this is correct.

on the comparison page  http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html

the processor core counts are PER socket.

I will see if we can change that table to make it clearer.

best regards,

Lee Dilworth

I don't quite understand this as well.  In terms of features, Advanced is only missing Svmotion and DRS.  You would think with being able to support 12 cores, you would want DRS to help with resources.

One other thing I've noticed, there is no upgrade path from Standard or Advanced to Enterprise.  It is only to Enterprise Plus.

well if you take a look at the "Cores" row in this table http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html now by the magic of world wide web'ery managed to get this changed to state "Cores Per Processor" so hopefully that is a better name for that row?

cheers

Lee Dilworth

Matt, Jason, you guys are missing my point.

I'll state it again - I do NOT have any issues with VMware wanting to charge more as core density increase. I am sure many software vendors will take this route.

I only know the enterprise space. I'm talking companies with 50K employees or more - as I've said many times on my blog, this is the only world I know. If you don't know that world, you can't possibly comment on the validity of my concerns. Based on your comments, I would suggest you don't know this world - (1) we don't do single year deals in this world and (2) we need 8 vCPU and will have >6 core per socket in our labs in a few months and in the production environment within a year. I'm not being arrogant about this - I have never worked in small/medium comapnies, so if you say it's not a big deal for you then I can only take your word for it.

So please be clear on this. My perspective is large corporate, my gripe is twofold:

1) The treatment of existing top tier licensees. It's a thing called principle, it's nothing to do with money. $295 is the retail price for the upgrade, enterprises don't pay anywhere near that. Even if I paid $100 extra per socket, right now that would equate to around $200K USD in my environment. Which is of course insignificant in comparison to what an average ELA deal is worth. But when you sign a multiyear deal, you cannot possibly forsee the future, and thus there is an understanding of fairness involved. We are paying for the top tier of what VMware has to offer, and regardless of what happens during the course of that deal, there's an understanding that we'll always be on the top tier. VMware obviously doesn't take this view.

2) The features included in Enterprise Plus. I too am surprised at the inclusion of stuff like vShield and FT in plain Enterprise. But clearly VMware know that the demand for these features in the enterprise pales in comparison to the demand for 8vCPU, hardware with more than >6 cores per socket, distributed vswitch and host profiles (in the enterprise - again, I imagine these features might be of little significance to smaller companies). As I said in my blog post, what is going to happen 12-18 months from now when we cant't buy less than 8 cores per socket? The "Enterprise" license will not be relevant to anyone anymore, but Enterprise Plus will be? Enterprise Plus, but no Enterprise to "plus" on top of? WTF?

Anyways I'll stop ranting. I speak to my peers in the industry I work in, their opinions are the same. VMware could've just flicked existing top tier licensees onto the new top tier and increased the cost when the contract renewal came around, and it wouldnt have been an issue. But trying to squeeze more cash out of big business in this market in such a cynical way (ie by putting features like 8 vCPU and >6 cores per socket into Enterprise Plus) will not do them any favours.

Hmm I think my initial reply went into the ether...

Anyways yeh, it depends on what CPU vendor you use I guess. Intel are certainly planning 8 core Nehalem-EX chips in 2009, and AMD are looking to offer 12 cores in 2010. One can only hope VMware will change their tune on this, but I won't be holding my breath

Stu