Impact of "vRAM entitlement of 8GB" on Home Labs?

[Virtuali3ed]

Hi Community, I have read some of the discussion around the new licensing model for vSphere 5 and the main thing is 'vRAM entitlement of 8GB".

Questions:

1. How does this imapct the home labs?

2. Is this a hard limit meaning ESXi will only see 8 GB even if there is more than 8 available in the Host?

Thanks.

[Virtuali3ed]

So guys I still have a question: Using free version, would I be able to power up a VM with more than 8GB of ram or would that operation be stopped with a message about vRam entitlement error?

Thanks.

[GVD]

Virtuali3ed wrote:

So guys I still have a question: Using free version, would I be able to power up a VM with more than 8GB of ram or would that operation be stopped with a message about vRam entitlement error?

Thanks.

It is speculated (though confirmed nowhere) that vRAM entitlement for the Hypervisor will be a hard limit. So yes, you will (most likely) get a warning that you're going over your vRAM entitlement and that your VM cannot be powered on.

You can however lower the allocated RAM and boot it anyway (with less).

J1mbo wrote:
 
Whilst the ROBO kit restriction is very clear, I don't see any restriction in the number of Essentials kits that can be owned there.  It also looks that multiple copies can be purchased via the vmware store.

The feedback I received from VMWare was that Essentials kits can be used with one license/kit "per customer site". "e.g. if the customer has 2 sites 1 in Paris, 1 in Marseille he can get 1 kit in both" as Licensing Support put it.

My follow-up question was if a remote datacenter is viewed as a customer site or not, but haven't received feedback yet.

[siers]

Perhaps they should just bring back the VMTN Subscription for those who have home labs.  One of the reasons they used to eliminate the subscription was because of the free server product.  Now that they've neutered that product it might be a good time to go back to the old way.

[GVD]

My Licensing Contact at VMWare tells me it's likely that the current vRAM restrictions for the Hypervisor will be re-evaluated, but that the hard limit will still be enforced.

So maybe they'll remove the pCPU requirement/restriction to unlock more vRAM, and thus allow say 24 GB vRAM to 1 pCPU machines, but whatever 'top' vRAM they decide on will be a hard limit and is unlikely to rise higher than the current 32 GB vRAM hard limit (now enforced for 4 pCPUs).

[LockAze]

Well, 32Gb would be okay. But 8? 8Gb would just mean that the 1 server enviroments where I now use vmware free, where I plan to upgrade to a paid version later, when the customer needs the upgrade would be gone.... What vmware is telling me now is basicly screw you!

8Gb is not enough, not even for a testing enviroment. And if they state that they're free version should only be for testing purpouses... Well, then I would just go over to eighter Hyper-V, KVM or Xenserver. They're all cheaper.

$2K for a server and then $.5K for vmware? 1/4 of the price of our cheap servers, no way. I would rather make the switch now than beeing raped by vmware.

[GVD]

Max 32 GB vRAM/pRAM regardless of # of pCPUs has been confirmed for the Hypervisor.

http://blogs.vmware.com/rethinkit/2011/08/changes-to-the-vram-licensing-model-introduced-on-july-12-...