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SuperSpike
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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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1,980 Replies
Rumple
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Mindli...I hate to break it to you, but with a configuration of 8 servers...you are not anywhere near a typicaly SMB customer (hell, I work in a company of 900 people and they only have 7 ESX servers with 70% of our infrastructure virtualized (and they also built it at less then 30% utilziation across the board) as our usage is exactly like your's and like the "95%" that won't be affected, the reason is that early on, you've overpaid for licensing when it was most likely unnecessary (I would be willing to bet by a long shot) so of course you won't be affected

For your specific configuration a "guideline" of capacity on that system based on known recommendation and best practices would be:

#1 - N+1 (always be able to have a complete host failure so in your case we would caclulate everything based on 7 servers, not 8

#2 - 4-5 vCPU per CORE * = 72 cores in your Farm * 4 (conservative) = 288 potential vCPU count on the low side. Assuming you went with 2vCPU on every VM in your farm (192 vcpu) you are still 66% below the recommended CPU Count (and don't forget you have a spare server still)

#3 - You have 384GB of RAM available to you to be 80% subscribed on each host and still maintain one spare server..you are at 300GB allocated...now take into consideration at minimum 20% is being shared = 240GB Utilized = 15% RAM available without even considering that you can safely oversubscribe that environment another 20% on top of that (in general)

So...by using capacity IQ and looking at the numbers, in reality my guess is you have at least an N+3 environment there...and in the end your vCPU would still be below the recommended limits (and remember on 4.1 those limits are much much higher (vmware actually enables 20vCPU/core which means a 10 is completely possible. ESX3.5 only allowed 8vCPU/core (hence the number of 4-5vCPU/core that was thown around).

So..if you "Right sized" your environment earlier on (using vmware best practices and recommendations)...you would have saved your company an extra 20k by removing 2 of those servers and their associated licensing and still be able to maintain an N+1...at this point you "might" be considering upping the RAM (as you can tell the RAM is your bottle neck, not your CPU...

So.considering 1 year+ later, you are able to increase the size of the RAM to 144GB for about 1/4 of the price of a new server, warranty, power costs,etc)

v4 means you would just purchase new RAM...v6 means you would end up needing to purchase at least 6 more licenses of enterprise plus to contine to use the existing environment (which is still CPU underutilized by a wide margin).

This is the cruxt of the whole problem....only those who were extremely conservative fit that 95%...the rest of us who did the math, watched our environments, scrimpted and saved and went for the ROI vmware virtualization provided are getting hosed. Microsoft only went for a 2:1 ratio on hyper-v....I have easily seen 20:1 using vmware without any performance degredation.

In the end, vmware has decided thats if we needed 20 servers originally in a hyper-v world to run same environment..but can do it with 8 because of their technology, we are now going to pay as if we needed 20 servers.

However Microsoft now only needs 10 servers to do the same thing....and its much much cheaper as well...scale out vs Scale up...spend more on hardware save boatloads on licensing.

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RobertK20111014
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It is not that easy to fool google bot Smiley Wink

VMware Communities<http://communities.vmware.com/index.jspa>

vSphere 5 Licensing

reply from pauskaa<http://communities.vmware.com/people/pauskaa> in VMware ESXi 5 - View the full discussion<http://communities.vmware.com/message/1800325#1800325

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mindli
Contributor
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Rumple,

I should have said SB customer then 😉

We sized it that way because we'll ~double our VMs until Q1 2012. We'll still fit in the new licensing schema, as we still won't have very large VMs (biggest are 16 GB vRAM), Further, I should have said that the 8 hosts are actually split in two clusters, so it's more likely to be N+1 or N+2 for each cluster from our point of view. Another point is, if we'd buy additional servers 1+ years later, we won't get the same hardware config, as we are just to small to have hardware supply agreements with our vendor.

Yes, we did overpay at first, we are aware of that. It was an investment in a 3-4 year plan, so see it that way. And you have to spend the money in good times, not bad times, from a financial point of view.

You can call it conservative, I call it well planned with a bit of luck 🙂

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Flan5ter
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Contributor

Ran the script, it worked.  I am still wiping away the tears.  We would have to double our 36 EP licenses. This is not going to happen.  I am sure we could get that number down.  But we wont be going down that route.  To go back to the business owners who have paid for their ram and ask them to either pay more or reduce their footprint is going to make us look stupid.  All VMware expansion plans are on hold.  A new project has spawned to evaluate the competition.  The end...

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RobertK20111014
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Contributor

Move along. Nothing to see here;)

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egray
Enthusiast
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Please keep in mind that Essentials+ is intended for small environments with ~20 VMs.  http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/small-business/essentials-kits.html

At $3.5K it is an incredible bargain for smaller shops, but never intended to support hundreds of VMs.

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Flan5ter
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EP=Enterprise Plus

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MattMcd20111014
Contributor
Contributor

I don't understand how this licensing makes any sense at all.. And the answers we're getting are even less comprehensible.

My actual numbers:

Todays licensing

7 x 2 socket 96G memory + 10% overcommit = 14 x enterprise licenses

5.0 licensing

7 x 2 socket 96G memory + 10% overcommit =  24 x enterprise licenses!

That means i'm paying $372 to license a test server (with 4G) that just sits idle 99% of the time.

Vram or not I don't see how it makes sense to charge for something that's imaginary.

For example in this new system:

1.  I'm paying for 10 cpu's that don't exist.

2.  If I over commit I'm paying for memory that doesn't exist.

3.  I'm paying Support on cpu's that i don't have.  

And the suggestions are almost too much... 

1.  Right size Vm's (who says there not already right sized)

2.  Run the script (I can add, and i don't need a script to tell me i'm being screwed)

3.  The vram model was designed for the cloud.   (I'm not running a cloud pricing model and it doesn't look like many others here are either)

4.  You should be able to pool from underused hosts.  (who buys hardware, they don't plan on using?)

As far as i'm concerned this is a non starter, and frankly i don't care what features are 5.  I'll be freezing on 4.1 and examining alternatives.

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sergeadam
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

That's a 3:1 ratio. They have got to be kidding.

real world we don't care. It's about feature needed vs cost.

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kbarnes
Contributor
Contributor

JohnTroyer said:

"hmtk1976, I'm sorry that we've disappointed you. Ultimately, you've got to do what makes sense for your environment. I do know that we make kick-ass software that adds a lot of value, and I hope we continue to talk with your VMware business contacts and we can continue to do business with you."

He's not the only one you've disappointed. I see a disturbing theme here from the VMware people. It seems as if you want to believe there's some small subset of disgruntled customers. You are very, very wrong.

As of this time, I'm still far from hitting even a memory-based licensing limit, having used only about 500GB of the 3744GB we currently have licensed. This is, of course, assuming I've read the new licensing material correctly, seeing as how VMware has done its upmost to make it as obtuse as possible. Even keeping that in mind, I will begin to actively research and test alternatives to VMware. It's very obvious to me that you've been drinking the Oracle kool-aid and will eventually be just as difficult to deal with. Fortunately, we have licensed Windows 2008 Datacenter on a per CPU basis for all of our hosts, which means that we can easily segue to Hyper-V without additional costs incurred.

As I pointed out to our salesman in an email I just sent out, VMware would do well to keep in mind that you are neither irreplaceable nor too big to fail. If you don’t believe me, drop me an email and I’ll send you the phone number for Sprint. They can easily explain the folly of such customer-hostile corporate thinking to you, having believed they were pretty kick-ass too.

P.S. I almost forgot: somewhere along the way, I ran into something completely ridiculous that seems to imply most shops are running only 5-6 VMs per CPU. Please let me know what the person making this claim was smoking and where I can get some. That claim is an impressive pile of steaming used bull food. We are at about 25-30 VMs per CPU, which is exactly what your people, both sales and engineering, told us to expect.

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aroudnev
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Contributor

Btw, this well explain, why VMware IS NOT presented in the clouds (most clouds run XEN) - this was because of this dumb model:

3. The vram model was designed for the cloud. (I'm not running a cloud pricing model and it doesn't look like many others here are either)

So, they killed VMWare presense in the clouds ALREADY, now they are klilling Vmware presense in the enterprises. Excellent job.. in favor of XEN and Hyper-V.

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Gauchonm
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Contributor

We are already overcommitted if we moved to 5.0 licensing.  With our hardware, we are running around 25% of our physical capacity (memory wise, way less CPU wise) with plenty of room to grow.  But with this licensing, we are over maxed out already!   This is a real life scenario with actual data.  We have been 100% virtualized for over 4 years.  Running ESX since 3.0 now on 4.1.  This is horrible.

Pooled vRam Capacity: 1344 GB
Number of VMs Powered On: 220
Current vRam usage: 1488 GB
Percent vRam usage: 110%
Number of VMs if all were Powered on: 250
vRam usage if all VMs were Powered on: 1598 GB
Percent vRam usage if all VMs were Powered on: 118%

\

Each of our hosts are r910 with 4 socket 8 core CPU with 512 memory.  So much for planning.  So much for upgrade expectations even though we bought the whole enchildada of enterprise plus with support for multiple years.

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aroudnev
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It was for the smal busineses; correct. But small businesses (or small sites) grow in the normal low, and even today it is normal to run 20 - 50 VM-s (you always forgiot to count test systems, demo systems and so so on) and have 64 - 128 GB of ram per host.

Ell ESENTIAL is saying was always (no matter what you wrote in the link below)

3 HOSTS

2 CPU per host

256 GB of memory per HOST

This is it. This is what people use when they select license,not what you image about 20 VM-s (license do not restrict ## of VM-s).

For now, you decrease a value of Essential approximately 4x - 8x, and try to keep customers connected to you?

And even this. 20 VM's , x 8 GB RAM (very common in 2 - 3 years), 160 GB RAM. 24 GB x 6 = 144 GB. You even can't support claimed 20 VM's anymore.

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GeekoCraig
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Contributor

SeanLeyne,

Can you post the reference link where you saw the "30 day free upgrade or pay $$$"?

thanks

-Craig Herring
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sliptrap
Contributor
Contributor

So I emailed my VMWare rep and mentioned that the new license model would have a significant cost increase to our view deployment (we bought view add-on licenses so no vsphere for desktops) and his response was "don't upgrade to 5 and stay on 4.1" well needless to say I'm quite pissed off and insulted at the lackluster response. But on the bright side my efforts to test Xen and Hyper-V have just tripled.

The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.
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siers
Contributor
Contributor

This is the same arrogant attitude I use to get from Oracle before moving over to MS SQL.  Saved ~$250,000 on the move and haven't regretted it since.  I hope VMware doesn't continue down the Oracle path.

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nolent
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Enthusiast

siers wrote:

This is the same arrogant attitude I use to get from Oracle before moving over to MS SQL.  Saved ~$250,000 on the move and haven't regretted it since.  I hope VMware doesn't continue down the Oracle path.

Seriously. Just substitute Oracle with any of the following: Novell, VMWare, Corell, IBM, Sun.

The arrogance is what kills me. If you read the white paper "VMware vSphere 5.0 licensing, pricing and packaging", page 3 and page 4 are truly insulting to any SE or hosting provider. I think to some degree, we made this company what it is by adopting it's products, and to be treated like this is just a joke. Basically software maintenance just became useless.

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kbarnes
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nolent wrote:

Seriously. Just substitute Oracle with any of the following: Novell, VMWare, Corell, IBM, Sun.

Sprint. There's a reason their company president is always on TV begging people to buy their phones and use their service.

Different market, same customer-hostile attitude.

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RobertK20111014
Contributor
Contributor

Eric Gray wrote:

Please keep in mind that Essentials+ is intended for small environments with ~20 VMs.  http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/small-business/essentials-kits.html

At $3.5K it is an incredible bargain for smaller shops, but never intended to support hundreds of VMs.

Guess what, other virtualization providers have even more incredible bargain without silly limits.

By the way, should I use only 20VM in cluster with total of 36 cores? Is this you call efficiency? Should I maybe run more demanding workloads to fully utilize all 36 cores? SQL, Exchange, Search server? Can I have 12GB or more RAM for each? Yes? At what price? Still incredible bargain?

To allocate 145GB of RAM using Ess+ I have to buy 7 standard licences so 1GB more will cost me twice cost of Ess+.

I'm jumping for joy.

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vmwareking
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Contributor

Try xenserver it's much better than hyper

Sent from my iPhone

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