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?

[sergeadam]

I agree with core based licensing.

Yes, there are changes coming to core definitions. Deal with that when they come.

Don't penalize me for the software industry's failures.

I run single purpose servers because every f'ing piece of software wants me to run a web-based console. Most don't run as well if you try to change the port config. For that, virtualization truly shines.

And leave me alone with that 'right-sizing' crap.  I build to vendor specs. I also build for occasional peak, knowing that my hypervisor will take care of RAM usage.

Hell, spin up a new 2008R2 server and have a look at what ESX recommends for RAM. That's right, 4GB.

I'm still not upgrading. I run small Esentials Plus clusters. It's really all I need. I could have used to greater than 2TB LUN, I'll make due.. However my current install i 3 R710, dual 6core CPU, 96GB. I'm above the hard ceiling for that kit. And these are by no means 'extreme' machines.

I have until 4.1EOL to properly evaluate the competition. I've seen Hyper-V and XEN, by 2013, they will be equivalent to ESX for all my needs.

[JAndrews42]

>I'm still not upgrading. I run small Esentials Plus clusters. It's really all I need. I could have used to greater than 2TB LUN, I'll make due.. However my current install i 3 R710, dual 6core CPU, 96GB. I'm above the hard ceiling for that kit. And these are by no means 'extreme' machines.

What is your current vRAM usage?  I had a VMware engineer insist last week that 4.x ESS/ESS+ already had a 144GB hard cap on vRAM, but I don't have any ESS/ESS+ clients with > 144GB in use to verify.

[sergeadam]

I'm not done building the environment.

[virtualDF]

just got email from softchoice, VMware made major adjustment to vSphere 5 licensing.

http://blogs.softchoice.com/advisor/2011/08/04/you-voiced-your-concerns-vmware-listened/

You voiced your concerns. VMware listened

August 4, 2011 By Steve  McDonald Leave a  Comment

Major Adjustments to vSphere 5 licensing announced  today

It’s been over two weeks since the launch of vSphere 5 and  the licensing changes  that ensued. There has been some concern  from customers about the changes, and in fact the twitter hash tag “#vTax” has become the  popular way to discuss the issues.  Most of the vSphere 5 changes are positive  as they reflect cloud type consumption and the technology advances are great  too, but many were still unsettled with the new model.

Some reports and blogs out there said that this change would provide  significant cost increases, however 90-95 percent of all businesses would NOT  have seen a change in what they are currently paying for their licensing.

Just to recap what was  first announced:

• On July 12^th, VMware announced they would be releasing VMware  vSphere 5 in their Cloud Infrastructure Launch, set to be launched in Q3
• In this Launch they also announce a new licensing model for vSphere 5 that  introduced a new factor called vRAM entitlement.
• There would be a vRAM entitlement for each licensing of VMware vSphere 5 as  follows:
• vRAM entitlement referred to the allocated virtual memory to a  powered on a VM.
• vRAM is not a physical limitation, but a limitation on the virtual memory  allocated in a VM.
• vRAM can be pooled across hosts, clusters, and datacenters with the use of  vCenter.
• They removed the physical core limitations off their licenses, so a license  could support an unlimited number of processor cores.

There were a few common  misconceptions:

• vRAM does not represent the physical RAM.
• You do not need to migrate immediately to vSphere 5 if you do not like the  model.  VMware will be supporting vSphere 4 up until vSphere 7 is released.  If  you stay with vSphere 4, you still will be supported and will be bound by the  previous licensing model.
• Most customer environments were analyzed, the changes only impacted a small  handful of customers, and for the handful that it did affect, it represented  incremental license costs.

However, based on the feedback from customers and the Partner Technical  Advisory Board which Softchoice sits on. VMware announced today some major  adjustments to the new licensing program.

The 3 new adjustments to  the program are:

1.  To address the issues of additional costs as a result of vRAM  entitlement, VMware has increased the vRAM entitlement level for each license  level as shown in the below chart.

2. The other concern that customers had was that if they allocated a lot of  vRAM for Tier 1 applications, they would need a significant amount of licenses.   (e.g. for an Application like Oracle or SAP with 1TB of vRAM, it would represent  almost $70,000 in licensing costs alone).  This  potentially could have caused customers to hesitate in  virtualizing  business  critical apps. VMware is addressing this concern by putting a cap on consumption  of the vRAM entitlement per VM at 96GB. Therefore this means that even if you   allocate 256GB of physical RAM to a single VM, it will only count as 96GB  against the vRAM pool.

3. The last issue that customers had was around accommodating temporary  workloads.  The original model called for licensing against the total amount of  consumed vRAM. This would impact customers with short lived usage spikes in  test, development and transient VMs.  The new model will now will be looking at  a 12 month average of consumed vRAM rather that a high spike.

Overall, it was great that VMware responded so quickly to all the  concerns  voiced  from their customers. But just like with the last change, you probably  still have a lot of questions around how it will affect your environment. Let  our dedicated VMware team help you understand your options and pick the  licensing model that is best suited for the way you currently use vSphere and  how you intend to use it in the future.

To help you better understand your options and answer any questions we will  be hosting 3 webinars on Wednesday, August 10th.  Our  Softchoice Technical and Licensing experts will discuss and summarize the  adjustments made by VMware today and what it really means to you and your  virtualized environment. We will also have an open forum, where you will be able  to ask specific questions related to your needs.

VMware vSphere 5 Adjustments Licensing Changes Forum

Wednesday, August 10^th, 2011

[bobbach]

sergeadam wrote:

I agree with core based licensing.

Yes, there are changes coming to core definitions. Deal with that when they come.

Don't penalize me for the software industry's failures.

I run single purpose servers because every f'ing piece of software wants me to run a web-based console. Most don't run as well if you try to change the port config. For that, virtualization truly shines.

And leave me alone with that 'right-sizing' crap.  I build to vendor specs. I also build for occasional peak, knowing that my hypervisor will take care of RAM usage.

Yes indeed. Single purpose servers are a huge advantage for us as well. Our environment serves a large number of quite different business units. Some tolerate reboots and such at different times from others.

In the past we would have fewer but larger SQL servers and pack as many as we could onto a single instance. Ditto for web servers, we packed them onto as few servers as possible and took a lot of flack when one needed a reboot.

In today's world I can build out a new set of servers for an upgrade and not worry about the resources consumed over the short term, but in the new model servers will count as vRAM whether or not they are in production so upgrades will cost more even when they are averaged out over the course of a year. As long as a year is in technology terms it is very short in project scopes

Today we build production and test dev to very similar specs, in the future licensing may keep us from leaving those test/dev servers up all of the time, let alone allocating the same level or resources..

It keeps coming down to the fact that memory, especially vRAM, metering is a bad idea.

I am looking forward to vSphere 5, it has a few very key features for our purposes that just don't exist in other products, especially without add-ons that cost a lot of money and add complication.

Hopefully they fix this before what should be a very informational VMworld.

[cmangiarelli]

kmcferrin wrote:

xhmtk1976 wrote:

Switching to another platform may cost more in hardware and a migration itself will cost money but it may also save money in the long run.  That's up to each for his own to decide.  For most of our customers the scenario would probably be comparable to changing tires.  Keep using them until they need to be replaced and then see what's the best value on the market.

There you go.  "cmangiarelli" likes to paint a picture of some tremendous expense with switching everything over at once.  Very few shops would ever consider that kind of migration.  Instead they are far more likely (as indicated previously numerous times in this thread) to stay with 4.1 for existing infrastructure and target new deployments for a less costly competitor, then migrate the legacy systems when the hardware needs refreshed.  If you do this then not only will you save money on licensing going from 4.1 to 5.0, but you would be able to avoid the inevitable price increase when they roll out the next version of vSphere (6? 7? 8?).

@xhmtk1976: I completely agree.  Each company's needs are going to be different.  Some companies don't forsee a need today or in the future for the current advances VMware has made.  For them, savings over time will pile up, justifying the expense of a conversion project.  However, others do forsee a future need for such advances; and thus need to weigh the current price of conversion against the lost opportunity cost that a competitor might not have that technology when they need it (thus potentially forcing another conversion depending on how important that need is).  For most small companies, the changing tire analogy works great.  But for larger customers, a better analogy is repaving an expressway; the costs are larger and you pave the expressway in many shifts on different sides of the road during off-peak hours over many months.

@kmcferrin: No, I never said "flip a lightswitch and convert overnight".  In fact, most larger customers are on a yearly tech refresh cycle which means they will ALWAYS be replacing legacy systems every year, a little at a time.  In that case, a conversion is potentially long and drawn out as the newer hardware is rolled out under a new specification (ie. different hypervisor) while the old hardware is kept at the previous specification.  Under this circumstance, both technologies exist at the same time, potentially for a couple years requiring increased support from staff.  As for avoiding an inevetable price increase, who's to say 2 years from now MS, Citrix or RedHat won't change their licensing too?  I completely support people who choose to stay at ESX4, but trying to compare the costs of moving to ESX5 "now" versus the "unknown" costs of moving to a competitor 2 years in the future is a comparison fraught with error.

The probem I am always faced with when discussing on this forum is that companies of varying sizes need different things from their technology platforms (whether that be virtualization, application, monitoring, etc).  I come mainly from a background of large enterprise with thousands of users and servers.  Since I'm so used to dealing with a larger sized company, my thoughts may not always be appropriate for smaller business.

As for people arguing that they feel cheated by SNS, I completely sympathize for you.  VMware should have grandfathered all current SNS contracts into the ESX5 platform and then told you the conversion to the next major revision of vSphere will require you to accept the newer licensing model.  This is how most other companies do it to avoid legal action.  For example, when AT&T deprecated the unlimited iPhone plan, us users were grandfathered into the old plan until we decided to cancel service.  A couple of months later, Verizon did the same thing!  Another example is when Sirus and XM merged, the customers were allowed to keep their old plans with the free online listening whereas new customers pay for additional content  "transports" beyond the first registered radio.

[hmtk1976]

The big test to see what Microsoft (and Citrix) will do with the virtualization platforms will be Windows Server 8. If Microsoft doesn't overhaul doesn't overhaul it's licensing for Hyper V à la VMware we'll be fine until the next version of Windows.  Citrix probably won't do wild things if Microsoft doesn't.

[ClueShell]

My VMware/Microsoft partner brought the enterprise-plus w/ management acceleration kit onto the table (VS5-EPLM-AK-C).

This includes "View Premier" and the loads of vRAM would well cover for the time being. What we save on a no longer needed 4th box, but those savings goes to VMware vTAX  *thats the downside*.

Can anyone at least confirm that this View Premier given in the AK contains ThinApp etc. and how many licenses/concurrent connections and most importante does not need yet another vCenter or vSphere Hypervisor for Desktops. => Its this "a la carte" mixed environment VMware does not recommend but supports.

I have to cover plan B - pay up and make the best out of as few licenses or money spent.

[JAndrews42]

>Can anyone at least confirm that this View Premier given in the AK contains ThinApp etc. and how many licenses/concurrent connections and most importante does not need yet another vCenter or vSphere Hypervisor for Desktops. => Its this "a la carte" mixed environment VMware does not recommend but supports.

View Premier includes ThinApp - see http://www.vmware.com/products/view/howtobuy.html

I've seen View bundles included with AKs before but I don't know of any specials right now, better confirm the # of seats with your sales guy (I think it was 10 seats in the past per AK) and whether it's "bundle" (ie includes vSpehre Desktop) or Add-on (doesn't include any vSphere licensing). 

[Bigi201110141]

Whats another 20-40K for an Enterprise?If the 20-40K is an issue maybee management has other more important issues.

Look no good self respecting Enterprise buys Dell Servers period. HP and IBM is the standard with Cisco coming into the picture.

You can't compare AMD Opteron performace with Intel 7500 or E7. Intel is the gold standard that is not matched by AMD. Thats why AMD has 20 core CPU to compete with Intels 8 and 10.

Ok you have some cases where 48 cores and 512 is normal. Yeah right.  But everyday enterprise does not have this setup.

When Windows Vista came out no one force people to switch to it. You could still buy XP licenses. You can do the same with vSphere 5. Buy them and convert to 4. Wait 18-24 months until 6 comes out maybee licensing will more to your liking.

We get it, you want to pay for 2 CPU License load up with 2TB of RAM and thats the end of it. vSphere 4 is for you or Hyper-V or Xen.

Another point is that you guys have some strong cases that vmware is ripping you off and violating the agreement with you via SnS.

Tell your Enterprise lawyers and take vmware to court and lets see what happens.

[Dracolith]

Bigi wrote:

Whats another 20-40K for an Enterprise?If the 20-40K is an issue maybee management has other more important issues.

Enterprises that will be successful are concerned about costs.    We know that every dollar spent  paying for software licenses is a dollar not invested back into the business or returned to shareholders.

Look no good self respecting Enterprise buys Dell Servers period. HP and IBM is the standard with Cisco coming into the picture.

That is an opionion that is not borne out in the facts.    There are plenty of self respecting enterprises that buy Dell servers.    And there is nothing wrong with a business buying Dell servers.

Self respecting businesses buy whichever equipment meets the business requirements at lowest cost.

You can't compare AMD Opteron performace with Intel 7500 or E7. Intel is the gold standard that is not matched by AMD. Thats why AMD has 20 core CPU to compete with Intels 8 and 10.

That doesn't make sense.

AMD is the gold standard just as much as Intel is.   Who cares how many cores are per package...  it's performance and parallelism that matter in CPU designs.

[VidarK]

I do notice one thing from the postingings from VMware both in forum and in private messages. They are refusing to comment on the legal aspects of their license change....

[allenb1121]

I know that feeding the trolls is a bad idea, but I can't let this one pass.

1. Any Enterprise should be looking at cost. If they are not, then a change of management will be in their future.

2. Your statement on Dell is rubbish. If no self respecting enterprise would buy them, then why are they in business and doing well financially? I have experience with Dell and HP, and they are comparable. To each his own - they are all good products. IBM and Cisco need to bring their prices down, though. I have no problems with Dell gear. The equipment is good, they are responsive as a company, and they are competitively priced.

3. AMD vs Intel is also rubbish. They are both good products. I personally like AMD, and have had great luck with them. For our extreme workloads, we use Intel, but AMD is more than adequate for 95% of our systems. The majority of our systems are PowerEdge 2970s, R715s, and R815s. We are replacing 2950s and R910s with R715s and R815s. If they were not performing well, we would not be using them.

4. You must not have much experience in a large enterprise. 512GB/4 cores is a common config. Why sprawl out over many small systems if I can save energy, heat, and rack space with a fewer number of small systems? Sure, there are some tradeoffs, but that is the route we have chosen to take. I'm sure you have your reasons for the config you have chosen.

Please stop with the blanket generalized statements and cliches. There is no single right answer, and I am glad there is adequate competition in the CPU and server market.

Allen B.

--

Allen Beddingfield

Systems Engineer

The University of Alabama

[Dracolith]

VidarK wrote:

I do notice one thing from the postingings from VMware both in forum and in private messages. They are refusing to comment on the legal aspects of their license change....

That's not surprising;  anything they might say could actually hurt them if there were a legal dispute raised.   Their lawyers would probably not approve of them discussing legal aspects in public.

I suspect we (the community in general) will never hear if any suits/demand letters/legal communications are exchanged,  those sort of things are likely to be settled in private to protect the disputing parties against negative public attention.

[Justin_King1]

"The big test to see what Microsoft (and Citrix) will do with the virtualization platforms will be Windows Server 8. If Microsoft doesn't overhaul doesn't overhaul it's licensing for Hyper V à la VMware we'll be fine until the next version of Windows.  Citrix probably won't do wild things if Microsoft doesn't."

WHy on earth would Hyper-V get it's licensing overhauled ... it's practically free as it is?  All they have to do is leave thier pricing the same combined with the new WIndows 8 featureset and VMware is going to start hemoraging in the small medium buisness market.

Let's see what MS has already announced in wake of this debacle:

1.  They blogged re-confirming that they will not use cpu/or memory calculations in the next Hyper-V release, sticking with thier current model which makes the host basically free (you pay mostly for SCVMM and SCOM).  This tanslates to HUGE cost savings.

2.  SRM for free added in.  Yup, the ability to have a DR replica of all your child/guest system will be built in and free.

3.  16 vcpu Child partitions (guest OSes)

4.  SCVMM deployment templates will include cluster and othercommon role deployment models (right click and deploy a windows 2 node cluster).

Microsoft (and the Opensource world as well) are simply holding thier model steady while they continue to bundle more features in for free, all the while VMware is asking for more money.

VMware needs to pick it's next actions very carefully, as I already see large corporations deploying Hyper-V and Xen servers for sattelite offices to save in costs and only using vmware in the main datacenter.

[Bigi201110141]

@ allenb1121 Sorry dude did not mean to bash AMD or Dell..... But your Uni can afford a few more licenses if needed and so will most major Enterprises, but I am telling you 512GB is not the norm now.

Some people on this board bought a Ferrari and bought SnS for it. They are entitled to a free Ferrari upgrade when the next update comes out. But when the next update comes out they see the new Ferrari has a limit of 120mph and if they want to take it to 200mph they have to pay extra. Now they are saying Ferrari is ripping them off. They will go to Nissan GTR where the speed limit is 200mph and it will get them from point A to B just like a Ferrari so why pay for one.

[ClueShell]

Whats there to discuss?

The US DoJ although investigating in VMware/EMC about the Novell/Attachmate patent issue does not see anti-trust oder other anti-competitive issues.

Sure conract law is there, but they give you a second choice - downgrading.

So just forget about class action or other court stuff. As other people pointed out if there would be equal competition prices would be under pressure. Fact is VMware is some engineering years ahead and they want to keep the lead technologically. If all complainers are really only 5 percent of the whole VMware pop heck i would have a good laugh and offer each one some compensation to silence this discussion.

[depping]

VidarK wrote:

I do notice one thing from the postingings from VMware both in forum and in private messages. They are refusing to comment on the legal aspects of their license change....

As any company out there VMware has spokespeople for specific topics. You reached out to random VMware employees, including myself, who are not entitled to make statements around this topic. I have forwarded your request to the appropriate team, that is the best I can do for you.

Duncan

Yellow-Bricks.com

vSphere 5 Clustering Deepdive - e-book

[VidarK]

Downgrading is not a second choice according to the contract. The contract states that we are to receive upgrades at no additional cost. A downgrade is not an upgrade...

[VidarK]

Thank you. I think everyone here would be very interested to hear VMware's public response to the questions raised about SnS and upgrade rights at no additional cost that existing customers have according to existing contracts.