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?

[TysonL201110141]

So I've taken the time to compute what the new license scheme will mean to us.

About 8 months ago we bought new hardware and vSphere licenses. The plan of the project was to get the resources needed to allow for expected growth for the next 2 years. Now with the new licensing we barely have enough licensing for our current load and will need to purchase more in the next 6-9 months. 

This is beyond anything reasonable. Sure, I can understand raising the costs of software over time but our vSphere budget over the next 2 years is going to have to double.

Luckily for us, once we move off our current vSphere hardware to the new hardware we purchased we will have hardware available for Hyper-V evaluation. Our current plan is to evaluate Hyper-V with intent to replace vSphere before our support contract expires (2 years).

I'm not happy about this. I really like vSphere and was an advocate here at work for years. Now I'm eating crow because my managers are unhappy that I've led the department into what one of them has called a budget crisis. 

[homepage]

????

[chadwickking]

Well,

Cast your vote and lest see what people say..

http://virtualnoob.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/vsphere-5-licensing-cast-your-vote/

I will be interested in how it comes out.  Honestly I think most will want to increase vRAM but maybe we will have honest opinions.  I think the long run people are going to want more vRAM.

[shaofis]

No option to continue 4.x licensing...

[Gabriel_Chapman]

a vmware rep replied to some of my concerns:

Our new program does affect some customers (roughly 2% based on our focus group studies) and it sounds like your environment could be one of them. My only other thought is to consider utilizing vShield to reduce costs costs related to security. vShield can free CPU resources that can be allocated to your vm's. I also suggest considering CapIQ as it can be used to right-size your environment, freeing up allocated memory, storage and other compute resources.

I honestly don't know where to begin.

[sergeadam]

Buy a 5 license and downgrade

[gmitch64]

> Buy a 5 license and downgrade

Doesn't really help you. As soon as you drink from the vSphere5 Kool-Aid (accept the new EULA), all your existing 4.1 licences get the vRAM infection.

[Ohhno]

Hehe i think they read it wrong.. It 2% that Not will affected..

[wdroush1]

JDLangdon wrote:

If my calculations are correct and they probably aren't, my production environment current is licensed for 56 Enterprise licenses.  Under the new model, as my environment exists today, I should only need 40 Enterprise licenses.

The bad news however is I just received a request for 4 new VM's and each one needs 32GB's of RAM.  Under the 4.1 licensing scheme I'm good to go.  Under the 5.0 licensing scam, I need to purchase 4 new Enterprise licenses just to run these 4 VM's. :smileyangry:

This is one of the major killers, we go from being able to allocate VMs based on available hardware, to having to call up VMWare and drop $2,500 in licencing when we spin up a VM for a medium sized business.

Where is my flexibility? Where is my scalability? If I have to deal with accounting every time I need a VM things will slow down.

[icontrolyourpow]

Gabriel Chapman wrote:

I honestly don't know where to begin.

You begin as many are (myself included), by evaluating competing products from other vendors.

We can piss and moan here indefinitely. It won't do any good. As unpleasant as it sounds, the reality is that the only vote which matters is the one you make with your wallet.

[cabraun]

This whole situation kinda makes me think, what if a backup vendor came along and sold you a product to backup all your servers (50 servers and total data of 1TB).  Then all of a sudden 1 day they told you, "Sorry, you are only allowed to backup a pooled capacity of 500GB and now you must buy 50 more 10GB server licenses for $300 each if you wish to backup your entire datacenter."

WTF?

Would VMware execs stand for that if their backup vendor came to them with some cockamamie story like that?

I think VMware would look for a new backup vendor ASAP.  And I think a lot of people will be looking for a new Hypervisor now.

Just for the record, in my environment, this new licensing will not impact me CURRENTLY!  At some point though within the next 12-18 months of continued P2Vs and Virtualization of new servers, it will though.  And by then I hope this policy has been changed or I am up to speed on Hyper-V or XenServer.  Because, working for a local govt in Southern Calif. we are pretty much broke.

[sergeadam]

gmitch64 wrote:

> Buy a 5 license and downgrade

Doesn't really help you. As soon as you drink from the vSphere5 Kool-Aid (accept the new EULA), all your existing 4.1 licences get the vRAM infection.

Are the new 4.1 serial numbers going to restrictvRAM, or are we strictly talking EULA?

Because if it's only EULA, I don't really care anymore.

[wdroush1]

JDLangdon wrote:

A lot of people here are saying that they will be switching to Hyper-V but I have to ask, have you even looked at Hyper-V yet and does it provide all the functionality that you are currently using with vSphere?

From what I've seen and read, which is very little, their vMotion type service is troublesome at best, their vSwitch fuctionality is horrible, their setup is not as straight forward, and their management tools are lacking.

I had to fight against Hyper-V, and while I agree their vSwitch functionality is terrible, our team has learned to work around it (and has taught them bad ideas of how vSwitches work). It would technically work fine even though it wouldn't be ideal, this is probably how most teams are seeing it.

[twindude]

Ok VMWare - answer this... can you please?

The right-size suggestion is crap.

i right-size to VMware vRAM rules for cost and an application vendor (SQL, Oracle, SAP, Exchange, ERPs) says different, who wins?

i have to pay attention to the app vendor so my business can run and I can pay VMware for my current license!

So how does right-sizing fit this impracticable license change in the middle of the game?

[wdroush1]

twindude wrote:

Ok VMWare - answer this... can you please?

The right-size suggestion is crap.

i right-size to VMware vRAM rules for cost and an application vendor (SQL, Oracle, SAP, Exchange, ERPs) says different, who wins?

i have to pay attention to the app vendor so my business can run and I can pay VMware for my current license!

So how does right-sizing fit this impracticable license change in the middle of the game?

So if I start relying on my SAN to do a lot of the heavy lifting instead of cheap RAM, does that mean in vSphere 6 I'll have to buy licences to cover iops too?

[bilalhashmi]

Guys,

I have been reading through this thread and after talking to multiple people in the industry I have proposed the following proposal for vSphere 5 licensing and onwards. Yes, I am a vExpert and I try to be unbiasd as I can be and I want you to know that I have done my best to be as unbiased as possible in my last post. Please read and give me your thoughts on this.

http://www.cloud-buddy.com/?p=413

[wdroush1]

Bilal wrote:

Sphere 5 Enterprise = 1:4 ratio

I got to here, no. I'm not running VMWare on 5 year old hardware in production (we have an older box I'm using for our dev environment that I'm getting 6:1 on, it's pretty tight though). Get rid of per-CPU models (one or the other VMWare), 96GB/license is expensive when I could get 256GB/license on new hardware with the v4 licensing model, and the vRAM model needs to basically double every 18 months, can we agree on that VMWare?

Licencing should be getting cheaper due to competitor pressure, not more expensive.

[bilalhashmi]

Keep in mind 1:4 ratio means 4 VMs per core, which I think is reasonable.

Your other suggestions are agreeable as well.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

[wdroush1]

Bilal wrote:

Keep in mind 1:4 ratio means 4 VMs per core, which I think is reasonable.

Your other suggestions are agreeable as well.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

Sorry, my bad. VMWare always uses the consolidation ratio as sockets.

Yeah, that's fine, RAM usage is still terribly low compared to v4 licencing.

We're getting 16-core CPUs in a few months on top of that. :smileyplain:

[sergeadam]

NO.

First, get rid of any kind of licensing tied to CPU. Doesn't make sense anymore.

Second, Your changing ratios depending on edition makes no sense. Because I only need the features on Standard does not mean I'm not going for high-density.

Third, get rid of that vRAM crap. Use pRAM. Why? predictability. I have to present budgets. I can't go back mid year and say, sorry, nothing's really changed on the server, but I need more money for licenses. And as important, I resent the hell out of any vendor that tries to either curtail how I can use my hardware, or tries to charge me more for high density.

What id MS charged you by CPU and by amount of storage. and then tried to charge more if you used compresion on some HDDs?