VMware vRealize management suite for hybrid clouds

Interlocked

What Does It Cost?

From my point of view, the topic of license costs at VMware is regularly less appealing than the technology. The vendor has a very strongly fragmented price strategy, with Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise editions of the products.

VMware itself only gives some nebulous hints on its product homepage with regard to the feature set on offer. For example, the Enterprise Edition offers all features that are basically available in vRealize, whereas the Standard Edition only offers basic functionality. However, admins are unlikely to be able to make complete sense of the categories. What's more, a direct feature comparison of each edition, allegedly available on the VMware website, was a link to a black hole at press time.

Ultimately, as is common with VMware, only a chat with a VMware distributor will lead to an understanding of prices. The distributors can deliver a concrete offer with actual figures, which you traditionally cannot get without contacting their sales force. However, VMware explicitly states that vRealize can be used as usual with a multicloud license from the company.

Conclusions

VMware vRealize is a typical VMware solution: It is easy to install and run, and its rich feature set delivers a happily-ever-after solution. If you already have VMware in-house and can get it cheaply, consider VMware vRealize as a solution for running hybrid setups. The feature-rich capabilities do what the vendor promises and feel as you would expect with VMware.

However, look before you leap: Once you have rolled out vRealize setups, switching to a different solution is painful. The lock-in effect hits home hard and makes it difficult to escape later.

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