Since Broadcom acquired VMware, licensing has moved to subscription-only bundles, and many organisations have seen their renewal quote change substantially. For them, the renewal date has become the date every infrastructure decision has to work back from.
Start with the date, not the platform
The common mistake is starting with a platform comparison and discovering the timeline later. Start with the date the current agreement ends, then work backwards. Each step below has a lead time, and most of them can't be compressed by adding people.
The steps, in reverse
Decommission and final cutover. The last wave needs to finish before the renewal date with room for a rollback. Leave the final weeks free of planned change on purpose, so a late problem has room to be fixed.
Migration waves. Waves run in dependency order, with a pilot first. Application owners need to test each wave, and their availability usually sets the pace more than the engineering does.
Target platform build. Whether the destination is Azure, Azure Local or both, the landing zone or cluster has to be built, secured, backed up and monitored before the first production workload moves.
Hardware and licences. Azure Local runs on validated hardware from OEM partners, and hardware lead times can be long. Microsoft licensing for the new platform, including Windows Server guest licensing, needs to be settled before the build starts.
Decisions. Each workload needs a destination: public Azure, Azure Local, Azure VMware Solution for a defined period, another hypervisor, or retirement. That needs an inventory and a dependency map, not a spreadsheet of VM names.
When the date can't be met
Sometimes the timeline doesn't work. If working back from the date shows the migration can't finish in time, there are options: negotiating the shortest renewal term available, renewing only the hosts that will still be running, or moving a subset of workloads to Azure VMware Solution as a bridge while the rest are rebuilt. Each has costs, and each is better chosen early than forced late.
A realistic minimum
For a mid-sized estate, the gap between deciding and finishing is measured in quarters, not weeks. If your renewal is within the next year and there is no inventory yet, the inventory is this month's job.
Facing a VMware renewal? VMware exit and Azure Local
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