vSphere 5 free version 8 Gb vRAM limit...

[DJCORNI]

Did I get that right: I have a Fuji TX150 S7 with 16 Gb memory and one pysical CPU. With the free version of vSphere 5 it is only possible to use 8 out of that 16 Gb available RAM for running VMs. Is that correct?

If that is the case I will change back to XenServer oder Hyper-V. Just a year ago I changed from XenServer to ESXi (because it came preinstalled on a built in USB flash dongle with the server) but I think that I will have to go back to Xen if the memory limitations are as I understood them.

[J1mbo]

Yes, but of course the change doesn't affect 4.1.

To use the lot with v5, vmware would like you to purchase the Essentials bundle.

[DJCORNI]

Yeah ok... so $495 is to much just for something other products give me for free. During the next weeks I'll have a look at Hyper-V or I will use what I already know: XenServer.

[Bernd_Nowak]

8 GB for the free Hypervisor seems so wrong in terms of RAM. Most HP performance servers are shipped with even 12GB so 4 GB not usable? We have some small/medium customers which start their VMware experience with the free Hypervisor. But due to MS licensing we mostly sell Microsoft Enterprise for those servers which give us one physical and 4 virtual licenses. So in a small environment with Windows 2008 hosts and 2 6 core cpus around 16 24 GB RAM for 4 windows guests seems to be OK. But with ESX(i) free only allowing 8GB why should we use it?

If we install a Windows Hyper-V role and up to 4 VMs we can use as much RAM as we want

The reason why we tend to deploy ESX(i) one first is that the cost for NAS/SAN and more then one server for HA mostly are to expensive. Add the cost for Essentials Plus or Standard and it's to expensive for most at the beginning. Plus that in this segment and even in bigger ones where people have Enterprise versions either the SAN/NAS storage is a SPOF or the people don't know the difference between HA and FT.

But this is OT

Would be nice if a VMware member could explain this. I can only imagine that they try to sell the base essential version which normaly have no real usage. OK, you have support and you can manage the single 3 ESX hosts from one console but that's it. Now with the free version limited to 8GB and the essentials allowing 24GB per CPU (48GB on a typical 2 cpu server) you need to buy at the essentials version. Instead of eleminating/restructering the essentials to one product which allows vMotion and HA, creating and deploying a vCenter appliance included in the package, they found a nice way to force those which want to use more then 8GB to buy a version.

[DJCORNI]

There's one thing that is not logical for me: Hyper-V from big Microsoft as well as XenServer comes for free with a huge feature set and without that limited vRAM. How will VMWare compete against them with that limited entry version.

Normaly every customer is using Microsoft Products so they already had to go through the Microsoft licence stuff. So why not to take one more MS product which comes for free: Hyper-V? As long as we talk about entry level systems (I used ESXi on my server just for things I don't like to have on a "real" server and for testing software and configuration options) competition is offering much more for free espeacially in terms of vRAM.

But the entry level things are often the entry point for going to virtualization for the important systems...

[J1mbo]

Bear in mind vmware have something like 80% market share in this space... so the gradual death of the free option seems only logical, meanwhile the others need to be free just to get a look in.

I just wonder whether the v5 Moores Law tax will make vSphere 5 vmware's Vista... in this case, as those that don't adopt early (so don't get more locked in), could be priced out altogether.  But obviously, their accountants who I'm sure are much clever than I am think otherwise.

[Ian97]

J1mbo, unfortunately that attitude is how Microsoft was able to turn Novell into a bit player during the late 90s and early 2000s.  They just got their product in the door and was able to undercut Novell at every turn.  These licensing changes seem to have opened up that very same door in this market.

[DSTAVERT]

ESXi Free became a popular small business virtualization tool. It would be reasonable for a business to at least buy the Essentials package.

[Bernd_Nowak]

Why? Because with Essentials Basic I have a centralised console if I prefer DAS instead of NAS (maybe don't have the funds for NAS)?

The only real advantage of the basic package instead of the free product does not give me as a customer that much more (esxi 3.5 and 4). IMO

That's why I would prefer only one essentials which has vMotion and HA. This would be great. With the new 8GB limit however ESXi free is more or less worthless today.

And like I said, if I run 4 Windows servers on a 2 * 6 core server with hyperthreading I would then prefer WIndows Enterprise and Hyper-V. IMO

But I'm not happy with this as I believe that the free ESXi version gives the customer enough inside view to later add a second server and maybe want to build some sort of HA.

PS: In direct answer. Yes ESXi free is used in small business but in my case you would not believe how hard it is to even sell a server and maybe to reduce the current hardware amount. I still have small companies which use servers like an old HP LH4 which is hosting the main oracle database. It was scheduled for next week to talk with the customer to ask if we should try to at least virtualize this and transfer it to an ESXi server. ESXi 5 development in case of licenses seems not that good to me.

[Soli201110141]

Do you rember Novell? Same fault ten Years ago.

My Suggestion for vmware:

Rent your products. The only way out of.

Sincerly

Soli

[wdroush1]

DSTAVERT wrote:

ESXi Free became a popular small business virtualization tool. It would be reasonable for a business to at least buy the Essentials package.

$500 essentials is worthless, might as well go with XenServer if you were forced into that.

$3,500 essentials is great for any SMB, you can't beat the price fo HA.

I like the free one, it lets you play (production system, eggs, one basket? meh...), sure some companies will run their production on it, we run our dev lab on it, but we're way more likely to stick our much more expensive and larger production system on it with HA later on because of that free system we played on.

Completely worth the tiny investment from VMWare, considering that stripping free is just going to get less people playing with VMWare at their office.

[scottyyyc]

As I've said in another thread, I think VMware is underestimating the amount of SMBs that use ESXi (free). You have to start somewhere, and for a lot of SMBs that usually means getting some production VMs on an ESXi host. Yeah sure, it might not be ideal, but you have to start somewhere. My company started out on a couple of ESXi boxes, finally moving to vSphere recently. Having a rediculous limitation of 8GB will simply mean people will look elsewhere. This is like Microsoft giving away a basic version of windows, but implementing some sort of insane limitation like 640x480 screen resolution and 16bit color. You can still "use" the product, but it's basically useless for any sort of real work.

VMware must really be wanting to push those Essentials bundles, I suppose they need to drum up some sort of reasoning for people to move up from the free license. Mind you, I would have to wonder who buys essentials, because for $500 all it really gives you is centralized management, which for what amounts to 1 to 3 hosts (and not being having anything like vMotion, DRS, etc, anyway) is trivial. They're obviously wanting $500 out of everyone who uses ESXi.

It really just boils down to this, a SMB, like mine (500 employees), will be looking for a virtualization solution. "Let's try VMware, I hear they're the king of the hill in the virtualization space. Hmm, their free product only allows 8GB RAM usage, that's useless, let's look at Xen or Hyper-V". That's exactly how the conversation will go - so in about 5 seconds, a company just reduced it's likelyhood of deploying VMware by about 90%. Once you get a half a dozen or dozen VMs going on something like Xen or Hyper-V, you're not just going to want to suddenly transition over to another platform. Unless your HA needs are extremely stringent, you're likely going to stay with MS or Citrix.

[rgard]

What the heck, 8 gb "vRAM" limit?  My desktop has 16gb of pRAM!  Give me a break VMware.  Look around, memory is huge these days.  This licensing model will not help grow your company.  Companies that do adopt it will be forced to downsize VMs, running them slow on less ram, being less productive... or PAY for speed.  That is just stupid.

Your company was built on density of machines, over allocation, etc.  This model smacks all your customers in the face that bought huge servers and stuffed them full of inactive machines.  Development environments the world over are now looking to exit stage right!

With SSD drives it might be simply better to have VMware swap like crazy on a tray of SSD's versus write huge checks to 'true up' and pay extra support fees every year.

You know what I am also thinking... Because of this 8gb vRAM limit with free...  The workstation product might actually just be a better product now, it has no such limit!

[J1mbo]

> $500 essentials is worthless

Not really since it provides unlocked vCLI, vCentre (with its monitoring and alerting capabilities) and the ability to buy support on top of that.  And of course then 3rd party tools like Veeam can be used.

[J1mbo]

> Development environments the world over are now looking to exit stage right!

This does seem inevitable, with no non-production use licenses (that I can see).

> With  SSD drives it might be simply better to have VMware swap like crazy on a  tray of SSD's versus write huge checks to 'true up' and pay extra  support fees every year.

This though is the crux of the issue - the fees are against allocated vRAM, not physical RAM.  So in effect, vmware have killed vSwap to SSD (and overprovision in general) in a stroke.

[wdroush1]

J1mbo wrote:

> $500 essentials is worthless

Not really since it provides unlocked vCLI, vCentre (with its monitoring and alerting capabilities) and the ability to buy support on top of that.  And of course then 3rd party tools like Veeam can be used.

I SSH all my boxes, and vCenter hardware monitoring would be useless on our 4 year old whiteboxes/ancient dying 3.5 boxes anyway.

It's basically $500 so I can babysit it, or $3,500 so I don't.

[Varazir]

is the limit only on the amount of memory you can assign to a Vm ?

[rickardnobel]

Varazir wrote:

is the limit only on the amount of memory you can assign to a Vm ?

8 GB to all VMs together.

[Varazir]

Well, do it count systems that are on or even turned off systems ?

[rickardnobel]

It is only for virtual machines powered on, but 8 GB maximum for all VMs together. Unless you have a two socket server, then you can use 16.