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?

[rickardnobel]

Edward Haletky wrote:

For example, I know most people only allocate about 50-70% of any one node due to HA requirements. So when you do the math you may be using only 25% of the available memory on any given node.

I do not really follow the example? How could this be 25% used memory on a node?

[DSTAVERT]

And I can't answer the question about the cost of a 1TB server but a 512GByte server with 4 CPUs and a fair disk array is about $35,000 using SuperMicro kit, which means that it will cost less than the VMWARE licences needed to use it?

We all want the balance to tip in our favor. It certainly has been in our favor considering the VM densities we have enjoyed over the past few years. Licensing changes have always inspired heated debate. Every major software company has had their share. We cry outrage, demand change, swear we will move to the competition but at some point settle into the reality that the balance has tipped again. Somehow we figure out how to justify the change in our environment. We find ways to make the most of what we have and at some future date the balance will once again be tipped in our favor.

Perhaps it's time to dust off those Windows 2003 licenses or demand more RAM efficient OS's and applications.

We will survive this. We always do.

[cvbarney]

Full_Halsey wrote:

That's what I'm hearing. Just because I and a lot of other posters are VCP's or better doesn't mean we have correctly deployed virtual environments and we just plain stupid. 

Just the same feeling!

About a year ago employees from VMware told us to SCALE UP:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/03/17/scale-up/

The same engineers are now telling us we don't understand and this license will fit for most customers...

Do the math! Yes, I've done that...

[cmacmillan]

Ultimately, your going to come down on a  GB/VM average usage metric for a pool/cluster and or GB/core metric for a host. In a world with more and more cores per  CPU, VMware's license revenue becomes inversely proportional to core  count (and memory capacity) unless they create a more proportional license: vRAM is what  they've decided on.

Arguably, VMware's product is the best one on the market, so yes, they have to protect market share AND profitability. What I'm illustrating in my examples is CPU and memory configurations that have parity with vSphere 4 license pricing. Perhaps we've become spoiled in the capacity of the current breed of Nehalem and Opteron processors with robust memory densities?

VMware perhaps scales too well. Virtualization capacity per core nearly doubled with hardware virtualization in vSphere versus VI3, and cores have more than doubled again since then. Per socket memory capacity since Vi3 has likewise quadroupled yet per socket prices for vSphere have held relatively steady. This means the utility factor of vSphere has increased nearly ten-fold in half as many years and license cost per virtualized workload has decreased accordingly.

Looking at the options of per vCPU, per VM or some convoluted other license sizing metric, VMware's actually chosen a good one. The vRAM license says your host can be as large as you want it to be, but as host capacity increases, license capacity increases too. This keeps revenue at a predictable level and allows license cost to be easily apportioned to workloads. It also forces better justification on per-VM memory use - something a lot of VMware deployments sorely lack.

That makes the argument around the memory choices VMware made: 24GB, 32GB and 48GB per license. Someone said this hurts Essentials customers most, but at $7/workload-GB for ESS and $31/workload-GB for ESS+, it's not much of a premium versus $52/workload-GB for STD/AK, $91/workload-GB for ENT/AK and $76/workload-GB for ENT+/AK.  In fact, it makes for an interesting problem for Enterprise SKUs moving forward (based on the vRAM metric). In a cloud service (ENT+) environment, that means an effective montly cost of around $6/GB for vSphere.

Are VMware's choices for vRAM sizing intelligent ones? That's ultimately up to the consumer.

[derekb13]

DSTAVERT wrote:

We will survive this. We always do.

Some of us plan to survive it by getting into a different boat that's not making 20 knots in an ice-field.

Wanna join us?

[FuSiOn4]

I think this will be very difficult for us to explain to the powers that be.  TPS is saving our backsides on vRAM:pRAM ratios.  Talk about an interesting conversation.  I can hear them already.  "Let me get this straight, you need more vRAM licensing than we have physical RAM altogether?"  It will stink having to 'true up' what is already provisioned... not to mention growth.  I said this on another forum, but this may very well turn into VMware's "New Coke" if you don't reverse the perception... which is everything mind you.  I think the comparisons to Novell are exaggerated, but that assumes VMware doesn't listen.  I think they will.

Maybe this is a marketing ploy to get everyone to buy CapacityIQ before the upgrade to vSphere 5  .

[Rumple]

The documents specifically state - vRAM is defined as the virtual memory configured to virtual machines.

Read it again..not what you are using…what you have CONFIGURED for the VM’s

AND

You must license at minimum ALL physical sockets

So…if you build up 10 hosts with 2 CPU each and are wildly underutilizing them (think 8GB/RAM ALLOCATED per host.) you need to purchase 20 CPU’s…of whatever flavor you need

However when it comes time to fully utilize those hosts, you may also need to purchase more licensing because you’ve over allocated more RAM then 20xvRAM entitlement level

[Texiwill]

Hello,

You need to do the proper analysis to determine what licenses are required. This has always been the case. Now it is even more. VMware is checking but the values are based off Allocated Memory not used, so we need to plan our allocations better.

I would never allocate the memory that the Box says to allocate. Most times you find you actually use quite a bit less memory than you initially allocate.

So FT does allocate memory so yes it will be added to your vRAM pool.

Are they listening, I believe so. It is a new way of thinking but remember it is pooled not physical...And I expect some better scripts to come out soon to help with this.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

Communities Moderator, VMware vExpert,

Author: VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security,VMware ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise 2nd Edition

Podcast: The Virtualization Security Podcast Resources: The Virtualization Bookshelf

[gllewellyn]

I am shocked by the licensing move, i can see this hitting the SMB market esp.

But dont ditch it everything just yet and jump ship to Microsoft or Zen.

All i can say is speak to your sales rep (VMware directly), as lost revenue to competitors will mean a shift in pricing downwards.

Or

If you can arrange an ELA where you can arrange preferencial pricing discounts and licenses.

[chanaka_ek]

see, WE will survive besause as customers we have a choice (and infact as much as I love VMware, I am going to diversify my options mainly with Hyper-V now...just in preperation for a worst case scenario)... Whether you will survive will largely depend on how you react to this matter .

To be frank, I would like to see both of us survive so I can keep on using my VCP and continue to vcdx and you will carry on having a stable job.....

[Full_Halsey]

With all due respect your argument for right sizing is invalid.

Now:

2-CPU - 256GB RAM = 2 VMware licenses

New model:

2-CPU - 256GB RAM (192GB vRAM assigned)  = 4 VMware licenses

What argument can you bring to the discussion that changes the fact that requires TWICE the number of licenses?? What does "right sizing" have to do with that calculation??

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Most people overallocate the memory for their VMs. For example, on my systems, I say I have a 10-15% overhead on allocation. I know some companies that have a 75% over allocation of memory just because.

So the 50-70% you allocate per node may actually use alot less, which means you can lower your overall vRAMAllocation to your vRAMused allocation or 10-15% over that and most likely fit under the licensing levels...

There have been considerable problems when you deploy tier1 applications because someone overallocated and underutilized resources. This often causes odd performance issues. But if you rightsize your VMs then you can get better performance and by this model better license prices.

Yes you have to license every socket, always has been the case. The idea is to actually plan out your deployments and consider all aspects to achieve the density of application and performance desired, that has always taken fiddling with memory allocations some up, some down.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

Communities Moderator, VMware vExpert,

Author: VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security,VMware ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise 2nd Edition

Podcast: The Virtualization Security Podcast Resources: The Virtualization Bookshelf

[gllewellyn]

Yes but this dosn't account for the memory intensive applications like, SQL, Oracle, Exchange Etc. VMware have been keen to promote the use of being able to host such application due to cos savings. Now VM's like these will be less likley do the thier foot print.

[WillieHowe]

I think you need to look at the application of the server before you do a cost-benefit analysis.  Make sure you are comparing apples-to-apples.

[ats0401]

With all due respect your argument for right sizing is invalid.

Now:

2-CPU - 256GB RAM = 2 VMware licenses

New model:

2-CPU - 256GB RAM (192GB vRAM assigned)  = 4 VMware licenses

What  argument can you bring to the discussion that changes the fact that  requires TWICE the number of licenses?? What does "right sizing" have to  do with that calculation??

Edward,

So your response to this is that most people setup their environments wrong, and if they just did it right, they would be fine under the new licensing??

What if 100% of your VM's are Right sized, perfect sized, sized by god himself, and you still have 192gb+ of vram assigned?

Do you think it's a good license plan to have to buy more socket licenses in this case?

I agree with the poster, I want to hear the argument that has nothing to do with right-sizing.

[rickardnobel]

Edward Haletky wrote:

Hello,

Most people overallocate the memory for their VMs. For example, on my systems, I say I have a 10-15% overhead on allocation. I know some companies that have a 75% over allocation of memory just because.

The thing is that because of features like TPS and reclaiming of zero pages inside the guests, it has been something good to have the guests somewhat relaxed memory allocations. It is strange if this suddenly becomes a concern for VMware and they want all their customers to go through perhaps hundreds of guest OSs and shut them all down to reduce the memory allocations?

[admin]

SuperSpike, thanks for commenting and expressing your concerns. At first sight it seems that you are missing some very key points about the model that can end up affecting the end result:

1) vRAM entitlements are pooled across the whole enviroment, therefore when you do the math you shouldn't focus on one or two servers, but your whole environment. This can radically change the end result. Here is a good example from a customer that was just as shocked as you are and then ran the numbers: http://lonesysadmin.net/2011/07/12/the-five-stages-of-vmware-licensing-grief/

2) the vast majority of people overpovision CPUs and physcial RAM for HA purposes. I don't know about your enviroment, but I'd be surprised if you didn't do that with such large servers running many VMs. With the new model essentially you don't have to license that capacity

3) While core limits are not an issue today if you are running Ent + (they certainly are an issue today is you use Enterprise), within 12-18 months under the vSphere 4.x you will have to deploy to two licenses per processor with the additional negative factor that you won't be able to share core entitlements among hosts

4) To run a 1TB VM you probably need a 16 sockets server with 1TB RAM. This means that the incremental cost would be about 6 licenses since each socket has to have at least one license and we are not even factoring in any spare vRAM capacity you may have in your pool. Looking at prices for hardware like the one above, it seems that the HW alone would cost over $150K, so I am not sure that virtualization software would end up being the most expensive component of the solution

5) vSphere licenses are perpetual so if you are refreshing your existing vSphere environement with new larger boxes you can redepoly your existing licenses to the new boxes just to expand the pool

Look I don't mean to sugarcoat it to you, but I think you should really run the numbers first to determine if you are impacted. Looking at the configs of latest purchased servers may lead to very wrong conclusions as we are seeing in many cases. We will soon make available a free utility app to check possible impacts of the new model on your environment - I'll post the link as soon as it's out. Hopefully it will help provide more clarity and please let us know what you find out.

[Full_Halsey]

I stand by my assessment that a licensing model that requires doubling your licensing for PAID subscription customers with NO one to one upgrade path is absurd.  Regardless of sizing, based on today's hardware deployments that I and other high end data centers are deploying, this model is a clear message from VMware that retaining customers is not their intention.

[rjb2]

A couple of weeks ago we decided that is worth renewing SnS on all our licenses and were looking forward to the release of v5. We were also planning to send a team to VMWorld. We were loyal advocates for VMWare. That all changed in a meeting we had today.

To answer Super Spike's question - yes, we were completely shocked by this move, but we are relieved that we hadn't written another check before finding it out. It looks like v4 will be with us for a while and we'll have time to adjust.

[rahlj]

Telling us we need to make better use of our resources and to plan better assumes that we dont.  Telling us that overallocation and overcommitment is OK and then to turn around and say that we were wrong for doing it is absolutely ridiculous

I want to hear an argument advocating this license model from someone that does not make money either by being employed by or has an association with VMWare. 

Also if you fall into that category I wish you would remember that at one point you have been in our shoes as the customer.