VDM and VDI licensing

[Dave_O]

I have got my head around the VDI licensing apart from the VDM server part.

How is the VDM server licensed?

I already have VI enterprise (3x 2CPUs) & VirtualCentre Enterprise

If I purchase the VDI starter kit, my understanding is, this gives me one ESX enterprise server (I assume 2CPUs), VC foundation (which I don't need) and a/some VDM license(s)

My questions are;

1. Do you get an ESX license file in the same way as for the server version ie a license file to add into to VC and you just ensure that only desktop machines reside on the ESX server? Or is it licensed in some other way?

2. How many VDM server manager licenses does this entitle me to. 1 more than 1?

We will be using 4 VDM servers.

Should I buy 1 x VDI starter kit and 10 x VDM 10 desktop licenses? to give me 10 VDM server licences?

What is the best (ie cheapest) way of licensing for our setup?

[Evileye]

The VDI bundle includes:

VMware Virtual Desktop Manager, VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Enterprise Edition for VDI, VMware VirtualCenter Server Management Server

With the VDI bundle you are paying for all of the infrastructure required to host the amount of concurrent users you bought. The initial bundle includes 100 users, and you buy more with VDI Bundle add-ons. You are allowed to deploy as many ESX servers required to accomodate your desktop load, but they can only host desktops.

If you already had enough capacity on your existing ESX servers, or wanted to host both servers and desktops on all ESX servers, you would buy VDM separately from ESX and Virtual Center.

Example:

VDI bundle for 100 users - approx $18000 (nothing else required)

a la carte VDM for 100 users - approx $6000 plus you must separately buy/have the VC and ESX licenses required

You need to do the math for your environment to see what works best.

My guess is if you were using servers that had a very high virtual desktop density, the a la carte method would be cheaper.

In the above example you would approximately 'break even' if you used two dual-socket servers hosting 50 desktops each and used your existing VC.

[Dave_O]

Thank you for your reply Evileye.

This has changed my whole perception of the licensing.

OK. At present I have one ESX server with virtually no load. Can I therefore buy the starter pack and 100 VDM licences and host these 100 VMs; 50 on my spare ESX server and 50 on the ESX from the starter pack or is the ESX from the starter pack limited to 10 in which case the VDI bundle is a better option?

I agree that any subsequent scaling out eg another 100 VM it is more cost effective to buy the VDI bundle because realistically you will put the 100 VMs on 2 maybe 3 ESX servers.

Also

As we are a school, machines are clustered in rooms of approximately 25 units. We are using the Wyse V10L thin clients which do not allow you, at present, to select a cluster of machines, they just choose the first available machine (unlike the web or PC client). We are, therefore, having to build a VDM broker server (virtual) for each cluster (room) of machines and point the V10L unit to the appropriate broker server (using the mac address through the include=$mac in the wnos.ini). Do I assume that we can have, like the ESX servers, any number of VDM broker servers and licenses to service up to the number of licenses acquired? Unless someone knows of a way to connect V10L machines to a particular cluster of machines from one broker server?

[patrickrouse]

Not sure about the capabilities of VDM2's broker, but with our connection broker (Virtual Access Suite - Desktop Services Edition) one can publish desktops or seamless applications to AD or Local users, AD or Local groups, AD OUs, Client IP Address Ranges or Client Naming Conventions. With this one can easily connnect different client devices to different Desktop Groups, or individual desktops. We use the VMWare SDK to automate and extend Virtual Center features.

Patrick Rouse

Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

SE, Western USA & Canada

Quest Software, Provision Networks Division

(619) 994-5507

http://www.provisionnetworks.com

[mattcoppinger]

Dave,

VDM 2.0 supports authentication against Active Directory, so any users and groups in an AD domain (or trusted domain) maybe entitled to a desktop or pool - regardless of where they access the virtual desktop from.

How are you authenticating/entitling users? Why do you need a cluster of V10L's to point to a specific Broker?

In your environment can you simply entitle students to a persistent pool? This way it ensures your students get the same desktop regardless of which room they sit in? When the V10L authenticates to the broker the student is given their personal (or a shared one in non-persistant pools) desktop from the pool. Is there a use case where a student will have multiple desktops?

I believe the licensing allows you to deploy as many connection brokers as you need.

If needs be contact me directly and I can discuss this with you.

Patrick, with all due respect, this is a VDM 2.0 forum and probably not an appropriate medium to be advertising your own product.

Regards,

Matt

[Dave_O]

Matt

It's not the desktop that is the issue. All students get the same desktop regardless of device, set in group policies. The issue is that there is a printer in each room which uses the first three characters of the machine name to attach to it at login eg printer in room C11 is called "C11". Machines assigned to this room are named C11-37827, C11-74378 etc (ie C11- created from a syspreped template and assigned to the C11 machine pool. The Wyse V10L does not allow (at present) selection of a specific pool so we have to create a single pool on each broker and point the client at the appropriate broker server using the wnos.ini include=$mac directive.

Dave O

[mreferre]

Dave,

we have had similar conceptual issues with printers mapping etc etc etc (see here: )

I understand that you are trying to manage this from within the XP vm (i.e. you map the local printer as a network printer at logon?). We have decided for a different strategy. We map the printers on the thin clients (using custom the $mac / $ ip variables...) and then the printer mapping gets exported into the VM via the RDP channel. The only difference is that we are using locally attached printers whereas you would need to configure the ThinOS to map a network printer. Not a big deal of a difference.

Also ... since you can group thin clients in similar configurations per room...you might find the Wyse Device Manager Default Device Configuration feature handy ... (BTW I hate WDM .. but here it >might< be of some use...).

Hope this helps... not even sure I understood the background...

Massimo.

[mattcoppinger]

Dave,

Massimo brings up a good point. You could enumerate the client IP/computer name using something like vbscript on logon (to the Virtual Desktop) and map a network printer accordingly. This would save you having to map thin clients to different brokers purely for location aware printing.

Regards,

Matt

[lhundt]

Hey Dave,

Which school do you work for? We are using VDM 2.0 as well at the college I work for. Shoot me an email at lhundt@gsc.edu

Thanks!

Lance

[Dave_O]

Massimo

I have had a mess around with the printer settings in wnos.ini and $mac files, with little success. The SMB1 printer settings drop you out of the windows session (when you try and print from there) and back into WNOS with a request for credentials despite having put them in, in the ini file. On entering credentials the unit stays in WNOS and the Windows session is minimised to an icon and cannot be retrieved. The unit needs to be reset.

Any help on this would be appreciated.

example of ini print command

Printer=SMB1 LocalName=C11 Host= Name=C11 PrinterID="What ever the printer is" Class=PCL5 Username=administrator Password=********* Domain=acme.co.uk

this works when you test print from WNOS (apart from the fact the it asks for credentials despite being already being given as above)

also tried LPD1 as above

[mreferre]

Dave,

mh.... I don't have an answer but it would sound something that a Wyse engineer can help debug/solve easily ..... sounds a misconfig problem to me.... although I can't say where it is.

If you have a Wyse contact to work with I am sure he/she will be able to help.

Massimo.

[nkrick · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your reply Evileye.

This has changed my whole perception of the licensing.

OK. At present I have one ESX server with virtually no load. Can I therefore buy the starter pack and 100 VDM licences and host these 100 VMs; 50 on my spare ESX server and 50 on the ESX from the starter pack or is the ESX from the starter pack limited to 10 in which case the VDI bundle is a better option?

I agree that any subsequent scaling out eg another 100 VM it is more cost effective to buy the VDI bundle because realistically you will put the 100 VMs on 2 maybe 3 ESX servers.

You do not need the VDI Starter Kit at all if you are going to purchase the VDI Bundle. The VDI Bundle includes everything you need, and then you purchase VDI Bundle Add-ons to purchase additional concurrent clients in 10 packs. The VDI Bundle includes ESX licensing for up to 8 CPUs (running XP or Vista clients only). The VDI Bundle Add-ons includes ESX licensing for 2 CPUs. Also, in case you didn't know, VDM uses concurrent licensing, you only need the number of licenses for current desktop (VM) connections that you will have at any one time. If you need 100 desktops, but will only ever have 50 concurrent connections at a time, you can use the VDI Starter Kit + 10 VDI Bundle Add-on's to get up to 50 concurrent users. The VDI Starter Kit includes ESX licensing for 2 CPUs, so you would have 10 CPU's total in the above example. If you do not need any ESX licensing, you can go with the cheaper VDM Starter Kit + VDM Bundle Add-ons.

As far as VDM "server" licensing goes, the purchase of the VDM concurrent desktop licensing grants you the ability to install VDM with as many replica servers and security servers as your environment needs. One "instance" of VDM with replicas will give you the ability to host seperate "environments" for seperate classrooms.

The vendor that we purchase our VI licensing from was able to send me a very informative PowerPoint presentation (from VMware) that includes all the information. I will attach it to this post since there does not seem to be any vendor/customer or proprietary information in it.

Message was edited by: nkrick

[Dave_O]

nkrick

Thank you for your most comprehensive answer to the licensing issue. Having read through many pages of information, no where have I seen a more transparent answer to this issue. It has saved many hours of searching and stopped me wasted money on inappropriate licensing.

Thank you again

Dave O

[mreferre]

It is my feeling that this new VDI pricing model is as broken as the old VDI (very broken) pricing model.

So with 1500$ you have an entitlement for 10 users and 2 CPU's (sockets). This makes 150$ per each user wich includs the broker piece (that you could buy separetely "ala carte" for 50$) and the hypervisor support.

Problem is that with 2 sockets (i.e. 8 cores) you are wasting a great deal of computational power. You will get 10 users on that 2 sockets box and your system will be likely utilized at 10/15% (in fact it's almost one core per user). If you are not interested in DRS / VMotion / HA (which for a VDI solution I don't see as critical as per server workloads - especially if you implement VDI pools) you can even use VI3 Foundation / VI3 Standard licenses which will allow you to host at least some 4 users per core (i.e. 32 users on two sockets). If you do the math and you add the cost of the VDM broker license ala cart it will turn out to be much cheaper then the 150$ per user.

Depending on the profile of your users you might find even cheaper to buy the non VDI VI3 Enterprise (with all fireworks). Supposing 8 users per core (if I remember well I read a VMware document that was suggesting that ratio) you get 5500$ / 64 users = 85$ (+50 for the VDM broker) = 135$.

Massimo.

[nkrick]

Massimo,

In my VDI cluster, RAM is a larger concern than CPU's. I need additional ESX servers in the cluster so I have sufficient RAM for all the VM's running. I will admit that about half of the VM's are developer VM's so they have 1 GB of RAM which is more than most VDI machines would require. I also think that VMware wants to include enough ESX licensing so that companies can repurpose older hardware (single and dual core CPU 1U servers) to use for VDI as a way to "get their foot in the door" so to speak. While you could use a large 4 CPU quad core server with 128+ GB of RAM and then host 200 VDI sessions on it, that is not practical for many companies (the companies that the Starter Kit is aimed at). When I saw the licensing cost, I thought quite the opposite of you. For my environment, I can use the VDI starter kit plus 2 VDI add-on bundles which gives me 30 concurrent connections and 6 CPU's. This allows me to use older IBM HS20 blades. The sticker price to build this environment is around $5400 (including maintenance) which includes ESX licensing that would otherwise cost over $21000 (sticker again). For me, the only thing "broken" about the licensing is that VMware is basically giving away ESX licenses (I am getting 6 CPU's of ESX licensing for $3000, a $18,000 savings).

Perhaps coming from a hardware company (IBM) gives you a different perspective on the hardware side and how larger hardware can be used to host more users, making the VDI Bundle impractical. I think it is great that VMware is offering both options. A VDI bundle which includes the cost of ESX for environments using smaller, repurposed servers, and a VDM bundle which is more practical for environments purchasing large servers to host VDI. I think though, if you add up the cost of the hardware + the cost of ESX licensing + the cost of VDM licensing, the only time that the VDI bundle does not come out cheaper in the end is when you already have purchased the ESX licensing for your VDI environment.

[mreferre]

That's an interesting point of view... thanks for keeping me on track on real-life-challenges.

This has often been an internal debate on how many VMware customers purchase brand new hardware with their virtualization projects Vs how many VMware customers re-purpose old servers.

I think the answer is that it always depends. My feeling is that most customers are buying new kits for strategic/production deployments (I am not talking PoC or tactical deployments) because of a number of reasons bound to the very nature of this x86 platform. You seem to be the proof that this is not always true.

Sure one thing that must be mentioned is that it would be interesting to understand how much power savings (over a period of three years) you can get running 200 users on 20 servers Vs 200 users on 4 servers. I have met many customers that told me that they could buy servers + VMware licenses factoring in into the business case just the power savings... (not to mention expired maintenance on very old kits etc etc).

Thanks. Massimo.

[nkrick]

Massimo,

The long term savings of using fewer servers is an interesting point. Unfortunately, this is not a point that I have been able to sell anyone in my company on in the past. All of the power usage is so buried in the facilities cost, no one is willing to determine what the actual power cost of running our Data Center is, nor are they willing to look at power savings as a way to save money.

In my case, the HS20's were actually orignally deployed to run an application development environment during our ERP upgrade in ESX 2.5.x. Since then, the development, test, and production environments have been moved to more powerful servers (HS21 Dual quad core with 16 GB of RAM). So, I am re-purposing "old" hardware that has always been used to host ESX server. When the IT budget keeps getting cut (the Corporation wants the IT budget to be less than 3% of total sales, I think the industry average is 5-6%), re-purposing old hardware strains the budget much less than purchasing new hardware. Plus the energy cost of running the Data Center is not applied to the IT budget...

[nkrick]

Also, for us, when a server is purchased against a capital project, it generally takes 5 years to depreciate. When you start virtualizing servers less than 5 years old, that leaves a lot of non fully depreciated hardware out there that should be re-purposed before new hardware is purchased...

[mreferre]

I TOTALLY understand what you are saying.

Thanks for the insides.

Massimo.