VMware

The vSAN inclusion trap most VCF buyers do not see.

vSAN is in the VCF bundle. The marketing reads as if that is value the buyer receives. The contract reads differently. The inclusion creates an entitlement the buyer pays for whether it is deployed or not, and a usage assumption that becomes the next renewal's anchor if it is.

By The Negotiation Desk · VMware · Archetype: The Trap

Published 4 Apr 2024

The VCF bundle includes vSAN. That sentence is one of the most consistently understated lines in every Broadcom VMware briefing we have read in 2026. The understatement is the trap. Treated as a benefit, the inclusion looks like the buyer has received storage capability at no marginal cost. Treated as a contract structure, the inclusion creates two distinct buyer side liabilities that almost no enterprise we have reviewed in the last 12 months has priced into their renewal posture. This article walks through both, because both produce cost the buyer does not realise they are taking on until the next renewal cycle.

The point is not that vSAN is a bad product. We take no position on the product. The point is that the contract treatment of vSAN inside VCF is not the contract treatment of vSAN as a standalone purchase, and the differences are doing meaningful work on the buyer's commercial exposure over a three to five year horizon.

Liability one: the unused entitlement

The first liability is the entitlement the buyer does not deploy. VCF prices vSAN by capacity tied to the bundle's core count. A 1,000 core estate carries a vSAN entitlement scaled to those cores. If the buyer deploys vSAN across the full estate, the entitlement matches the deployment. If the buyer deploys vSAN selectively, or not at all, the entitlement still exists, the buyer still pays for it, and the seller's record shows it as consumed for renewal purposes.

We see this pattern in roughly two thirds of VCF estates we review. The buyer's primary storage platform is something else. vSAN is deployed in a subset of clusters, often for management workloads or for a specific tier. The remaining vSAN entitlement is, in practical terms, shelf inventory. The buyer pays for it as if it were deployed, and the seller's record carries it forward as if it were planned to grow.

Liability two: the renewal anchor

The second liability is more expensive and shows up at the next renewal. The seller's record at renewal time treats whatever vSAN footprint the buyer ran during the term as the new baseline. If the buyer expanded vSAN during the term, the renewal anchors to the expansion. If the buyer maintained vSAN at the original footprint, the renewal anchors to that. The anchor becomes the floor for the next conversation, and the floor is sticky.

The buyers who win this fight at renewal time are the buyers who priced the anchor risk during the original signature. They negotiated the renewal anchoring logic explicitly, in writing, in the contract. The buyers who did not now find themselves in a renewal conversation where the seller's opening assumption is that the prior term's vSAN footprint becomes the next term's minimum commit. The seller is not wrong to assume that. The buyer signed the contract that made it the default.

"vSAN inclusion is sold as the easy yes. It is the easy yes. The hard yes is the renewal three years later, when the inclusion has produced an anchor the buyer cannot back away from without taking the loss."VCF Engagement Lead, The Desk

What the contract should actually say

The contract should treat vSAN inclusion as an entitlement, not a commit. The buyer side language we recommend, and that we have successfully landed on the last seven VCF engagements we ran, is that the vSAN entitlement is available within the bundle, that deployment is at the buyer's discretion, and that renewal pricing is anchored to deployed footprint at the time of renewal, not to entitled footprint or to peak footprint during the term. That last clause is the one the seller resists most. It is also the one that protects the buyer against the anchor liability.

If the seller will not agree to deployed footprint anchoring, the fallback is rolling baseline anchoring, which uses the average deployed footprint across the final 12 months of the term rather than the peak. This produces a softer floor at renewal and is easier for the seller to accept, because it gives the seller a measurable number to work with that does not depend on point in time deployment.

The vSAN HCI alternative reading

A subset of VCF buyers have been told by the seller that vSAN inclusion is the right answer because the alternative, a third party HCI stack, is more expensive once integration costs are included. This is sometimes true and sometimes not. The Desk's standing position is that the comparison should be modelled, not asserted. We have seen the comparison go both ways depending on the size of the estate, the existing storage commitments, and the maturity of the third party stack in the buyer's environment. The point is not that vSAN inclusion is wrong. The point is that the seller's framing of the comparison should not be taken as the buyer's answer.

How to surface the trap in the current renewal

If the buyer is in a current VCF renewal and the trap has not been addressed at original signature, there is still recoverable value. The first step is to document the actual vSAN deployment footprint as of the renewal date. The second is to surface that footprint against the entitled footprint in the renewal conversation. The third is to negotiate the anchor language for the new term, even if the prior term did not have it. The seller's response to this depends on the size of the gap and the buyer's overall posture, but in most cases we have seen meaningful concession come back when the gap is documented and presented as a structural correction rather than a discount ask.

The documentation step is the work that determines whether the conversation lands. The buyer needs a vSAN deployment report exported from the buyer's own management console, a date stamped capacity report, and a workload to cluster mapping that shows where vSAN is actually serving production. These three artifacts together establish the deployment footprint as a verifiable number. Without them the conversation becomes a debate about what should be counted, which is a debate the seller is well prepared to have.

The framing also matters. The buyer is not asking for a discount. The buyer is asking that the contract reflect the actual deployment rather than the entitled allocation. The seller's commercial counterpart will accept this framing more readily than a discount ask, because it does not create the same precedent risk across other accounts. The buyer's legal counterpart on the seller side will sometimes push back, because the change does require contract language updates. The legal cycle is real and should be planned into the timeline.

Why the trap is structural, not opportunistic

It is tempting to read the vSAN inclusion as a seller side gambit. It is more accurate to read it as a structural feature of how the VCF bundle is priced. The bundle has to include vSAN at the entitlement level it includes it at, because the bundle math depends on the entitlement scaling consistently with core count. The seller is not setting a trap. The contract structure produces the trap by default if the buyer does not negotiate against it. That distinction matters for the conversation, because it tells the buyer where the seller has flexibility and where the seller does not. The seller has flexibility on the anchor language. The seller does not have flexibility on the entitlement scaling itself.

VCF estates reviewed where vSAN entitlement exceeds deployed footprint9 of 14

Median entitlement to deployed footprint gap38%

Renewals where anchor language was negotiated at original signature3 of 14

Buyer side recoverable value on documented gap, median11% of renewal

What we have seen on live deals

A Fortune 200 insurer brought a VCF renewal to the Desk in late 2025. The estate had 4,200 cores. The vSAN entitlement scaled to the full core count. The actual vSAN deployment was 1,180 cores worth of capacity, concentrated in two clusters. The buyer had been paying for the full entitlement for three years and had no contract language anchoring the renewal to deployed rather than entitled footprint. The renegotiation produced a 14 percent reduction on the renewal value, framed as a structural correction, plus deployed footprint anchoring language in the new contract. The anchor language is now the largest single piece of forward value in the engagement.

The takeaway

vSAN inclusion in VCF is not a free benefit. It is an entitlement the buyer pays for, and an anchor the seller uses at renewal. Both liabilities are routinely underpriced at original signature.
The contract language that matters is the renewal anchoring clause. Deployed footprint anchoring is the strongest buyer side position. Rolling 12 month baseline is the workable fallback. Entitled footprint anchoring is the seller's default and is the most expensive for the buyer.
If the trap has already been signed into, recoverable value still exists at the next renewal. Document the deployment gap, surface it as a structural correction, and negotiate the anchor language for the new term.