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?

[hmtk1976]

By the way VMware did not provide any information as to how licensing will evolve in the future.  The vRAM limit is idiotically low as it is but will it be automatically be increased with vSphere 5 U1 for example?  Will other things than vRAM determine licensing costs in the future?

And why  can't we trade existing vSphere licenses for the Desktop SKU for those who use View with add on licenses?

Message was edited by: Dave.Mishchenko - wording edited to comply with community standards.

[RobertK20111014]

By the way VMware did not provide any information as to how licensing will evolve in the future. The vRAM limit is idiotically low as it is but will it be automatically be increased with vSphere 5 U1 for example? Will other things than vRAM determine licensing costs in the future?

It does not matter anymore. Do you have any trust to company who just took money for SnS and gives you simply no option to upgrade?

[hellraiser]

I do think VMware have dropped the ball on this - having the arrogance to ramp up the cost of their product and just expect their existing user base to put up with it is something worthy of Oracle (of whom I have a great deal of experience, most of it negative). The problem VMware have, however is two-fold - not only are there lots of other hypervisors out there which, whilst lacking some of vSphere's features, are more than up to the task of running VMs, but the advent of the VM came with another great asset - portability. Once you have a VM, it is very easy to convert it to another hypervisor, something VMware would be very wise to remember. They may think that people won't leave as it will be too much hassle, but exporting and importing a VM whilst time consuming, is a piece of cake....

I'd still like to know how the likes of AMD/Intel continue to make money when each new CPU seems to cost the same as the last, yet has lots of new features added. I don't think they'd be very popular if they charged based on how much of the CPU you used! Likewise how come the other hypervisors make money without using a vRAM model, yet VMware can't?  Sounds to me like bad business sense....

JD

[VidarK]

Just to have facts on the table here...

I don't have any SnS or vSphere licensing contract in front of me to read but I wonder if VMware can present what parts of their contract that allows them to cripple their product to force me to purchase extra licensing making a 484% one off and recurring cost increase?

This question is relayed from our company lawyer.

I'm talking about the case where I'd have vSphere 4.1 Advanced licensing with a long term SnS expecting to have upgrades covered for the whole duration of the SnS contract within the license terms of vSphere 4.1. Naturally I'd be expecting to deploy Windows 8 VMs next year since my SnS contract entitles me to upgrades.

[Flan5ter]

I agree, doesn’t the SnS cover us for seamless upgrade with no additional cost.  If not, where does it state this?  If it doesn’t cover upgrade without additional cost what are we paying for?

Has anyone passed this to their legal department?

[Ian97]

@hmtk1976

I was wondering how the vRAM entitlement would increase over time as well.  Without an increase schedule, this model stands to become more expensive over time, even after being over priced to begin with.

[johndennis]

Has anyone passed this to their legal department?

The Federal Trade Comission Handles Bait and Switch Complaints.  Has anyone considered filing a complaint with them?

There's always the California Attorney Generals office too...

I'd file one, but my boss would kill me. 

[Flan5ter]

Below is an extract from a tid that specifically states free upgrade with no additional costs.  Most of our licenses stem from original purchases made of ESX3.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100552...

"For example, customers with valid Support and Subscription are entitled to receive any new major and minor releases made generally available by VMware. For such customers, moving from VMware Infrastructure 3 to VMware Sphere 4 is an entitlement, and does not entail an additional charge."

Another extract from VMware website

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

"vSphere customers with an active SnS contract are entitled to upgrade to vSphere 5.0 at no extra charge."

[kbarnes]

Ian97 wrote:

@hmtk1976

I was wondering how the vRAM entitlement would increase over time as well.  Without an increase schedule, this model stands to become more expensive over time, even after being over priced to begin with.

That is exactly the point. Rather than basing their business around a service and support model, VMware has chosen to go for the quick, easy money. This view is short-sighted and does not bode well for the quality of their support in the future. To me, this is a clear message that they are going to be moving to low-quality support from untrained flip card readers.

I have always defended the cost of VMware in my organization based on the high quality of support. That defense is at an end. I have begun laying out plans to test Hyper-V in our environment. If I'm going to get crappy support, I might as well save my budget money and get crappy M$ support along with my free hypervisor product.

[RogerThomas]

This is one of the reasons why a number of people have compaired VMWARE to Novell. In the long distant past Novell changed the name of NetWare to IntraNetWare and then tried to tell all the customers with active support that they were not intitled to an upgrade as it was a new product - odd at that time Novell lost a lot of customers to Microsoft and months of trying to maintain this 'story' they had to give up. They then tried again when they placed the features of NetWare on top of Linux as they then decided that everyone should have to purchase Linux licenses on top of their NetWare licences - again more lost customers.

[tuensel2k]

Is it possible in vSphere 5 to use different vRAM Pools in one Cluster?

As an example Cluster of 8 Hosts 4 Hosts are using an Enterprise Plus vRAM Pool, 2 Host are using an Enterprise vRAM Pool and the remainign 2 Hosts use a Standard vRAM Pool.

Or do i have to create 3 different Clusters for this scenario?

[rbtwindude]

When i think about architecting in VMware; I do not think it is a good idea to build more clusters for license purposes! For one when you start doing other things on the backend with storage and migration principles this could become a nightmare (that includes other replication tools). I so don’t like the idea of only 2 hosts in a cluster; prefer 3 based on maintenance and overcommitting resources.

So I’m not sure where VMware is going with this but it just doesn’t feel right… even if you try to right-size VMs this will still hurt in the long run as you have performance issues and the application owners/vendors tell you that you do not have enough RAM or resources…. So do we tell the vendor/app owner they are lost or tell VMware that? Or Is VMware now going back an saying that some apps can’t be virtualized based on cost between vRAM licenses vs. physical hardware? I just don’t get this..  2-4 VMs on physical hardware host just doesn’t seem like the value is there…

[wooglins]

You would have to create seperate clusters.   You cannot mix different license versions in the same cluster.   This has been the case for some time, and is not a new license introduction.

[rbtwindude]

@woolgins

i agree if they are different license types...

[Rumple]

Quote - VMware has chosen to go for the quick, easy money

Maybe this is why…

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/27/rsa_security_breach/

[unsichtbare]

I think, sadly, most of the VMware blogs & voices on which we used to rely have become part of the VMware establishment and remain silent on this issue, or simply tow the VMware line like the rediculous article by Eric Sibert. None of the following either mention or do anything besides tow the line.

• http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/
• http://blog.scottlowe.org/
• http://www.yellow-bricks.com/

[unsichtbare]

When I bought Windows XP Professional in 2001, my computer had 256 MB of RAM and maybe 2 dozen applications; I paid $99 at Sams Club.

When I bought Windows 7 Enterprise in 2009, my computer had 16 GB of RAM and I had hundreds of applications; I paid $199 at Best Buy

I would neither expect not tolerate Microsoft capping the amount of RAM (other than the supported 192 GB) nor limiting the number of applications I could run! Sure, the cost for W7E was greater than XPPRO, but it was not 64 times greater (because 16 GB is 64 times 256 MB)!

[siers]

Exactly right unsichtbare.  Let's compare this apples to apples even more though on the enterprise side.  Had your company purchased Windows XP Professional in 2001 and kept up on Software Assurance (their SnS) you would have been licensed for Vista, and Windows 7 Professional at no additional cost and without the license reducing the amount of RAM below that of a previous version.

[kcucadmin]

ok here are my two cents. I've been following this thread for quite some time.

vRAM just doesn't make since. neither does vCPU, VIRTUAL anything doesn't make sense for that matter.  The nice thing we gained from moving to virtualization was we were able to dedicate a single VM to a single ROLE.  i.e. no more stacking apps in a server.  We were able to "SANDBOX" apps. so that one did not impact the other.

in order to dedicate a single VM to a single ROLE "Workload" whatever. you have OS overhead in memory etc etc etc.  Before no big deal, ram was cheap or vmware could handle that overhead with TPS. Now im being penalized for that.

if they were worried about a decrease in licensing based on SCALE up potential of Socket/Core count, they should of moved to a Socket/Core model and left RAM out of it.

I can handle paying for two licenses for a single socket to cover the "CORES".  I get that, it makes since.  It's easy to predict, i know what my core count will be up front for the life of that hardware.  and it has ZERO impact on how I "Want" to virtualize.

for example.

Standard/Essentials 1 Socket - upto 4 cores

Enterprise/Enterprise+ 1 Socket - upto 6 cores

IF/WHEN core counts exceed that, you would need to increase your license count.

If vmware truly thinks tying Licensing to MEMORY is going to net them revenue, they truly don't understand how tight IT Budgets are and how innovative IT can be with sharing apps/ram.

ALL this allocated vRAM licensing will do is to encourage sharing WORKLOADS in the same vRAM space.  Which is stupid, and IT guys like me will start to look for other solutions.

[sergeadam]

Robert Samples wrote:

I can handle paying for two licenses for a single socket to cover the "CORES".  I get that, it makes since.  It's easy to predict, i know what my core count will be up front for the life of that hardware.  and it has ZERO impact on how I "Want" to virtualize.

for example.

Standard/Essentials 1 Socket - upto 4 cores

Enterprise/Enterprise+ 1 Socket - upto 6 cores

IF/WHEN core counts exceed that, you would need to increase your license count.

How about keping thing even simpler.

Licensing sokets made sense  few years ago when server CPUs were mostly quad cores. It doesn't anymore. How about we just move to a straight core license? Let me put whatever number of CPUs in my server, license the number of pCores. If I put a single 8 core or twin quads, in a server, I pay the same, for the same potential workload. And leave RAM alone. Period.

It's simple. It's easy to explain and budget. It pretty effectively licenses workload. I would not even mind increases in new licenses and SnS over time as core power increases.