An SDK useful to enterprises rolling their own tools for migrating off VMware is now only available to Broadcom’s top partners.
Broadcom is raising the stakes when it comes to preventing its VMware customers from moving to another platform. The company has stopped users from downloading its Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK).
While this may not look like significant news VDDK is, in fact, a vital part of tools used to migrate away from VMware. For example, it is used by Microsoft Azure Migrate, Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit, Nutanix Move, and VMware-to-KVM migration products — in other words, many of the applications that will assist disgruntled customers from navigating away from VMware. The kit is still available to larger Broadcom software partners, but can no longer be downloaded by anyone for free.
Broadcom made the move, reported by the VirtualizationHowTo website, with little warning, no deprecation announcement, no alternative link, nor any explanation. The original download link for VDDK now leads to a 404 page, as do many of the support pages for it.
Redditors complained about the missing pages, with one sharing links to copies of VDDK hosted by the Internet Archive. Those files have since been removed from the archive, and the download page has also been excluded from the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive’s index of past web pages. Such exclusions can occur at the site owner’s request, or if the uploads are found to breach the Internet Archive’s policies.
Since purchasing VMware, Broadcom has been making things more difficult for users, with higher prices, unfavorable support terms and unnecessary product bundling. It has boosted its financial returns on the product but customers are seeing fewer benefits.
Making it harder to obtain the tools necessary to walk away from VMware may not be sufficient to stem the tide.
