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SuperSpike
Contributor
Contributor

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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aroudnev
Contributor
Contributor

I made internal survey among developers, including east europe, and all offices freeze their plans to go with VMware 5 and now waiting what happens first

- VMweare remove their new licensing restrictions

OR

- they can't stay on Vmware 4 anymore (and need to go to the other products)

No one downloaded or plan to download VMWare 5, for this reason. The main killer is not even so much essential restrictions as Free version restrictions (8 GB per cpu makes it absolutely useless). They all use mixtures of free, essential and standard licenses so don;t having free version makes vmware almost useless for them.

Just to compare, all free versions 4 was upgraded to at least essential or standard (few which was not are going to be). No one plans to try Vmware 5 at all for now. At the same time, we got a few requests to purchase HYPER-V manager so I can guess what is going on on these remote sites.

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vmwareking
Contributor
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why dont u try Xensever???????????????????????????????????

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aroudnev
Contributor
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Because FOR NOW Vmware ESXi4.1 is better then XEN and do not have these dumb vRAM limitations. We just do not plan to go to VMWare 5,

at least if it will be licensed by vRAM and if free version have 8 GB per cpu limitation. We can use 4.1 for a few years and test other vendors for the possible change of provider (and save $$$ on support with Vmware , too - if we do not plan to go to 5 then we do not need support contract).

I personally am not annoying about install new product when it is released - if something satisfy me, why should I switch over? 2 TB limitatioon for the LUN is not a big deal - I can use external iSCSI or allocate a few 2 TB lun-s to VM and combine them on the OS level, and so on; and I do not see any other sugnificant benefits in ESX5i until we have a very new hardware which is not supported by 4.1 - and then we will have a lot of other VM vendors for sure... We have many Windows 2000 servers for example, they work well and I do not see why we spend time upgrading them if they work well (of course, not exposed to Internet and not high performance systems). The same with VMWare - ESX4 works well, why should I cause a problems to myself migrating to 5? In addition, I already got few negative reports about ESX5 compatibility from a few forums... (even not vRAM issue but simple after suspend/unsuspend my VM with oracle, I got damaged database files inside this VM - it was unusual combimation of OS but anyway...).

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AureusStone
Expert
Expert

Off topic but why would you ever suspend a DB server?  I wouldn't do that in 4 or 5.

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aroudnev
Contributor
Contributor

Not me.

But for example to move it from one VMWare host to another, sometimes. I did it few times (for dev servers of course).

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vmwareking
Contributor
Contributor

All software has its limits. here is the Config Max for XenServe 6 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131047

why are people so sensitive about software..

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hmtk1976
Contributor
Contributor

I was thinking the same.  You just don't suspend a DB server while the DB's are running just like you don't do a P2V with running DB's.  That's just stupid.

The free hypervisor can use 32 GB vRAM BTW.  Useful for basic testing and very small deployments but that's it.  Still, you should not expect a commercial company to keep on offering free products that compete with their paying products.  The word "naive" springs to mind.

If vSphere 4.1 supports Windows 8 I see many users sticking with 4.1 but if it doesn't they'll have to upgrade or switch platforms.  Hopefully there will be a vSphere 5 U1 or 5.1 with increased vRAM entitlements by then.  I'd really like a vRAM roadmap...  It's difficult planning like this.  we're going to stick with VMware for now but once Hyper V 3.0 hits the street we're going to have a really hard look at it and probably offer it as well.

For those who do not see a problem supporting Windows 2000 Server I wonder what does constitute a problem.  Maintaining dinosaurs like that is a problem whichever way you cut it.  Sure, it'll probably work but it isn't supported anymore and having one more OS to manage is PITA.  Too bad that it's often not easy to get rid of them if you run proprietery/old software.

As fo our customers there isn't a single one that is affected by the new vRAM entitlements.  They either have Enterprise and vRAM to spare or they're small enough that the 192 GB limit of Essentials (Plus) isn't a problem.  Still, that hard limit in Essentials is troubling.  If VMware were to offer vRAM packs I'd be far more comfortable to sell Essentials to customers if we could do that.  Standard is something we usually do not sell: our customers are either small enough for Essentials or big enough to want the features only Enterprise (Plus) has.

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J1mbo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

vmwareking wrote:

All software has its limits.   here is the Config Max for XenServe 6 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131047

why are people so sensitive about software..

Because we expect limits to increase with the technology rather than limit the use of it, certainly where there is no price advantage otherwise.  vSphere 4 entitlement (if you like) was at least 256GB per host, so Ess/+ had 768GB, now it has 192GB.  v4 has a shelf life of about 3 years IMO becuase of that, v5 will have inadequate headroom by the time it is realistically deployed almost anywhere because of Moore's Law.

This is the crux of the issue... vmware has priced in 100% revenue growth every 18 months, and expect us as architects/evangilists/professionals to be so stupid as not to notice this.

I'd go further still and suggest the driver is short-term gain for the current Directors, which sadly we see time-and-time-again, where there is no regard to long-term value but only a focus on a suitable golden handshake.  Stan O'Neal, Fred Goodwin, there are plenty of examples.  Only will we see a change to something sensible once the current Directors have moved on.

Hopefully that will happen before the market share has collapsed.

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vmwareking
Contributor
Contributor

yeah knew that already, but whats the problem with the XenServer limits again? vs v5 price

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tomaddox
Enthusiast
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vmwareking wrote:

why dont u try Xensever???????????????????????????????????

At this point, if you're the best that Citrix can do for guerrilla marketing, with your incoherent, illiterate spamming of this discussion every time someone brings up their concerns with the new licensing structure, I have serious doubts about Citrix's ability to deliver a quality product.

The people in this thread have been struggling with the challenge of how to handle a major upgrade and licensing change when they already have significant strategic or tactical investments in a particular technology platform. A forklift migration to another platform is non-trivial. Everyone is aware of the options, I assume, or can easily discover them, but most of us are using VMware because it offers us desirable features and just possibly because we like it. We don't want to migrate to a different platform because it's a lot of work and because it undoubtedly involves losing functionality. That said, many VMware customers are undoubtedly considering Xen and other competing products, so your "contributions" to this thread are actually hurting the Citrix cause.

Just thought you should know.

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sedilbur
Contributor
Contributor

Why do to plan to move in vpshere 5 ?

All new good stuffs are for Enterprise Plus host licensed...

I never plan to buy this kind of license...too expensive for what I can get (except for Distributed Switches but I can work without...)

Acceptable Solutions:

1) Vmware fuses Enterprise with Enterprise Plus at the cost of  Enterprise. (Also increases the vram entittlement and takes off  socket/core limitation)

So 1 licenses for one Esxi (whatever the number of socket/core)

2) Vmware give me all the hardware I need to run my bought vmware license.

Why  I need to buy the hardware and be over-licensed in the software part  limited in the socket PLUS vRAM used ? Emc wants me to buy 2 times my  licenses ?

3) Go back to the old licensing modele that take care only in my hardware specification.

(More  efficient because you bough your hardware and the licenses based on  socket number/core. Why vmware claims that "Vmware ballooning" is the  best part of vmware Infrastructure and then, customers need be pay back  for this functionnality now ?)

In other way:

I must buy redhat license, windows license...So vmware is very EXPENSIVE at this end.

I have 80% of windows machine...10% physical

20% of linux machines (All virtuals)

My bill reaches a high score with the actual Vpshere 5 licensing.

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hmtk1976
Contributor
Contributor

tomaddox wrote:

vmwareking wrote:

why dont u try Xensever???????????????????????????????????

At this point, if you're the best that Citrix can do for guerrilla marketing, with your incoherent, illiterate spamming of this discussion every time someone brings up their concerns with the new licensing structure, I have serious doubts about Citrix's ability to deliver a quality product.

The people in this thread have been struggling with the challenge of how to handle a major upgrade and licensing change when they already have significant strategic or tactical investments in a particular technology platform. A forklift migration to another platform is non-trivial. Everyone is aware of the options, I assume, or can easily discover them, but most of us are using VMware because it offers us desirable features and just possibly because we like it. We don't want to migrate to a different platform because it's a lot of work and because it undoubtedly involves losing functionality. That said, many VMware customers are undoubtedly considering Xen and other competing products, so your "contributions" to this thread are actually hurting the Citrix cause.

Just thought you should know.

Well, we all know that switching platforms is like changing a pair of socks, don't we 😉

Some people don't understand that we don't buy on specs or price only but also for the entire environment.  We use Backup Exec for example and our customers have usually purchased the VMware agent.  That costs money and there isn't an equivalent for XenServer or Hyper V so changing platforms would at least double our backup windows and make us lose other nice features.  And it goes much farther than that.  But it's just too easy to say that Hyper V/Citrix is cheaper and have decent configuration maximums too these days.  Personally I'm not going to put much time in XenServer because vSphere, even in its current licensing form, will do for the next few years and Hyper V 3.0 should be released sometime next year.  I think that will become a bigger contender than XenServer.

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wdroush1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

vmwareking wrote:

All software has its limits.   here is the Config Max for XenServe 6 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131047

why are people so sensitive about software..

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/

You mad?

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Radio1
Contributor
Contributor

Lets Build a car for the us that has an absolute top speed of 50mph.

Yes all software has its limits. I do not disagree totally with a limit on the vRam. I just don’t think VMware should steal capabilities that their loyal customers had and call it a good thing. I hope they fall on their face, there stocks drop and the idiot that came up with this idea find himself unemployed. I hope that this practice causes such a blow to the finances of the company (the only thing they really care about) that they never again attempt to punish loyalty. Yes all software has its limits, but you shouldn’t limit current capabilities and call it better.

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vmwareking
Contributor
Contributor

I don't care if u buy xenserver or not,

Why get personal. It's just software!!!!

Just trying to understand your opposition to xenserver 6.

Is this the whole Mac vs pc guy thing. Well u should get a life. Removing my self from this stupid thread.

I use what ever software that meets business requirements not my own personal whims. The vmware directors understand lazy admins nature and reaping the rewards.rude prick

Sent from my iPhone

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kcucadmin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The message or an attachment did not reach the intended recipient(s).

Subject: New message: "vSphere 5 Licensing"

From: communities-emailer@vmware.com

To: rsamples@kcurology.com

Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:56:46 -0600

Reason: content policy violation

Action: quarantine

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hmtk1976
Contributor
Contributor

Damn, and I thought iPhones had spell checkers...

If you insult someone at least try to get your grammar and spelling right.

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tomaddox
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

vmwareking wrote:


Removing my self from this stupid thread.

Victory! :smileycool:

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wdroush1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

vmwareking wrote:

Is this the whole Mac vs pc guy thing.

[...]

Sent from my iPhone

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

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IT_Architect
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

WOW!  Quite a thread.  I read about 8 pages.  I was CTO at two large companies before founding a consulting business.  I use ESXi  on our VMware web servers.  I am not negatively impacted by the change  in licensing because of their size.  I do understand VMware's need.   However, what they have devised to address that need causes more problems than it fixes, as is evidenced here and elsewhere.

The version 5 licensing model cannot possibly work for a multitude of reasons.
1.  There are those that defend it by telling us to get a better handle  on real memory  requirements.  Anybody who has managed IT knows that  isn't the real world.  In the real world, VM A is busy at one time, and  VM B at another.  The memory  requirements declared during the setup of VM A  and VM B must be set to the max each will need for both now, and a reasonable time period into the future.  That is what makes it possible for VMware to over-subscribe memory, one of VMware's advantages, and part of its advertised value proposition.  The incredibly obvious  problem with the new  licensing scheme is it uses the DECLARED memory,  rather than memory actually used.  This results in them being vTaxed on memory they don't even have, and expensive IT assets being employed to pursue the elusive minimum amount of memory necessary for each VM to prevent as much over-subscription of memory as possible.

2.  Because of the continuing drop in RAM prices, operating  systems  and software freely use RAM to avoid disk accesses, provide increased scalability, and reduce development costs.  RAM has not been a reliable indicator of benefit derived for a very long time.

3.  VMware talks about advances in  hardware undermining their licensing scheme, and then attempt to fix it by gearing the license to a physical CPU and RAM, which contradicts their own logic.  It doesn't even take into consideration the power of the CPU.  RAM, as I've previously mentioned, has a very loose correlation to the benefit derived.  What if they are running SSDs?

A recommendation that I made on  another thread is devising a  documented, verifiable, measurement of CPU computing  units.  VMware is in a  perfect position to limit performance across a  cluster, and log when, where, how much, and for how long performance was limited by license.  It would be the perfect upsell tool to sell more computing units for VMware, and an equitable way to quantify and charge for value received, both for VMware, and customers who charge back their customers based on use.  It would no longer matter to VMware if customers wanted to use 50 P4s, or 5  high-end XEONs, nor would the license be impacted by advances in hardware capabilities.  They could adjust the cost per computing unit downward slightly with each new version to entice customers to upgrade, and maintain them on their maintenance programs.  They could adjust their price at any time to keep their competition weak  and emaciated.

Quite often when companies achieve a  certain level of success, they lose sight of the source of their  revenue.  Salesmen tend to believe that their sales skills, company good  will, and superior product will make the sale to the CFO on the golf course.  That game hasn't worked in ten years.  Business owners learned that they don't have the skill sets necessary to make technology decisions.  Businesses hire or retain people like myself and the people on this thread to tell them what to buy.  We make the business case for the product, and that's what gets purchased.  The business owner opens the door for the salesman after the sale has been made.  VMware stock holders can  ignore your wrath against version 5.0 licensing, but they will do so at  their own peril.  If you guys make big investments in learning and time  to get another product to work for you, VMware will need to make much greater sacrifices to gain your business once you've developed other options.

EMC's storage products are vulnerable to competition from startups.  VMware does a lot to stabilize EMC's value.  Microsoft and CITRIX invested cubic cash to pitch Hyper-V and XEN as the premier virtualization platforms a couple years ago.  As a result, VMware wasn't  even a supported option on the list at most data centers.  It took VMware quite a bit of time, effort, and sacrifice to dig themselves out of that.  Since then, Hyper-V and XEN have faded in mind share.  However, the new 5.0 licensing is for Hyper-V and XEN, what Vista had been for the MAC.  Microsoft/Vista, not Steve Jobs, built the MAC market share.  Microsoft/Hyper-V has been  quick to mobilize their drummers and capitalize on the near universal  dissatisfaction with version 5's licensing.  I found the link to this thread on what turned out to be a pro Hyper-V site, while Googling for VMware licensing information.  While some have suggested that VMware might be better off with fewer, higher paying customers, the flip side to that is guys like you dictate the direction of the lost-customer revenue stream, which in turn feeds the competition, one of which has deep pockets, excellent marketing, and boundless tenacity.  To kill a monster always requires greater sacrifice than ensuring you never create it in the first place.  Any study of Microsoft's history reveals they innovate very little, they pioneer no markets, and they are very adept at exploiting industry pioneer's missteps.  Time and again, companies have simply given away the rewards due them for the risk and sacrifice of pioneering a market, by implementing poorly thought out business decisions.

VMware has a business-killer of a problem on their hands.  It may make them appear incompetent in the short-term to adjust their licensing yet again, but not nearly as incompetent as if they allow the current licensing scheme to hit their bottom line and market share.  VMware needs to start beating drums about a 5.1 version, due to come out soon, that incorporates a logical licensing scheme, that does not penalize their customer base, and preserves VMware's mind share and market share.

I see this misstep as a golden opportunity to introduce an industry-first licensing scheme that doesn't require a degree in computer mysteries to understand, and is usage-based so it can provide revenue for VMware and a positive ROI for the customer, at any usage level.  That would be the design of the perfect trojan-horse of a licensing scheme that could open the gates of data centers everywhere.  It has the potential to help make VMware the "Windows desktop" of the virtualization world.  VMware has tremendous potential.  I can think of ideas off the top of my head of how to make VMware a "no-brainer" while making people giddy about contributing to VMware's revenue.  I've been accused of having too much energy, curiosity, creativity, and implementing changes faster than people are comfortable with.  But, with a product with the potential of VMware, I would think their employees would be getting speeding tickets while driving from the gym to work out of eagerness to get there.

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