Broadcom has restructured vSAN licensing from a per-socket to a per-core model and introduced vSAN Max for disaggregated storage. Enterprise buyers face dramatically higher storage costs — but there are significant optimisation opportunities if you understand the new model.
VMware vSAN (now branded as VMware vSAN within the Broadcom portfolio) is a hyperconverged storage solution that has undergone significant licensing changes since the Broadcom acquisition. The shift from per-processor to per-core pricing — which affects the entire VMware licensing stack — has had an outsized impact on vSAN costs, because storage-intensive workloads often run on high-core-count servers.
Under the legacy VMware model, vSAN was licensed per socket, with editions (Standard, Advanced, Enterprise) differentiated by feature set. Under Broadcom's model, vSAN is licensed per core across all physical hosts participating in the vSAN cluster, with the edition tier determining which features are available. For a typical storage cluster running 2×32-core processors per host across 6 hosts, the core count that requires licensing has increased from 6 sockets to 384 cores.
Storage-optimised servers tend to have higher core counts than compute-optimised servers. Customers who migrated to high-density NVMe or SAS storage nodes in 2022–2024 may face the steepest per-core licensing bills when renewing or transitioning their vSAN entitlements. Conduct a core count audit before any renewal discussion.
Broadcom currently offers vSAN in three configurations: as a standalone product, as an inclusion within VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), and as vSAN Max — the new disaggregated storage SKU. Understanding the differences is critical to selecting the right licensing approach.
| Configuration | Included Features | Licensing Basis | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| vSAN Standard (standalone) | HCI, RAID-5/6, dedup/compression, encryption at rest | Per core, all participating hosts | Customers running vSAN without full VCF stack |
| vSAN Enterprise (standalone) | Standard + stretched clusters, file services, iSCSI target, advanced analytics | Per core, all participating hosts | Environments requiring stretched clusters or advanced features |
| vSAN within VCF | vSAN Enterprise-equivalent features included | Included in VCF per-core subscription | Customers already running or transitioning to VCF |
| vSAN Max | Disaggregated storage, NFS/iSCSI/NVMe-oF support, storage-only nodes | Per core, storage nodes only | Organisations separating compute and storage pools |
vSAN Max is Broadcom's response to the growing market for disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure. Unlike traditional vSAN, which requires every host to contribute storage, vSAN Max allows you to deploy dedicated storage nodes and present storage to separate compute nodes. This disaggregated model enables independent scaling of compute and storage, which can be economically significant when your storage growth rate outpaces compute requirements.
Critically, vSAN Max is licensed only on the storage nodes — not the compute nodes consuming the storage. This makes it a potentially attractive option if you have a large compute cluster that consumes storage from a smaller number of dedicated storage hosts. A 4-node vSAN Max storage cluster serving 40 compute hosts would require licensing only 4 hosts' worth of cores, rather than 44.
The most important cost optimisation question for most vSAN customers is whether to purchase vSAN standalone or as part of a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) subscription. The answer depends heavily on how much of the VCF bundle you actually need.
| Factor | Standalone vSAN | vSAN via VCF |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | vSAN only | vSAN + vSphere + NSX + Aria + Tanzu (full stack) |
| Cost per core | Lower if only using storage | Higher per core; lower cost if you'd buy the stack anyway |
| Feature access | vSAN Standard or Enterprise | Enterprise-equivalent |
| Negotiation flexibility | Easier to scope and price | Broadcom bundles make it harder to exclude components |
| Audit risk | Lower — scope is narrow | Higher — more products to track compliance across |
| Strategic risk | Lower vendor dependency | Higher lock-in to Broadcom platform |
For organisations that only want VMware for storage — using alternative hypervisors or running workloads on bare metal — standalone vSAN is almost always more cost-effective than VCF. For organisations running the full VMware stack including NSX and vSphere, VCF economics improve substantially.
Many customers have reported that Broadcom's sales team is increasingly reluctant to quote standalone vSAN pricing, steering customers toward VCF instead. While VCF can offer better economics for full-stack customers, do not accept a VCF proposal without independently modelling the cost of buying only the components you need. The unwanted components in the bundle represent pure cost.
Because vSAN is now licensed per core on every host in the cluster, reducing the core count of your vSAN cluster is a direct lever on licensing cost. Before your next renewal, consider the following optimisation approaches:
The availability of credible VMware alternatives — particularly Nutanix AOS and Proxmox with Ceph — creates meaningful negotiation leverage for vSAN renewals. Broadcom's commercial team is acutely aware that storage is the most portable component of the VMware stack. A credible evaluation of an alternative storage platform is one of the strongest BATNA tools available to enterprise buyers.
Key alternatives to evaluate before a vSAN renewal include Nutanix Acropolis (which offers similar HCI functionality with a subscription model that many enterprises find more predictable), Ceph-based storage solutions running on commodity hardware, and public cloud storage (AWS EBS, Azure Managed Disks, GCP Persistent Disk) for workloads that are candidates for cloud migration.
Before any renewal negotiation, complete an internal audit of every host in your vSAN cluster, mapped to its core count and storage contribution. Identify hosts with disproportionately high core counts relative to storage capacity — these are candidates for replacement or migration to a disaggregated vSAN Max configuration.
Run a financial model comparing your current per-core cost across all vSAN hosts against a disaggregated vSAN Max architecture with dedicated lower-core storage nodes. Even if a hardware refresh is required, the multi-year licensing savings can significantly exceed the CapEx cost of new storage hardware.
If Broadcom's team presents only VCF pricing, explicitly request standalone vSAN pricing and require Broadcom to justify the bundle economics in writing. Calculate the cost of buying only the products you will actually use and present this as your reference point in the negotiation.
Begin a genuine evaluation of Nutanix, Ceph, or another storage platform at least 90 days before your renewal date. A signed PoC agreement or a completed TCO analysis from an alternative vendor gives you concrete leverage when discussing vSAN pricing with Broadcom.
Broadcom has demonstrated willingness to increase list pricing at renewal. Any multi-year vSAN commitment should include locked per-core pricing for the full term, with annual escalation caps not exceeding CPI or 3%, whichever is lower.
Customers transitioning from legacy perpetual vSAN licences to subscriptions should request conversion credits for the residual value of existing perpetual entitlements. Broadcom has offered conversion programmes in some markets; negotiate aggressively to maximise any such credit against the new subscription cost.
Disaster recovery and non-production workloads may qualify for reduced-cost licensing under Broadcom's DR and development environment policies. Ensure these are explicitly documented and discounted in your renewal agreement — many customers pay full rate for DR nodes unnecessarily.
vSAN pricing negotiations benefit from independent benchmarking data on what comparable organisations are paying per core. Top VMware negotiation consultants maintain this benchmarking data and can validate whether Broadcom's proposed pricing is competitive before you commit to a multi-year term.
The transition to core-based licensing has created new compliance risks for vSAN customers. Common exposure areas include hosts that have been added to vSAN clusters without corresponding licence purchases, development clusters running vSAN features that are only licensed in the production environment, and vSAN Max storage nodes that have been expanded (adding cores) without a corresponding entitlement update. The broader guidance on VMware audit defense under Broadcom applies directly to vSAN compliance management.
Maintaining an up-to-date vSAN licence position — documenting every licensed core count, every cluster, and every edition tier in use — is essential to avoiding audit exposure and ensuring you enter renewal negotiations from a position of certainty rather than uncertainty.
Our network of independent VMware licensing specialists can benchmark your current vSAN costs, identify optimisation opportunities, and negotiate lower renewal pricing.