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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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tomaddox
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Enthusiast

rgard wrote:

This forum serves as a method for speaking with VMware and the Community as a whole.  If VMware is not actively monitoring this huge complaint thread that serves as more justification to walk away.  We should not have to contact our reps, as this method is more public and we can all see each others complaints and experiences as well as the response from VMware.  I urge everyone to keep this discussion as public as possible.  If you speak with 'reps', please also do so here as it will serve to keep them honest if you will.

This thread is currently #2 on Google for the search term "vSphere 5 licensing," right after the licensing PDF itself, which means that it will get people's attention. That should get VMware's attention, and it should give us all incentive to keep this thread active

VMware: we don't want to change platforms. It's a costly and difficult task, but you are essentially giving many of us no choice and making it compelling for many others. Not only that, potential customers are very likely to see this thread, and if they even skim it, they will see what you've done to alienate your existing (and previously very loyal) customers and walk away.

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RobertK20111014
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Bottom line of what I get as a message from VMWare is that their solution is no longer future proof. If they can screw our plans once, they can do it again. I have bought 3y SnS to be foture proof for at least 3 years. Now I have nothing after just 5 months.

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aroudnev
Contributor
Contributor

Real world data are about THE PAST. They have absolutely, !ABSOLUTELY!, nothing about the future plans. If I have system ALREADY I don't need Vmware 5 at all - I am already done.

But if I plan new systems I'll purchase TOMORROW-s server and it will not have 16 GB of RAM but will have instead 128 GB (maybe even 256 GB) of RAM, and here I have 10x to 20x price increase which means, again, switching to XEN or others. Does anyone in VMware understood it - you SHOULD NOT use data from the PAST but you MUST use data from the FUTURE. Does Vmware understand that their new licensing made already a HUGE damage to the company reputation and alreay made a very goo (just excepllent) promotion for theXEN and Hyper-V products?

Real world data has been used indeed John.

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JZadmin
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Contributor

Just came across this forum today.  I've been digesting this new license scheme since it was released and wondered what other people's opinions were, glad to see I'm not alone.  In our existing environment we actually come in well under the vRam allocation required, however that's only in our existing environment.

We've been spec'ing 48gb of ram to a 6 core cpu for our new systems which is exactly enough for an Enterprise Plus license.  However, as soon as a higher density core cpu becomes available we'll no longer be able to maintain that ram/core ratio without buying additional licenses.  We've been using VMware as a "green" initiative at our company and this whole licensing scheme would seem to classify as a "brown" initiative.  If I'm having to pay for these additional licenses anyway, why not expand physical servers out to take advantage of the extra cpu socket that's being wasted.  That's more data center space and more heat generated, but hey, now I'm not wasting my cpu licenses just to have a bit of extra ram.  With this whole model, the need to have any tie back to a physical cpu socket seems pointless.  Pick one method please, don't try and double dip.

We had a very large initiative for virtualization coming that was going to be pushing 100+ VMware physical hosts, and we fought very hard to get VMware chosen as the hypervisor for this project because we were already familiar with it and had proven it to work extremely well, despite the premium it would cost to run it in VMware versus Hyper-V or Xen.  We now have to completely re-open this project for re-design because our licensing costs for that project will multiply infinitely higher.  The money we'll save on the licensing with a competing product will probably pay for any additional power or rack space used.

We will certainly be speaking with our VMware reps to go through proper channels, but power to the people, this is a great discussion.

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elaurs
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

one question - I have seen several tools/scripts to run to get an idea about how we will be affected by the new

license change.

Is VMware working on a official tool/script for this? If yes, when will it be released?

I just want to make sure that my numbers are bulletproof before contacting our TAM.

Thanks.

Enrico

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ITDir
Contributor
Contributor

ROFL...  Whew... what a good laugh <wiping away tears>

Just got a canned answer from our VMware rep who is honestly trying to help...  Comments are in blue.

100% of the customers I’ve talked to so far, started off with concerns that the new licensing model would be more expensive.

100% of their concerns were alleviated, after they:

  • Reviewed the material below (links to the lame prerecorded webinars)
  • Gathered real data about their environment (again, VMware users stop what your doing and go use a tool...)
  • Followed up with me for lingering questions (showed the picture of a 2x dual socket env with 64GB each and how with 8 POWERED OFF hosts, the enviornment was comfortably at the 96GB vRAM limit)

The funny thing is I just purchased several Cisco UCS servers with 192GB of RAM... (total pRAM, 384GB) and am getting ready to add another one.  Based on what I just purchased, tell me if I should laugh or cry about VMware's "Clarification of Details"...    Better not purchase standard licenses since "10x Standard licenses = 240GB of Pooled vRAM" still isn't going to cut it (Version 4.1 would have been 6x Standard licenses for my 3 hosts)...  Smiley Happy

Clarification of Details

These are the details that need clarification most often.

  • Physical Host – No more limitations on Cores or RAM! (and no more limit on how much VMware is going to take you to the cleaners)
    • Unlimited Cores per CPU
    • Unlimited Physical RAM
  • vRAM = the configured RAM of a Virtual Machine
    • Only Powered on VMs consume your vRAM entitlement *Picture Below - #1*(the example picture shows 25% of VMs powered off)
    • vRAM is Pooled across all hosts *Picture Below - #2* (2x dual socket env with 128GB total pRAM)
    • All the licenses in your vCenter environment will "pool" together.  As long as you are equal to or less than your vRAM Total, you will be in compliance. 
    • Example: 10x Standard licenses = 240GB of Pooled vRAM to use across ALL hosts for Active/Running VMs.
  • How much vRAM am I using today?
  • Overprovisioned vRAM
    • VMware’s philosophy of optimization, efficiency and doing more with less saves our customers money.  Overprovisioned VMs do not follow this philosophy & create drag that keep datacenters from running at their true potential.   
    • Because VMware is so good at Memory Management, many customers allocate a TON of vRAM or use the same amount of RAM they had on their physical box. 
    • It’s time to Optimize your environment!

For some odd reason, each time I get fed this type of "stuff" from VMware, I feel strangely like I have been kicked in the guts.

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egray
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Enthusiast

An official VMware tool will be provided soon.

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MrSyslogd
Contributor
Contributor

I hope it deals when you have more than one linked vCenter with SRM. The blessed tool did not product valid results last I tried.

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scowse
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

GVD wrote:

I've received confirmation from VMWare that a vRam licensing impact team has been created, made up of management and Tier 2 and Tier 3 licensing agents.

Of course, simple claims from this thread will not be enough to sway anyone at VMWare into changing their licensing terms. I can only encourage you to explain your specific situation to the VMWare Licensing Support team. If possible include the results of their "script", but if that is not possible or not relevant to your situation: send them your particular story (current issues, planned purchases, future compliance issues,...).

If enough people do this, we might see a change in at least a few areas, though I'm not nearly naïve enough to expect big changes.

I still detect the slight-of-hand of the marketing department here in naming it the "vRAM Licensing Impact Team".

The accounts department would have named it the "Loss Minimisation Team - LMT"

The PDT department would have named it the "Disaster Recovery Team - DRT"

The shareholders would have named it the "Save Your Jobs Team -SYJT"

etc

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egray
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Actually, VMware would not have had to up the core limits.  Users of 16-core CPUs would need to apply two Ent+ licenses per CPU.

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aroudnev
Contributor
Contributor

Oooo......

(Under my desk, wiping away tears...)

I knew that Vmware sales are not very good, but this answer... Ok, yes, turn off your hosts, change memory to the low limits, etc etc.. all JUST NOW... Or better switch to XEN or MS Hypervisor or (much easy) install 10 free ESXi 4.1 and stay with them forever (I can write my own VC for them, exactly as I aleady wrote my own VCB backup system for them instead of dumb consolidated backups).

Thanks for showing it. Smiley Happy

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aroudnev
Contributor
Contributor

>> Eric: An official VMware tool will be provided soon

Eric, you never got the point. You official tool is almost useless. This is because if we DO HAVE systems today, we can stay with them withiout version 5. But if we make a design for the new installations, then we don't need your tools; it is 100% obvious that new model is not acceptable at all (even today, with 64 or 128 GB RAM per 2 cpu servers) and it became even less acceptable in a few years! I will have 2 sockets, 4 / 6 cores per socjket, 64 - 128 GB RAM servers in 1/2 year; I can expect memory oversubscription from 1.2 to 3x; so I need 192 - 300 GB or vRAM; how much it will cost me if I run essential today with 4.1 and so pay about $3.5K for the essentail+ licenses and have all features, and if you can got the same from 2 other vendors for the less price? Any method to budget it, please - do you have a magic stick?

Customers can multiply and add the numbers... They are not an idiots.

A.

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Dracolith
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

You know...  VMware could save a lot of grief by including some  entire-environment  vRAM Entitlements with vCenter itself.

And establishing equivalencies  between editions, so there is just _one_ pool of vRAM.

The concept of having multiple "pools of vRAM" per edition is very confusing!

I suggest an equivalency, that _all editions_  managed by the same vCenter be in a common pool,

would be ideal, for example:

1GB standard level vRAM entitlement  =   0.34GB  enterprise level vRAM entitlement   (since standard is ~34% the cost of enterprise)

1GB standard level vRAM entitlement  =   0.28GB  enterprise+ level vRAM entitlement

or equivalently

  1GB vRAM Standard Edition =  1  "standard vRAM Unit" consumed

  1GB vRAM Enterprise           =   2.94 "standard vRAM Units" consumed

  1GB vRAM Enterprise+         =   3.57 "standard vRAM Units" consumed

  So for example, if I have an extra Enterprise license not assigned to any host,

  that provides an extra  32 * 2.94  =   94.08 standard vRAM units to the pool.

  If 26GB of extra vRAM is needed by an Enterprise+ host,  that consumes 94.08 standard vRAM units.

1GB enterprise+ level vRAM entitlement =  1.63GB enterprise edition vRAM

So for example, with that type of _actually flexible_ pooling available,

we could buy one Enterprise+ edition CPU license, to get  (48 * 3.57) = 171.36 "standard vRAM Units",

meaning 171.36GB of RAM  for a Standard Edition host.

Once vRAM were standardized into one pool, VMware could include "Standard vRAM units" with

the Kit/vCenter, e.g.

vCenter Essentials:   64 standard vRAM units for 3 hosts managed by kit  in addition to per-cpu entitlements

vCenter Essentials Plus: 128 standard vRAM units for 3 hosts managed by kit in addition to per-cpu entitlements

vCenter Foundation:  376  standard level vRAM entitlement in addition to per-cpu entitlements

vCenter Standard:   913 standard level vRAM entitlement   per vCenter instance in addition to per-cpu entitlements

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aroudnev
Contributor
Contributor

What the reason of using vRAM licensing at all? As you can see from discussions, no one really got benefits from it, and the reasonable entitlements starts with 128 GB per CPU - so why at all VMware changed pretty good licensing from 4.1 9which attracted many customers) to the totally broken vRAM model?

I don't think ,that they can fix the problem if they proceed to insist on vRAM licensing - customers have a choices TODAY so they wil just make promotion to XEN and Hyper-V if they continue this speculations that we know better then you, what do you need.

Maybe vRAM licensing make sense in the high end, but again only if the numbers are for the future (128 GB per enterprise cpu is absolutely minimum) and not from the past (8 and 24 GB - it is from the deep past).

And it is already obvious, that VMware will not get any benefits from new model, but instead will have a huge loses (in the customer base). They could place this game (with vRAM) maybe 10 year ago when there was not good alternatives, but not today.

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Baddos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I love the:

ITDir wrote:

  • Overprovisioned vRAM
    • VMware’s philosophy of optimization, efficiency and doing more with less saves our customers money.  Overprovisioned VMs do not follow this philosophy & create drag that keep datacenters from running at their true potential.  
    • Because VMware is so good at Memory Management, many customers allocate a TON of vRAM or use the same amount of RAM they had on their physical box.
    • It’s time to Optimize your environment!

Like people are running guest with gig or terabytes of over allocated memory. Even if they were, it's a switch that doesn't cost money. VMware is really going to be the social engineering tax cop?

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Dracolith
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Because VMware is so good at Memory Management, many customers allocate a TON of vRAM or use the same amount of RAM they had on their physical box."

What the?  No.   That is totally wrongheaded,  and it is terribly insulting and infuriating that they print such a thing!

It sounds  like someone at VMware doesn't know when to put a sock in it.  So they're deciding to try to grow the lie bigger?

That allocation of large amount of vRAM is some sort of admin error.  Their nose is getting longer, because it is oh just so obvious.

First of all,  just because  (XXXXXXXX)  application server is running inside a virtual machine does not suddenly mean that less memory is appropriate.      If you decide to "optimize" a VM  by  "right sizing"  its RAM,  this can lead to  unplanned downtime or service degradation,

when the reduced amount of RAM is insufficient   to keep up with growth,   burst usage,  or anomolies.

Reducing the RAM can also lead to a violation of vendor support agreements;  many applications will specify minimum specifications, and the minimum RAM requirement is not waived just because the server is virtual.

Second of all,  reducing physical RAM usage is not an optimization.  Normally,  optimal usage would be to achieve  utilization of all available RAM to facilitate better performance than slow disk storage.

The  _MORE_  of the physical RAM that is utilized for something useful,  the more efficiently the hardware is being utilized.

Physical RAM that is not being utilized to improve performance is memory "left on the table"   that could be providing high-speed cache for various applications in the environment!

The less percentage of the physical RAM on a host you are able to utilize, the LESS EFFICIENT the Hypervisor.

Configuration of VMs with large amounts of vRAM is the optimization.

Because RAM cached reads are faster than disk-based reads, and this is especially true for database, mail, file servers, java app servers, web servers, etc.

Until vSphere5,  this is 99% of what made  VMware's Hypervisor more optimal than competing Hypervisors.

You could achieve a higher capacity utilization of host memory.

From now on,  performance benchmarks with  vs5    will now need to include the caveat that most

physical RAM will be dormant, due to licensing restrictions.

Which would make vs5 horribly inefficient,  compared to even running the OS on bare metal.

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hellraiser
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Enthusiast

Lol, you seriously expect benchmarks to contain that kind of info?  They will concentrate on performance and high benchmark numbers, not tell potential customers that in order to get that kind of performance you need a ton of RAM and associated licences, making it more expensive than physical hosts Smiley Happy

Hellraiser...........>

JD
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pauskaa
Contributor
Contributor

Ignore me, faulty accusations

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hellraiser
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Still #2 this end, the dodgy number of posts is most likely due to this being such an insanely long thread - the google link takes you straight to this forum and thread in all its 69-page glory Smiley Happy

Hellraiser............>

JD
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pauskaa
Contributor
Contributor

Huh, it suddenly works again. My bad.

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