vSphere as a service in the EU: what hosted VMware IaaS covers and what happens to your licences

vSphere as a service: what a hosted VMware IaaS includes

vSphere as a service, also called VMware hosting or hosted vSphere, is infrastructure as a service on VMware: a provider runs the ESXi hosts, vCenter, storage and network in its data centre, and you get virtual machines with set vCPU, RAM and storage. You install and run the guest operating systems and applications, while the provider operates the hardware and the hypervisor layer. This is the split that NIST’s definition of cloud computing (SP 800-145) gives for IaaS, in which the consumer “does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications”, with possibly limited control of some network components such as host firewalls.

As of October 2026, under Broadcom’s cloud service provider programme (VCSP), the provider holds the VMware licences for its platform, so a tenant buys a service and no VMware licence. A VCF subscription you already own can follow you only to a service on Broadcom’s list of Certified Cloud Services, and Broadcom’s programme documents of May and June 2026 do not allow vSphere Foundation (VVF), vSphere Standard or Enterprise Plus to be used on any Cloud Services in Broadcom’s sense.

Who licenses VMware in a hosted service: Broadcom’s VCSP programme

Unless you bring your own VCF subscription, the provider is the licensee. Broadcom’s VCF 9.1 FAQ of 3 September 2026 refers to licences obtained “through a Broadcom cloud provider program, (e.g., VMware Cloud Service Provider, Metal-as-a-Service), where the provider is the licensee”. The provider signs a commit contract, and Broadcom’s 9.1 licensing documentation for providers, updated in August and September 2026, defines its commit capacity as “the committed capacity in the signed commit contract”, counted in cores or TiB. A VCF usage meter instance in the provider’s environment collects licensing and usage data, which “is converted to core usage per hour for each license”, and usage above the commitment may be billed to the provider as overuse.

How Broadcom counts the provider’s cores and TiB is a matter of the provider’s contract, not yours, and none of it becomes your entitlement: the VCF programme document of June 2026 excludes “Software licensed to a partner under the Cloud Service Provider Program” from the right to port. Since the service depends on that contract, ask a provider under which Broadcom programme it licenses its platform, how long its contract runs and which VMware version its hosts run.

What happens to the VMware licences you already own

Broadcom’s programme documents define Cloud Services as computing infrastructure “that a Customer does not own, and which a third party markets or makes available as a service to its customers”. The VVF document of June 2026 and the vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus documents of May 2026 say that the customer “must not (and must not allow Customer’s Third-Party Agents to) use or deploy the Software on any Cloud Services”. VCF is the exception, since it may be ported to the services on “the then-current list of Certified Cloud Services”; the customer must port “the entire set of components of the Software” and “continues to be the licensee”.

Broadcom: VCF and VVF programme documents (June 2026), vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus programme documents (May 2026), VCF 9.1 FAQ (3 September 2026), VCF 9.1 licensing documentation for providers (2 September 2026).

Cloud Services exclude infrastructure deployed on-premises, “whether in Customer’s data center or a co-location facility”, provided the third party that makes it available “does not have access to, and does not perform any services with respect to, the Software (including managed services, installation, etc)”. Once the third party that provides the infrastructure has access to the VMware software or performs services for it, installation and management included, that exclusion no longer applies. Whether a given contract falls under the definition is a legal assessment for your legal department.

Bringing your own VCF subscription: licence portability

Broadcom’s VCF 9.1 FAQ of 3 September 2026 sets the conditions for licence portability. VCF and applicable add-on licences qualify when “purchased directly from Broadcom or an authorized reseller or distributor after December 13th, 2023, and where the end customer is the licensee”, so earlier purchases do not qualify. The destination must be on Broadcom’s list of Certified Cloud Services, which was dated July 2026 when we read it on 6 October 2026. Broadcom’s VCF 9.0 licensing documentation, updated in September 2026, also asks the provider for “Certification for portability with the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program”.

The same documentation describes portability for the case in which you buy VCF from Broadcom and “hardware, service and lifecycle management” from a provider, which then “deploys and manages the VMware Cloud Foundation environment for the end customer”, licence management included. Ask the provider which environment and hosts your licence would entitle.

In VCF 9 the steps run through the VCF Business Services console, per the same 9.0 documentation:

1. Create a split licence with the capacity you want to port; it must not be added to a VCF Operations instance.
2. In the console, open the licence’s menu on the Version 9+ Licenses tab under License Management, select Manage Sharing for Portability and turn on the Activate Sharing for Portability toggle.
3. Send the licence ID and Site ID to the provider, which validates them “for legitimacy and ownership by the end customer using the Broadcom API”.
4. Add the licence to a VCF Operations instance deployed by the provider, which also deploys a VCF usage meter appliance and registers it for usage reporting.

A split licence holds “a portion of the capacity of a default license”, so the cores left in the default licence have to cover the hosts you keep. Sharing can be reversed, in Broadcom’s words: “If an end customer wants to share a license with a different provider or keep the license for personal use, they can deactivate license shared for portability.”

Our VMware optimisation service audits the estate and its subscriptions and draws up an action plan ahead of renewal and end of support, with dates. Tell us which subscriptions you hold, with their end dates and the hosts they cover.

What the provider runs and what you still manage

The provider runs and patches the physical hosts, ESXi, vCenter, shared storage and the network fabric. You keep everything inside the VMs: guest operating systems and their patches, applications, in-guest security tools, user accounts, and the licences of software that runs in the VMs, which follow each vendor’s own rules for hosted infrastructure. Protect the portal login like any administrator account, with named users and multi-factor authentication. What guaranteed CPU and RAM mean compared with overcommitted resources, and when a dedicated private cloud fits better than shared IaaS, is covered in our comparison of IaaS, private cloud and hybrid.

Broadcom programme documents for VVF and VCF (June 2026) and for vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus (May 2026) for the core rule, VCF 9.1 FAQ, Q24 (3 September 2026) for the licensee; the split of control follows NIST SP 800-145 (September 2011).

Snapshots, backup and restore tests in a hosted IaaS

Snapshots in the portal give you a rollback point before a change. Broadcom’s KB 318825 says “Do not use VMware snapshots as backups”, because the snapshot file “is only a change log of the original virtual disk”, and advises against keeping a single snapshot for more than 72 hours, since the file keeps growing and can fill the datastore. Backups are separate copies with their own schedule and retention.

In the contract, settle who sets the backup schedule and retention, who may delete restore points, where the copies are kept and who runs restore tests and records the results. On our IaaS the backup runs on Veeam, and data and backups stay in the EU.

Network, migration and exit

Before the first VM moves, decide whether subnets are stretched from your site to the provider or VMs take new IP addresses, how DNS, firewall rules and the VPN or private link change, and in which order dependent systems move. Our guide to migrating VMs to a hosted VMware platform compares the methods, their downtime and re-IP.

Our engineering partner Vixen.UNO moves systems step by step, in agreed maintenance windows and with a rollback plan, and we provide test access to the platform before migration. Describe the VMs you would move first in the form below.

Exit terms belong in the contract from the start. Since 12 September 2025, Article 25 of the EU Data Act has required cloud contracts to set notice, transitional and data retrieval periods, and our article on Data Act cloud switching sets out the periods and the charges. Between two vSphere platforms the VMs keep their virtual disks and configuration, and the virtual hardware version decides where they can run. Broadcom’s KB 315655 says “A VMware product cannot power on a virtual machine with a virtual hardware version that is higher than what it supports”, so a VM upgraded to version 22, introduced with ESX 9.0, needs ESX 9.0 or later at its destination.

Hosted IaaS or renewing licences for your own cluster

Keeping your own cluster means renewing a per-core subscription. Broadcom’s programme documents of May and June 2026 set a minimum of 16 cores per processor, and our guide to counting VMware cores after Broadcom shows how host layout changes the count. The tier also decides how long the version lasts. Broadcom’s product line comparison of April 2026 says vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus “are only available as versions up to the 8 Update 3 release”. In August 2025 Broadcom’s VCF blog said that vSphere 8 “will be supported until October 2027”. Our guide to choosing the renewal tier compares Standard, Enterprise Plus, VVF and VCF.

Beyond the licence, your own cluster carries the servers and their refresh, spare capacity for a host failure, the room and the staff time, which a hosted IaaS turns into a monthly service. Your own cluster still fits where systems need low latency to machines or users on site, or where a subscription with years left to run cannot move with the workloads: VVF, Standard and Enterprise Plus in any case, VCF when the subscription does not qualify or the provider you would choose is not on Broadcom’s list. It also fits a team that runs the estate well on hardware with years of life left. Hybrid sits between the two, with some systems on-premise and others moved, and replication between the sites.

What we do

Under our EU Cloud service we host guaranteed compute or a private cloud in Baltneta’s Tier-3 data centres in Lithuania, on a European contract with a transparent monthly invoice in euros. The IaaS option runs on the VMware vSphere platform, with CPU and RAM not shared with other clients, a self-service portal, snapshots and Veeam backup; data and backups stay in the EU. Baltneta operates the platform, and our engineering partner Vixen.UNO handles migration and support, with the scope of its access defined by the contract. For the cluster you keep, VMware optimisation audits the estate and its licences and matches editions and subscriptions to your workloads within Broadcom’s current licensing logic. The first call is free of charge, and the price of the technical assessment is fixed before work begins.

FAQ