of the annual subscription licence cost, with the actual percentage depending on account size, product mix, and negotiation posture. Large accounts (£2M+ annual VMware spend) typically achieve pricing at the lower end of the range (12–15%), while smaller accounts face pricing closer to 20–25%.
Impact on overall cost of ownership: For an organisation with a £1M annual VMware subscription cost, Premier Success pricing of 18% adds approximately £180,000 in annual support spend on top of the subscription. Over a 3-year commitment period, this represents an incremental £540,000 support cost on top of the base licence cost. This support premium was not historically mandatory — pre-acquisition, organisations could choose lower-cost Production Support for non-critical components and reserve Premium for core infrastructure only.
| Annual VMware Subscription Cost | Active Success (Included) | Premier Success at 15% | Premier Success at 20% | Total 3-Year Cost (at 20%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £500k | Included | £75k/year | £100k/year | £1,500k + £300k = £1,800k |
| £1M | Included | £150k/year | £200k/year | £3M + £600k = £3,600k |
| £2M | Included | £300k/year | £400k/year | £6M + £1.2M = £7,200k |
| £5M | Included | £750k/year | £1M/year | £15M + £3M = £18M |
For large enterprises, the cumulative support cost impact is substantial. A Fortune 500 company with a £10M annual VMware subscription cost now faces £1.5M–2M in annual support costs under the new model, whereas the equivalent support cost under pre-acquisition VMware would have been £2.2M–2.5M for Premier Support across all products, or potentially much less if selective production-only support was acceptable for non-critical components.
Beyond the pricing restructuring, Broadcom's support model has changed response time commitments and support availability in ways that should factor into your decision on support tier selection:
Active Success response times: Business hours only (Monday–Friday, 08:00–17:00 in your support region). Critical production issues occurring outside these windows — weekend outages, overnight issues in North America, issues during Asian-Pacific working hours for European-based teams — effectively receive no support response until business hours resume. For environments with global operations or 24/7 workload criticality, business-hours-only support is operationally unviable.
Premier Success response times: 1-hour response time for severity-1 critical issues, 2-4 hours for severity-2 major issues, 8 hours for severity-3 standard issues, 24 hours for severity-4 enhancement requests. The 1-hour response time applies 24/7 worldwide. However, "response time" is defined as acknowledgment and initial engagement — not as time to resolution. Initial response might be a case assignment or clarifying questions rather than a technical solution. For issues requiring engineering escalation or architectural change, resolution may take days or weeks even with 1-hour response commitment.
Broadcom's support contracts are deliberately vague about what constitutes "resolution." For production environment issues, do not rely on response time SLAs — instead, negotiate explicit language around escalation paths, named technical contacts, and resolution commitments for specific issue categories (e.g., "critical performance issue on vSphere core cluster" vs. generic "issue"). The gap between response SLA and actual resolution time is a major source of customer frustration in Broadcom support interactions.
Broadcom has compressed the support lifecycle for VMware products — meaning older versions reach end-of-support status more quickly than under VMware's previous policies. This creates forced upgrade pressure and increases total cost of ownership for organisations with stable, non-bleeding-edge infrastructure.
| vSphere Version | Release Date | End of General Support | End of Technical Support | Still Supported (2026)? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| vSphere 7.0 | April 2020 | April 2023 | October 2028 | EOGS passed; limited to critical patches |
| vSphere 8.0 | September 2022 | January 2025 | January 2030 | EOGS passed; limited to critical patches |
| vSphere 8.0 Update 1 | March 2023 | March 2025 | March 2030 | EOGS passed; limited to critical patches |
| vSphere 8.0 Update 2 | August 2023 | August 2026 | August 2031 | Full support |
| vSphere 8.0 Update 3 | May 2024 | May 2027 | May 2032 | Full support |
The critical observation: vSphere 8.0 and 8.0 Update 1 have both reached End of General Support (EOGS) as of 2025. Organisations running these versions are now receiving only critical security and stability patches — not feature enhancements or non-critical fixes. This creates a support upgrade path where Broadcom exerts commercial pressure to upgrade to vSphere 8.0 Update 2 or later to maintain access to full support and new features.
For organisations with stable, proven 8.0 Update 1 implementations, the forced upgrade from EOGS status is a significant cost driver and operational risk. Broadcom's position is that lifecycle transition pressure is necessary to "encourage modernisation," but the practical effect is to shorten the ROI window on infrastructure investments and increase annual support costs through upgrade cycles.
Given Broadcom's aggressive support pricing and shortened lifecycle, some organisations are evaluating third-party support providers as alternatives. The main third-party support options for VMware products are:
Rimini Street: Rimini Street provides break-fix support for VMware vSphere, vSAN, and NSX products at approximately 50% of Broadcom's Premier Success pricing. For a £1M VMware subscription with 20% Broadcom Premier Success add-on (£200k/year), Rimini Street quotes approximately £100k–120k/year. Rimini's support model is focused on incident response and stability — not adoption guidance or architectural consulting. The primary risk is that Rimini Street support does not include hypervisor patches or new feature development; critical security patches are sourced from Broadcom and integrated by Rimini. For organisations prioritising cost reduction over Broadcom's latest feature velocity, Rimini represents meaningful savings.
Spinnaker Support (now part of CloudHealth): Spinnaker provides third-party support for VMware products at pricing similar to Rimini Street (50–60% of Broadcom). Spinnaker's support includes both incident response and advisory support for capacity planning and performance optimization. The risk profile is identical to Rimini Street — critical patches are sourced externally and stability is prioritised over feature velocity.
Risk analysis of third-party support: The primary risk is that third-party support providers do not develop patches themselves — they rely on Broadcom-provided security patches and fixes, which are integrated after testing. For critical security issues, this introduces a lag between Broadcom release and third-party availability. Additionally, third-party support does not provide the adoption and modernisation support that Broadcom emphasises in the Premier Success positioning. For organisations confident in their VMware operational maturity and not requiring Broadcom's architectural guidance, third-party support provides material cost savings. For organisations heavily dependent on Broadcom's guidance for VMware adoption and modernisation, third-party support may create capability gaps.
Third-party support is credible for operational continuity (incident response, stability) but not for strategic capability (new features, architectural evolution). Use third-party support as a negotiation lever with Broadcom — the credible threat of moving to Rimini Street or Spinnaker typically achieves 15–25% support cost reductions from Broadcom. However, for organisations planning significant VMware modernisation or transformation (cloud migration, subscription model transition), Broadcom support retains strategic value despite the cost premium.
The support tier restructuring and lifecycle compression have created new negotiation opportunities with Broadcom's commercial teams. Unlike licence terms, which are relatively rigid, support pricing and coverage terms are frequently negotiable for larger accounts. Key negotiation levers include:
Negotiating support as a percentage of deal: Rather than accepting Broadcom's published Premier Success quote (typically 15–25% of licence), negotiate a fixed percentage of the total renewal deal as your support cost. For large multi-product renewals (vSphere + vSAN + NSX + Aria), this percentage is typically negotiable downward to 10–15%. The advantage is that if your licence cost decreases through negotiation (core reduction, subscription discount), your support cost decreases proportionally.
Multi-year support lock-in: Broadcom is willing to discount support pricing for 3-year or 5-year commitments. If your renewal is a 3-year commitment, negotiate a flat 12% support fee locked in for all 3 years rather than accepting annual increases. This provides budget certainty and protects against future support price increases.
Validating support entitlements: Many customers discover during renewal that support entitlements are ambiguous — for example, whether all vSphere nodes have Premier Support included, or only named clusters. Before renewal negotiation, formally document exactly which systems and products have support coverage in your current contract. This prevents Broadcom from using ambiguity to require additional support purchases at renewal.
Challenging the Premier Success upsell: For non-critical components or secondary environments, negotiate whether every system actually requires Premier Success. Data centres supporting non-production workloads, legacy systems near end-of-life, or systems with low incident rates are candidates for Active Success only. Segmenting systems by criticality and supporting only critical systems with Premier Success can reduce support spend by 30–50% for organisations with mixed-criticality environments.
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