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?

[JohnADCO]

The past week I have been talking to every friend I know that runs vmware....

Standard SMB model of those I talked to is 2 procs, 12 cores, 64gb pRAM,  with heavy over subscription going on.

This pretty much sums up our situation here as well.     I mean we are dolling out around 120gb of ram on our 64GB hosts with no real detectable performance issues.  Think 40 to 50 or so Win7 in the cloud workstations here.   And this on Standard 4.1.....

Did Vmware really think people were tpycially using less RAM than they actually have in their hosts?    I polled 6 people (6 different companies / enviroments) and nobody has more pRAM in their hosts than they are using, quite the opposite.

[rgard]

Part of the problem is that even if VMware came back and said, "we will change the ratios" most of us are going to say "great now I only need to buy 2x what I have today instead of 4x to upgrade" and continue to look at other technologies.  The problem is they ruined their reputation.  No matter how much they apologize the pain was so bad that we will remember this forever and always be scared they might hit us again with something.

If they wanted to change to this model they should have made the ratio so large that it would have taken at least a couple years to begin effecting the customers.  When they did it this way they are saying 'we are greedy, you are hooked, now pay up suckers'.  I think they failed to realize how technically savvy the customers are, and how easy it is to switch to another product.  Sure it might take a year, but it's not much different then when we all started piling our physicals into virtual's.

I welcome the change and can't wait to begin looking at Xen, KVM, and Hyper-V.  However for my company Hyper-V is free as we are entitled (EA) to everything we need to make the change for $0 cost (including VDI, Management software, etc).

Our 2012 project was to begin looking at VDI on VMware.  However it will cost us almost 2.5 million to implement with the new price model, vs Free with Hyper-V.  There product has to be HUGELY superior to get that kind of dollar discrepancy floated past the CIO.

[rjb2]

rgard wrote:

Our 2012 project was to begin looking at VDI on VMware.  However it will cost us almost 2.5 million to implement with the new price model, vs Free with Hyper-V.  There product has to be HUGELY superior to get that kind of dollar discrepancy floated past the CIO.

VMWare is offering a new Desktop SKU that has no throttle on the vRAM.

Here is a post that you might be interested in:

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2011/07/15/confirmed-vmware-will-introduce-a-ne....

[ITDir]

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!

Have already been doing that... Here is a response from our LAR when I informed them that our VMware expansion is on hold;

"Agreed. Its especially poor timing with Microsoft and Citrix stepping up their game. Vmware will be losing many mid market customers. Some one will lose there job when customers start jumping ship."

That "some one" should be a VMware senior manager.

[rgard]

rjb2 wrote:

rgard wrote:

Our 2012 project was to begin looking at VDI on VMware.  However it will cost us almost 2.5 million to implement with the new price model, vs Free with Hyper-V.  There product has to be HUGELY superior to get that kind of dollar discrepancy floated past the CIO.

VMWare is offering a new Desktop SKU that has no throttle on the vRAM.

Here is a post that you might be interested in:

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2011/07/15/confirmed-vmware-will-introduce-a-ne....

Yah I got that too.  I think that is great from a fee stand point, but what it did was counter to the idea behind a fluid and cloud like IT.  They cut it so you can't run servers and desktops on the same hardware.  I am not here to argue either side of "is it good or bad to do it", but the thing is they made the choice for us. 

[tomaddox]

Fernando wrote:

Why are you guys considering Hyper-V if there are better alternatives around ?

For many people, Hyper-V licensing is included with their existing Windows licenses. "Better" is a matter of perspective, and picking the right solution is clearly something each of us needs to consider based on our particular needs.

Please don't muddy the issue by turning this thread into some sort of religious flamewar.

[sliptrap]

vmwareking wrote:

are u saying Windows 2008 R2 is free? u can beg, but u would be still wrong.

No Windows Server 2008 R2 is not free, but Windows Hyper-V 2008 R2 is. Totally separate download and no cost. The only cost associated with running Hyper-V other then the hardware and guest OS Licenses is the management tools which are completely optional. You get clustering (HA) and LiveMigration (vMotion) free.

[sergeadam]

As said, Hyper-V is free with my datacentre licenses. On paper, it’s good enough. However I had to dismiss it because they it is still not handling networking properly. The ESX vSwitch is still the best in the business. MS has to step up their game on that. Requiring NIC-Teaming at the NIC driver level just won’t work.

I’m now looking at XenServer. Not free, not even cheap, but let’s see.

[aroudnev]

You all forget about essential ,which is very attractive TODAY for the small businesses - you pay $500 and have 3 server / 6 cpu license.

And IT CAN'T BE DOWNGRADED. And it will have enfiorced memory limit.

All these customers will go to XEN and will not pay even a single cent to Vmware. They wil be lost forever.

Today-s paths is

Free ESXi -> Upgrade to Essential -> Upgrade to standard/enterprise. And all steps are low cost so IT can profe the concept and get financing.

New path will be

Free XEN -> Commercial XEN. No VMware.

[aroudnev]

+ 1000. Exactly the same.

[aroudnev]

For now free edition has a very reasonable limitation of you can't clone, move, copy and make other management tasks on it. But it is normal, working ESXi.

So the way I passed on a few small projects was:

- install free ESXi

- when I have 2 or 3, encourage management to pay $500 for essential, then maybe upgrade to essential plus

- then when everyone used to work on it, encourage them to pay for VC standard or enterprise.

if they have 8 GB limitation.. it is just a joke. No one will use them at all. We are not in 2001 when they was a kibngs; we are in 2011 and there are many alternatives around.

[aroudnev]

It is ALREADY TOO LATE. They already DID A HUGE HARM, people ALREADY started to test alternatives. They can't fix it.

(Looking into the whole thread - it became obvious. Their CEO can go to XEN and Microsoft and ask for a bonuses).

[sliptrap]

rjb2 wrote:

VMWare is offering a new Desktop SKU that has no throttle on the vRAM.

Here is a post that you might be interested in:

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2011/07/15/confirmed-vmware-will-introduce-a-ne....

That's Awesome! Now instead of running my existing View infrastructure on the licenses I already own I can pay VMWare another $26k to run the same View Infrastructure on the same hardware... hurray for progress. We bought VM View addon licenses becuase we already had enough Enterprise licenses to cover our View deployment (which was one of the key selling points to the business to even purchase view) and now we have to come up with another $26k minimum. We are definitly not going to upgrade to 5.0 and i've begun researching replacment options for our Server infrastructure and possibly VDI.

[yannara]

When ESXi 5 is comming out? Will there even be a totally free version to use on a bare metal?

[wdroush1]

aroudnev wrote:

You all forget about essential ,which is very attractive TODAY for the small businesses - you pay $500 and have 3 server / 6 cpu license.

And IT CAN'T BE DOWNGRADED. And it will have enfiorced memory limit.

All these customers will go to XEN and will not pay even a single cent to Vmware. They wil be lost forever.

Today-s paths is

Free ESXi -> Upgrade to Essential -> Upgrade to standard/enterprise. And all steps are low cost so IT can profe the concept and get financing.

New path will be

Free XEN -> Commercial XEN. No VMware.

$3,500 essentials plus... $500 essentials is worthless to any company that is willing to take out the checkbook for virtualization, I'd never ask for a company to put down $500 so I can basically do nothing more than can be done now.

It's 1000x easier to sell "for $3,500, we get HA, which pays for itself after like one clustered server" then "For $500 you get nothinggggggggggg".

[wdroush1]

aroudnev wrote:

For now free edition has a very reasonable limitation of you can't clone, move, copy and make other management tasks on it. But it is normal, working ESXi.

So the way I passed on a few small projects was:

- install free ESXi

- when I have 2 or 3, encourage management to pay $500 for essential, then maybe upgrade to essential plus

- then when everyone used to work on it, encourage them to pay for VC standard or enterprise.

if they have 8 GB limitation.. it is just a joke. No one will use them at all. We are not in 2001 when they was a kibngs; we are in 2011 and there are many alternatives around.

hmm? I mean we do it on the datastore level (move, copy, etc.), it's a pain... but it works.

[rjb2]

aroudnev wrote:

It is ALREADY TOO LATE. They already DID A HUGE HARM, people ALREADY started to test alternatives. They can't fix it.

(Looking into the whole thread - it became obvious. Their CEO can go to XEN and Microsoft and ask for a bonuses).

Although it is clear that damage has been done, and I suspect that the situation may be unfixable for some customers, it isn't too late for VMWare to make some adjustments for existing customers that have a lot of skin in the game.

I'd like to point you to the excellent survey that woffers put together and to the specific question about which version of the product is being used.

http://wuffers.net/2011/07/18/vsphere-5-migration-survey

VMware Edition?

Essentials	1.44%
Essentials Plus	2.16%
Standard	15.11%
Advanced	4.32%
Enterprise	37.41%
Enterprise Plus	39.57%

I think Essentials needs to be seen for what it is - a point of entry to get your feet wet with virtualization. Woffer's survey shows what versions are important to most of the people on this forum. I have to think that VMWare is going to look at the reaction of these customers because they are the ones who drove VMWare revenues, and they probably didn't anticipate that this would push so many of them out of their camp. Personally, I don't have a problem with a company that misses the mark, but then finds a way to make it right. We should communicate with VMWare reps.

[rickardnobel]

yannara wrote:

When ESXi 5 is comming out? Will there even be a totally free version to use on a bare metal?

Probably in early August. And there will unfortunately not be any (usable) free version in 5.0.

[rjb2]

Shane wrote:

rjb2 wrote:

VMWare is offering a new Desktop SKU that has no throttle on the vRAM.

Here is a post that you might be interested in:

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2011/07/15/confirmed-vmware-will-introduce-a-ne....

That's Awesome! Now instead of running my existing View infrastructure on the licenses I already own I can pay VMWare another $26k to run the same View Infrastructure on the same hardware... hurray for progress. We bought VM View addon licenses becuase we already had enough Enterprise licenses to cover our View deployment (which was one of the key selling points to the business to even purchase view) and now we have to come up with another $26k minimum. We are definitly not going to upgrade to 5.0 and i've begun researching replacment options for our Server infrastructure and possibly VDI.

I completely agree with you that existing customers who using Enterprise licenses have every reason to be VERY unhappy, and here again, I have to suggest that you start a dialog with your reps and have them setup a meeting for you to talk with their managers/executives at VMWare and explain your situation. My only point here was that the new VDI option without the throttled vRAM isn't so bad for new implementations. However, those of us who have paid for Enterprise versions and SnS, and who now find themselves with a 75% reduction in capacity, have every right to be livid about this and to expect some sort of response from VMWare.

[allenb1121]

August. It is my understanding that the memory for the free version with be capped at 8GB. We will be using the free version of Citrix XenServer for our standalone setups where we were using the free version of ESXi before.

Allen Beddingfield

Systems Engineer

The University of Alabama