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SuperSpike
Contributor
Contributor

vSphere 5 Licensing

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?

@Virtual_EZ
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Full_Halsey
Contributor
Contributor

Bilal wrote:

No 4:1 means 4VM's per core and if this is reasonable

You are right about my inverse numbers.. I have updated that.. Thanks!

why is VMware telling people that they should be able to get 8:1?

That has been true for the previous versions. And if they have enough vRAM they can still do that in the vSphere 5. Besides most 8:1 are VDI envirnoments and the VDI lic will have unlimited vRAM. However I am not a 100% on the upgrade path from the previous VDI version.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

Please keep in mind that not everyone uses VIEW for their VDI environment. I have customers using other VDI implementations with ESX for the backend. They are getting 8 and even 10 to 1 density. They are completely dead in the water under this new license model.

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Gabriel_Chapman
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

EMC Avamar works like you described. Brocade fibre switches do per port licensing. You have the ports, but you must licese each one to use it.

The difference is that you know going into those products what the licensing structure is, they are not changing it from one upgrade to the next, well not yet.

Ex Gladio Equitas
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bilalhashmi
Expert
Expert

Licensing based on utlization is unpredictable as it will fluctuate. And more importantly what will be VMware's incentive in that approach. Won't they be working towards selling even less? Let's be realistic here. If memory techniques are expected to be further enhanced, VMware should have incentive in that. With utilization as the metric and not allocation VMware will have a conflict of interest.

Basically if my VM today only uses 20%, then why would VMware enchnace it further to use even less? They will loose more money that way and in all honest no company wants that including MS or Citrix. Furthermore if memory enhancements do not occure and stay where they are, we will have to purchase more pRAM instead. I think vRAM is a better option based on those reasons.

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Blog: www.Cloud-Buddy.com | Follow me @hashmibilal
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cabraun
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

If Brocade came to me tomorrow and said "Hey, you are only allowed to push 2Gb through each port in your 32 port 4Gb fibre switch unless you pay for 32 more ports" they would be shown the door rather expediently.

The new license model is no different.  "Hey, you are only allowed to use half or a quarter of the RAM in your server unless you buy 2 or 4 times as many licenses as you needed to operate yesterday"

Same same as far as I am concerned.  And VMware may well get the same treatment that Brocade would likely get if they tried that approach.

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wdroush1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Dracolith wrote:

If I use VMware FT,  does both the primary and secondary VMs count against my VRAM usage?

Already asked them about this on their Facebook page, they said yes.

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sergeadam
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Bilal wrote:

Licensing based on utlization is unpredictable as it will fluctuate. And more importantly what will be VMware's incentive in that approach. Won't they be working towards selling even less? Let's be realistic here. If memory techniques are expected to be further enhanced, VMware should have incentive in that. With utilization as the metric and not allocation VMware will have a conflict of interest.

Basically if my VM today only uses 20%, then why would VMware enchnace it further to use even less? They will loose more money that way and in all honest no company wants that including MS or Citrix. Furthermore if memory enhancements do not occure and stay where they are, we will have to purchase more pRAM instead. I think vRAM is a better option based on those reasons.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

The incentive to innovate should be the same as everyone else, to stay ahead of the competition and to gain market share. I expect licensing to increase year over year. I expect SnS to increase year over year. That's the revenue model. I'm not a big shop. All I really need is decent HA. vMotion is nice, but I can usually schedule down time for maintenance. 

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wuffers
Contributor
Contributor

Just slogged through 34 pages of this thread, just a fascinating read.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the new licensing scheme is on allocated vRAM. Does this mean it applies to templates and powered off VMs as well?

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bilalhashmi
Expert
Expert

No. only powered on VMs.

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Blog: www.Cloud-Buddy.com | Follow me @hashmibilal
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Full_Halsey
Contributor
Contributor

What if Microsoft changed their IIS license model to one where all commerce web sites have to pay a per site license fee. One web site per server = 1 unit, 20 web sites on a server = 20 units. People are making money off of their ability to publish web sites that generate income and now Microsoft feels they are entitled to a percentage of that revenue.

How much of an outcry would come from that?? What would VMware do??

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bilalhashmi
Expert
Expert

Because unlike VMware MS has multiple ways to generate revenue eg. OS, Applications like office, SCCM, SCVMM, SCOM, not to mention SQL etc etc.. They can afford not to charge for IIS.

How does VMware generate revenue primarly?

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Blog: www.Cloud-Buddy.com | Follow me @hashmibilal
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JustinL3
Contributor
Contributor

sergeadam wrote:

Bilal wrote:

Licensing based on utlization is unpredictable as it will fluctuate. And more importantly what will be VMware's incentive in that approach. Won't they be working towards selling even less? Let's be realistic here. If memory techniques are expected to be further enhanced, VMware should have incentive in that. With utilization as the metric and not allocation VMware will have a conflict of interest.

Basically if my VM today only uses 20%, then why would VMware enchnace it further to use even less? They will loose more money that way and in all honest no company wants that including MS or Citrix. Furthermore if memory enhancements do not occure and stay where they are, we will have to purchase more pRAM instead. I think vRAM is a better option based on those reasons.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

The incentive to innovate should be the same as everyone else, to stay ahead of the competition and to gain market share. I expect licensing to increase year over year. I expect SnS to increase year over year. That's the revenue model. I'm not a big shop. All I really need is decent HA. vMotion is nice, but I can usually schedule down time for maintenance.

First off, I'm not opposed to vRAM Allocation as a model if they are going to give us decent entitlment numbers to allow for todays processors; what they have set now is way too low.

With that said, of course utilization will flucuate, but it is not un-predectable, especially in an established environment.

VMware doesn't decide how much memory an OS and application is going to activly utilize.  The OS and application running within the VM determines that.

If VMware want's to shift to licensing on vRAM, then Utilization kinda makes sense (granted it is volitile but would be managed and licensed towards high-marks).  If it was licensed on active Utilization, then it gives the customers the choice of placing the workloads on highly dense monster servers, or spreading them out across a larger number of smaller servers.  Either way, the same number of VM's are going to actively utilize the same amount of vRAM whether they're all on a few big servers or spread out across a lot of smaller servers.

Gives the customer the choice of server size they want to use as well as the ability to over-allocate vRAM a little bit as a safety net without being penalized by an Allocated model.

I don't know what thresholds would be for each tier of license etc; but I think the idea is interesting.

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Full_Halsey
Contributor
Contributor

Bilal wrote:

Because unlike VMware MS has multiple ways to generate revenue eg. OS, Applications like office, SCCM, SCVMM, SCOM, not to mention SQL etc etc.. They can afford not to charge for IIS.

How does VMware generate revenue primarly?

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

Correct me if I am wrong but VMware has nearly 30 product lines, most of which are add-ons to vSphere. There's a reason why Verizon gives away free phones, it's to make money on the add-ons and the service.

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

Charles Braun wrote:

If Brocade came to me tomorrow and said "Hey, you are only allowed to push 2Gb through each port in your 32 port 4Gb fibre switch unless you pay for 32 more ports" they would be shown the door rather expediently.

The new license model is no different.  "Hey, you are only allowed to use half or a quarter of the RAM in your server unless you buy 2 or 4 times as many licenses as you needed to operate yesterday"

Same same as far as I am concerned.  And VMware may well get the same treatment that Brocade would likely get if they tried that approach.

This isn't the same thing at all. You are perfectly free to use your current licenses as you currently do. This is a new licensing model and going forward if you want to use the new product it will be under the new model. When Brocade has a new fibre switch and you want to use it you need to purchase the new version and all the HBA's, cables, management software etc. at the prevailing rate.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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sliptrap
Contributor
Contributor

Full_Halsey wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but VMware has nearly 30 product lines, most of which are add-ons to vSphere. There's a reason why Verizon gives away free phones, it's to make money and the add-ons and the service.

Yes but this is the EMC business model, they sell you a product and then gouge you with rediculous license constraints and limitations unless you cough up more money.

The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.
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cvbarney
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

If you don't like the license, stay on 4.x! Do you need the new features of 5? If it cost you serveral new licenses and you can't motivate it, don't upgrade and look over time how the new license will be adopted or VMware will change it.

We shall advise our customers who upscaled their environment (2 CPU/>=256 GB) last year to stay on 4.1 and look next year or the upgrade can be done without major investment. Otherwise still keep it on 4.x and investigate alternatives.

See: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/licensing.html

Converting vSphere 5 Licenses to vSphere 4 – "Downgrades"

If you have purchased VMware vSphere 5 licenses and wish to convert  some or all of them, to increase your available VMware vSphere 4  licenses, you may downgrade the desired number of the licenses on the  vSphere license portal.  If you wish to convert some or all of your vSphere 5 licenses to VMware  Infrastructure 3 (VI3) licenses, you must first downgrade to vSphere 4  and then follow the existing process to downgrade to VI3.

Downgrading from vSphere 5 to vSphere 4 via vSphere License Portal

  1. Log into the    vSphere License portal using your VMware.com account credentials
  2. Locate the VMware vSphere 5 product name for the license key(s) you would like to downgrade
  3. Expand the product name and click the "Downgrade" button
  4. Follow the prompts to downgrade your license key(s) to VMware vSphere 4
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Full_Halsey
Contributor
Contributor

cvbarney wrote:

If you don't like the license, stay on 4.x! Do you need the new features of 5? If it cost you serveral new licenses and you can't motivate it, don't upgrade and look over time how the new license will be adopted or VMware will change it.

We shall advise our customers who upscaled their environment (2 CPU/>=256 GB) last year to stay on 4.1 and look next year or the upgrade can be done without major investment. Otherwise still keep it on 4.x and investigate alternatives.

See: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/licensing.html

Converting vSphere 5 Licenses to vSphere 4 – "Downgrades"

If you have purchased VMware vSphere 5 licenses and wish to convert  some or all of them, to increase your available VMware vSphere 4  licenses, you may downgrade the desired number of the licenses on the  vSphere license portal.  If you wish to convert some or all of your vSphere 5 licenses to VMware  Infrastructure 3 (VI3) licenses, you must first downgrade to vSphere 4  and then follow the existing process to downgrade to VI3.

Downgrading from vSphere 5 to vSphere 4 via vSphere License Portal

  1. Log into the    vSphere License portal using your VMware.com account credentials
  2. Locate the VMware vSphere 5 product name for the license key(s) you would like to downgrade
  3. Expand the product name and click the "Downgrade" button
  4. Follow the prompts to downgrade your license key(s) to VMware vSphere 4

That's great customer service?!?! If I ran my business that way, I wouldn't be in business for very long. 

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sliptrap
Contributor
Contributor

DSTAVERT wrote:


This isn't the same thing at all. You are perfectly free to use your current licenses as you currently do. This is a new licensing model and going forward if you want to use the new product it will be under the new model. When Brocade has a new fibre switch and you want to use it you need to purchase the new version and all the HBA's, cables, management software etc. at the prevailing rate.

Except most if not all of us pay an annual subscription fee so that we can take advantage of product upgrades. Now we are going to have to pay even more out of pocket on top of what we have already been paying for the last 2 years to upgrade to 5.

The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.
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cvbarney
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Full_Halsey wrote:

That's great customer service?!?! If I ran my business that way, I wouldn't be in business for very long.

Why? What are you going to advise your customers with a big colsolidation ratio, large servers with a big amount of memory. Upgrade to 5, it will worth it! But ohh yeah, you first have to buy 20 additional licenses. Really good customer service!

Customers don't care about storage-DRS, VMFS5 etc. They care about their business and we are providing their IT.

If 4.1 is good enough for now, keep it. If 5 is affordable after a period of time (when VMware has changed their license) an upgrade may be worth.

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sergeadam
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

That give me 3 years to make the switch. And unless licensing changes, a switch will be made.

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

There isn't much to be gained posting here other than getting on record. If you actually do have an issue rather than just an opinion on the issue then consider spending the time with your VMware rep or VMware reseller. Get some direct help understanding the impact on your organization. Perhaps there are options you don't see or other ways to mitigate the effects of the change.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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