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?

[Jimbonx]

Dear if new users maybe not impact so much on this new licensing model.

but the existing users that already invest on some hardware will impact directly from the new licensing model.

just for your info about license i attached the picture license paket kit from vmware

as for the it to suggest the management to invest are depends on need likes

does the hardware maintanance i budgeted from your company? for how many years for each server hardware?

multiply by number of server for physical calculation.

with virtual are you reduce number of physical server you need? multiply again by number of physical you need for virtual host.

there one of saving you got, besides that for the enterprise edition windows in virtualization you eligible to use 4 for each license you got.

or maybe for data center license for unlimited windows run on that processor.

you must calculate precisely and detail to get the budget approve.

from my side i had no budget for data center consolidation (virtualization) when i joint to my company, just get the budget from opex.

transfer the opex to capex with justification benefit how many saving that we will had on virtual environment.

calculate also the electricity u need and cooling for less physical server you need, also calculate the room for data center you need if calculate to $ for each square meter you used.

you will definitely suprising for the saving you got, that is the beauty of technology.

but suddenly the license scheme changed that will be impact for what i already present to management for this current time we do not need ......

now we need to double the license from no where that not calculated before and become a heartburn for me.

thanks

[Jawdat]

Aroudnev, I don't know how solid that review you kindly added the link to, especially the percentages on there, who's done the survey?.

It does not take a genius to work it out, for the Cloud Service Providers the less cost they can run their operations the more profits, enters the Xen, KVM, Parallel or even Hyper-V (how can they run enterprise-stability-performance with this one without so much management/bits and bobs...).  So it is obvious Cloud guys will reject VMware with any licences, it is open market in the end and you get what you pay for, so as those CSP's customers.

Again I am not defending VMware or this new taxing licensing model, its clearly unimaginative, inflexible to say the least and VMware like the CSPs, looking at maximising their profits, cashing in on their dominance/market share and all that.

What I am saying is that CSPs use of the virtualisation technology is directly connect to the existence of their business and to their profit making, virtualisation is the conveyor-belt of their production/business and yes they should pay fairly for it.

Corporations and SMBs on the other hand use this technology to reduce the costs of running their businesses. VMware missed this aspect completely and yes, if they continue like this they might be in more trouble than they think in no time.

[hmtk1976]

E.W.

If 144 GB vRAM is not enough for you and anything but Essentials (Plus) too expensive you're better of with XenServer at this time.  How much RAM would you need to assign to your VM's you think?  With 144 GB vRAM you can virtualize quite a few servers and even with the new licensing it might be a good purchase.  You'll have to do the math though.  The hard limit on usable vRAM is tough.

As to building your own systems... I really don't understand why anyone would do this except for very specific tasks.  Support isn't guaranteed if the machine isn't on the HCL of VMware or Citrix so why bother saving a few € building your own?

[goppi]

Hi.

We are a consultant company focused on the SMB market and the Essentials Plus Kit

was what most often fit our customer's needs.

I just studied the new licensing model for ESX5 and I think we will start

evaluating other solutions for virtualization.

Sorry but the new licenssing model is a joke and nothing more than

a drastic price increase.

We will not upgrade a single customer to ESX5. For most of them

we would simply not be able to do that without leaving the Essentials

path.

It somehow looked that first VMware offers interresting products for

a reasonable price and then after you are depending on it, they

try to rip you off.

I'm absolutely shocked.

[hmtk1976]

Blog from 2008. If you read it with vSphere 5 licensing in mind you might cry.

[hmtk1976]

blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2008/03/memory-overcomm.html

[nolent]

hmtk1976 wrote:

Blog from 2008. If you read it with vSphere 5 licensing in mind you might cry.

You need to step back and realize this is 2011, not 2008. That train of thought was so "last decade". You need to step into the future and embrace the cloud and thank VMWare for allowing us to better provide these vital services to our business units. :smileylaugh:

[kmcferrin]

Mark Hodges wrote:

VMware is also somewhat handicapped by the fact that their only source of revenue is in virtualization software.

I’d have to disagree with this…

VMware has Capacity IQ, Vmware has vShield App (upgrade to vShield), VMware has hundred of products…however not many people see the true value of them to be honest…at least in the core infrastructure environment.

…

The reason vmware needs the revenue from their hypervisor is because no one will buy their other products…

VMWare view…has huge competition from citrix.  Trend competes with vShield App product line (deep security),

Citrix is able to give Xenserver away because they have customers who want to run Citrix…and XenDesktop is a natural companion…tie in their Cloud purchase to give you the who management piece and I think they have really put vmware into a bind…especially since their Cloud model is so F’n expensive compared to Citrix.

Their only saving grace I think in a lot of cases is that many big businesses run vSphere…which will tie in nicely to cloud providers running VSPP environments…

However make it too expensive for either party and guess what…Citrix will walk away with the price.

Economically I think vmware is going to be in trouble as Citrix moves down this road of a complete solution for Cloud, Infrastructure, application, and Desktop integration, especially when you start typing in their Networking and Wan Acceleration products….

Citrix is building a complete solution…vmware is concentrating still on Infrastructure, Cloud and Desktop virtualization…

I love how you say that you disagree with what I said, then you made my entire argument for me. 

I think that you actually agree with me but misunderstood what I said.  My claim is that VMware only makes money from virtualization software, not that they only make money off of the hypervisor.  "Virtualization software" encompasses all of those other things that you mentioned.  Citrix and Microsoft have other money making products outside of virtualization, VMware doesn't.  VMware's non-hypervisor software (which I will call "virtualization management software") only works with VMware's hypervisor.  Microsoft's and Citrix's will manage hypervisors from multiple vendors.  Their approach is more open (bring whatever hypervisor you have licensed) and they have other sources of revenue.  VMware's is closed (ESXi/vSphere only) and they don't have other sources of revenue.

That's not to say that VMware isn't viable, they certainly are.  They still have marketshare and mindshare, plus technical leadership.  But as time goes by and the competition catches up technically then VMware begins to look much less compelling, and the increased licensing costs and constantly changing license model will not be helpful to them longer-term.

[kmcferrin]

hmtk1976 wrote:

For VMware's sake I hope that cloud providers like their product lineup because for my customers the Citrix and Microsoft products are as good as vSphere.  I'm going to upgrade a customers Windows Server Enterprise to Datacenter which would cost a whopping € 50 per server per year more in SA than they pay now.

I am unclear what this has to do with virtualization.  Surely if they have a virtualization solution in place then they already have properly licensed their Windows Server VMs?

[kmcferrin]

E.W. wrote:

But the main factors of purchasing is to see whether or not the company cares

and/or understands the supposed customers they sell their products to.

Judging from this thread,  I'm sceptical.  My company would *never* invest

that much in the infrastructure (which is why the systems are self-built

towers).  Seeing so many *real world* configurations in this thread, and

looking back at the pricing/licensing pdf,  I question the decision behind the

vRam entitlements.   Even with Essentials, I'm only given a max of

vRAM of 144GB.  3 Hosts, that's 48GB per host.  Each host having

just 1 socket.   Hosting at least three VMs  Does it even make sense

for me to bother with virtualizing?   (Sometimes I wonder if I'm just interested

in Keeping up with the Joneses.)

No offense to anyone.

In my experieince business virtualize for a few different reasons:

1.  Consolidate more hosts onto fewer hardware devices to more fully utilize the hardware you have and save on hardware costs, energy, cooling, etc.

2.  To gain access to extra features like HA, vMotion, etc that make the life of the IT department a little easier when it comes to patching and keeping things running.

3.  To gain access to the DR capabilities that virtualization brings.

4.  To build a more dynamic data center environment.

Then there's the whole hosting company/service provider side that doesn't seem to apply to you.

My question for you is "Why do you want to virtualize?  What is the ROI?"  If the ROI isn't there (and there are certainly small companies for whom virtualization would be nice and helpful but doesn't offer the ROI) then you may not want to go there.

All that said, be aware that VMware isn't the only game in town when it comes to virtualization.  If you don't like what you see then look at the other vendors in the space and see if their offering doesn't make more sense for you.

[kmcferrin]

goppi wrote:

Hi.

We are a consultant company focused on the SMB market and the Essentials Plus Kit

was what most often fit our customer's needs.

...

We will not upgrade a single customer to ESX5. For most of them

we would simply not be able to do that without leaving the Essentials

path.

Surely you will let your customers make that decision for themselves?

[hmtk1976]

kmcferrin wrote:

hmtk1976 wrote:

For VMware's sake I hope that cloud providers like their product lineup because for my customers the Citrix and Microsoft products are as good as vSphere.  I'm going to upgrade a customers Windows Server Enterprise to Datacenter which would cost a whopping € 50 per server per year more in SA than they pay now.

I am unclear what this has to do with virtualization.  Surely if they have a virtualization solution in place then they already have properly licensed their Windows Server VMs?

With the money we save on SnS we can buy SCCM VMM or System Center Essentials if we go the Microsoft way and still come out far cheaper.

[LockAze]

I also work as a consultant, and from a customers view you tend to see this: Here is what we will tell you that you need. If you buy it from VMware it will cost you xxx$ but if you buy it from say Microsoft it will cost xxx$ less for you. And you won't have the memory limitation. What do you think the customer will choose?

So basicly VMware will have to give something that Citrix or Microsoft doesn't offer (that given, they do have a better product) to a price that is not so far away from say microsoft or Citrix. But when they are more expensive, and they cripple away their best selling point (overcommitment) then I can't go to the customer and say: VMware has the best solution and it's reasonally priced because of the fact that they have a great overcommitment functionality. I now would have to say: You could go with VMware, but since memory is cheap and getting cheaper by the month, maybe Microsoft or Citrix is the way to go, they're cheaper and if you need more memory just buy it and cram it in your server... Problem solved. or if you go for VMware you could first maybe buy more memory and then buy a new expencive license so that you are actually allowed to use this extra memory.

I do not now what kind of genious that thought up this idea, but from my place... It just made the competitors a lot more interesting.

[Rumple]

Heh..thats what I get for responding to a thread in the middle of the night, when I had better things to do, like sleep 🐵

[JAndrews42]

Changes have been made, call your partner or check back after 2pm PDT 8/3/11

[bobbach]

Unlike a lot of the folks in this thread I will come out and say I am excited about vSphere 5.

Multicore FT and Storage DRS are the cornerstone of a much more resilient platform. We have wanted these features since we started with virtualization on ESX 2.5. Much of our dual datacenter design was built knowing that these technologies would come, we have been getting ready for them for a long time. We have been telling management that their investment just keeps paying off and will continue to show value

Now that they are coming and we should be getting ready to realize a lot of the promise of ESX/vSphere, VMware has changed the rules of the game yet again. I understand that they need to keep shareholders happy even with the expanded employee base and shiny new facilities they have have to pay for. I'm also sure that they are betting that there are a lot of us out here that will stay the course, and dig deeper to pay for the promise delivered.

I'm not sure that they are right.

Shareholders understand reinvesting in a wildly sucessfull business, and customers understand when they are being pinched. Neither customers nor shareholders want to see other platforms begin to see more R&D time or production resources.

We have become used t there being a single pane to tell us what we need to know in vCenter, we have grown accustomed to supporting one virtualization vendor. But given how much memory we plan to add to our environment in the next year or two we may need to look at other solutions. Mixed environments are never perfect. Remember the Novell/Microsoft shop days or the conversion period from Token Ring to Ethernet? Neither Novell nor Token Ring faired well in the end.

Do we expect price increases? Sure we do. We expect fair increases in our maintenance costs and upward movement in initial purchases. We do not expect to be paying a new model every time a metric pushes ahead. Maybe next they'll charge us for network throughput, or virtual storage, the number of cores under FT etc.

VMware has every right in the world to charge us however they want. As custodians of our organizations data, we have an OBLIGATION to make sure that we protect and make that data accessible in as cost effective a manner as possible.

In many cases that may require the movement of test/dev to another platform. Maybe tiered virtualization platforms will take hold. As the competing technologies integrate a similar feature set they may move up a tier or two. And perhaps sooner than we like to think we'll remember VMware in the same breath as Banyan VINES.

I for one hope that they see the error of their way. They can fix this.

Hopefully they have still have the vision and the corporate will to do so.

[goppi]

Surely you will let your customers make that decision for themselves?

Of course.

But customers nearly always follow our recommendations.

And if we present the costs (meaning to leave the Essential path) I have no question

that most of them are not willing to go that route.

In SMB things are a bit different.

Virtualization is nice and gives flexibility but it is not essential

and from a ROI point of view it is no that convincing either.

We will keep our customers on 4.1 and meanwhile take the time

to look for alternatives.

In our business we try to focus on a single product for every aspect

to be able to offer high quality services and to be economic. As

the price gap between VMware and the competitors is getting quite

large our competitors which offer different solutions are getting

a competitive advantage.

[tomaddox]

I haven't seen the official announcement, but VMware has apparently changed the licensing model slightly, incorporating these two changes:

1) vRAM entitlement is doubled per license level (96 GB for Enterprise Plus).

2) Individual VMs can never consume more than 96 GB of license cost.

So, we're still being shafted, just not as hard.

On the hilarious side, my VMware rep tried to sell the new licensing model as an advantage since it allows us to pool all of our licenses. As I explained to him, any licensing change which requires more work from me is not an improvement, no matter how they try to sell it.

The urgency of considering an alternative virtualization platform has been somewhat reduced, but we will still, in all likelihood, be moving our desktop virtualization initiatives to the Citrix Xen suite to ease our vSphere licensing.

To those who say that VMware needs to increase their prices to stay competitive, I would offer the following feedback:

1) They just brought in record profits based on the old licensing model.

2) If my company told our clients that we were going to increase their costs by 50-200% without a commensurate improvement in their return on investment, we would quickly find ourselves without clients. If we told them that it's because we need to maintain our level of profitability to satisfy our shareholders, I believe that we would hear the sounds of the worlds smallest violins playing just for us, because that's what I'm playing for VMware.

[hmtk1976]

Is there an official announcement?

[tomaddox]

There's supposed to be one this week.