Broadcom pulls VMware's VDDK downloads, stranding VMware migration tools

Broadcom has quietly removed public access to VMware’s Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK), and the fallout reaches far beyond developers who use the library directly. The VDDK underpins a wide range of third-party migration and backup tools — Microsoft Azure Migrate, Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit for Virtualization, Nutanix Move, and open-source utilities like virt-v2v and nbdkit all depend on it. With the download pages now returning 404 errors for both VDDK 8 and 9, the practical effect is that customers trying to move workloads off vSphere have lost a key piece of tooling needed to do so.

The change appears deliberate rather than a glitch. ShapeBlue documented the broken links on August 25, 2026, after its VMware-to-KVM workflow started failing, and found every version-specific path unavailable. Broadcom has published no deprecation notice or replacement, but support cases tell a consistent story: administrators on Reddit report being told the VDDK is ‘no longer available for use or download,’ with Broadcom steering them toward backup products from its authorized Technology Alliance Partners. One VMware subreddit thread on the topic was removed by moderators, though its comments remain visible.

Major vendors are already adjusting. Microsoft has updated its Azure Migrate documentation to warn that Broadcom may restrict VDDK access and to recommend agent-based migration as a fallback to the agentless method. Red Hat published a support article on August 27, 2026 confirming the ‘not found’ and ‘access denied’ errors, noting it cannot host or redistribute the proprietary package and is investigating ways to remove the dependency, such as storage copy offload. Coming amid broader frustration over Broadcom’s post-acquisition licensing moves, the removal reads to many customers as one more obstacle placed squarely in the exit path from VMware.