vcpu or core ? change in esxi5

[suhag79]

i have purchased one of the product license based on cpu... i.e 2 cpu/socket license.....

Now when i create new VM for this product, it gives two option/combination.....core/socket.....

So my question  is how much cpu/core assigned to vm to meet license comliance ?

is their any way to add cpu/core in virtual machine dynamically? based on need....i m not talking about cpu share.....

regards,

suhag

[AWo]

The number of cores or vCPU's you assign to a guest is not related to the license. The license must fit to the number of physical CPUs in the host, regardless of the number of cores each CPU contains.

AWo

[suhag79]

this is applied to any product license policy? like oracle, rhel etc......

because,,,,,,,,as per  Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment....like Amazon Web Services – Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)........ customers are required to count each virtual core as equivalent to a physical core.

and what about  dynamically adding cpu/core in virtual machine? is it possible? i m not talking about cpu share.....

[AWo]

I talk about vSphere licenses. And you?

Oracle is a special thing, the database needs to be licensed for each CPU in the farm, actually used or not.

AWo

[suhag79]

yes, i m also referring vsphere5........amazone example was misleading.......so there is no thumb rule that 

"The license must fit to the number of physical CPUs in the host, regardless of the number of cores each CPU contains"

right?

[AWo]

Yes.

That is directly from the VMware license document:

VMware vSphere 5 Licensing:

Per-Processor with vRAM Entitlements
VMware vSphere 5 is licensed on a per-processor basis with a
vRAM entitlement. Each VMware vSphere 5 processor license
comes with an entitlement to a certain amount of vRAM capacity,
or memory configured to virtual machines. Unlike in vSphere 4.x
where core and physical RAM entitlements are tied to a server
and cannot be shared among multiple hosts, the vRAM entitlements
of vSphere 5 licenses are pooled, i.e. aggregated, across all vSphere
servers managed by a vCenter Server instance or multiple vCenter
Servers instances in Linked Mode.

Licensing Unit:

Per Processor (CPU) Like VMware Sphere 4.x, VMware vSphere 5 is licensed on a perprocessor
basis. Each physical processor (CPU) in a server needs to
have a least one vSphere 5 processor license key assigned to be able
to run vSphere. vSphere 5 license keys can be purchased, deployed
and managed in the same way they were with vSphere 4.x.

No Limits on Physical Resources
VMware vSphere 5 licensing removes all restrictions on physical
cores and physical RAM. This change eliminates barriers to deploying
VMware vSphere on new multicore server configurations, improving
customers’ ability to choose server hardware that best meets
their requirements

AWo

[PduPreez]

My 2 Cents

"The license must fit to the number of physical CPUs in the host, regardless of the number of cores each CPU contains"

That is correct, ESXi needs to be license for each CPU Socket

You can run Max 25 x vCPUs per physical core (not recommended)

Best practice is to run 4 vCPUs per physical core

You might need additional licenses to increase your vRAM entitlement pool

Some reading on licensing: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

vSphere 5 introduces vCores per vCPUs specifically for some software licensing requirement. (From Application Vendor side)

As AWo mentioned Oracle licensing is still based on physical CPUs in the whole cluster. This has to change soon

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