Leaving VMware Just Got Harder After Broadcom Pulled VDDK Downloads - Virtualization Howto Skip to content YouTube Twitter LinkedIn GitHub Facebook Discord Pinterest Google Profile BlueSky Virtualization Howto Virtualization, Cloud, DevOps, Reviews Search for: Sign in Subscribe Subscribe Forum Home Lab Kits DevOps Virtualization Proxmox VMware Hyper-V XCP-ng Containers Kubernetes Mini PC & Server Home Lab My Home Lab Nested ESXi Lab Proxmox Build 2025 About Contact Disclaimer E-books Podcast Privacy Newsletter Sign In Premium Search for: Home 2026 September Leaving VMware Just Got Harder After Broadcom Pulled VDDK Downloads Leaving VMware Just Got Harder After Broadcom Pulled VDDK Downloads September 7, 2026 September 7, 2026 by Brandon Lee Like Follow Comments Add Us Add Virtualization Howto on Google Preferred Source Google Profile Subscribe without JavaScript Just when we thought that Broadcom wouldn’t be able to slow down customers moving off of vSphere to another platform. They may just now have done something that will have that net effect. This time it involves VMware’s Virtual Disk Development Kit, which we have always known as the VDDK. Broadcom has just killed the download of this library, and it will have far reaching consequences if this is a permanent move. Let’s see why this is a cause for alarm and why the VDDK is so important. What is the VMware VDDK? If you have never personally downloaded the VDDK you might assume this is some obscure VMware developer package that most just won’t ever need. And, you are right to some extent if you have no need to use the VDDK directly. However, what you might not realize is just how many tools that you probably ARE using that make use of it. Like what? Well, here is the kicker. This library is central to many of the migration tools that are used to migrate from VMware to other platforms. It is used by tools like Microsoft Azure Migrate, Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit, Nutanix Move, VMware to KVM migration products, and other tools like virtv2v and nbdkit . So, for VMware customers who are trying to figure out what life after Broadcom looks like, this is yet another unexpected roadblock to leaving the platform. What exactly did Broadcom change? The reason this suddenly matters is that Broadcom has removed the normal publicly accessible VDDK download pages , and affected customers are reporting that Broadcom support has told them VDDK is no longer available for general use or download. See the Reddit thread here: Broadcom VDDK links : r/sysadmin . If you now navigate to the link of the VDDK download where it was previously, you will see the following 404 page: Vmware vddk 404 for the previous download page Even stranger as it would seem, I have been unable to find a traditional Broadcom announcement explaining this change. So far, there has been no transition notice, deprecation announcement, or replacement tool or library announced. Instead of this, many migration vendors and customers have seen in the last few day that links they have been pointed to are suddenly returning errors. This is much more interesting than an SDK just disappear. So, the net effect, no matter what Broadcom’s motivation might be is pretty hard for us to ignore at this point. A VMware technology that is used to move and protect VMware workloads has now become harder for customers and migration vendors to get their hands on. For many customers who may be looking at their exit path
As an old ex-vmware eng it's kinda sad reading all these articles about broadcom's controlled descent into terrain. A lot of really cool and useful engineering was done in vmware's heyday, and it was often delivered in rather shaky commercial shapes, but for a while the whole thing kinda worked. And broadcom seems to see it as a company that is long past its ability to innovate, extracting as many dollars as possible before its rapidly decreasing value goes to zero.
There was a solid few years that a lot of business types at vmware behaved as though winning was the default, assured state. It took several years for them to see that that was very much not the case. A real lesson in there, for every successful business today.
I got my current job because I could lead the hyper-v to VMware migration project. Just this year I led the VMware to hyper-v migration project. VMware was such a great product (although a bit cumbersome in the VCF environment I managed). It’s really unfortunate it went the way of Broadcom. In comparison Hyper-v feels like a typical Microsoft product. A bunch of different tools created by different teams to do tasks that feel bolted on and afterthoughts. I have to run FCM to manage the nodes? But I run HVM to manage the roles? But there’s no overall resource management like VMware vsphere or proxmox does natively?
I’ve quietly built a proxmox cluster in our environment for semi-prod workloads for when the inevitable windows host has issues.
From TFA
VMware to Proxmox migrations are not affected ...
Amusingly - and acknowledging tiny scale and modest automation requirements of home lab compared to enterprise - as I started migrating to Proxmox a year or two ago, the process of shuffling VMs off my ESXi servers and onto Proxmox was surprisingly painless. Effectively mount the ESXi as storage systems, and then 'copy to here'.
IIRC the only small challenges were a conservative choice on target VM's CPU type (Proxmox seems to dislike defaulting to 'host' CPU) and the network / SCSI controller defaults. I assume designed to prioritise robustness over performance.
All automatable, I'm sure.
So the Linux qemu-img tool can still convert VM disk images from .vmdk into formats compatible with all the other hypervisors. Is there something more to the process of VM migration from VMWare than just using this tool (and manually creating the proper virtual hardware profile in the new hypervisor)?
Obviously the types of supported virtual hardware will be different between hypervisor types, but that's usually something that can be dealt with separately.
Can someone exfiltrate the VMWare source so that it can be distributed at a later date once Avago (Broadcom) cease?
A friend of mine said that VMWare was still the best VM platform due to the ecosystem that built around it, so it'd be nice if it could be preserved for later resurrection.
I know time moves on quickly, but it'd be a shame to lose it entirely.
I know this is promoting criminality, but there's something wrong with society if this is deemed criminal.
Disclaimer: don't (be a hero)
VMware is still seen as "platinum" level in my org compared to Proxmox, which I guess to a certain degree is true. But the features in use are basic VMs with vMotion. Proxmox provides that out of the box. Granted we've had a couple issues with a corosync wobble on larger clusters which was fixed long-term by putting corosync on a separate set of switches.
So far the Proxmox experience has been pretty flawless. We run a several hundred k8s VMs orchestrated by Rancher and use the dynamic load balancing feature that came with 9.2 so no noisy neighbours. Haven't dabbled too much with Ceph as the VMs are backed with NetApp arrays but I anticipate it to be pretty smooth when we reach that point.
I am of the school of thought that even if Broadcom gives VMware Standard away free for a year, it would be hard to convince customers that they need to stick with the platform
Yep. They're building the cage around you. Why would you stick around?
Leaving VMware just got harder? What? NO! It just became more obvious that you've failed if you are still stuck there. (VMware employee #10/11 -- I lost count. First Director of PM).
I'm kind of glad this is all happening because it provides a nice example to point to when I try to explain why I don't want to be dependent on a vendor for these sorts of things.
The sad part is that most companies using VMWare could have been using Proxmox all along without any of the licensing and fee nightmares.