VMware Cloud Community
mitvix
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

License, Please someone says that I´m wrong?

Hello

Please, someone says that I am wrong?

I´m working with a project involving three servers with 4 socket 10cores each and a total amount of 3TB of memory, 1TB each per physical server, in an original project with vSphere 4.1 I will use 12lic of Enterprise Plus. I know that with some calcs I see that 12 lics in vSphere 5 will provide support to only 576GB of vMemory (12x48GB), if I want use all memory that I have (3TB), I´ll need just more 50 licenses of Enterprise Plus, 576G that I have  more 50.5x48GB=2424GB to totalize the amount of 3TB, or 62 licenses in total. I´m wrong?

Please, someone says that I am completed wrong in my think?

Thanks

Alexander Manfrin

http://www.vmworld.com.br

Alexander Manfrin VCP - VMware Certified Professional Owner www.vmworld.com.br +55 61 8110 2665 - Brasilia - Brazil
Reply
0 Kudos
13 Replies
kcucadmin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

that's if you want to ALLOCATE all 3 TB to VM's.  if you were planning on OVER ALLOCATING it's worse.

it's these types of projects, that VMWare obviously felt they deserved a LARGER portion of the "SCALE UP" savings that hardware was able to offer now.

now if you were going to use this hardware for VDI the good news is you could use the View License Model and not be limited by vRAM, but guess what now you get to pay by user.  which is still way more expensive than what you would of payed under the 4.x model.

Reply
0 Kudos
rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

Robert Samples wrote:

that's if you want to ALLOCATE all 3 TB to VM's.  if you were planning on OVER ALLOCATING it's worse.

That is important I think. Most calculations seems to be based on that the vSphere memory techniques is not working at all. With just the reclaim of zero pages from guest OS the amount of physical RAM / vRAM could be far from each other, which the new license model will punish you for.

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
Reply
0 Kudos
Lessi001
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello Alexander,

after reading the license whitepapers I can only agree with your calculations. If you allocate the whole 3 TB RAM to your VMs you will have to buy 52 extra Licences (Enterprise Plus). The bad thing - in my opinion it is also necessary to buy the Support for the Licences, too.

Regards

Andi

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary, and those who do not.
Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

The calculation looks to be correct provided that you plan to allocate all of the 3 TBs to Virtual Machines. Enterprise Plus provides an vRAM entitlement of 48GB per license.

www.thevirtualheadline.com

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
Reply
0 Kudos
Baddos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Are you really going to be having 3TB of allocated and online guests? Not keeping any extra RAM for maintenance on a host or in case of a host failure?

The vRAM calc also doesn't count VMs that are shutdown/suspended from what I can tell reading their license info.

Reply
0 Kudos
rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

Baddos wrote:

Are you really going to be having 3TB of allocated and online guests? Not keeping any extra RAM for maintenance on a host or in case of a host failure?

Does that matter much? If he is having 1 TB per host x 3 and only having 12 licenses x 48 GB = 576, there is still a large difference, even if keeping the capacity of one host back (N+1).

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
Reply
0 Kudos
mitvix
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The true is that the project involve 6 physical server with QPI between pair of servers in total 3TB (6 x 4tenCore x 512GB each), to simplify I talk about 3 machines only to exemplify.

The true cenario is

6 IBM xSeries 3850 X5 with MAX5 and QPI 4 socket 10cores each 512GB working in pair

The right cost will be 6x4proc=24licenses x 48GB =  1152GB of support vmem

The client is a Government office, I believe that they will not virtualize with vmware and they will review the architeture of this project.

Alexander Manfrin VCP - VMware Certified Professional Owner www.vmworld.com.br +55 61 8110 2665 - Brasilia - Brazil
Reply
0 Kudos
Baddos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Rickard wrote:

Baddos wrote:

Are you really going to be having 3TB of allocated and online guests? Not keeping any extra RAM for maintenance on a host or in case of a host failure?

Does that matter much? If he is having 1 TB per host x 3 and only having 12 licenses x 48 GB = 576, there is still a large difference, even if keeping the capacity of one host back (N+1).

Of course it matters, the new license model is based on per socket and allocated online vRAM. I'm not thrilled with the new licensing model either, but we should be outlining the exact facts. The expected vRAM total is left out from his posts so you can't say for sure what the new license cost will be. I think VMware would be much more responsive if people outlined their concerns with ALL the facts and not just throwing hardware specs at them.

Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I do see your point and most likely it is unlilkely all 3 TB would be allocated to power on Virtual Machines ( which I believe is what goes towards the vRAM entitlement ). However as posted in this case the number of current license vRAM entitlement of  576 GB is significantly off from the total possible memory available.

www.thevirtualheadline.com

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
Reply
0 Kudos
Baddos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Certainly true, all I'm saying is we should post all the info to highlight what the cost will be. Showing this to VMware will give them more accurate information on how current/future customers costs will be affected.

Reply
0 Kudos
scottyyyc
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

With this whole licensing debacle, one thing I have to wonder is what the averages are in terms of RAM/host for VMware customers...

In my personal experience (mostly SMB), I don't hear of or see too many setups where hosts have more than about 64gig per proc. VMware "says" that this licensing change wont affect the vast majority of people, and they say most customers will be a little bit ahead. But then again my experience is SMB, not enterprise. Is it more common in enterprise environments to be loading up hosts with 500/1TB of RAM? Or perhaps is this whole licensing debacle a case of a few of the largest VMware customers getting screwed.

I'm not saying I agree with the new licensing (I dont), I'm just curious...

Reply
0 Kudos
Baddos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

If you have a lot of db/email servers  virtualized, then yes it would not be out of the ordinary for an enterprise to have their hosts use more than the 48gb/processor that vmware is establishing as the base for enterprise plus.

Reply
0 Kudos
GaryHertz
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

scottyyyc wrote:

With this whole licensing debacle, one thing I have to wonder is what the averages are in terms of RAM/host for VMware customers...

In my personal experience (mostly SMB), I don't hear of or see too many setups where hosts have more than about 64gig per proc. VMware "says" that this licensing change wont affect the vast majority of people, and they say most customers will be a little bit ahead. But then again my experience is SMB, not enterprise. Is it more common in enterprise environments to be loading up hosts with 500/1TB of RAM? Or perhaps is this whole licensing debacle a case of a few of the largest VMware customers getting screwed.

I'm not saying I agree with the new licensing (I dont), I'm just curious...

I am not a large enterprise customer.  I'm a fairly small shop.  I'm the sole support person for anything to do with servers.  That includes server hardware and software, storage, backups, and the mail system.  We have about 75 servers running on vm.  That should give you an idea of our size.  I currently have 8 Enterprise Plus licenses so I'm in no way one of VMware's larger customers.

I had four 1 socket 4 core servers with 96GB of RAM each.  I ran out of RAM before I ran out of CPU power on those servers.

I upgraded to four 2 socket 8 core servers with 256GB of RAM each.  The upgrade required me to go to Enterprise Plus so VMware got a piece of the CPU upgrade and I'm fine with that.

Although I went from 96GB/CPU to 128GB/CPU, I went from 24GB/core to 16GB/core on the new servers.  Using the GB/core numbers I expect to run out of memory before I hit my CPU limits on the new servers. I think GB/core is a better number to look at than GB/socket.  Using sockets is a little like using memory slots when talking about memory.

I realize everyone's environment is different and my memory/processor needs might be greater than a other people but I can't believe it is way above the norm.  We run a mix of file, SQL, mail, SharePoint application servers along with the normal DC, DNS, DHCP, backup, antivirus, and monitoring servers.  We are pretty much exclusively a MS shop with the exception of a few appliance servers that run on Linux.  I'm not sure how our memory requirements would compare to an all Linux environment.

Even if we use your numbers of 64GB/socket the new licensing model is way under what the average customer is using.  I also want to point out that we've been talking about physical RAM.  VMware's restrictions are on virtual RAM.  I'll bet you could run 24GB/socket of vRAM on a system with 16GB/socket of physical RAM under the right conditions.

Reply
0 Kudos