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]

cmangiarelli wrote:

As a first time poster to VMTN, I'd quite sad that I'm spending my first message on this licensing topic.  However, while I don't agree with the current licensing standpoint of vRAM, I wanted to put in my $.02 about licensing per CORE and why I don't think it will work (which is why VMware needs to find the best licensing scheme which doesn't penalize current customers but allows them to get a piece of pie as their customers flourish).

The definition of a core is not a guaranteed science today nor in the future.  There are processors being developed with multi-core capacity that is devoted to and excelling at executing specific types of instructions.  There are also chips being researched (and produced) that are comprised of hundreds of "cores" that allow themselves to be reprogrammed at a moments need.  Let's look at an over-simplefied example; if a cpu had four full cores designed to executed standard instructions but two additional cores designed to only handle complex floating point operations, would that be a quad core of six core CPU?  Why should customers pay for cores that software can't completely run on but nevertheless gain a bonus from those two special "cores" under certain computational processes?  If I have a 500 core chip that reprograms itself into six independent execution pipelines, should I pay for all 500 cores or only 6?

The future of CPU's is currently undergoing some interesting research and proof of concepts.  It's absurd to think these advances won't spill over into our x86 world at some point in the future.  What do we do then?  Wait for VMware to create yet another licensing model?

That may be true, but it is the best we have right now. It's all about what the processor presents to the hardware.

P.S. Oh yeah, the notion that a Hyper-V farm is free is absurd.  Even if you create a farm, it's useless without the Microsoft licenses you need to buy to run Microsoft guests; unless you plan on running free linux guests on Hyper-V, but that too is absurd... lol    However, if you are strictly a Microsoft customer with datacenter licensed per socket, I can agree that Hyper-V is worth a look if you are considering alternatives.

The point about the free nature of Hyper-V is that you can download Hyper-V and install it for free. Of course you need to license the guest OS, but that is not any different than with VMW. The other point made is that a fair number of us purchase Datacentre licenses for our ESX hosts, therefore we are already fully licensed for Hyper-V

[cmangiarelli]

sergeadam wrote:

cmangiarelli wrote:

The future of CPU's is currently undergoing some interesting research and proof of concepts.  It's absurd to think these advances won't spill over into our x86 world at some point in the future.  What do we do then?  Wait for VMware to create yet another licensing model?

That may be true, but it is the best we have right now. It's all about what the processor presents to the hardware.

True but people are also complaining that VMware has already changed their licensing model twice before.  You can't have your cake and eat it too!  I was simply trying to point out how flawed this decision is when vSphere 6 ships if they are trying to prevent future technology advances from affecting their licensing strategy.

sergeadam wrote:

The point about the free nature of Hyper-V is that you can download Hyper-V and install it for free. Of course you need to license the guest OS, but that is not any different than with VMW. The other point made is that a fair number of us purchase Datacentre licenses for our ESX hosts, therefore we are already fully licensed for Hyper-V

True too, but people attempt to say Hyper-V is free when under most customer scenarios, it's not.  For SMB's and mid-teir businesses, they may not have datacenter licensing.  For enterprise customers, the move off VMware and onto Hyper-V has an associated cost comprised of engineering, implementation, downtime (can't vmotion between techs), man-hours, etc.  If Hyper-V was so great, people would have implemented it when they first bought their licenses.  However, we all know the past and while Hyper-V is "good enough", today VMware offers so much more; so I think people who are threatening to convert will simply wait out ESX4.1 (since it's currently technically superior and they already own it) and see if VMware licensing changes before committing to a full-out conversion.

[sergeadam]

cmangiarelli wrote:

True too, but people attempt to say Hyper-V is free when under most customer scenarios, it's not.  For SMB's and mid-teir businesses, they may not have datacenter licensing.  For enterprise customers, the move off VMware and onto Hyper-V has an associated cost comprised of engineering, implementation, downtime (can't vmotion between techs), man-hours, etc.  If Hyper-V was so great, people would have implemented it when they first bought their licenses.  However, we all know the past and while Hyper-V is "good enough", today VMware offers so much more; so I think people who are threatening to convert will simply wait out ESX4.1 (since it's currently technically superior and they already own it) and see if VMware licensing changes before committing to a full-out conversion.

if I'm a vmware shop, with Windows guests, I can download Hyper-V for free and convert my VMs. Hyper-V is not for everybody, neither is XenServer. ESX is still the best product out there. The point is that until a couple of weeks ago, I could do a comparison between the three, point out the places where ESX is superior and do a ROI based on that. I could justify 'best' against 'good enough'. I can no longer do that. So 'good enough' will have to do.

Most of us agree that the current socket model is unsustainable for VMWare. But licensing virtual-anything goes against what we bought into, and against what the others are doing.  Whatever licensing scheme we would accept has to relly on physical. 2 things won't change. CPU propwer and cores/sockets is going up. RAM cost is going down. The server I buy next year will be able to virtualize at a higher density than the server I just bought. I won't mind paying more $ to VMWare for that increased power. be it by core, or by socket+pRAM, providing the allocations and prices make sense.

[jmounts]

VMware has a better product then the other competitors. Else an uprise like this wouldn't have happened.

But 2nd best would be Xen. and they have alot of not most of the features of vSphere for less cost.

Hyper-V, I tend to compare this to a desktop integraded Virtualization solution. From my expereince its no different then Virtualbox, or VMware workstation/Server Platforms.

Unless the hypervisor runs on its own with out an underlining OS to support it, its always going to have draw backs.

Hyper-V is good to use to get Virtualization rolling if you know nothing about it. or dont have extra hardware resources around. Otherwise, Download ESXi put it on USB and then run vConverter to start your virtualization.

I think the only 2 real competes are between VMware and Xen, I do not think Hyper-V should be listed in the mix here.

[vmwareking]

Hyper pee is not free even with data center for god sake. If u have to pay to get something for free that's not the same as downloading xenserver free edition that includes xenmotion and snapshotting .

Sent from my iPhone

[sergeadam]

vmwareking wrote:

Hyper pee is not free even with data center for god sake. If u have to pay to get something for free that's not the same as downloading xenserver free edition that includes xenmotion and snapshotting .

Sent from my iPhone

How much are you getting paid to shill for XenServer.

You can download Hyper-V for free. As beer. 

[Gauchonm]

Citrix is jumping all over this. See below link straight from Citrix.

http://www.citrix.com/English/ne/news/news.asp?newsID=1859403

[cmangiarelli]

sergeadam wrote:

if I'm a vmware shop, with Windows guests, I can download Hyper-V for free and convert my VMs. Hyper-V is not for everybody, neither is XenServer. ESX is still the best product out there. The point is that until a couple of weeks ago, I could do a comparison between the three, point out the places where ESX is superior and do a ROI based on that. I could justify 'best' against 'good enough'. I can no longer do that. So 'good enough' will have to do.

Most of us agree that the current socket model is unsustainable for VMWare. But licensing virtual-anything goes against what we bought into, and against what the others are doing.  Whatever licensing scheme we would accept has to relly on physical. 2 things won't change. CPU propwer and cores/sockets is going up. RAM cost is going down. The server I buy next year will be able to virtualize at a higher density than the server I just bought. I won't mind paying more $ to VMWare for that increased power. be it by core, or by socket+pRAM, providing the allocations and prices make sense.

Maybe you could do that because of your Microsoft licensing, but those smaller customers not using datacenter only get a limited number of guest licenses too.  So to say they can download hyper-v and convert for free is not correct (and I'm not saying you said that, just playing devil's advocate).  It's possible that they may need to true-up licensing if they are trying to use their Standard and Enterprise licenses for guests because those licenses don't allow an unlimited guest workload per physical hardware device.  However, you could probably do that and be fine... but justifying ROI is generally done right before purchase time.  So if you are in the unfortunate predicament of renewing your VMware licensing right now (or the near future), then good luck.  I feel bad for those customers justifying the expense of conversion to the CxO's and then come to find out they just spent extra money to convert to an inferior solution if VMware fixes this licensing debacle.  Then again, they could also rejoice if VMware doesn't.  Only time will tell...

As for your second point, I completely agree.  However, VMware is caught in an interesting position.  Hardware advances are making physical licensing obsolete because it can't keep up with the change occurring in that realm.  Licensing tied to a virtual metric makes sense... ultimately, but not at a time when economic turmoil is causing businesses to slash costs and reduce personnel.  As has been pointed out, paying per VM is unfair because a 1cpu/1gb guest shouldn't be charged the same price as a 8cpu/32gb guest.  But what if the metric was CPU x RAM x $VMwareCost?  Then you'd have a level playing field for cost/vm; except now you are back in the business of buying capacity when you need it, a position most of the people here also don't want to be in.

[rjb2]

Gauchonm wrote:

Citrix is jumping all over this.  See below link straight from Citrix.

http://www.citrix.com/English/ne/news/news.asp?newsID=1859403

they must have seen this coming -- the link is from 2009

[Marcel1967]

rjb2 wrote:

Gauchonm wrote:

Citrix is jumping all over this.  See below link straight from Citrix.

http://www.citrix.com/English/ne/news/news.asp?newsID=1859403

they must have seen this coming -- the link is from 2009

I guess the Project Open Door is closed now, see what it states:

The Project Open Door promotion will be effective worldwide from October 1 – March 31, 2010.

Who knows the Door will be re-opened again.

[nolent]

cmangiarelli wrote:

True too, but people attempt to say Hyper-V is free when under most customer scenarios, it's not.  For SMB's and mid-teir businesses, they may not have datacenter licensing.  For enterprise customers, the move off VMware and onto Hyper-V has an associated cost comprised of engineering, implementation, downtime (can't vmotion between techs), man-hours, etc.  If Hyper-V was so great, people would have implemented it when they first bought their licenses.  However, we all know the past and while Hyper-V is "good enough", today VMware offers so much more; so I think people who are threatening to convert will simply wait out ESX4.1 (since it's currently technically superior and they already own it) and see if VMware licensing changes before committing to a full-out conversion.

Maybe you  could do that because of your Microsoft licensing, but those smaller  customers not using datacenter only get a limited number of guest  licenses too

First, we all know hyper-v isnt FREE. It has it's associated Windows license cost. Beyond that, your licensing costs are the same as they would be with VMWare. You have to have a valid license for each guest OS REGARDLESS of which hypervisor you use.

Second, the Datacenter arguemet is moot, as the same rules would apply regardless of VMW, Hyper-V or Xen. If an SMB cant get Datacenter, they cant get Datacenter. Dont cloud the issue here (no pun intended, but maybe appropriate).

Third, Hyper-V WASNT that great, and maybe ISNT so great, that's why we all use VMWare. But then again, their costs were rational, and their SnS should allow us to upgrade at will without this ridiculous new licensing scheme a-la EMC Mafia type tactics.

Fourth, I think you are SERIOUSLY overestimating the engineering time to migrate from one virtual platform to another. I believe this will be trivial.

My comments: Personally I dont think we will go to Hyper-V. Even though we could with little to no investment in time and money. But it's not there yet. We will stick it out with ESX 4.1 until the wheels fall off, or our servers are due for replacement. I just replaced ALL our ESX servers very recently. I am on all new HP G7 stuff, so I have lots of lifetime. When it comes time to replace the hardware or 4.1 becomes end of support, I will have to make a decision. By that time, you have to figure both Hyper-V AND Xen will be better than now, if not AT feature parity with VMWare.

To the people who say "it's too late for VMWare to change". I say to that, no it's not. The binaries are not even publically available. If they are going to make a change for the postivie, NOW is the time. Not AFTER RELEASE. Whomever made this decision at EMC I am sure it will come out later that this is a pretty good example of Carly Fiorina type decision making, hopefully they have the sense to pull the plug on this before it brings the company down.

[Chemosh]

...I totally agree with Tomaddox.  VMWare really needs to fix this, and they do have a window of opportunity to do so. They wont do so, as they are at that critical point where a company tries to cash in on it's client base and assumes it can just weather the PR costs until people just cave in.  Considering how much they've been moving towards Apple product compatibility lately, it's pretty obvious where they are getting some of those strategic ideas... 

It seems like a lot of us who have been pushing VMware all these years are now suffering a bit of head-trauma and loss of faith.  I've got a bunch of clients who are irritated with the vendor lock-in abuse they are now experiencing, and I have better things to do with my time than dealing with this.  Very frustrating, and a huge blow to our credibility as partners and consultants who have been avengelizing and recommending these technologies for years.  The timing is almost miraculously bad, what with recent product anouncements, and acquisitions and whatnot from MS, Citrix, and Red Hat.

[gmitch64]

The Project Open Door promotion will be effective worldwide from

October 1 – March 31, 2010.

Looks like we've missed it already - lol.

G

>>> Gauchonm <communities-emailer@vmware.com> 7/28/2011 4:53 PM >>>

Gauchonm replied to the

discussion

"vSphere 5 Licensing"

To view the discussion, visit:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1801731#1801731

[LucasAlbers]

I so agree with this point...

"It seems like a lot of us who have been pushing VMware all these years are now suffering a bit of head-trauma and loss of faith."

We are thinking of making t-shirts for our vmware sales event that is coming up, here is what we have for ideas:

1.)

ESXI free or Die.

2.)

Xenserver is free.

3.)

No Vtaxation with out representation.

4.)

Vsphere 4 = customers

Vsphere 5 = virtual customers.

5.)

(Crossed out vtax , the same as the crossed out "no smoking" signs.)

6.)

4.x till 2014/05/21, baby.

[hmtk1976]

Question.  Say I have 1 vcenter with 2 clusters, each with 2 dual CPU servers (8 CPUs) all licensed for Enterprise.  Do I have a single vRAM pool of 256 GB or 2 vRAM pools of 128 GB? (8 x 32 GB or 2 x 4 x 32 GB - I'm already the mathematical genius we'll all have to be!)

[jmounts]

hmtk1976 wrote:

Question.  Say I have 1 vcenter with 2 clusters, each with 2 dual CPU servers (8 CPUs) all licensed for Enterprise.  Do I have a single vRAM pool of 256 GB or 2 vRAM pools of 128 GB? (8 x 32 GB or 2 x 4 x 32 GB - I'm already the mathematical genius we'll all have to be!)

Just one, since your only running Enterprise Cals.

[rgard]

So many Hyper-V haters in here are uneducated about the product.  Go get educated on how the product is TODAY, not from what you know about it from months ago.  And if you haven’t used it, don’t say one thing good or bad about it, as here-say is not appropriate here.

Hyper-V is free.  The SC/VMM part is not.  That is no different then how VMware is licensed EXCEPT in that VMware will charge you for the host.  Hyper-V is free and has NO AVAILABLE COST OPTIONS.  It is 100% free to install and run many VMs on a host.  You have to license whatever VM you want to put on it, that is no different then VMware.  Again, Vmware does charge to license your hosts, Microsoft does not.

Also, Microsoft is in the midst of a large Hyper-V change that will put it right there in feature set with VMware 5 and guess what, it will continue be free.  It will have things like 16+ vCPU and large memory support (128gb+).  It will have simple to setup replication to another host.  And it will have these things before your newish v4.1 hosts go off support.

I for one like what I have seen and read about with the new HV.  I think it’s going to be a kick to the pants for VMware and I am not sure how they are going to survive when you consider the new features of HV & this new license model.  When you consider the licensing models alone, Hyper-V is FAR more cloud friendly as a service then VMware.

I am a long time VMware customer, started ESX back in v2.5.  I used VM Workstation when it only ran in Linux.  But to me, running my Windows shop on a Windows Hyper-V just seems like it should work better and have tighter integration with the rest of the Microsoft products.  I for one look forward to learning about Hyper-V and getting it running.  This new license model is a great opportunity for us diehards to spread our wings and move on.

http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/how-to-get.aspx

[jmounts]

rgard wrote:

So many Hyper-V haters in here are uneducated about the product.  Go get educated on how the product is TODAY, not from what you know about it from months ago.  And if you haven’t used it, don’t say one thing good or bad about it, as here-say is not appropriate here.

Also, Microsoft is in the midst of a large Hyper-V change that will put it right there in feature set with VMware 5 and guess what, it will be free.  It will have things like 16+ vCPU and large memory support.  It will have simple to setup replication to another host.  And it will have these things before your newish v4.1 hosts go off support.

I for one like what I have seen and read about with the new HV.  I think it’s going to be a kick to the pants for VMware and I am not sure how they are going to survive when you consider the new features of HV & this new license model.  When you consider the licensing models alone, Hyper-V is FAR more cloud friendly as a service then VMware.

I am a long time VMware customer, started ESX back in v2.5.  I used VM Workstation when it only ran in Linux.  But to me, running my Windows shop on a Windows Hyper-V just seems like it should work better and have tighter integration with the rest of the Microsoft products.  I for one look forward to learning about Hyper-V and getting it running.  This new license model is a great opportunity for us diehards to spread our wings and move on.

Because you posted the link before, looks like you either reposted or deleted your init post and posted again, im going to clear this up for you and everyone else.

Link -> http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/how-to-get.aspx

Highlights in that link

1. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is a stand-alone product  that will be available via the Microsoft Download Center free of charge.

(Requires win2008R2 to be running UNDERNEATH Hyper-V, IMHO Huge Draw back over ESX/XEN - Not talking about the 2008R2 License Cost here)

2. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 does not require CALs for  the product itself.

(You can download for free via Windows Updates, the Application Hyper-V is free to install and run, still requires a 2008R2 License, which is NOT FREE when comparing it to ESXi-Free to Xen-Free)

Though, I guess you can 'consider' the 3 day trial of any 2008R2 install + Hyper-V free...for 3 days.

Aside from that, The features they are promoting are similar to ESX and XEN.

However, do you really trust Windows (Think of the security holes now) to host your other Windows Environments? I sure as hell don't.

[JustinL3]

I like #4, although I hear things might be looking up for v5.

[sliptrap]

jmounts wrote:

Link -> http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/how-to-get.aspx

Highlights in that link

1. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is a stand-alone product  that will be available via the Microsoft Download Center free of charge.

(Requires win2008R2 to be running UNDERNEATH Hyper-V, IMHO Huge Draw back over ESX/XEN - Not talking about the 2008R2 License Cost here)

2. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 does not require CALs for  the product itself.

(You can download for free via Windows Updates, the Application Hyper-V is free to install and run, still requires a 2008R2 License, which is NOT FREE when comparing it to ESXi-Free to Xen-Free)

Though, I guess you can 'consider' the 3 day trial of any 2008R2 install + Hyper-V free...for 3 days.

Aside from that, The features they are promoting are similar to ESX and XEN.

However, do you really trust Windows (Think of the security holes now) to host your other Windows Environments? I sure as hell don't.

1. Hyper-V Server 2k8R2 is a standalone installer using the 2k8R2 Core infrastructure but DOES NOT require 2k8R2 installed or licensed. Its FREE. You only have to license the guest OS for the VMs you build (exactly the same as VMWare)

Your confusing the Hyper-V server role that comes with 2k8R2 and the Hyper-V Server 2008R2 product, they aren't the same thing. So just to recap, Hyper-V Server is COMPLETELY FREE. And the best part is you get the clustering and live migration free, ESXi doesn't do that for free.