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?

[vmwareking]

Interseing you didnt look at XenServer,its prriced per host.. The platnium edition is $5000 USD RRP for a single server.. http://virtualizationandstorage.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/vmware-vsphere-vs-citrix-xenserver-cost-cal...

[vmwareking]

You should transfer to XenServer its priced per host..Here is a cost comparison http://virtualizationandstorage.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/vmware-vsphere-vs-citrix-xenserver-cost-cal...

[hellraiser]

That would work out to approx £15.5k for the same server using Xenserver.

JD

[johndennis]

One more thing to consider in this equation is how your processors handle memory.

In January of this year we upgraded from:

Xeon 5410's with 32GB of RAM-Ram was oversubsribed by guests by vmware handled it well...

to

Xeon X5650's with 48GB of RAM

50% more RAM, sounds good right?  WRONG!  The new Nehalem Processors use larger memory page sizes (1MB I believe), and VMWare optimizes memory by the page so the memory my new servers were MAXED OUT the day I purchased them even though they have 50% more RAM than their predecessors.  I ended up having to upgrade to 96GB.

If you haven't moved to the new Nehalem processors this will be something to consider! 

Again, let VMWare know how you feel:

1. Open a ticket with VMWare support to complain about licensing-There is a special team assigned to handle this.

2. Complain to your VAR

3. Fill out the online feedback form on the vmware website.  https://www.vmware.com/contact/contactus.html?department=prod_request

4. If you own VMWare stock-share your concerns with investor relations IR@vmware.com 

5. Contact your regional vmware salesperson and complain to them too.

48GB per proc for Enterprise Plus is WAY too low.  Their Cadillac of licensing should allow for at least 96GB!

[scottyyyc]

Why is there negativity towards using free ESXi in production? On these discussion threads and elsewhere, there seems to be a few too many people who stand in amazement and shock that individual ESXi boxes are used in anything but strict test environments... Let's not forget that the only difference between a free and licensed vSphere ESXi box is a license key. Minus some of the fancy features, the core hypervisor is the same. VMware says it's 'The best Way to Get Started', but for many companies that means getting started virtualizing production environment, not test environments. Many SMBs don't even have much in the way of test environments.

ESXi is pretty huge for SMBs and smaller companies getting started. Many companies will use ESXi (or, believe it or not, VMware Server) for a number of years before they're ready, financially or technologically, to move to vSphere. I come from the SMB world, and believe you me, it's sometmes a tough expense to get passed through. Often times, the cost of virtualization (and IT in general) is proportionally higher for SMBs than it is bigger companies. And many SMBs don't have expansive racks full of shared storage, so that's often another piece of the pie that adds expense.

Don't be hatin ESXi as a free product. You'd probably be amazed how much it's used in production. Until only recent vSphere and storage approval, 75% of my company's infratructure was on free-as-in-beer ESXi. The global recession was a b*tch.

[SWilliams1968]

Reply to scottyyyc

I agree with you except for the new changes in ESXi 5 where there is a limit of 8GM vRAM which makes 98% of the SMB servers I manage now require a purchased license.  Short and sweet 2 cents worth...

Sean

[sergeadam]

scottyyyc wrote:

ESXi is pretty huge for SMBs and smaller companies getting started. Many companies will use ESXi (or, believe it or not, VMware Server) for a number of years before they're ready, financially or technologically, to move to vSphere. I come from the SMB world, and believe you me, it's sometmes a tough expense to get passed through. Often times, the cost of virtualization (and IT in general) is proportionally higher for SMBs than it is bigger companies. And many SMBs don't have expansive racks full of shared storage, so that's often another piece of the pie that adds expense.

Don't be hatin ESXi as a free product. You'd probably be amazed how much it's used in production. Until only recent vSphere and storage approval, 75% of my company's infratructure was on free-as-in-beer ESXi. The global recession was a b*tch.

Agreed. I came to VMWare through the free product. I had 4 aging servers, dependent on each other. So there was no difference if an individual server went down, or all 4 went down. I made a case for a single larger server running ESX 3.5 at the time. eventually got a second one, then a SAN and paid licenses.

I also still use the free version in offices with a single host. But I can't really do that anymore.

Xen Server looks pretty good in my trials.

[wuffers]

Are people finding the survey results helpful? Looking at the second round of results, and removing the somewhat dubious amount of 40000 Enterprise Plus licenses, we are still talking about ~15k licenses, not exactly chump change.

If you haven't taken the survey, go here and share this link:

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

I also put it on Digg, so hopefully more people have exposure to it (more data = better results). Digg the survey here:

http://digg.com/news/technology/vmware_vsphere_5_migration_survey

[rjb2]

scottyyyc wrote:

Why is there negativity towards using free ESXi in production? On these discussion threads and elsewhere, there seems to be a few too many people who stand in amazement and shock that individual ESXi boxes are used in anything but strict test environments... Let's not forget that the only difference between a free and licensed vSphere ESXi box is a license key. Minus some of the fancy features, the core hypervisor is the same. VMware says it's 'The best Way to Get Started', but for many companies that means getting started virtualizing production environment, not test environments. Many SMBs don't even have much in the way of test environments.

ESXi is pretty huge for SMBs and smaller companies getting started. Many companies will use ESXi (or, believe it or not, VMware Server) for a number of years before they're ready, financially or technologically, to move to vSphere. I come from the SMB world, and believe you me, it's sometmes a tough expense to get passed through. Often times, the cost of virtualization (and IT in general) is proportionally higher for SMBs than it is bigger companies. And many SMBs don't have expansive racks full of shared storage, so that's often another piece of the pie that adds expense.

Don't be hatin ESXi as a free product. You'd probably be amazed how much it's used in production. Until only recent vSphere and storage approval, 75% of my company's infratructure was on free-as-in-beer ESXi. The global recession was a b*tch.

I wouldn't say that I am amazed or shocked that the free version is used in some production environments, but VMWare is not in business to give away software, and there has to be a mutual understanding of this fact. We get value out of the products that they develop using a small army of paid developers. The question all of us need to ask is how much value do we place on what they are producing and compare it to the prices they are charging. VMWare has the challenge that every business faces of trying to maximize their profit, and figuring out the impact of the price on this equation depends a lot on how many customers answer - "yes, I am getting enough value to pay X amount". They have to be thinking hard about this and wonder if the new entitlements need adjustment because if they get the balance wrong it will have a serious financial ramifications.

Some of us may indeed switch to another product and doing this is even harder to swallow when you have justified spending a lot of money on VMWare already. Imagine if you had spent $3K per socket plus SnS for years on top of that and you suddenly found out that your capacity has been reduced by 60-75%. Yes, staying behind on 4.5 is one option, but that only takes you so far.

So, we don't hate free ESXi, and I'm happy that you've been able to leverage it. I'm also not saying that the entitlement is exactly right on it, but I do think there is a limit to what should be expected in a free version of software developed by a commercial company.

[tomaddox]

vmwareking wrote:

Interseing you didnt look at XenServer,its prriced per host.. The platnium edition is $5000 USD RRP for a single server.. http://virtualizationandstorage.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/vmware-vsphere-vs-citrix-xenserver-cost-cal...

Okay, we get it, you're a paid shill for Citrix. Please stop spamming this thread. Adults are talking about serious issues.

[Bernd_Nowak]

I fail to see the logic why the ex free version should not be like it has before. Contrary, MS Hyper-V 2008 R2 is free as well as XENServer. Citrix and Microsoft both are companies like VMware.

To be honest I have one customer who asked me about the Essentials 4.x version. My answer, and my feelings about the Essentials (not the plus version) is that it really lacks some interesting features in ESX 4 and also it seems in 5:

This quote shows the main important feature which only Essentials Plus still has to offer:

Improve application availability with VMware High Availability and vMotion

I asked the customer if the centralized vSphere console would help him that much and he refused to buy the essentials. Now, today he is forced to buy the essentials, just to use more then 8GB (or 16GB) .

With the minimum of the 2 companies I named, I would call it a bad decision from VMWare. I use Ubuntu LTS version at customers. Same would be with Debian. So is it bad to use stuff @ customers where there's no phone to call. I do Novell and Microsoft and most of the time I had a problem the Internet was a much better solution place then the companies itself.

But, I will not say that the VMware support itself is bad. No, in a SAN environment with FC and vSphere as well as View both running the VMware support was great. But most of the time I had problems with VMware ESX/vSphere/View the problems had been solved by an update or sometimes they had been produced by an update But this has nothing to do with VMware. Same happenend to Exchange RU3 and RU4 for Exchange 2010

So no bad feelings against the VMware support but a strange feeling about the recent changed prices and strategy affecting not only the bigger installations but also the smaller ones. We will see. Like others I'm following MS, Citrix and RHEL products more closely. Especially MS because with Enterprise Edition for small companies I have covered the Microsoft license stuff. And with Hyper-V included why should I try to sell more? It's hard enough to sell needed newer servers anyway and if asked what are the advantages of the Essentials version for a customer with 2 or 3 servers without HA/vMotion should I tell the SMB customer that he can use one central vSphere console, which he never will use anyway?

[none95]

Before this licensing change, I was already eyeing XenServer for it's lowest price and per-host licensing. Now, I will commit to it fully.

After the annoucement I allocated two of our AMD servers to create a small cluster on XenServer Free. Under one hour I had it running. And after that I migrated flawlessly one of our TS servers to it, by exporting to OVF, and then from OVF to XenServer by using their free XenConvert app. It is even running faster than it was on ESXi.

Another nice alternative is to use their Xen Cloud Platform, that is also free and has some features of the paid versions namelly Memory optimization,  Automated VM protection and recovery, Live memory snapshot and revert, Performance Graphs, Distributed virtual switching, Heterogeneous pools, 8 vCPU per VM (can be extended to 32vCPU by using the CLI), Intelligent Placement. And you can use XenCenter with it.

Add in some Cloud.com/Cloudstack or OpenStack and you will get a very nice Cloud environment also for free.

To take this under perspective, this is the same as getting vCenter Standard, vCenter Heartbeat, vCloud, vMotion, Data Recovery, Update Manager, Distributed Switch, Enterprise Plus vCPU Entitlements with only technical limits for money or hosts, for zero money.

So to me it's bye bye VMware. I will now gradually migrate my VMs to XenServer and my next Windows Server 8 based VMs will be totally deployed from scratch with it.

[wdroush1]

scottyyyc wrote:

Why is there negativity towards using free ESXi in production? On these discussion threads and elsewhere, there seems to be a few too many people who stand in amazement and shock that individual ESXi boxes are used in anything but strict test environments... Let's not forget that the only difference between a free and licensed vSphere ESXi box is a license key. Minus some of the fancy features, the core hypervisor is the same. VMware says it's 'The best Way to Get Started', but for many companies that means getting started virtualizing production environment, not test environments. Many SMBs don't even have much in the way of test environments.

ESXi is pretty huge for SMBs and smaller companies getting started. Many companies will use ESXi (or, believe it or not, VMware Server) for a number of years before they're ready, financially or technologically, to move to vSphere. I come from the SMB world, and believe you me, it's sometmes a tough expense to get passed through. Often times, the cost of virtualization (and IT in general) is proportionally higher for SMBs than it is bigger companies. And many SMBs don't have expansive racks full of shared storage, so that's often another piece of the pie that adds expense.

Don't be hatin ESXi as a free product. You'd probably be amazed how much it's used in production. Until only recent vSphere and storage approval, 75% of my company's infratructure was on free-as-in-beer ESXi. The global recession was a b*tch.

I don't think there is much hate, I mean for small companies, go for it! Get your feet wet, feel the benefits of virtualization. You guys typically don't have redundancy anyway, and small companies rarely grind to a screetching hault if some servers go down.

However, once you start getting beyond small time IT and get any kind of redundancy, HA licenses (no matter your hypervisor) is worth the cost easily. Plus even for a small business, one day of ESXi exploding easily costs the company way more than the license for essentials would.

[derekb13]

wdroush1 wrote:

I don't think there is much hate, I mean for small companies, go for it! Get your feet wet, feel the benefits of virtualization. You guys typically don't have redundancy anyway, and small companies rarely grind to a screetching hault if some servers go down.

However, once you start getting beyond small time IT and get any kind of redundancy, HA licenses (no matter your hypervisor) is worth the cost easily. Plus even for a small business, one day of ESXi exploding easily costs the company way more than the license for essentials would.

I'm sorry but as someone who was running a Top 20 web site on ESXi (using a combination of free and licensed) I'm going to call shenanigans on that.

For good chunks of our infrastructure, where we'd horizontally scaled it out (web-server VM farm), we'd run free-ESXi on the hardware hosting those VM, and if we had to do maintenance on the underlying hardware, or there was a failure, or whatever, the attitude was ... who cares? there's already plenty of redundancy in the environment, so there's no need to vMotion VMs away ahead of time, or HA them up on other hardware... let them go down and we'll fire them back up when they're done. And by doing so, we saved ourselves tens of thousands of dollars in licensing and SnS costs.

So let's not pretend that any one use-case is more or less valid, or more or less cost-effective than another. Everyone's situation is different.

[wdroush1]

tomaddox wrote:

vmwareking wrote:

Interseing you didnt look at XenServer,its prriced per host.. The platnium edition is $5000 USD RRP for a single server.. http://virtualizationandstorage.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/vmware-vsphere-vs-citrix-xenserver-cost-cal...

Okay, we get it, you're a paid shill for Citrix. Please stop spamming this thread. Adults are talking about serious issues.

No need to be mad at the low costs. With hypervisors that cheap I doubt they can afford the amount of paid shills that VMWare has on their various social networks every day (yeah marketing guys, it's obvious).

I had a friend whose company recently went XenServer, I'll have to see his opinion on it in production, I've been extremely tempted because yeah: It's a metric ton cheaper than vSphere 4.x, and ludicrously cheaper than vSphere 5. Got another friend who is migrating his ESXi box now because of vSphere 5 free totally destorys their 3VM server setup... which on that subject:

They have an open driver development kit! This is a huge plus for me, we've discussed various hardware that ESXi straight up barfs on due to poor driver support, we just compile our own drivers for XenServer... I'd totally recommend that VMWare get on board with that in vSphere 6 (if they're still a big enough name by that time...).

Also, RedHat also does a host/socket combination that is about the same price per host as XenServer.

[wdroush1]

Derek Balling wrote:

wdroush1 wrote:

I don't think there is much hate, I mean for small companies, go for it! Get your feet wet, feel the benefits of virtualization. You guys typically don't have redundancy anyway, and small companies rarely grind to a screetching hault if some servers go down.

However, once you start getting beyond small time IT and get any kind of redundancy, HA licenses (no matter your hypervisor) is worth the cost easily. Plus even for a small business, one day of ESXi exploding easily costs the company way more than the license for essentials would.

I'm sorry but as someone who was running a Top 20 web site on ESXi (using a combination of free and licensed) I'm going to call shenanigans on that.

For good chunks of our infrastructure, where we'd horizontally scaled it out (web-server VM farm), we'd run free-ESXi on the hardware hosting those VM, and if we had to do maintenance on the underlying hardware, or there was a failure, or whatever, the attitude was ... who cares? there's already plenty of redundancy in the environment, so there's no need to vMotion VMs away ahead of time, or HA them up on other hardware... let them go down and we'll fire them back up when they're done. And by doing so, we saved ourselves tens of thousands of dollars in licensing and SnS costs.

So let's not pretend that any one use-case is more or less valid, or more or less cost-effective than another. Everyone's situation is different.

Hmm that's a pretty good point, once you start forking out for datacenter licenses and can spin up VMs for essentially free (or running a full and free *nix environment, which I notice is your situation) I guess you do offset it in the other direction with RAM and CPU being so bloody cheap. However I also doubt that many SMBs have *nix admins working for them too. Those are expensive. However at that point why even virtualize, especially in a web farm of *nix boxes? And even then you could still virtalize on *nix technologies and go with something familiar and not propritary at every corner.

If licensing was a lot more reasonable though I'd think it could be more reasonable for us on Windows environments that have to look at nightmareish shit like MSSQL clustering and IIS clustering which involves basically forking out buckets of cash.

Edit:

You mean top 222 , but point still stands (can you guys stop having useless answers to my questions too! :smileysilly:).

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/global;8

So I'm curious, what do you guys plan to do? Run 4.1 till it's support runs out?

[jmounts]

The point here is, Vmware's Hypervisor is just software, Software that is easily replacable. So moving from ESXi to Hyper-V or Xen is simple, just a bit time consuming.

This current License model is going to ruin Vmware, period.

And here's why.

You are paying for a license that does 2 things.

1. Applied key to your host to enable vMotion+8waySMP+other Features (gets managed by vCenter)

2. applies the Memory of the Key to your vRAM pool in vCenter

From what I can tell, they are not offering 'vRAM packs', If you need more memory you need to buy an upgraded Host License (just like you do now for Vmware Features) in the right vRAM amount. Though, from the current information it looks like you are limited to 48gigs per host to be added to your vRAM pool. So not only are you not going to be able to use the entire amount of ram available on any single host, you are going to NEED to stack hosts to get more vRAM in your pool.

Let's say the average deployed Host has 192gigs of ram. They are limiting each host to present 48gigs of ram to the vRAM pool via the Enterprise key. I think this is where they got their 5:1 number from the quote below...

From Vmware's vSphere_pricing.pdf Q/A Section:

Although it is impossible to predict the effects of the new
model in every type of environment, the licensing model has
been designed to minimize the risk of potential impacts in
existing environments while also providing room for growth.
vRAM entitlements have been set to provide enough capacity
to scale well beyond today’s average consolidation ratios of
5:1. In addition, thanks to pooling, customers will be able to
share entitlements among multiple hosts, thereby making
more efficient use of available capacity.

BTW, the above quote is complete Crap. Anyone with 2 braincells can rub them together, make a little smoke and predict EXACTLY what this licening model is going to do with currently deployed vSphere4 environments if/when they upgrade to the new license model.

1. More Hardware is going to be required (Hosts, to get more vRAM)

2. It's going to cost ALOT more in the long run.

3. VMware can no longer use the 'going green' statements in their products page once this license model goes live. More servers = more power requirements.

4. Vars, resellers, and partners are going to get hit the hardest with this.

Oh and lets not forget #6

6. Thanks to Vmware, other competitors now have a full fledged chance to get their foot in the door and take over. Xen comes to mind, THEN (Maybe) Hyper-V.

Basically, Vmware, your new license model SUCKS, and is serious limiting and needs to be changed before it goes live.

[Baddos]

jmounts wrote:

BTW, the above quote is complete Crap. Anyone with 2 braincells can rub them together, make a little smoke and predict EXACTLY what this licening model is going to do with currently deployed vSphere4 environments if/when they upgrade to the new license model.

1. More Hardware is going to be required (Hosts, to get more vRAM)

2. It's going to cost ALOT more in the long run.

3. VMware can no longer use the 'going green' statements in their products page once this license model goes live. More servers = more power requirements.

4. Vars, resellers, and partners are going to get hit the hardest with this.

Oh and lets not forget #6

6. Thanks to Vmware, other competitors now have a full fledged chance to get their foot in the door and take over. Xen comes to mind, THEN (Maybe) Hyper-V.

Basically, Vmware, your new license model SUCKS, and is serious limiting and needs to be changed before it goes live.

You don't need more hardware, you just need the extra licenses. Unassigned licenses in vCenter will add to the vRAM pool.

[jmounts]

Baddos wrote:

You don't need more hardware, you just need the extra licenses. Unassigned licenses in vCenter will add to the vRAM pool.

Ok, thats what I thought, But I wasnt 100% sure.

So basically, if you need a 'vRAM' pack to increase your Pool its the price of your licensing Model. Even if you are not planning on adding the Host. So your paying for something your not going to completely use (IE. The Features)

vSphere5 - doesnt look like we'll be meeting then 😉

[jmounts]

Here's a little math

If you have a host that has 192gigs, and you are planning on using the entire amount of ram, heres the price per host you can expect to pay

192gigs @995 per 24gigs = 7960 Per Host
192gig @2875 per 32gigs = 17250 Per Host
192gigs @3495 per 48gigs = 13980 Per Host

If you want to have 2 hosts, one for Primary and one for secondary (HA+vMotion) here is the price on that.

192gigs @995 per 24gigs = 7960 + 1 spare host = 8955 per 2 hosts (192gigs of vRAM)
192gig @2875 per 32gigs = 17250 + 1 spare Host = 20125 per 2 hosts (192gigs of vRAM)
192gigs @3495 per 48gigs = 13980 + 1 spare host = 17475 per 2 hosts (192gigs of vRAM)

For

Option 1 you need 8 Licenses (Probably the most cost effective)

Option 2 you need 6 Licenses (Costs the Most in the Long run)

Option 3 you need 4 Licenses

This is more expensive then the current pricing vSphere4 Model, by far.

Has VMware been losing money on sales this much, to do this to their customer base? Common....