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?

[jfolkman]

My company bought the Essentials + (and 3 new hosts) based on what VMWare’s published specs and description for the product editions were.

We purchased 3 hosts with 64GB of pRAM thinking that would get us through a 2 - 5 year period and if we miscalculated a bit on the pRAM we could still go up to 128 GB pRAM per Host as per VMWare's own specifications.  Now (if we want to upgrade) not only can we not upgrade our pRAM we cannot even use the entire 64GB pRAM per host we bought the new hosts with!  Why (especially with software assurance) should we have to pay more to utilize what we already have??  We are not running more than 20 servers on our 3 host cluster but should we wish to do that or should we wish to allocate more vRAM to VM's than VMWare thinks is correct we should be able to do that.

VMWare should Grandfather all existing licenses with the same Version 5 vRAM entitlement as the Version 4.1 license granted in pRAM.  That really is the only fair thing to do given so many Companies (large and small) have based their long term planning and budgets on what VMWare published as specifications (RAM, CPU) for their different editions of the product.

On a new project we will plan according to what VMWare is specifying (should we use VMWare) but we will all be hoping the rug doesn’t get pulled out from under us again!

[vmwareking]

Xenserver is better than hyper by 20:1

Sent from my iPhone

[aroudnev]

What's interesting, they in VMware could play this game (switch to vRAM) when they changed from 3.5 to 4.0; with exactly the same limitations as in 5 (except 8 GB for free version cold be a kidding even 2 years ago). People did not had so much pressure from vRAM usage and there was not good alternatives then.

But NOW???? I don't see any chance how new model can increase profits - those who lost on it just will stay on 4.1 (it is new and can stay for next 5 years witjhout much oproblems) and eventually look for alternatives (and save a lot on maintanance cost), those who planned upgrade or new installations - will put maintanance on hold and look for alternatives,

so in any scenario VMware get less but not more.

Looks as someone got this idea (vRAM) 3 years ago, could not prove it then, so he kicked it off just now, using 3 year old market data and analyze...

[aroudnev]

Can we please make a difference between

- INTENDED by some silly marketoid

AND

- WHAT it really PROVIDED.

Essential provided a very cost-effective VM solutions for the small businesses or small sites and can effectively run 3 128 GB pRAM each hosts, which in turn can effectively run about 30 production VM-s or about 40 - 90 developmemnt or test VM-s or even more.

It does not matter what someone INTENDED; it does matter what is the real product, and it is much more then it was intended (and it explains product success). And it was in match with the alternate solutions. Essential-5 is far BEHIND the alternates just as far behind Essential-4 (so I can't image any idiot who will purchase essential-5 while he can purhcase or keep essential-4).

PS. Why anyone need to upgrade to ESXi5 at all? I don't see any minor reason to do it for the next 3 years.

[rgard]

Storage IO controls for NFS is the main reason I would like to upgrade. Second reason would be increases for the VM to virtual very large SQL servers.

Can’t do it at the costs they published. Our company has put all VMware projects on hold. If this doesn’t change by October, our budjet cycle, we will put our money into other vendors.

[AndrewFerris]

What's the point of paying for SnS if all it does is transition you to a new punitive level of licensing when you do a sever refresh?

We have 2 ESXi hosts in one vCenter. Dell R710s with 46GB of RAM each (and 40GB used right now) and two CPU sockets.

4 licensing (List Price)

4 vSphere 4 Advanced 1 proc licenses

$2717 list each for $10,868 list total

5 licensing (List Price)

4 vSphere 5 Enterprise 1 proc licenses

$2875 list each for $11,500 (64GB of VRAM per server)

Ho hum I suppose because I know there more features in V5 Enterprise than V4 Advanced.

But I have a surprisingly affordable quote on a quad CPU IBM server with 1TB of RAM for under $60,000 purchasable right now.

Using list V5 pricing

Enterprise for a 1TB server is $92,000 and $46,000 for a 512GB server

Enterprise Plus for a 1TB server is $76,890 and $38,445 for the 512GB server 

So increases of $21,529 (512GB) to $59,874 (1TB) on Ent Plus from V4 to V5 for the same servers. Nu-Oracle indeed.

Andrew

[aroudnev]

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/news/2240038937/Why-VMware-licensing-changed-in-vSphere-5-and-wha...

I am under the desk!!!

[Gauchonm]

Talk about pulling the rug from out under.

Before:

VMware -   Get enterprise plus!!! Scale up!!! Shared memory, over commit etc., etc.!  It's all so great with our product.  Buy support and always have the latest!!

Us:  Ok let's get an r910 4 socket 8 core 512 ram (we almost went 1tb)!

Now:

VMware - Nevermind!

Us -  Our vram is currently using 110% of our current licensing if we go 5.0.  (True #s)

VMware - Would you like support with those extra licenses and the egg on our face?

[siers]

AndrewFerris wrote:

What's the point of paying for SnS if all it does is transition you to a new punitive level of licensing when you do a sever refresh?

Andrew

Yes this is a huge part of the problem.  I can' think of a time when I've paid for software maintenance and then got less with the new version. Imagine if EMC, VMware's parent, came out with a new version of their NAS or SAN OS and charged you based on the number of GB that were allocated, including thin provisioning, and then told you to 'right size' your file systems and disk pools.  Oh and yeah you were allowed 480 disks in that CX480 in the old code but now you have to pay 10 times more to 'use' the same space. 

[sliptrap]

aroudnev wrote:

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/news/2240038937/Why-VMware-licensing-changed-in-vSphere-5-and-wha...

I am under the desk!!!

Wow i used to respect Eric Sibert but based on that article its quite clear he's just another VMWare robot. Sad sad days ahead.

[scowse]

Shane wrote:

aroudnev wrote:

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/news/2240038937/Why-VMware-licensing-changed-in-vSphere-5-and-wha...

I am under the desk!!!

Wow i used to respect Eric Sibert but based on that article its quite clear he's just another VMWare robot. Sad sad days ahead.

There is truth in that article from Eric.

"...VMware had to do something. Otherwise, the massive scale-up potential for servers would result in fewer hosts with fewer sockets -- and fewer licensing dollars for VMware."

[aroudnev]

This article starts with you will not pay more but then prove, with 100% probability, that you WILL PAY 2x - 4x more.

Anyway, I dont see why anyone will go with vmware 5 model - most will stay with 4 and then go out of the Vmware.

I had a phone conversation with my friend who supports a lot of Vmware installations He saw the same as me - many people started with free ESXi and then purchased licenses when they grow. Starting with model-5, 8 GB vRAM free VMware don't make any sense at all - so this channel will be terminated and VMware will lost all such customers.

(Don't say me that ESXi5 can have 16 GB of vRAM if you have 2 cpu - many, many installation uses 1 cpu servers. And then, even 16 gb vRAM is a kidding even today).

[Rumple]

I agree they had to do something as well…

However the problem is they have reacted with increased competition in their Core market space (the hypervisor itself) by trying to increase profits in the face of decreasing market share.

Remember for 50% of all users, we care about the virtualization technology, HA and DRS…even oversubscription of memory has become a commodity as RAM prices have dropped.

All 3 major players in that market place provide the same base features.

VMWare has made some very strategic purchases over the years coming out with things like vAPP, vShield and a pretty good cloud environment…THIS IS YOUR MONEY MAKER market…

The Hypervisor can no longer be your bread and butter…it’s your core product you leverage to upsell customers onto other product lines..remember, you can’t sell vAPP to a customer on Xenserver…this is very basic business sense…such that even us lowly techies understand…

When I sell a customer a server I am not making money on the hardware or the operating system…it’s the Service and Support…

Hell..double the cost of S&S…at least that would have made a hell of a lot of business sense…and people would have understood…you pay more money for S&S because the value of the product we provide you as part of that Software Assurance has increased…

[scowse]

Spot on Rumple - this is the Redhat way - S&S

VMW are in the denial/delusional phase that may well see them forgo all market share

[aroudnev]

They find the best time to do stupid things:

- their own VMware 4.1 is well established and customers can stay with it next 3 - 5 years, so they can't push customers to purchase new licensing. As a result, only those who pay less will purhcase it, those who pay more by new schema drop off or stay on 4.1 next 3 - 5 years. No increase in payments, sorry...

- their competitors, at last, mature enough to be a real alternatives. It was not a case few years ago, but it became a reality now.

- new markets such as VDI are coming and customers did not decide on the platform yet - so they can change to competotors easily, too.

If someone choose exact time to decrease VMware value, he could not do it better. They could do this change 3 years ago, can maybe do it 3 years later, but now... not a way at all, no matter how much paid articles, claiming that it is excellent marketing move, they publish. They have maybe a week or 2 before media reciognized all this story, publish it and start to discuss outside of Vmware community, and them... their shareholders will be counting losses. Through I think that their sale department can feel losses already as people starting to put Vmware projects on hold.

[LucasAlbers]

I am sure the xen and microsoft sales teams are high-fiving.

The biggest mistake VMware can make is to erode it’s strongest pillar – todays small, medium and large Enterprise virtualization customer and sacrifice this for an (arguably strategic but unvalidated) cloud market …

http://www.virtualizationmatrix.com/2011/07/vsphere-5-announcement-the-aftermath-great-product-dange...

[SeanLeyne]

Craig Herring wrote:

SeanLeyne,

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

thanks

I would love to but it came in an email from Softchoice (which we had some of our VMware licenses in the past) on July 12th following the initial v5 licensing announcement. I deleted a while ago...  The basic gist of the email was that I had only 30 days to choose to "embrace" the "fantastic new licensing model". (please read with extreme sarcasm).

If I get something more current I will post to the forum.

[vmwareking]

Does any one have the actual new prices

Found this http://www.virtualizationmatrix.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/license.png

Sent from my iPhone

[scowse]

After evaluating the other two of the big three hypervisors it reminds me of the browser wars.

In my IT department I spend quite a bit of time explaining to and chiding my users that having a "favourite" browser is so last century - get over it. Productivity is far too important for your hangups to interfer.

As one one browser loses the plot and cannot/will not render certain applications or vica versa it is necessary to keep changing browsers until you find one that works - until it is time move on to the next!

I currently find it necessary to run three. Occasionally one drops off the list until an upgrade makes it usable again.

And so it seems to be the same in the virual world - some hypervisors will do some things better at the right price for a while  until ...see above.

What they all have in common is very strong conversion utilities 

Market forces at work me thinks.

[hmtk1976]

With current hardware its a piece of cake to run 20 VMs PER HOST with Essentials Plus.  With current licensing though...