vSphere 5 Licensing

[SuperSpike]

I took a minute to read the licensing guide for vSphere 5 and I'm still trying to pull my jaw off the floor. VMware has completely screwed their customers this time. Why?

What I used to be able to do with 2 CPU licenses now takes 4. Incredible.

Today

BL460c G7 with 2 sockets and 192G of memory = 2 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses
DL585 G7 with 4 sockets and 256G of memory = 4 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses

Tomorrow

BL460c G7 with 2 sockets and 192G of memory = 4 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses
BL585 G7 with 4 sockets and 256G of memory = 6 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses

So it's almost as if VMware is putting a penalty on density and encouraging users to buy hardware with more sockets rather than less.

I get that the vRAM entitlements are for what you use, not necessarily what you have, but who buys memory and doesn't use it?

Forget the hoopla about a VM with 1 TB of memory. Who in their right mind would deploy that using the new license model? It would take 22 licenses to accommodate! You could go out and buy the physical box for way less than that today, from any hardware vendor.

Anyone else completely shocked by this move?

[sergeadam]

The survey is flawed inasmuch as Essentials and Essentials Plus were late addition. I use Essentials Plus, but picked Standard as it was the closest i had at the time. I would suspect that Standard use is lower and Essentials Plus higher. Essentials Plus is a sweet spot for a lot of SMBs.

[aroudnev]

No, of course I can do copy / clone etc on other levels (I say you more - I can do VCB backups on the free version - I created a good script and VA to do it, it even gzip images) BUT it's usually easy to pay $500 and add essential. And then, when you can show, HOW well it all works, you can justify money for enterprise.

So it was a good road for the newcomers. Now they block it. Do they think they will get more money? 0 x $ is always ZERO.

[admin]

The free VMware Hypervisor is licensed for 8GB per socket, not per host. The FAQ is unclear on this and being updated: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html

[wdroush1]

John Troyer wrote:

The free VMware Hypervisor is licensed for 8GB per socket, not per host. The FAQ is unclear on this and being updated: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html

Which is great, those running at home will be penalized, those running it on older equipment at work are fine, bleh.

[wdroush1]

aroudnev wrote:

No, of course I can do copy / clone etc on other levels (I say you more - I can do VCB backups on the free version  - I created a good script and VA to do it, it even gzip images) BUT  it's usually easy to pay $500 and add essential. And then, when you can show, HOW well it all works, you can justify money for enterprise.

So it was a good road for the newcomers. Now they block it. Do they think they will get more money? 0 x $ is always ZERO.

Actually you make a good point, $500 to show your company the power of vCenter is great... essentials plus though I'd go behind for a longer-term solution for small businesses.

Err but can't you just get an evaluation license for that anyway?

[rickardnobel]

John Troyer wrote:

The free VMware Hypervisor is licensed for 8GB per socket, not per host. The FAQ is unclear on this and being updated: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html

While you are editing this, could you please remove the claim that the free Hypervisor support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM? (See next tab, "compare".)

I think it is a bit disturbing trying to make Hyper-V and XEN look bad with "only" 32 and 64 GB per vm.

[bobbach]

I have to agree that VMware has a small window of opportunity to make this right.

Companies have made far worse announcements and then come out smelling like roses when they correct their course and do the right thing.

When we pay our maintenance I think that we have a reasonable expectation that new versions will not remove functionality because the bean counters want to make revenues grow in a misguided attempt to raise prices.

Raise our maintenance costs at a reasonable rate. Make the CPU license cost a little more, but don't gouge us for memory, storage, bandwidth, server count or any other metric just because it pulls ahead of the others in usage.

It's to bad to have all of this political nonsense sullying what should be a time focused on an exciting release and and impending VMworld which should both increase sales and product acceptance. It will be interesting to see how many prospective clients the VARs bring this year, and how much of a less than positive vibe is present.

Yes I'll still be at VMworld and I hope that by then this is fixed and we can be excited about the release again.

[bilalhashmi]

Rickard wrote:

While you are editing this, could you please remove the claim that the free Hypervisor support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM? (See next tab, "compare".)

I think it is a bit disturbing trying to make Hyper-V and XEN look bad with "only" 32 and 64 GB per vm.

Where exactly does it say that "the free Hypervisor support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM"?

Keep in mind it still the same hypervisor without purchased licenses.

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[aroudnev]

It don't make ANY difference. 8 GB or 16 GB of vRAM on Vmware host in 2011 is just a joke and nothing more. Even 48 GB will be a joke in a few years thorugh I can understand such limitation per CPU on FREE server.

[aroudnev]

It's not a show; many companies can work with essential license for a long until they really need HA. It is a good starting point. And it bring money, even if not so much , to Vmware, and bring good new customers who maybe will go to the enterprise license later (or in a new projects).

We do use essential on a few small sites with success (HA provided on application level). Of course, essential plus is much better, but not everyone agree to purchase it, while I can always get approval for essential license.

[rickardnobel]

Bilal wrote:

Where exactly does it say that "the free Hypervisor support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM"?

It is stated on numerous places on the Compare tab that the page is about the free Hypervisor, right next to the FAQ. Check the bottom for the 1 TB / vm statement.

[bilalhashmi]

Rickard wrote:

Bilal wrote:

Where exactly does it say that "the free Hypervisor support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM"?

It is stated on numerous places on the Compare tab that the page is about the free Hypervisor, right next to the FAQ which John Troyer linked to. Check the bottom for the 1 TB / vm statement.

Excuse my ignorance but will you kindly post a screenshot? Thanks!

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[rickardnobel]

Bilal wrote:

Excuse my ignorance but will you kindly post a screenshot? Thanks!

No problem at all, here you can find a screen shot of the 1 TB / vm statement.

[sliptrap]

John Troyer wrote:

The free VMware Hypervisor is licensed for 8GB per socket, not per host. The FAQ is unclear on this and being updated: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html

I'd also like to point out that touting the "Ballooning and compression" of memory is no longer a viable advantage over Hyper-V and Xen as with the new licensing model VMWare has told us in no uncertian terms that over provisioning memory is going to cost us significantly more memory. So anyone who's going to stick with VMWare wont be overprovisioning and therefore wont be taking advantage of those memory management features.

[rjb2]

bobbach wrote:

It's to bad to have all of this political nonsense sullying what should be a time focused on an exciting release and and impending VMworld which should both increase sales and product acceptance. It will be interesting to see how many prospective clients the VARs bring this year, and how much of a less than positive vibe is present.

Yes I'll still be at VMworld and I hope that by then this is fixed and we can be excited about the release again.

Yes, we have a team that was planning to attend VMWorld and had just gotten permission to register, but that got put on hold until we can determine whether there is a future in the next version for us. This will depend on how VMWare responds and if they can do the right thing.

[GaryHertz]

Bilal wrote:

Rickard wrote:

While you are editing this, could you please remove the claim that the free Hypervisor support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM? (See next tab, "compare".)

I think it is a bit disturbing trying to make Hyper-V and XEN look bad with "only" 32 and 64 GB per vm.

Where exactly does it say that "the free Hypervisor support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM"?

Keep in mind it still the same hypervisor without purchased licenses.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

As Rickard pointed out it says it under the "compare" tab. The very last entry.  While you may realize that you would need a licensed version to be able to create a VM of that size if you look at the top of the page it reads

"VMware vSphere Hypervisor is the simplest and easiest way to get started with virtualization for free. This fully functional hypervisor...".

While I don't think VMware is trying to mislead anyone they need to rephrase the size limits to reflect that 1TB is not obtainable with the free version.  Rickard was merely suggesting that they revise that part of the document that could be misleading.

[sliptrap]

While I don't think VMware is trying to mislead anyone they need to rephrase the size limits to reflect that 1TB is not obtainable with the free version.  Rickard was merely suggesting that they revise that part of the document that could be misleading.

Well in VMWares defense since the 8GB limit is per proc you totaly could run a 1TB VM on free ESXi if you were running a 128CPU system.

[bilalhashmi]

Rickard wrote:

Bilal wrote:

Excuse my ignorance but will you kindly post a screenshot? Thanks!

No problem at all, here you can find a screen shot of the 1 TB / vm statement.

So @ http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html it states that "VMware vSphere Hypervisor is the simplest and easiest way to get started with virtualization for free."

Please note it states "easiest way to get STARTED"

I have been unable to find anywhere where it states that "the free hypervisor can support up to 1 TB of RAM per VM"

Please let me know if you find otherwise.

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[rickardnobel]

Shane wrote:

While I don't think VMware is trying to mislead anyone they need to rephrase the size limits to reflect that 1TB is not obtainable with the free version.  Rickard was merely suggesting that they revise that part of the document that could be misleading.

Well in VMWares defense since the 8GB limit is per proc you totaly could run a 1TB VM on free ESXi if you were running a 128CPU system.

According to information on the forum the highest amount is 4 CPU, meaning 32 GB of vRAM maximum...

[bilalhashmi]

While I don't think VMware is trying to mislead anyone they need to rephrase the size limits to reflect that 1TB is not obtainable with the free version.  Rickard was merely suggesting that they revise that part of the document that could be misleading.

I can agree with your comment.

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