ESXi

I'm not sure if this has type of results thread has been started else where but I am interested to see what the real world scenarios are and how VMware's customers may or may not be affected.

Some nifty scripts have appeared that cut right to the chase and informs you if you are currently using more or less vRAM that you would be entitled to  under vSphere 5 licensing rules.

Check the scripts out here and post your results!!!

Cheers!

-Justin

Edit:

It is worth noting that as Hugo mentioned on his blog, his script "assumes the environment is homogeneous, so uses only one type of edition."  I've also had feedback that it does not take into consideration how many CPU licenses are registered in vCenter.  Rather it looks at how many CPU licenses are in use by the hosts managed by vCenter.  What that means is that if you own 36 CPU licenses but are only using 22 CPUs, the calculation will be based off of 22, not 36.

I am getting nothing from this script

I added my VC name but I get nothing from it

is there something else I need to change? or add?

@kopper27:  I believe it requires vSphere 4.1, you can try another script that Hugo Peeters wrote.  Not sure if that has same requirement.

http://www.peetersonline.nl/index.php/vmware/calculate-vsphere-5-licenses-with-powershell/

I found the PeetersOnline script easier to use;

My present company is one of the lucky ones, we are using Enterprise licensing.

======
pCpu Count: 38
vRAM (GB):  482
======
Resulting license options:

Edition                                                Entitlement                                       Licenses
-------                                                     -----------                                            --------
Essentials/Essentials Plus/Standard       1 pCpu + 24 GB vRAM                     38 with 430 GB vRAM overhead
Enterprise                                             1 pCpu + 32 GB vRAM                     38 with 734 GB vRAM overhead
Enterprise Plus                                      1 pCpu + 48 GB vRAM                     38 with 1342 GB vRAM overhead
======

Do you have vSphere Standard licenses ?

If yes, the Key for that type was incorrect, I changed it to the correct licensekey value.

Unfortunately, there is afaik no enumeration (in the SDK Reference) that lists all the available licenseKeys.

For now I have

                                    licenseKey

Essentials                "esxEssentials"

Essentials Plus      "esxEssentialsPlus"

Standard                   "esxFull"

Advanced                  "esxAdvanced"

Enterprise                "esxEnterprise"

Ënterprise Plus       "esxEnterprisePlus

If i'm reading this correctly we are using 714Gb of vRam and have 1686Gb remaining. We have Enterprise Plus across the board, which means we are ok, but i still think for the extra cost of Enterprise Plus the 48Gb limit is too low, should be at least 64Gb,

yeah I am using vpshere 4.1 update 1

trying the other script

to tell you the truth I don't understand the results I might need to read this PDF for licensing

@kopper27

Depending on your license level you either have:

32GB of vRAM Overhead (Essentials,Essentials+, Standard)

96GB of vRAM Overhead (Enterprise)

224GB of vRAM Overhead (Enterprise+)

Either way it looks like you are good to go and won't need additional licensing when moving to vSphere 5 based on your environment (Powered on VM's) today.

Enterprise.(1-6 Cores per CPU).

@digitlman77

Your licenses give you 62GB of remaining vRAM to assign to Powered On VM's.

Wow.  EPIC FAIL.

My 2 cluster hosts have a total of 262GB pRAM  by themselves.

2 other hosts have a total of 75GB pRAM.

And by vRAM, they mean among all 4 hosts, an aggregate total of 62GB of vRAM may be used, right?

62GB is available for new guests.

Ahhh..you mean 62G is avail for *ALL* running guests, right?

You'll have 62GB you will be allowed/licensed to give out to new powered on VM's or existing powered on VM's.

Right, 62Gb maximum for all running guests.

Total for all my hosts.

That sucks.

No, that 62GB overhead (should actually be headroom - overhead sounds like it's unusable for VMs) is available in addition to whatever you have running at the moment (the 226GB line near the top).

Yeah, you are somewhat hosed if you want to use all of the physical RAM in your clusters. Join the club. :-(

Also using the other script my results are:

Here's a couple snips from our NON VDI vCenter Instances.  Looks like we're ready for vSphere 5 :smileyhappy:

Holy MotherF$%^$#

We are currently using 4x vsphere 4 Standard licenses currently on 2 hosts with 144GB of Physical memory between them (96GB on one and 48Gb on the other)

According to this page - http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/pricing.html

By using existing 4 Standard licenses I would still need to purchase 12 Standard Licenses (because I will need growth budgeted) thats $15000 best case...$12k if I push hard

Assuming vmware gave me upgrade pricing for difference between Enterprise and Standard for my 4 vCPU's and didn't increase my S&S thats still going to hurt.

Standard to Enterprise Licenses

4x upgrade licenses = $7520

I also need at least 2 extra licenses to growth:

8x$2870+S&S = $28744

Total upgrade coverage = $36264...even with discounts that $30k...

Standard to Enterprise Plus

4xUpgrade licenses = $10000

4xEnterprise Plus = $17476

Best case I get a deal for 24k or so....

Thats to provide me features I do not use...and to allow me to upgrade to vsphere 5...which for me, really means vmfs 5 functionality increase (ie larger then 2TB volumes..)

I obviously use my environment to the extreme...which is what I paid for vmware for...if I wanted to kinda use it I would have been on hyper-V already since I already paid for the datacenter licenses for these servers...I would have saved myself 10k upfront.

I want the high density consolidation which obviously works very well with vmware...but now after you get me hooked on crack you jack the price...

Realistically speaking, I do not purchase hardware to scale out because every server I add, at a minimum adds $500/month to my datacenter costs (not withstanding the lease costs for the hardware).  I therefore increase the RAM in my systems.

Obviously this means no revenue stream for vmware...I get it, I really do...

So..why not drop this stupid CPU count and go strictly with minimum host charge and then change me an incremental cost for vRAM increments (say 64GB)

At least then when I upgrade RAM, I can easily budget for the additional costs and you get a re-occuring revenue stream.

Hell, even if you said vRAM was sold in 64GB increments then I would only need to need to cover a couple increments of memory and since I would expect it to be closer to the $1000/64GB vs $3200, then I probably would not even squeek about $2k right now...

$12-30k...thats going to force me to move to Hyper-V...its not even in the same freaking ballpark pricewise...

Great script, worked inmmediatly and the results are:

vCenter        : vcenter.asvznet.nl
vRAMConfigured : 569.8
vRAMUsed       : 541.3
vRAMEntitled   : 960
LicenseType    : vSphere 4 Enterprise

Guess we already did some good sizing in the past.

Not running more than 15-20 VM's/host because we don't want to end up in the dark when the hardware fails :-)

André van de Werken

IT Consultant

Carante Groep

the Netherlands

======

The majority of our CPUs are now HP dual CPU blades with 96GB RAM.  These have been replacing older 32GB machines, and we're looking to remove the last of these - so the CPU count will drop to 40.  So we'll need to keep more Enterprise licences than we would have done or upgrade to Enterprise Plus, which we'll need to utilise all the extra physical RAM.

Bottom line is we're at best looking at a reducing on our planned savings or more likely an increase in costs :smileysad:  Fortunately, I guess, we were planning at costing Enterprise Plus to get some of the added features (host profiles and distributed switches really are needed now)

Paul

So, does this mean that I am using 226Gb total, and have compliance for 268?

It depends on what your license type is.

You either have:

(Essentials,Essentials+, Standard) - You'll need to buy one more CPU license

(Enterprise) - You have 62GB of vRAM overhead to use

(Enterprise+) - You have 206 GB of vRAM overhead to use

What type of licensing are you under?

Thanks!

-Justin

Since everyone is posting results you mines of well also cast your vote!

So far over 40% say it will cost them more money, in fact over 100%.  Pretty sick and there have been some good comments as well.

We will fall into the greater then 100% in licensing.  We are going to have to purchase an additional 47 licenses on top of 42....

http://virtualnoob.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/vsphere-5-licensing-cast-your-vote/

Please vote and lets see how it goes!

There is a difference between  'What you have now' and 'what you will need in next 2 years'.

Yes, JUST NOW we fit into ESX5 model. But RAM is cheap and we use our CPU only 10 - 20% so we plan to add more RAM into both big VMware cloud and few small Essential sites. Usual, non expensive dell 710R server need about 64 - 128 GB of RAM to utilize 100% CPU with small /medium size VM guests.

IT makes new license absolutely irrelevant and we definitely will never go to the ESX5 licensing; if enforced by dropping old model we will move to other technology. And I will never recommend Essential5 for purchase to anyone while I recommended it to 4 - 5 users (who come to VMware first and was distracted by their high prices for the beginners... before they learn about step by step way as Free -> Essential -> Standard). We easily run 128 - 200 GB of vRAM on DELL 710 in development staging and testing; new model makes it impossible to license (I will pay for the virtual things such as vRAM which never do exist.. thank you).

To be relevant, new mode must allow average of 4x - 8x growth NOW; it do not allow any; so it will not survive. ESX4 model do allow it (todays memory is about 32 - 64 GB RAM per 2 cpu server; maximum is 256 GB; pretty relevant to stay with it). It is absoluely clean to everyone. The authors of this model can already request bonuses from Microsoft for the helping them to compete.

Have either of you talked with your VMware Account rep yet?   VMware would love to know what the situation is that is causing you to not be able to go to vSphere 5.   This is off topic for the purpose of this thread. 

Can you post your data from the License Query Scripts so we can see your situation from solid numbers?

Thanks

My organization is Enterprise Plus, so we're okay at the moment. We're actually licensed for 36 CPUs. Still interested to see what our upgrade costs will be. Of course, we just ordered some new blades with 256GB of RAM each... and to use all of it we'll need more licenses.

======
pCpu Count: 22
vRAM (GB):  451
======
Resulting license options:

Edition                                                                 Entitlement                                                             Licenses                                                              
-------                                                                 -----------                                                             --------                                                              
Essentials/Essentials Plus/Standard                                     1 pCpu + 24 GB vRAM                                                     22 with 77 GB vRAM overhead                                           
Enterprise                                                              1 pCpu + 32 GB vRAM                                                     22 with 253 GB vRAM overhead                                          
Enterprise Plus                                                         1 pCpu + 48 GB vRAM                                                     22 with 605 GB vRAM overhead                                          
======
NOTE: vRAM only counts memory allocated to vm's that are POWERED ON.
NOTE: Please double check the results of this script, since hosts may have been omitted due to errors.
Disclaimer: No rights can be deduced from this calculation.
======

Here is what we have. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CCVC4:

------

pCpu Count: 8

vRAM (GB):  110

Edition                    Entitlement                Licenses               

-------                    -----------                --------               

Essentials/Essentials P... 1 pCpu + 24 GB vRAM        8 with 82 GB vRAM overhead

Enterprise                 1 pCpu + 32 GB vRAM        8 with 146 GB vRAM overhead

Enterprise Plus            1 pCpu + 48 GB vRAM        8 with 274 GB vRAM overhead

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CCCOLOVC:

---------

pCpu Count: 10

vRAM (GB):  48

Edition                    Entitlement                Licenses               

-------                    -----------                --------               

Essentials/Essentials P... 1 pCpu + 24 GB vRAM        10 with 192 GB vRAM overhead

Enterprise                 1 pCpu + 32 GB vRAM        10 with 272 GB vRAM overhead

Enterprise Plus            1 pCpu + 48 GB vRAM        10 with 432 GB vRAM overhead

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

I have tried both methods from two separated VMware PowerCLI stations against 3 different 4.1 vCenters but without success. I got latest VMware PowerCLI on both stations.

Clipboard01.png shows result for Alan Renouf Get-vSphere5Licenses script.

Clipboard02.png shows result for LucD Get-vRAMInfo function.

Clipboard03.png shows result for LucD Get-vRAMInfo function when I first run script by copy paste and run in VMware PowerCLI command line and then run Get-vRAMInfo command.

Clipboard04.png shows result for LucD Get-vRAMInfo function on one of my PowerCLI station against one of my vCenters when I used . ./Get.. .ps1 to load a function.

Clipboard05.png shows result for LucD Get-vRAMInfo function on other one of my PowerCLI station against other one of my vCenters when I used . ./Get.. .ps1 to load a function.

Please can you give me a hint? Please what Im doing wrong?

Thanks.

Frantisek

I assume you stored the function in that .ps1 file ?

If yes, you have to dot-source the file to 'load' the function.

. ./Get-vSphere5Licenses2.ps1

Yes, that is a dot followed by a blank at the beginning.

Afterwards you can call the function from the PS prompt

Get-vRAMInfo

So, i am assuming under my normal Enterprise licensing, that I have 405GB of memory to allocate to every single one of my guests..

Hi Luc,

thank you very much for your prompt response. I have tried . ./Get.. .ps1 to load function but no success. You can see screenshots 04 and 05 I have updated to my reply.

ferdis,

try exiting Powershell and try again.

Hi digitlman,

thanks for response but no sucess. It just reports same as in 04 05 screenshots from my original response. Only difference is that it repeats more sentences which are the same:

Row 31 char:56 "A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'Property' "

Hi

I know this doesn't answer your initial question, but you may want to try a different method.  The results of the below script will pull from your license manager, not powered on guests (what is currently in use). Both methods are great, but for me, I like to see what is currently in use.

http://www.virtu-al.net/2011/07/14/vsphere-5-license-entitlements/

Hi Troy,

I run License Validator on two VMware PowerCLI v 4.1 machines against two vCenter 4.1 but it generated a lot of errors. So no success again. It generated report with no data.

Thanks.

Frantisek

yes, I see you already stated Alans code errors too.  I guess I should read the thread a bit better.  I'm no PowerShell guru, just barely a novice, but do you have the most recent version of PowerCLI

> Get-PowerCLIVersion

PowerCLI Version
----------------
   VMware vSphere PowerCLI 4.1 U1 build 332441
---------------
Snapin Versions
---------------
   VMWare vSphere PowerCLI 4.1 U1 build 332441

Hi,

yes I have latest VMware PowerCLI:

VMware vSphere PowerCLI 4.1 U1 build 332441

I got more vCenters. One with 4.1 258902 release, and others with 4.1 U1 345043 release.

All vCenters are Windows 2008.

VMware PowerCLI machine one is Windows XP SP3.

VMware PowerCLI machine two is Windows Server 2003 SP2.

I'll tap out because I don't want to lead you down a road of no return.  I'm sure the PowerCLI gurus will come to the rescue soon.

You may also want to open a new thread in the VMware vSphere™ PowerCLI Community to get a bit better exposure.

What version of Powershell are you running?  This error leads me to believe your running on the stock powershell on Windows 2008 which is Powershell v1.   Upgrade to Powershell 2.0 RTM and try again.

Windows 2008 32bit: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11829

Windows 2008 64bit: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20430

It looks as if you are running PowerShell v1.

The function requires PowerShell v2.

Do you have a W7 or W2K8R2 box where you can try the script ?

Those have PowerShell v2 by default.

You are right!!! :smileyhappy:

Problem was that I had PowerShell v1 on my XP and Win 2003 machines.

Now after upgrade to PowerShell v2 everything is going well.

Luc, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! :smileyhappy:

You know that feeling when someone help you to move forward? YOU HELP ME SO!!!!!!

Once again, big thank you!!! :smileyhappy:

If you guys are having problems with the scripts and just want the numbers then you can run this single cmdlet after connecting to vCenter to pull the current configured vRAM amount.

>Get-VM | Measure-Object -Property MemoryMB -Sum

It will return the total configured memory in MB, so divide by 1000 to change to GB

slaclair wrote:

>Get-VM | Measure-Object -Property MemoryMB -Sum

It will return the total configured memory in MB, so divide by 1000 to change to GB

Nice and simple... slaclair wins.  Thanks!

You can expand that simple line into

Get-VM | where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"} | Measure-Object -Property MemoryMB -Sum

That way you'll see what actually uses vRAM pool memory.

In this last environment I tested, they are not going to be impacted by the licensing change..however they are horribly horribly underutilized and overbuilt.

they have 10-esx hosts with 48-96gb of RAM in them and they are running 125VM's with 300GB allocated...

So..what it comes down to, is..if you built your vmware environment using the Microsoft hyper-v design of a 1-2 or 1-5 consolidation ratio you will be fine...however most of us have paid for the vmware design..which is consolidate the living hell out of things and use the power of the product to oversubscribe much higher since it does it so well.  We are the ones who will get screwed.

Everyone else who threw way more money and licenses at their pool early on without needing to, save money in the future...those of us who scrimped and got the biggest ROI on our servers now have to pay the piper...

I Still believe the vRAM OR pCPU model is the correct answer..not both...

Without sharing specific numbers, I can tell you that in our environment that we've just upgraded to new hardware AND ENT+ licensing to be able to use that new hardware, we will be ok initially as we have about 1.7T of vRAM entitlement headroom.  My account team will be eager to say "see, you'll be ok".  But that's not acceptable to me because we're only 20% utilized right now and we invested alot of money to be able to use the infrastructure for the next year or two.

If I wanted to get to a conservative 65% utilization, I'll have to buy at least an additional 80 ENT+ licenses as our utilization increases under the current entitlment numbers.

Without re-posting my thoughts on this, check this out if you like.  http://communities.vmware.com/message/1792658#1792658

Have a good weekend everyone!

I have four servers, each dual socket, 256 GB with Enterprise Plus licensing.  I an currently using 340 GB vRAM which comes out to about 7.1 licenses.  I own 8 so according to VMware I should be perfectly happy. I purchased the servers 12 months ago and sized them to allow for at least four years of growth.  Thanks to the new licensing I've just about reached that point already.

I still have several physical servers that I would like to migrate.  Those servers have 160 GB of memory.  I know I can cut down on some of that but most of them are configured as required by the software vendor.  Whenever we have an issue I'll have to boost it back up to the vendor requirements and taking it back down will be a losing battle.  I'll take a rough stab at a number and reduce the memory by 25% and go with 120 GB as the vRam needed for these servers.  340 + 120 =  460.  This will require me to purchase 2 more licenses.  I'd need to get the required vRAM down to 92 GB in order to get the extra license down to one.

VMware response seems to be that all I need to do is right size my servers and  I'll be fine.  I actually have software that monitors my VMs and makes sizing recommendations.  According to that software I need to add about 8 GB of memory overall to my existing servers to right size them.  In addition several servers are being used for projects that are in the development stage.  They are sized anywhere from 25% to 50% of what is recommended by the vendors so I am sure I'll need to add memory to them when they go into production.

Doing the math, to utilize the memory I have and allowing for one server offline for HA, 1024 - 256 = 768, I need 16 licenses or an additional 8 licenses.  This is using a 1:1 ratio of pRAM to vRAM, in actual practice I should be able to get more than 768 GB of vRAM from 768 GB of pRAM so the number is probably more like 10 to 12 licenses.

So yes, according to the script I'm fine under the new licensing scheme and I'm in the 90% to 95% of users that aren't affected by the new licensing.  Life is good.

GaryHertz wrote:

I purchased the servers 12 months ago and sized them to allow for at least four years of growth.  Thanks to the new licensing I've just about reached that point already.

So yes, according to the script I'm fine under the new licensing scheme and I'm in the 90% to 95% of users that aren't affected by the new licensing.  Life is good.

I love how we go from "My 4 years of growth budget being gone" to "life is good". :smileyplain:

I made a calculator to help me figure out some of the prices differences...Enterprise isn't even worth buying now, your better off with Enterprise Plus.

My environment today is good to go for a little bit:

DataCenter1

Counting physical cpu's and vRAM in your environment. Please be patient...
======
pCpu Count: 201
vRAM (GB):  3476
======
Resulting license options:

Edition                                Entitlement            Licenses
-------                                -----------            --------
Essentials/Essentials Plus/Standard    1 pCpu + 24 GB vRAM    201 with 1348 GB vRAM overhead
Enterprise                             1 pCpu + 32 GB vRAM    201 with 2956 GB vRAM overhead
Enterprise Plus                        1 pCpu + 48 GB vRAM    201 with 6172 GB vRAM overhead

DataCenter1

Counting physical cpu's and vRAM in your environment. Please be patient...
======
pCpu Count: 163
vRAM (GB):  3628
======
Resulting license options:

Edition                                Entitlement            Licenses
-------                                -----------            --------                                               
Essentials/Essentials Plus/Standard    1 pCpu + 24 GB vRAM    163 with 284 GB vRAM overhead

Enterprise                             1 pCpu + 32 GB vRAM    163 with 1588 GB vRAM overhead
Enterprise Plus                        1 pCpu + 48 GB vRAM    163 with 4196 GB vRAM overhead

I'm good to go for existing jump to vSphere 5.

Updated:  7/18/11 12:18pm ->  Issues with the script pulling all data was found.   Re-ran with each vCenter instance independently.

Our company would owe $300k to upgrade from v4.1 to v5. If you are a Microsoft shop and own Microsoft Datacenter as we do, you could effectively download the new Hyper-V R2 SP1 server and move your environment for free. To further the problems for VMWare, If you have a Microsoft EA with entitlements for VDI as we do, it would be free to build out a VDI deployment on Hyper-V vs many hundreds of thousands of dollars for VMWare.

We have no experience with the new R2 HyperV and clustering with it, however we are already in the process of building out and testing it. The costs to maintain the types of consolidation ratios with VMWare vs HyperV don’t make sense anymore. VMware basically just took themselves out of the market for anyone with a consolidation ratio over 5:1. Our business is WAY over that, with a total virtualization ratio of around 95%. We will build our 2012 projects and budget around this change and likely not go forward with VMWare.

Two years of price increase from VMWare, that is not a trend we wish to continue.

What does your VMware Account rep say about the $300k to go to vSphere 5? 

Hi,

I'm a SMB customer. Nevertheless, we licensed Enterprise Plus because of it's features. We also tried not to pack that much VMs on our servers as others seem to do. We always like to have enough headroom for possible server outage and performance. This means we're luckily in a quite comfortable situation, as you can see in my license validator results below. The average vRAM assigned to our VMs has always been between 3 and 4 GB, going from 1 GB to 16 GB max.

We have 8 Dell PowerEdge R710 with 2 CPUs (6 cores) and 72 GB RAM each.

All,

All,

I will be out of the office Wednesday through Friday. I will have limited email access and might not respond to you until Monday August 1st.

If this is related to a prodcution issue please call the SOC at 847-467-6662 and ask for either the OS or Storage Team be paged depending on your need.

John

For clarity of this thread. Mindli - see my response in this thread http://communities.vmware.com/message/1800336