Author: Christophe Herrbach, Head of Azure VMware Solution Product Management at Microsoft
UPDATED: Broadcom has announced changes are coming to its VMware licensing model on hyperscalers beginning in its new fiscal year on November 1, 2025. If you’re an Azure VMware Solution customer, here’s what you need to know about the new requirements and how they will affect your cloud deployments.
What’s changing?
Broadcom is changing its VMware licensing policies across all hyperscaler platforms to require customers to “bring your own” portable subscription for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). This means customers must purchase portable VCF subscriptions directly from Broadcom to use with cloud services in the future, including Azure VMware Solution.
Azure VMware Solution already supports “bring your own” licensing model
The good news is that Azure VMware Solution is ready for this change. The Azure VMware Solution VCF BYOL option is available in all 39 AVS regions worldwide, allowing customers to run AVS using their own VCF subscriptions. This BYOL solution is priced lower than AVS with bundled VCF subscription.
No product changes to Azure VMware Solution
These updates are about licensing only—there are no product changes to how Azure VMware Solution works. Microsoft will continue to deliver Azure VMware Solution as a fully managed VCF private cloud service on Azure. In practice, this means that Microsoft takes care of all infrastructure and VMware host level software management, patches and upgrades. You don’t need to worry about hardware maintenance or manual VMware host updates.
Key dates and transition details
- Microsoft will stop selling Azure VMware Solution with VCF subscriptions included after October 15, 2025. After this date, new Azure VMware Solution node purchases will require you to provide a VCF subscription purchased from Broadcom.
- UPDATED If you purchase Azure VMware Solution Reserved Instances (RIs) on or before October 15, 2025, you can continue to use your Azure VMware Solution nodes without any licensing or product changes until August 30, 2027. On August 30, 2027, as a result of the latest Broadcom VCF licensing change, the AVS license-included SKUs will be retired. You can continue to use the AVS managed service with no technical changes if you choose to bring a portable VCF license from Broadcom prior to August 30, 2027. Learn more.
- Azure VMware Solution with license included PayGo nodes can continue to operate without any licensing or product changes through October 31, 2026.
Helpful resources
We’re committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for our customers and partners. Here are some helpful links with more details:
- How to use portable VCF subscriptions with Azure VMware Solution
- Self-service exchanges and refunds for Azure Reservations
- If you need to purchase VCF subscriptions and do not have a Broadcom contract, leverage one of the Broadcom channel partners here.
We will be reaching out directly to current Azure VMware Solution customers with more details. If you have any questions, reach out to your Microsoft account representative so we can help you navigate this transition.
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