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?

[Dracolith]

RParker wrote:

vSphere has 2 features that ALONE will be enough to make people move, 300% increase in performance with the new file system, and SDRS, storage distribution.. that will be quite an increase in manageable VM's and performance.

There is no 300% increase in performance of the new filesystem.

There  is an increase in the performance of CERTAIN operations on a VMFS filesystem, if your filesystem lives on a SAN/NAS that supports the VAII addons  for fast cloning, offloaded zero'ing,  and  ATS.

But only if your hosts are licensed at the  Enterprise+  level.      For everyone else, VMFS5 is not too interesting.

Aside from the fact, they removed  the 2TB LUN size limit.   But that's not an "aswesome feature" added to VMFS5,

that's a limitation/defect in VMFS that they corrected.

[AndrewFerris]

VAII is in Enterprise now in 5. Of course Enterprise is still more expensive per GB of RAM than Ent+.

Andrew

[Dracolith]

RParker wrote:

It's math.  vSphere 4.0 was 300,000 IOPS.  vSphere 5.0 features boast over 1 million IOPS.

Unless I am having a bad day, 300,000 to 1 Million is 300%, ok so it's more like 233% but still..

Am I wrong?  That's on the vSphere 5.0 Features page, I can't find the VM Ware version but here is the re-published version..

http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/vsphere-5-features

It's called  puffery.     They tested  vSphere 4,  on one set of  hardware, and achieved 300,000 IOPS.

They tested vSphere5   in a totally different configuration and achieved 1 Million IOPs.

It may be  that there was a limitation in vSphere4  that prevented you from exceeding 300,000 IOPS in

some _very_ large scale  storage environments  with   I/O load spread across  a large number of SSDs.

But that doesn't mean, in general, that if you currently get 300,000 IOPS on your existing hardware,

and you upgrade to vSphere5 without changing anything else,  they you will suddenly be getting

1 Million IOPs.

To achieve that 1 Million IOPs, you will need to look at the design very carefully, and make

major adjustments to the hardware,  including  LUN reconfigurations, and changes to the equipments/

model numbers, HBAs,  and choice of servers used.

[hmtk1976]

That's the problem for old Enterprise users.  Paid SnS, v4 created Enterprise Plus which was the only version to get new features, keep on paying SnS and stil not getting worthwhile upgrades.  They should just merge Enterprise and Enterprise Plus in one SKU.  I know, there was a "cheap" upgrade from Enterprise to Enterprise Plus back then but it still chafes to have paid SnS and suddenly not have the top version anymore.  for anyone not on Enterprise Plus vSphere 5 is not a must have if you already run 4.1.  Chances are VMware will only support windows 8 on vSphere 5 though more or less forcing us to succumb to the vTax.  The problem with VMware is that you know far too little of their plans for the future.

[Dracolith]

RParker wrote:

I think you are being a bit obtuse.  If you have a Laptop if you have a SATA drive on it (5400 RPM) your OS supports SATA II 6Gb/s speed but your drive does not, then yes your OS will NOT go faster.

...

You can be as stubborn as you want, I am not going to explain HOW storage or IOPS work, I am only reporting what VM Ware stated as part of their feature set!

The problem is you are not repeating VMware's words.  VMware never said anything about a 300% performance increase as part of the VS5 changes.

You are conducting synthesis;   taking two different things VMware wrote at different times,  and treating them as if they said  both things today.

This degree of performance improvement is something you have implied, not something VMware has stated!

In all likelihood, if you test  vSphere4 on the same hardware that delivers   1 million IOPS to vSphere5,  you can get very close to 1 million IOPs with vSphere4.

The marketing never said  "VSphere5 can get 1 million IOPs,    but vSphere4.1 can only get 300,000 IOPS  in the exact same storage environment."

VMware put out a whitepaper on the subject of  performance improvements in vSphere5:  http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10195

Massive changes in VMFS  request capacity/latency aren't even noted.

[DSTAVERT]

Dracolith wrote:

RParker wrote:

I think you are being a bit obtuse.  If you have a Laptop if you have a SATA drive on it (5400 RPM) your OS supports SATA II 6Gb/s speed but your drive does not, then yes your OS will NOT go faster.

...

You can be as stubborn as you want, I am not going to explain HOW storage or IOPS work, I am only reporting what VM Ware stated as part of their feature set!

The problem is you are not repeating VMware's words.  VMware never said anything about a 300% performance increase as part of the VS5 changes.

You are conducting synthesis;   taking two different things VMware wrote at different times,  and treating them as if they said  both things today.

This degree of performance improvement is something you have implied, not something VMware has stated!

In all likelihood, if you test  vSphere4 on the same hardware that delivers   1 million IOPS to vSphere5,  you can get very close to 1 million IOPs with vSphere4.

The marketing never said  "VSphere5 can get 1 million IOPs,    but vSphere4.1 can only get 300,000 IOPS  in the exact same storage environment."

VMware put out a whitepaper on the subject of  performance improvements in vSphere5:  http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10195

Massive changes in VMFS  request capacity/latency aren't even noted.

The VMware presentations have shown support for 1 million IOPs in 5 and 300,000 in 4.1 http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/vsphere-5-features

4.1 could not accomodate 1 million IOPS even if you had storage capable of that number. 5 can.

[ph0bia]

We had a call with VMware today to discuss the licensing changes and I have to say that they were pretty open about everything and overall had a positive and cooperative attitude.  As you know from my previous posts I have been vocal about my displeasure regarding this change, however a few points that I took from the call which have eased my mind somewhat:

- The vRAM pool is vCenter-wide, not per-cluster, and even linked VCS's will "share" this pool, so if you for instance have a DR site with a linked VCS then the licenses you have at that site will be part of your overall pool

- ESXi 5 will not prevent VMs from powering on and running even if you have exceeded your vRAM pool licensing, so essentially this is all trust-based.  Since they have removed the 'highwater mark' determination and are now basing it on annual averages, one should be able to take down many hosts for maintenance or have temporary machines powered up for months-long projects, etc. or in other ways exceed the vRAM allocation that the site is licensed for and there would be no negative ramifications nor would you owe them more money

- If you utilize the super-VMs feature and allocate >96GB to any guests, they will only count 96GB of it as being depleted from the pool, I don't think too many people have 128GB+ VMs floating around, but this is a good concession nonetheless for those who do

- It seems like if you can demonstrate that you are already overcommitting RAM to the degree where this change will negatively impact you at release-time, then they are willing to discuss it and work something out with you to resolve your situation

All in all I still feel that this change was a mistake on their part, certainly it is a PR nightmare if nothing else.  On the other hand I sort of also understand where they are coming from with it, and it seems like they are also trying to be fair.  I suspect that the initial bad vibe that came from the original announcement may be insurmountable, the stigma is now in place about all of this.  I would however urge everyone to honestly contemplate how this actually impacts their environment and if you are still dissatisfied, give them a call - I believe they will be cordial and supportive of your concerns and will want to work with you to resolve it.

[JAndrews42]

@ph0bia

Your first 3 points were 3 of the main points from the announcement last week.

>ESXi 5 will not prevent VMs from powering on and running even if you have exceeded your vRAM pool licensing, so essentially this is all trust-based.

Except for ESXi Standalone and ESS/ESS+ (in theory, I want to see screenshots of someone hitting it).  With those you will be prevented from powering on machines that exceed the limit (32GB/192GB assuming you are configured correctly).

And don't forget ESS/ESS+ don't support linked mode.

>Since they have removed the 'highwater mark' determination and are now basing it on annual averages,

They are using the average of the high-water mark - but you are not allowed to exceed your entitlement.  You are required to predict and purchase in advance.  VMware has promised tools to help with that.

[depping]

I just want to inform everyone that the official License Advisor Tool has been released: http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/upgrade-center/vsphere-licensing-ad...

Duncan

[depping]

Dracolith wrote:

RParker wrote:

vSphere has 2 features that ALONE will be enough to make people move, 300% increase in performance with the new file system, and SDRS, storage distribution.. that will be quite an increase in manageable VM's and performance.

There is no 300% increase in performance of the new filesystem.

There  is an increase in the performance of CERTAIN operations on a VMFS filesystem, if your filesystem lives on a SAN/NAS that supports the VAII addons  for fast cloning, offloaded zero'ing,  and  ATS.

But only if your hosts are licensed at the  Enterprise+  level.      For everyone else, VMFS5 is not too interesting.

Aside from the fact, they removed  the 2TB LUN size limit.   But that's not an "aswesome feature" added to VMFS5,

that's a limitation/defect in VMFS that they corrected.

Yes there is a way to dismiss every single new feature out there and I am starting to wonder what you are trying to achieve. Saying that VMFS-5 corrected a defect is just not right. VMFS was completely re-engineered to support the workloads of tomorrow. Not only did the max LUN size went up to 64TB also Physical RDMs support this. On top of that the whole sub-block mechanism was changed to ensure your datastore would be capable of supporting many more VMs and subsequently files.

VAAI is part of Enterprise by the way. Check the licensing/packaging whitepaper.

For everything lower than enterprise+ just think enhancements like: vMotion SDPS, Storage vMotion Mirror Mode, New version of HA, enhancements to DRS/DPM, Data Recovery 2.0, vCenter Appliance, App Monitoring (open to the public), esxcli, Update manager enhancements, esxi firewall, swap2ssd, splitRxMode, multi-nic vmotion etc. And I am just naming a few of the enhancements that vSphere 5.0 brings.

[scowse]

As posted earlier, this really is the "Rolls Royce" marketing model. Millions of people have tossed and turned at night refusing to accept the fact that they really could not afford one.

Get over it, move on and try as hard as you can to enjoy the clunker that is within your means

[LockAze]

Can someone please explain to me, when I want to deploy some of our smaller servers to our customers, example: 3 servers with 1CPU 6Cores and 32Gb ram pr. server (a total of 96Gb for all three servers) what license would I then have to buy to use all of my ram? I'm wondering because I want to know if I should deploy VMware or if I should go for XenServer.

[RogerThomas]

LockAze wrote:

Can someone please explain to me, when I want to deploy some of our smaller servers to our customers, example: 3 servers with 1CPU 6Cores and 32Gb ram pr. server (a total of 96Gb for all three servers) what license would I then have to buy to use all of my ram? I'm wondering because I want to know if I should deploy VMware or if I should go for XenServer.

For this you would just purchase the Essentials edition, which covers up to 3 servers with a max of 6 CPUs and 192GByte vRAM - while many people have been hit by all the changes the configuration you are looking to licence will not be effected as you will have room to grow unless you need to over commit memory by 100%.

[hmtk1976]

Assuming you're not doing memory overcommitment you should be fine with Essentials/Essentials Plus.  3 hosts with max 2 CPU's each and a hard limited vRAM pool of 144 GB.  If your VMs don't need more than 144 GB vRAM you're fine.  You get the 144 GB regardles of whether you use 1 CPU or all 6.  Or you can get 3 vSphere Standard or Enterprise Plus licenses and a vServer Foundation.

If VMware would license vRAM only you could have been ok with a single Enterprise Plus 🙂

[hmtk1976]

Oops.  I was still counting 24GB/socket for essentials.  Must be my new contact lenses giving me a headache.  192 GB for Essentials (Plus) is correct of course.

[RogerThomas]

hmtk1976 wrote:

Assuming you're not doing memory overcommitment you should be fine with Essentials/Essentials Plus.  3 hosts with max 2 CPU's each and a hard limited vRAM pool of 144 GB.  If your VMs don't need more than 144 GB vRAM you're fine.  You get the 144 GB regardles of whether you use 1 CPU or all 6.  Or you can get 3 vSphere Standard or Enterprise Plus licenses and a vServer Foundation.

If VMware would license vRAM only you could have been ok with a single Enterprise Plus 🙂

You missed a memo

The upper limit was raised from 144GByte to 192GByte when VMWARE changed the rules last week.

[J1mbo]

> Saying that VMFS-5 corrected a defect is just not right.

What was said was "they removed the 2TB LUN size limit...But that's not an "aswesome feature" added to VMFS5, that's a limitation/defect in VMFS that they corrected".

This analysis does seem quite fair on the basis that VMFS4 was very obviously lagging in this area - all other major file systems addressed this years ago.  It was certainly a limitation; and it would cetainly have become a defect (unfit for purpose) over time, if it wasn't already.

Anecdotally, the issue also popped up frequently in the ESXi 4 forum nearly as often as "why is my write speed so low".

[LockAze]

For my part it will be "almost like a free lunch" just $495 for the essentials pack + $1500 for vCenter Server Foundation. That's $1000 cheaper than XenServer. I really don't like the vTax but for now it will be ok for my part.

[RogerThomas]

LockAze wrote:

For my part it will be "almost like a free lunch" just $495 for the essentials pack + $1500 for vCenter Server Foundation. That's $1000 cheaper than XenServer. I really don't like the vTax but for now it will be ok for my part.

No need for the $1,500 cost of vCenter Server as essentials comes with it as standard.

     http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/small-business/features.html

[LockAze]

So only $500...? That was actually really cheap for my part.