ESXi Licensing for Supported Upgrade Path

[mumbles202]

With the requirement to upgrade ESXi in order to be in a supported state when upgrading CUCM, what would be the correct why to get licensing now that Broadcom has purchased VMware?  I was able to find the download links on the Broadcom website, but with the licensing changing and the free hypervisor being removed, does everyone need to purchase a SKU from Broadcom now?

[Roger Kallberg]

AFAIK all licenses now needs to be procured from Broadcom.

[Nithin Eluvathingal]

If you are using the foundation licenses that came with the BE7K and BE6K, please note that they reach EOL march 2025. Customers with active SWSS will have access to version upgrades from 7.x to 8.x, subject to VMware making the upgrade available to Cisco. You need to check with Cisco Licensing TAC if Broadcom (VMware) has made the upgrade available to Cisco for the Foundation users.

This condition was mentioned in the EOL release document  in 2022, and many changes have occurred since then, including the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom.

The replacement option for the Foundation License  was VMW-VSP-STD, which we activate the licenses from the VMware portal,  If your licenses were not foundation licenses and were purchased under the SKU VMW-VSP-STD, as far as I know, you should be able to get the upgrade through the Broadcom (VMware) portal.