Right-sizing and modernising a VMware estate after licensing changes
How a manufacturer could cut licensed cores, move suitable workloads and keep critical systems stable.
The situation
A mid-sized manufacturer runs plant and business systems on a VMware cluster sized years ago. A subscription renewal under new per-core licensing would significantly increase cost, and the team has limited capacity to plan alternatives.
Our approach
Assess the estate
Inventory hosts, cores, VMs, utilisation and the VMware features each workload depends on.
Right-size
Consolidate hosts and retire idle VMs to reduce licensed cores for the workloads that stay.
Model options
Compare staying on VMware, moving selected workloads to Azure VMware Solution or Azure, and an alternative hypervisor for non-critical systems.
Migrate in waves
Move the agreed workloads with tested rollback plans, prioritising low-risk systems first.
Keep plant systems stable
Leave latency-sensitive manufacturing systems on a smaller, right-sized on-site cluster.
Typical technology
What success looks like
Metrics we would agree with you up front and track throughout:
- Licensed cores before vs after
- Annual infrastructure cost
- Host utilisation
- Unplanned downtime during migration
- Recovery time objectives met
This is an illustrative scenario showing how Inspired Infotech approaches this type of problem. It does not describe a specific client, and actual approach and outcomes depend on each organisation’s systems, data and goals.
Services behind this scenario
VMware Solutions
vSphere, VCF, NSX and vSAN design, upgrades, licensing strategy and cloud migration.
Learn moreVirtualization
Consolidate servers, storage and networking to maximize utilization and cut infrastructure cost.
Learn moreMicrosoft Azure
Azure migration, app modernization, data platforms and Azure OpenAI for Microsoft-centric enterprises.
Learn moreFacing a similar challenge?
Let’s talk about your situation and what a realistic plan looks like.