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?

[GVD]

rjb2 wrote:

GVD wrote:

.... and VMWare isn't about to let that piece of the pie have a free lunch.

Speaking of the "free lunch", there was a lot of discussion about how unfair the entitlements for the free version of ESXi were, but there doesn't seem to be many kudo's now for the 4x increase on that version - 8GB to 32GB.

Not doing so would hurt VMWare in the long run.

People getting into virtualization cheaply would be forced to go with Citrix Xenserver Standard, Hyper-V or KVM.

People already running test environments using more than allocated would be left behind on 4.1 or would eventually migrate to Citrix Xenserver Standard, Hyper-V or KVM.

Quite frankly, many of VMWare's users simply do not know the "enemy" well enough. Forcing the users to start looking at the alternatives, they might actually see something they like.

Personally, I'm grateful for the 32GB in the hypervisor & have posted as such in other Hypervisor threads.

Two main issues however remain as far as I am concerned:

1. Moore's Law: When planning my purchases, I look into the future and want to AT LEAST plan 3 years ahead. This means Moore's Law is always in the back of my mind. Even if I don't buy all the RAM now, I leave slots free to be able to replenish as my requirements grow and keep pace with Moore's Law (in the past 5 years, they have & I expect them to keep pace in the future as well).
2. Grandfather old licensing: While this recent change is sufficient to fit most people's current and near-future needs, there are still some people getting hurt over this. These people are forced to buy licenses, stay on 4.1 or migrate, regardless of their SnS agreement. VMWare should "grandfather" their licenses, and give them the licenses needed to match their current resources at the very least. If not, VMWare should entirely refund their SnS fees for the past 3 years.

If this is addressed, I will probably entirely forget about this entire licensing and PR screw-up. If left as is, I will always be reminded of this when making future plans. While right now VMWare is fulfilling my current and near-future needs, who is to say they wouldn't go against my interests the next time around regardless of my SnS?

[DSeaman]

GVD wrote:

DSeaman wrote:

In fact VMware makes a strong case why allocated vRAM does not make sense and why basing it on reserved pRAM is more appropriate. I agree..just too bad we can't use the same, more logical IMHO, model.

Reserved RAM is commonly used for shared deployments when leasing/renting VMs to customers, but when you're using it for internal purposes only, you rarely use reservations, except for the most crucial VMs. As such, reserved RAM will be fairly low in most SMEs, and VMWare isn't about to let that piece of the pie have a free lunch.

I agree internal deployments probably don't make wide spread usage of reservations. However, VMware has a minimum floor of 50% of allocated vRAM so that VMs which have little or no reservations still require you to pay for them. So you aren't getting a free lunch.

[ClueShell]

Somehow agreed.

The next possible solution:

vSphere 4 Standard gave you 6 cores and 256 GB RAM. My of the shelf server has 9 RAM slots per socket. Affordable back then were 4GB sticks todays there are the 8 GB models. In three years 16 GB sticks will be cheap.

2 sockets / 6 cores / (18x8) 144 GB RAM

VMware licensing cost $2000 (v4)

VMware licensing cost $5000 (v5)

4 sockets / 6 cores / (36x8) 288 GB RAM (ok exceeds limit)

VMware licensing cost $4000 (v4)

VMware licensing cost $9000 (v5)

Maybe it gets cheaper to upgrade than a 2.5 fold increase with bigger editions but we dont need/want the features.

Sure it helps if you have N+1 an this +1 is just there for load balancing, but we do the overhead ourself, we just shut down those VMs that are not mission critical but benefit from the big and performing boxes while they are alive.

What else does VMware expect from a small shop?

Aaargh.

[hmtk1976]

ClueShell: you quite obviously didn't do that magical trick VMware calls "right sizing" your VMs.

[DSeaman]

hmtk1976 wrote:

DSeaman wrote:

VMware also made some changes (or clarified some issues) for VDI users that have vSphere 4.0 and want to upgrade to vSphere 5.0. They've waived the vRAM entitlement limits in certian configurations (in addition to the vSphere Desktop SKU that was widely known) and for vSphere 4.x licenses purchased before Sept 30, 2011. You can check out the details and restrictions here:

http://derek858.blogspot.com/2011/08/vsphere-5-vdi-licensing-redux.html

I think this is a great move, and will allow existing VDI deployments to migrate to vSphere 5.0 for little to no additional cost, regardless of vRAM usage.

I'm sorry but I call this bullshit.

For those having View in production NOW this entire scheme sucks and blows at the same time.  We "just" need another vCenter to manage our VDI machines.  Oh fun, everything's working with my current vCenter so now I have to pry View loose just for same harebrained licensing scheme? You call this not unreasonable, I call this a dealbreaker.  Besides the cost of another vCenter, perhaps a Windows license and backup agent for the VM it's another machine that uses resources for the simple stupid reason that some sales guys at VMware live in another world.  Not to speak of extra work, downtime, ...

Existing customers are still shafted with the licensing.  There's no possibility of trading licenses.  Our View environment is running on vSphere Enterprise licenses.  Why not trade those licenses to an equal value of the vSphere Desktop SKU?  That would have been easy and fairly painless.

These guys are clueless and unless Citrix and Microsoft do something equally stupid with their upcoming virtualization products they've lost me as a customer.

I agree it would be more efficient to have added additional logic to vCenter to take into account vSphere Desktop and grandfathered vSphere 4.0 servers that are just dedicated to VDI, instead of requiring separate instances. However, I do think the new terms are much more favorable, while not perfect, do go a long ways to helping ease VDI migrations to vSphere 5.0. Maybe a future vCenter update will have the intelligence to manage both types of "pools" so you can rely on a single vCenter.

[MauroBonder]

Changes in Licensing vSphere 5.

For all http://app.connect.vmware.com/e/es.aspx?s=524&e=20665715&elq=0dbde50e1902486ea0c4ccf8646067fe&OPENID...

[Dracolith]

DSeaman wrote:

I agree internal deployments probably don't make wide spread usage of reservations. However, VMware has a minimum floor of 50% of allocated vRAM so that VMs which have little or no reservations still require you to pay for them. So you aren't getting a free lunch.

About that...  didn't the model used to be   consumed   or  utilized   vRAM as  indicated by metering per-hour average of the  "Consumed memory" performance statistic?   Now they are using  reservation   with a  50% floor of  configured   vRAM?

Please correct me if i'm wrong:

If  consumed memory   for a VM  was less than the reservation,  or less than  50%  of  the VM's   configured  vRAM in the old model,

then the changes to VSPP will result in a higher cost for that VM?

[lawjm]

I may as well throw in here as well. First let me say that I really like vmware. It has saved me about 30% on hardware costs over the last three years. And, an actual 30% reduction in cost beats those inflated marketing numbers any day.

The problem I now face stems from me really liking the product. It does everything I want it to do. I can't think of a single feature I want that it doesn't provide. So...why should I upgrade? Im not going to pay more for the privilege of locking myself in a less flexible licensing model.

Holley purchased vmware licenses about 3 months before Microsoft's hypervisor was released. I decided early on that it didn't make sense to delay our virtualization project an additional three months just to evaluate a solution that was bleeding edge. But now Microsoft Hyper-V isn't bleeding edge, and since we are a Microsoft shop their virtualization costs are almost $0 for us.

I can and will continue to use the licenses I have now while I evaluate the best alternative. 20 years ago our servers had 32mb of RAM, 10 years ago our servers had 512mb of RAM. Today I don't have a server under 4gb. I can plot a trend line.

I think we will all look back on both vmware and RIM as companies that had the world in the palm of their hand and still managed to lose to the competition.

--John Law

[rjb2]

DSeaman wrote:

....Maybe a future vCenter update will have the intelligence to manage both types of "pools" so you can rely on a single vCenter.

The current vCenter knows how to manage and count for hosts that have been assigned a key for a "vSphere 4 Desktop Host" license. We currently run VDI in a separate cluster for licensing compliance, and it works fine.

I don't recall seeing anything about a requirement for the new Desktop edition to have a separate vCenter. The first mention of this was in the context of the new provision for upgrading regular licensing to v5 and being able to run VDI without the vRAM limits. My hunch is that the new "requirement" only applies to those situations, and that the Desktop edition will operate like the previous "vSphere Desktop Host" license. The reason for this would be that the regular vSphere versions will be contributing to the server pool, and this is this is problematic.

This is only my opinion, and I'm waiting for someone from VMWare to clarify this point officially.

Someone posted the following on another blog, but it would be nice if there would be an official clarification by a VMWare rep posted here!

Answer from VMware: “We find that most customers separate their desktop virtualization and server virtualization deployments and typically use different instances of vCenter.  VMware recommends the use of different vCenter instances for Desktop Virtualization.”

See - http://virtualfuture.info/2011/07/vsphere-5-for-desktops-license/

[tomaddox]

Duncan wrote:

Have you ever seen any vendor offering a roadmap of how licensing will evolve?

Not as such. No other vendor I work with (not even EMC, which is saying something) has jerked the rug out from under us in quite this way, though. Virtually (har) everyone in this thread is, or was, a VMware fan. What people such as yourself are missing is that the new licensing is not just a minor change such as we saw when Virtual Center 2.5 morphed into vSphere 4 and made the Enterprise license worthless but a massive and punitive shift which has a tremendous potential to increase cost and complexity for customers who are making significant use of virtualization.

VMware has made much of "the average customer" only running five VMs per host. Even assuming I believed that, this "average customer" is not the die-hard VMware fan. What VMware should have done was talked to the people who are seriously using the product, shooting for 20+ VMs per host and maximizing their consolidation ratios. These are the people who are (or were) VMware's biggest fans, advocates, and champions. These are also the people who are getting treated the worst and who feel the most betrayed by this sudden licensing shift, and now salt is being rubbed in our wounds by people saying things like:

• The new licensing is better for you because it allows you to pool your vRAM allotment (entirely overlooking the fact that this was never a concern before).
• You get unlimited vRAM for virtual desktops! (As long as you purchase and deploy a second vCenter instance and never, ever run servers in your VDI cluster.)
• VMware needs to make money! (They have been raking it in hand over fist already.)
• No other product offers the stability and feature set that VMware does, so you should expect to pay more. (We were already paying more, now we're potentially paying even more than we were.)

The clue phone is ringing. I think it's for you.

[Baddos]

Have you ever seen any vendor offering a roadmap of how licensing will evolve? The changes made were caused by the loud voice of the community / customers. Saying that VMware doesn't listen is just not right. I can understand your frustration but you also need to keep in mind that there are two sides to this. Lets be honest, removing pRAM / vRAM / Cores would mean the price of the license would need to go up, that would have resulted in a similar response as the above.

You can tweak the numbers to always make it sound bad, and yes you can tweak the numbers to make it sound great. There are also loads of VMs between 2G  and 4GB of memory, which would be roughly 45 VMs on a single host, which is 9 times more than most enterprises run today.

9 times eh? Because people run hosts with 1 processor when they run vmware? Lots of people TODAY running VMs between 2 and 4GB? This really shows VMware's lack of understanding of their customers current situations and future growth.

We understand that VMware MAY have to change it's licensing as density ratios improve, but the vRAM model is clearly flawed now matter how you look it. Many would argue that VMware doesn't even need to change licensing this version at all.

[Baddos]

hmtk1976 wrote:

Sure there are load of VM's with relatively little RAM but in the next few years many of them will be replaced by VM's with 4+ GB RAM.  VMware seems to think only of now and not of the future.

What's insane is that VMware is arguing that they need to increase licensing costs because of growing trends, but refuses to accept the growing trends of guest requirements.

[nuttervm]

See my original post on Duncan Epping's website:  http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/07/21/scale-upout-and-impact-of-vram-part-2/comment-page-1/#commen...

I appreciate the gesture made by VMWare to update the licensing scheme and make it suck less, but I am still feeling left out in the cold.  My simple example goes from being able to use ALL my 256 GB pRAM on v4.1 to only 192 GB pRAM on v5.0. I am STILL unable to use 64GB of pRAM that I can use today and the ONLYnew feature in v5.0 that my Essentials license class can use is the new VMFS5 (smaller sub-block allocation, larger extents/LUNs)

As I mentioned in the post, VMWare clearly doesn't think my business is important or that my use-case is valid.  I don't want to make sensationalist claims, but VMWare really is forcing me to look at their competition.  I have no choice, I can't afford $14k in new licenses just for the privilege of continuing to use my existing hardware with no additional features.

VMWare, if you are listening, PLEASE RECONSIDER.  Use the Active memory metric to gauge vRAM usage and I assure you the complaints from your customers will stop!

[lawjm]

I’m afraid that they ARE thinking of the future and trying to position themselves to squeeze more profit down the road by introducing caps now while the GB limits seem high. I fully expect RAM usage for my company to double in the next 2 years, I think VMware executives expect it will double as well.. –John Law

[kmcferrin]

Justin Devereaux wrote:

How about Hyper-V?  Most people use datacentre licences for the Windows VMs on their ESX clusters, this way you get the hypervisor for free, with no limitations on future RAM usage.

Not to sound like a broken record, but Hyper-V has nothing to do with licensing Datacenter edition of Windows.  Hyper-V is just plain free.  Licensing the datacenter edition of Windows is 100% about licensing the VMs running inside Hyper-V/VMware/Xen and has no bearing on the hypervisor cost.

[bobbach]

"I’m afraid that they ARE thinking of the future and trying to position themselves to squeeze more profit down the road by introducing caps now while the GB limits seem high. I fully expect RAM usage for my company to double in the next 2 years, I think VMware executives expect it will double as well.."  –John Law

I also worry that on the next release they will decide they need more, so they'll chage us for disk under vSphere.....

[lawjm]

You are correct (although the last time I looked it was $5 a proc), but I think Justin was talking about people already having the 2008R2 Data Center core software at their fingertips. –John Law

[hmtk1976]

It's just the management tools you have to purchase.  System Center Essentials or Virtual Machine Manager.

[TysonL201110141]

So the change that VMware has made to the licensing is definitely better than their original limits. The original limits were flatly unacceptable which would guarantee the university I work at to abandon vSphere once 4.1 lost support.

With the new limits we are still going to not upgrade to 5.0 for the next couple of years. Once we have to upgrade we will evaluate the current levels of RAM in our servers vs the RAM limits in the license and decide if the licensing costs are worth the features vSphere gives us compared to the competition.

Sadly, VMware has damaged the confidence that I and my team have in them. We have been forced to look at them with a critical eye and realize that VMware will try and screw us if we aren't watchful.

I for one have stopped looking forward to new versions of vSphere. Instead I will look at new versions with a critical eye and consider whether features will be worth the new licensing costs that VMware may impose.

VMware, I used to love you. Now you are just another software company.

[kmcferrin]

lawjm wrote:

You are correct (although the last time I looked it was $5 a proc), but I think Justin was talking about people already having the 2008R2 Data Center core software at their fingertips. –John Law

$5/processor for what?  Datacenter Edition is more like $2500-$3000/socket.