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?

[JEDWARDS777FL]

If this were medieval times, there would be large mobs of people with pitch forks and torches at VMWare's door!

[scowse]

well that is as lame as everything else i have seen from vmware.

A monumental decision like this based on one days data - and did not check it?

Sounds like crap to me.Are you sure he is not the vmware cleaner?

[rjb2]

scowse wrote:

well that is as lame as everything else i have seen from vmware.

A monumental decision like this based on one days data - and did not check it?

Sounds like crap to me.Are you sure he is not the vmware cleaner?

That is why it has been requested here more than once that VMWare discloses the underlying data that they are using to support their advertising claims.

[wdroush1]

rjb2 wrote:

scowse wrote:

well that is as lame as everything else i have seen from vmware.

A monumental decision like this based on one days data - and did not check it?

Sounds like crap to me.Are you sure he is not the vmware cleaner?

That is why it has been requested here more than once that VMWare discloses the underlying data that they are using to support their advertising claims.

So we can do the system analysts job for them.

[Garvin]

Will VMware reconsider this licensing model and where did this idea come from?  This will make my company consider other vendor products.

G

[VidarK]

Here's an interesting TCO example of how bad this thing turns out for anyone that plan to utilize the hardware for what it is worth:

12 servers each being equipped with 2x10core cpus and 256GB RAM. Save 1 for HA and you end up with 11x256GB RAM=2816GB RAM for a 1:1 ratio usage.

vSphere 4.1 Advanced licensing: 12servers x 2cpus x $2245 = $53880 (+ $13464/year SnS). 3 year cost: $94272

vSphere 5 Enterprise licensing: 2816GB RAM / 32GB-per-entitlement x $2875 = $253000 (+ $63272/year SnS). 3 year cost: $442816

Citrix XenServer: Essentials for Xenserver Enterprise: 12 servers x $2500 = $30000
                                   Technical support: $1500x3 = $4500

                                  SA renewal: $325/host x 2 years x 12 hosts =  7800

                                  Total for 3 years: $42300

[bobbach]

It may appear that offering RAM packs would buy back goodwill, but accept them with caution if they are offered.

You will be on the hook for the maintenance on all of the RAM packs whether you paid for them or not.

TANSTAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

[scottyyyc]

Remember that "Hyper-V Server" (the core version) is not the same as "Windows Server 2008r2 w/ Hyper-V". Hyper-V Server is like server core (no traditional GUI), which I'm pretty sure is free. Full 'Windows Server plus Hyper-V' is not free, but as many mention, Datacenter licenses basically make it free for anyone who has DC licensing.

Personally, I tried XenServer about 2 years ago, and was put off a little by it. They had some kinda silly limitations, like with snapshotting (to revert to a previous snapshot, you had to create a whole new VM based on that snapshot... not practical)... But I still found it impressive, given that it was free. But on the same page, I like ESXi for that very reason, particular since I'm in the SMB space.

BUT, now VMware is even limiting the free version to 8GB RAM, so particularly in the SMB space, a lot of people will be turning to Xen and Hyper-V. It's simply a matter of fact that smaller customers will never be able to demo/trial ESXi if there's an extremely ludicris 8GB vRAM limitation. That's like demoing Windows 7, but only allowing 640x480 and 16bit color - people will not even bother. They're basically strong-arming the free installs into paying $500 for essentials (which even then is still limited...)

I get a sense that vSphere 5 will be VMware's Vista. Lots of technical improvements and a reasonably good product, but overshadowed by other factors.

[bobbach]

After some thought, I can see that buying more vSphere will be problematic, but we could all still leverage our investment in VMware by upgrading what licensing we own to vSphere 5 and then using another flavor of hypervisor for tier two aplications and test/dev.

This way we could use our existing VMware and then as other products, be they from open source, Microsoft, Red Hat whatever, gain the features we need we can scale back and eventually eliminate our VMware licensing.

Just from a practical standpoint the license model is a problem. Any SAN admin will tell you what a pain it is to activate ports on SAN switches as you go. Now we will be asking to buy memory for an existing server, because thanks to VMware we won't be able to max RAM out right away, and also need to order licensing. Now cheap RAM needs expensive licenses.

This model is what caused us to eliminate IBM's SVC from our plans for storage. It's a great product, but it doubles the price of disk expansion, in the end the SVC storage virtualization engine was to expensive to continue investing in for our environment.

I hope that VMware can still change direction before we remember them the way we do Banyan VINES and Novell.

I drank the Kool-Aid and still love VMware's products. I'm just not sure how much longer we'll be able to afford them since we understand the same trends that led them to make this change.

[Rumple]

I totally don’t understand the limits on free edition.

Sure, the business argument can be that customers will just use the free edition vs buying a license if they had high memory allowances…

In reality, the answer is…those that use esxi free in production are NOT going to buy a damn license anyhow and if they can’t use vmware…they will just use hyper-v…

Let the fools use esxi free in an unsupported configuration with only basic features if they choose…better they use your product then the competition…at least they gain experience and can advocate for vmware when they get into bigger organizations (or grow themselves).

[bobbach]

8GB for ESXi Free Edition?

Funny how they hurt people they likely don't mean to or maybe this is what they were guarding against.

I was just quoting servers to run ESXi Free Edition to consolidate the servers that I wanted to exist outside the full blown vSphere environment. Servers that mange the SAN and BladeCenter, one of the vCenter linked servers and a workstation with all of the links and tools to manage the environment to guard against that day when something goes catastrophically wrong. In the past I ran all of those things on seperate servers and it is time to replace them

I was looking at two servers each with a modest 16GB of RAM each, one at each datacenter. Total cost under $10k. Now I'll need to add vSphere licensing or more likely, run the servers within 8GB or and deal with the performance hit or test Hyper-V on one and KVM on the other since I didn't budget for any new licensing for these. I suppose it's always good to see what the competition is doing anyway.

[Marcel1967]

Mind vSphere Hypervisor (free) has an entitlement of 8 GB vRAM per socket/CPU. So 2 CPU's will give 16 GB of internal memory to be configured for VM's. This was said by two VMware employees in two sessions. It could be explained a bit better on VMware.com. See also here http://up2v.nl/2011/07/14/vmware-vsphere-hypervizor-will-have-a-memory-limit-of-8-gb/

[bobbach]

I suppose I could by another CPU for each, but considering what they are for it seems like such a waste.

I'll check though, it may be cheaper than buying licensing.

[johndennis]

I opened a ticket with vmware support to complain about licensing and here is the response that I received:

Thanks very much for getting back,

What we will do here is feed all general feedback on to senior management so I will pass your comments on to them. The more feedback from customers who are affected a lot by this change the more likely vRam is to change.

Just get back with the information about your system when you can and we will begin the process here to look  at how we could help with your particular environment.

As I said the more feedback the better, so if you have any other comments/questions just get back to me. Once you have the information on your environment just get back to me.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

I would strongly encourage all of you to open tickets with vmware and contact your resellers to complain.  If they don't hear from all of us nothing will change!

[JEDWARDS777FL]

I don't think it is a question of whether VMWare will modify the new licensing model, THEY WILL HAVE TO.  It's more of a questions of, when, by how much, and will it be too late.

My talks with VMWare indicate that not only are VMWare's customers upset about the change, but it appears as thought at least some VMWare employees are also very aware of how flawed this new structure is and are trying to give upper management customer feedback in order to get this fixed.

Posting on this discussion and letting VMWare hear our complaints can only help.  Hopefully with enough incentive from their customers, VMWare will wisen up before there are no customers left.  Help out by going to https://www.vmware.com/contact/contactus.html?department=prod_request and complaining about the new licensing model.

[Rumple]

Unfortunately for home use, most of us pick up a single Quad core with hyperthreading and its more then enough cpu horsepower…it’s the damn ram that kills you…

[JEDWARDS777FL]

  At least until the introduction of vRAM licensing, VMWare was like crack.  Once you get a little, you need more!  I liked this approach and know of quite a few SMB that eventually shelled out the cash, but you are right, if they are going to be cheap they are going to be cheap.  Maybe it was those folks that threw off the numbers from VMWare's "study".

[rjb2]

Jeremy Edwards wrote:

I don't think it is a question of whether VMWare will modify the new licensing model, THEY WILL HAVE TO.  It's more of a questions of, when, by how much, and will it be too late.

My talks with VMWare indicate that not only are VMWare's customers upset about the change, but it appears as thought at least some VMWare employees are also very aware of how flawed this new structure is and are trying to give upper management customer feedback in order to get this fixed.

Posting on this discussion and letting VMWare hear our complaints can only help.  Hopefully with enough incentive from their customers, VMWare will wisen up before there are no customers left.  Help out by going to https://www.vmware.com/contact/contactus.html?department=prod_request and complaining about the new licensing model.

I would also suggest that anyone who is interested in this topic contact the VMWare rep responsible for your area directly (our reseller was happy to provide us with that information). My experience has been that these folks do want to listen to you and are conveying these concerns to upper management, which is where the decisions of this magnitude are made.

[eriklange]

As one of the admins for two datacenters and 60 Enterprise Licenses mark me down for the disappointed category.  While currently not needing to fork over any cash for the upgrade, they've now limited our room for growth.  Discussions for virtualizing our Oracle and production Websphere environment are going to have to include these costs if memory goes beyond what we are currently "entitled" to.  I don't see us winning any debates about reducing the amount of memory they think they will need. 

When our growth gets beyond what we are currently licensed for, I expect the other virtualization platforms will look even more enticing, and it will be time to evaluate alternatives.  I think we're going to see a very slow rate of upgrades to v5, and if this licensing stands they stand to quickly lose market share.

[vintera]

Besten Dank für Ihre Nachricht.

Ich bin bis am Mo 25.07.2011 abwesend. Emails werden aus diesem Grund erst verzögert beantwortet. Bei dringlichen Anliegen bitte ich Sie meinen Stellvertreter (Fabian Dobler, fabian DOT dobler AT travel DOT ch) oder meinen Vorgesetzten (Pascal Scandola, pascal DOT scandola AT travel DOT ch) zu kontaktieren.

Herzlichen Dank für Ihr Verständnis

Freundliche Grüsse / with best regards / cordialement

Benjamin Schaja

System Engineer

travelwindow AG

Steinentischstr. 5

8027 Zürich

Switzerland