T‑Mobile moves 30,000 VMs off VMware amid lawsuit

T‑Mobile is shifting 30,000 virtual machines from VMware vSphere to alternative hypervisors after filing a breach‑of‑contract lawsuit against Broadcom over support for its perpetual VMware licenses [Ars Technica]. Broadcom stopped delivering security patches and feature updates in early 2026, following its acquisition of VMware in May 2023 [Ars Technica]. T‑Mobile sued Broadcom in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on June 25, 2026, alleging breach of contract and seeking a court order to keep the legacy support alive.

The carrier will migrate Windows-centric workloads to Microsoft Hyper-V and Linux workloads to KVM/QEMU clusters [Ars Technica]. A subset of the workloads will also be re-hosted on public-cloud instances in Azure and AWS. The migration will be executed in three waves, each targeting a specific business unit, with the final wave slated for completion by Q4 2027.

The move has significant implications. Perpetual licenses are no longer a safe bet after a vendor change, as the lawsuit shows that enterprises cannot assume legacy contracts will survive a parent-company acquisition [Ars Technica]. Broadcom's VMware revenue outlook is now uncertain, losing a carrier of this size removes a multi-year, high-value support contract. The migration also gives open-source hypervisors a credibility boost, as T-Mobile's commitment to KVM/QEMU for its Linux workloads signals that large-scale, carrier-grade deployments are feasible without VMware.