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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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abbasi
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

People left Novell because they got the same functionality out of the box from MS (it wasn't as good, but it was good enough) and it was cheaper.  History could be repeated. 

Hyper-V, XEN, Red Hat Virtualization, KVM, Oracle Virtualization - None are as good as VMware but they are becoming 'good enough'

http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/231001635/microsoft-new-vmware-pricing-makes-vmware-cloud-costs-4x-mic...

I have to go back and evaluate and possibly resize all 600 vm's because they may be entitled to more vRAM than they need/use.

VMWare does have a tool CapIQ to analyze all my servers to right size them but that is priced on a 25 VM lic so it would cost approx $70,000 just to evaluate my enviroment. (If anyone can recommend any third party tools that accomplish this task let me know)

I had always been a strong advocate of VMware, I have used ESX since ver 1.x

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waynej
Contributor
Contributor

My current utilization is meaningless.  We have already had to shut down dev VMs due to memory constraints on our current cluster as some production services grew (thank you java devs *cough*).  We have also held off on migrating existing physical 2003R2 servers to 2008R2 VMs.  Our new infrastructure just arrived and we planned to rapidly expand this year.  After being a champion of VMware for the last 4 years in my organization, I may be forced to migrate to Hyper-V due to cost.  I won't like it, but a budget is a budget unless you are the federal government.

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bilalhashmi
Expert
Expert

I recommend you look at

  • Hyper9 / Virtualization Manager (Solarwinds)
  • vFoglite
  • vKernel

These are all goo tools for capacity analysis.. based on ur needs, I think one of the tools above will be great help.. I would recommend you evaluate all to find the best tool for your org.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

Blog: www.Cloud-Buddy.com | Follow me @hashmibilal
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derekb13
Contributor
Contributor

abbasi wrote:

VMWare does have a tool CapIQ to analyze all my servers to right size them but that is priced on a 25 VM lic so it would cost approx $70,000 just to evaluate my enviroment. (If anyone can recommend any third party tools that accomplish this task let me know)


Ask your VMware reseller for a 30-day eval license.

Seriously, we talked about purchasing it at one point at a previous employer, and the reseller was like "Would you like me to request a 30-day eval?" and all I could think of was "DUH!!!! Of Course!"  :smileylaugh:

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wdroush1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Anger by the numbers for those non-believers:

http://www.roushtech.net/tech-blog/10-virtualization

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JDooleyCLT
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Just because I participate in the community and was given a "vExpert" designation doesn't make me smarter than anyone else.  It also doesn't mean the new licensing won't affect me and my customers, and it doesn't mean I'm super excited about it.

What is there that can be said at this point?  I think the move to vRAM is good, long term, but I think tying it to pCPUs is a bad move, and I think the numbers that they used to come up with the allocations are way, way low.  My response is the furtherst thing from official, I'm just a VMware user/customer like everyone else.  *shrug*

I've run my numbers.  I know what it will mean for me and my customers.  I've started preparing for the discussions that will happen, internally and externally.  Unlike many of you, I don't have the ability to fall back to another hypervisor, so I'm doing my best to stay out of the fray, focus on the positive (if you hadn't noticed over the licensing melee, there was a very kick-ass product release that happened...) and figure out how make things work.

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brettsx99_xxx
Contributor
Contributor

http://www.roushtech.net/tech-blog/10-virtualization

An excellent summation and totally in line with my thoughts around this also.

Something needs to be done. VMware need to make a statement and an adjustment pronto.

This licensing change is a colossus mistake that has totally overshadowed the release of v5.0

They are running out of time before it's too late.

Edit: I manage a few largish sites here in AU. The numbers so far are mixed, some ok for now, but no room for growth. Others impacted severely.

I can say there is a lot of discontent and the impetus to evaluate other offerings is high.

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Rumple
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Overall I think most of us would be totally fine with one of 2 options:

A - tie the licensing to the amount of Physical RAM in the servers and make it a standard increment across the board (128Gb maybe?) with different price points based on the edition (since if someone wants to run 2 servers with local storage and have no HA and load the servers to the walls with VM's..well..all the power to you...when one host falls over, you will probably reconsider your licensing level.  All Incremental increases cost the same.

B - Make it a base license cost per Host w/ first 256Gb vRAM included and then incremental vRAM costs are an incremental price point (say 30% of the full base (since there is no need to put S&S on additional ram).  Base price is determined upon the edition you want.

Even if the base price is a bit higher then now...at least we have more control of costs...and can budget for it easier since we purchase more vmware licenses when we but the physical RAM or buy a new host...

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LucasAlbers
Expert
Expert

I particularly agree with point about losing the hearts and minds of new adopters on that previous link:

http://www.roushtech.net/tech-blog/10-virtualization

"Home users get shafted too.

This one really hurts me personally too. Another employee at our company and I both run VMWare products at home, with the 8GB limit on RAM we're limited severely on our home boxes. I'm pretty frugal with hardware and mainly virtualize Linux, but my coworker runs a lot of Windows boxes, and I can see how he'll hit the 8GB limit quickly.

At which point, we both might as well just run XenServer, I'll get additional hardware support (and no RAM limit when I need to allocate more than 8GB of RAM), and my coworker can get his additional RAM. When we both get familiar with XenServer, guess what we recommend at work?"

In addition we run a number of machines on the free version and this new license model completely renders the free version unusable, and also means I would never recommend it as the free version is now worthless.  In the past we have added the free machines to the vcenter farm as their vm's become critical.

Getting all the departments that use vcenter to agree to the vsphere 5 upgrade is also an impossiblity, as they suddenly lose the ability to use all their resources.

Our licenses costs will double using our existing hardware within 1 year based on our growth rates.

The conversation goes something like this:

"(Hey guy in that other department that's also in our vcenter cluster)....You know those three (3) 72GB servers?

I'd like to upgrade to vsphere 5 because of all it's great features.  You'll need to cough up 1 standard license per each box just to use your memory.

...hmm...and so with page sharing your effective vram usage will actually be 72 * 1.44 (1.44 is our overcommit based on our current 1 TB of allocated VMs.)

"uh... so you'll need two more licenses per box.)"

"(Long pause.)"

3 servers * 72 GB * 1.44 our actual current memory usage with page sharing. = 103 (round down to 100.) / 24 GB our standard licenses level =

+ 6 more standard licenses.

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Ian97
Contributor
Contributor

One point that may have been touched on is one group of people you're not going to hear much from are potential customers of VMWare.  I'm a small potatoes shop and in the grand scheme, I don't matter much to VMWare.  However, I went from two or three weeks away from deploying a cluster to having three months of planning, memos, and approvals flushed down the toilet with this price hike.  I'm back at square one and have to look at alternatives.  I can't be the only one in this situation now or down the road, most that probably have more to spend than I do.  Moreover, how can I move forward and trust that I won't get burned again?

And for those saying to talk to your rep, I barely got any help from my rep.  She didn't know the product line, didn't know the changes with the new licensing, and hasn't tried to reach out to me to figure out a way to get our business.

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wdroush1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Ian97 wrote:

And for those saying to talk to your rep, I barely got any help from my rep.  She didn't know the product line, didn't know the changes with the new licensing, and hasn't tried to reach out to me to figure out a way to get our business.

Wow, can I become a VMWare partner? I do VMWare practically in my spare time (I am first and foremost a developer at work to be honest) and still am more knowledeable than that. Smiley Wink

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FREDYz
Contributor
Contributor

What is the next move ? Buy vMotion in packs of 100 ?

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pcmanning
Contributor
Contributor

Is this Vmware milking their position before the opposition take over?  Lots of people talk of moving platform, but that'll take time, in the meantime VMware earn a bit more dosh.  Then Xen/KVM/HyperV take over - all way cheaper and 90% as good for most people - and VMware goes down the pan?  Want vCloud level functionality there's OpenStack, Novell Cloud Manager (was Platespin I think), Citrix, MS SCVMM etc etc.  Want vShield security - loads of more traditional and well understood options...

After all, they've had their big idea, and the improvements are getting more and more esoteric.  e.g.

Storage DRS  - breaks most big arrays (thin provisioning, auto-tiering, compression/deduplication).

Storage Appliance - good for small shops, but there's a fair number of options already out there for this - HP P4000/Lefthand, etc

Is there any real innovation left in this area?  Are all the ideas done and we're just waiting for MS and co to copy and catch up?

VMware could try and do a Microsoft and price everyone out of the market, but they have two issues - first is that some of the opposition is already free and second, they have no other products to fall back on.

Really, to stay competitative I'd say they need to another model, more or less give away the hyper-visor with no CPU/RAM restrictions - the basic hypervisor is close to zero value now - it's what you build on top that's key.  So vCloud and vCenter should be the same product, banded by functionality.

This new licencing model is the worst thing they can do!

Paul

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Bernd_Nowak
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Obviously I like the idea about another licensing schema. Why not prefer this:

Hypervisor ESXi free without CPU/RAM limits maybe a host limit

Option one: HA and vMotion

Option two: FT

Option three: vStorage Motion

Option four: vShield

No CPU/RAM limit. Only limit maybe enforced with HA and vMotion to make Essensentials possible.

I'll don't say that I believe VMware is greedy but they might think about the horrors of DL5xx/7xx servers with multiple pCPUs and that's why they don't prefer this schema.

But if we, or better my customers, are charged then the best approach still be pCPUs or pCoreCPUs. Leave the RAM out as the current schema don't seem right for vSphere 5 and the current MS OS.Windows 2008 R2 VMs should have more then 4GB as they are 64bit OS. So around 8GB seems reasonable for a 2008 R2 VM, IMO. So 4 VMs already need 24GB. And this is without free RAM for HA and FT. So I'm not puzzled to see a lot of 2 CPU examples here with 128 GB. We're talking about servers or?

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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi,

I am currently on annual leave until 27th October. For support queries, please refer to our helpdesk, helpdesk@daraco.com.au.

For sales queries, please contact mjarvis@daraco.com.au.

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cvbarney
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Bernd Nowak wrote:

Obviously I like the idea about another licensing schema. Why not prefer this:

Hypervisor ESXi free without CPU/RAM limits maybe a host limit

Option one: HA and vMotion

Option two: FT

Option three: vStorage Motion

Option four: vShield

No CPU/RAM limit. Only limit maybe enforced with HA and vMotion to make Essensentials possible.

Good idea, back to ESX 3.0 🙂

You buy the normal ESX  'starter' license and HA, vMotion, DRS and backup as add-on. Beside starter the 'Enterprice' license was introcuces with all the add-on's inlcuded, but if you only needed vMotion and HA then starter with the add-ons was cheaper.

See here:

http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/doxley/WindowsLiveWriter/VirtualisationWhywouldyounotchooseMicro_...

We had this same discusion 2 years ago with the introduction of vSphere4. VMware had the idea of removing the Enterprice license.

http://gestaltit.com/featured/top/gestalt/vmware-vsphere-licensing-vista/

But 2 year ago the limits where much beter. 256 GB pRAM and 6 core per CPU for essentials, even for the free edition:http://malaysiavm.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/vSphere4.1-License-Comparison-Chart.png

So, 2 years ago 256GB was a reasonable limit for a server with Essentials or Enterprice in VMware's perspective. Now 2 years later we have to deal with 48 GB vRAM in case of essentials, and no 256 GB for Enterprice(+) but 96 GB at most. If they had translated 256GB to vRAM for Enterprice+ everybody was happy, a fair change of licensing. No physical limit anymore, but people who invest in large servers can migrate without any issue.

What's next?

I can remember my first VMworld in 2006. VMware ESX 3.0 (VI3) was introduced, everyone loved it! Diane Greene was coming up for the keynote, a CEO who LOVES VMware and she could convey to the people in the room. Even as her husband Mendel Rosenblum, co-founder and technical brain of VMware. People with VMware in heart!

Diane was unexpectedly fired in 2008 and Mendel (of course) left to support his wife. And now we've Mr M$ Paul Maritz. The rest we know till now.

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itoperationsgrh
Contributor
Contributor

An example using dual processor Xeon boxes and Enterprise Plus licensing, 24 Enterprise Plus licenses cover this

  • 8      hosts with 144 GB and dual sockets
    • 1,152GB of RAM
  • 4      hosts with 256GB and dual sockets
    • 1,024GB of RAM
  • 2,176GB      of RAM total
    • 24 * 48GB = 1,152GB
    • Have to purchase an additional 24 licenses to cover       the available RAM

Double the cost for a support renewal

The expense occurs when you have more than 48GB per socket or 96GB per host on average per vSphere Center for clusters based on dual socket servers.

On new purchases an example is:

  • Dual socket server (R-810) with 256GB of RAM x 3
    • 768GB of RAM total
    • 6 Enterprise Plus licenses covers 288GB of installed RAM
    • 10 more Enterprise Plus licenses required to cover the additional 480GB of RAM
    • Additional cost of new licensing at the sweet price point
      • Cost of 6 Enterprise Plus licenses with vSphere(Acceleration Kit) for 3 years
        • $43,222.45
  • Plus 10 more Enterprise Plus licenses
    • @ $5,730 per license for 3 years is $57,300

Have I misunderstood this?

This would be a modest price increase @ 96GB per socket;

@ 48GB per socket it’s a very large increase in cost.

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itoperationsgrh
Contributor
Contributor

This would be a modest price increase @ 96GB per socket;@ 48GB per socket it’s more than double

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rjb2
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Bilal wrote:

I can understand your frustration and please understand that I am not defending or attacking anyone. Just like everyone else, I am also trying ot hunt down how this will impact everyone. With that being said, I have posted 3 polls on my blog to get some kind of a data. I plan to blog based on the feedback I will recieve. So I will appreciate if you can respond to that as well. It will take less than 30 sec.

http://www.cloud-buddy.com/?p=475

Lastly, I will still urge you to run your numbers. Lets still follow the process.. run the script, post the numbers and point out how this impacts your future plans.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

Hey Cloud Buddy, I agree that we should be careful not to generalize, and you shouldn't take it personally; we know that you've been trying to come up with workable suggestions for solving this frustrating situation, and that is commendable.

I do however think you are placing too much emphasis on the "process", if there even is such a thing. If you are referring to posting snapshot numbers from one of the tools that are out there, then you are missing what people have been saying here. Many of us have plans to use the capacity we own right now that isn't reflected by the scripts, and have also paid SnS year after year to be able to move from version to version, not to make the occassional call to technical support to help fix a problem. In my opinion, and for many others, the snapshot of allocated vRAM simply doesn't address the fundamental problem, that these new entitlements have scuttled our plans.The script only serves VMWare, not us, because it shifts our attention to a relatively meaningless result set.

You have already stated that the entitlements are too low and have offered a suggestion for larger amounts. Everyone on this community would agree that the entitlements are too low; that much seems pretty clear, although they may not agree on the numbers. The big question is whether VMWare is going to respond to this in a way that will turn things around for a large number of their unhappy customers, or if they will stick with their plan and let the chips fall where they will. No matter what they do, there are going to be some customers that are going to be unhappy -- most likely the ones who are in the process of purchasing mega hosts with a 2-4 sockets and huge quantities of RAM, or who want to be able to purchase these types of hosts in the future, . But, right now there are too many customers without mega hosts that are being negatively impacted by this change and this is the problem that VMWare needs to address.

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bilalhashmi
Expert
Expert

Bilal wrote:

I can understand your frustration and please understand that I am not defending or attacking anyone. Just like everyone else, I am also trying ot hunt down how this will impact everyone. With that being said, I have posted 3 polls on my blog to get some kind of a data. I plan to blog based on the feedback I will recieve. So I will appreciate if you can respond to that as well. It will take less than 30 sec.

http://www.cloud-buddy.com/?p=475

Lastly, I will still urge you to run your numbers. Lets still follow the process.. run the script, post the numbers and point out how this impacts your future plans.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

Hey Cloud Buddy, I agree that we should be careful not to generalize, and you shouldn't take it personally; we know that you've been trying to come up with workable suggestions for solving this frustrating situation, and that is commendable.

Thank you! And thank you everyone who has voted on my blog. I am waiting till I get a decent sample size. So far I have recieved 60 votes. The feedback has been interesting and I am glad I did this. If you haven't voted please do so. I can't gaurantee anything will come out of this, but I will be sure to forward these numbers to a proper channel and also blog based on the feedback I recieve. Let's continue to be be honest and realtic in out feedback though.  You can hit the view result button on the poll to see the results we have so far if you are interested to see that.  Thanks again.

I do however think you are placing too much emphasis on the "process", if there even is such a thing. If you are referring to posting snapshot numbers from one of the tools that are out there, then you are missing what people have been saying here. Many of us have plans to use the capacity we own right now that isn't reflected by the scripts, and have also paid SnS year after year to be able to move from version to version, not to make the occassional call to technical support to help fix a problem. In my opinion, and for many others, the snapshot of allocated vRAM simply doesn't address the fundamental problem, that these new entitlements have scuttled our plans.The script only serves VMWare, not us, because it shifts our attention to a relatively meaningless result set.

I understand your conern which is why I mentioned that you also rais that concern along with the numbers that you submit. I am sure VMware will see that even though your used vRAM is way less tham your pRAM, they know that you bought the pRAM for a reason and would like to use it at some point. I agree which is why I say post those conerns along with those numbers.

You have already stated that the entitlements are too low and have offered a suggestion for larger amounts. Everyone on this community would agree that the entitlements are too low; that much seems pretty clear, although they may not agree on the numbers. The big question is whether VMWare is going to respond to this in a way that will turn things around for a large number of their unhappy customers, or if they will stick with their plan and let the chips fall where they will. No matter what they do, there are going to be some customers that are going to be unhappy -- most likely the ones who are in the process of purchasing mega hosts with a 2-4 sockets and huge quantities of RAM, or who want to be able to purchase these types of hosts in the future, . But, right now there are too many customers without mega hosts that are being negatively impacted by this change and this is the problem that VMWare needs to address.

VMware is a public company and they know what happened to Novell. They will not purposly try to make a mistake that will put them in a difficult situation. If the licesning model needs revision, VMware is a smart company and they will realzie that..

Disclamer: I am not a VMware employee and my comments are based completely on my own opinion. So please dont use anything I said as the official word.

Follow me @ Cloud-Buddy.com

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