VMware estate readiness2026-11-09

What the vSphere estate actually costs to keep

Built from RVTools exports: 116 VMs, 6 hosts, 3 files.

38 VMs are past end of support, 15 are powered off, and the estate holds 240 physical cores.

VMs116 Hosts6 Physical cores240 vCPU per core2.1:1 if cores else "n/a" Effort7.8 days

Hosts

Host	Cluster	Cores	ESX	Memory
esx01	PROD-A	40	7.0.3	512 GB
esx02	PROD-B	40	7.0.3	512 GB
esx03	DR	40	7.0.3	512 GB
esx04	PROD-A	40	7.0.3	512 GB
esx05	PROD-B	40	6.7.0	512 GB
esx06	DR	40	6.7.0	512 GB

Guest operating systems

Family	VMs	Vendor end of support	State
2019	28	2029-01-09	supported
2016	20	2027-01-12	supported
2012	16	2023-10-10	expired
2022	16	2031-10-14	supported
2008	12	2020-01-14	expired
centos 7	10	2024-06-30	expired

Findings

HIGH Virtual machines running an unsupported operating system

38 of 116 VMs are past their vendor end-of-support date (32% of the estate). Most common: 2012 ×16, 2008 ×12, centos 7 ×10.

Do this: These cannot be patched. Either isolate them behind a firewall rule and a documented exception, or rebuild them; the report lists each one.

MEDIUM VMs reaching end of support within twelve months

20 VMs will lose vendor support in the next year. Renewal conversations usually land before the rebuild does.

Do this: Put these in the same project as the migration; doing them one at a time costs more.

MEDIUM Powered-off VMs still consuming licence and backup budget

15 VMs are powered off, holding 76 vCPU and 600 GB of configured memory. They are still in the inventory, still backed up, and still counted by some licensing models.

Do this: Confirm with the owners, then decommission. It is the cheapest reduction available before renewal.

LOW vCPU-to-core overcommit

516 vCPUs against 240 physical cores, a ratio of 2.1:1. Above roughly 6:1 the contention shows up as latency in someone's application and gets blamed on the app.

Do this: Check the cluster's CPU ready time before consolidating further; the ratio alone is not a verdict.

MEDIUM Hosts running an out-of-support hypervisor

2 of 6 hosts run ESX 6.x or older. That is a separate support problem from the guest operating systems, and it constrains which vSphere releases you can move to.

Do this: Include host upgrades in the same budget ask; a per-core subscription does not fix an unsupported hypervisor.

Licensing exposure, at list

At $135 per core per year (VMware VVF list, an assumption, not a quote), 240 cores is $32,400 per year. This is the number to take into the renewal conversation, not a price: your entitlement, discounts and any committed term change it. Decommissioning the 15 powered-off VMs does not reduce core count — it reduces the workload the estate is justifying.

What this cannot see

RVTools shows configuration, not contracts. It cannot tell you what you are entitled to, what your renewal quote is, which workloads have a support obligation, or what the applications actually depend on. Ask for the current VMware contract, the renewal quote and one application owner per cluster before quoting a migration.