VMware vSphere 5 is official

nhan.ng

well, it's official

Wonder if all my hardware will work with it

VMware vSphere Upgrade Center: Private Cloud Computing

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QHalo

Must..finish..VCP4...

Adios ESX for good it looks like. But then we all knew it was coming.

http://www.vtesseract.com/post/7537276754/my-vsphere-5-blog-posts-reading-list

Get reading

blargoe

Licensing is now based on memory consumption?!?!?!? Me no likey. I may have to double my licensing in one of my locations.

kalebksp

Licensing is based on allocated memory, not consumed memory. You don't have to license memory that is "reserved" for failover purposes, only the amount of memory that will be allocated to all the VMs.

I still think it sucks, going to limit design choices. At least they removed the cores per processor component.

MentholMoose

VCP 5 blueprint is here:
VMware Training

cyberguypr

Does anyone know when it will be available for download?

RTmarc

kalebksp wrote: »

Licensing is based on allocated memory, not consumed memory. You don't have to license memory that is "reserved" for failover purposes, only the amount of memory that will be allocated to all the VMs.

I still think it sucks, going to limit design choices. At least they removed the cores per processor component.

If the new model is exactly what I think it is, I may have to consider moving to Hyper-V or something else. Each Enterprise Plus license entitles you to 48 GB of memory. The four new servers we are bringing in will be 192 GB of memory each. That means I'll have to buy 4 EP licenses per server. I don't even much think so.

blargoe

It sounds like if your VM's are using the full 192 per server, you don't need to license that much. The phrasing in the licensing guide was "memory consumed", but also in a different section it says "memory configured per virtual machine". So does that mean we're having to license our overcommitted memory, or just the actively used memory? What about VM overhead? I'm trying to get more info from my VM rep on this.

RTmarc

blargoe wrote: »

It sounds like if your VM's are using the full 192 per server, you don't need to license that much. The phrasing in the licensing guide was "memory consumed", but also in a different section it says "memory configured per virtual machine". So does that mean we're having to license our overcommitted memory, or just the actively used memory? What about VM overhead? I'm trying to get more info from my VM rep on this.

I read the same and fired off something to our rep too.

kalebksp

It's based on how much memory you assign your VMs, not consumed memory.

RTmarc wrote: »

Each Enterprise Plus license entitles you to 48 GB of memory. The four new servers we are bringing in will be 192 GB of memory each. That means I'll have to buy 4 EP licenses per server. I don't even much think so.

Assuming you're not going to fully allocate your memory (such as for failover) you don't have to license all 192 GB.

Here's a good example: The Five Stages of VMware Licensing Grief ? The Lone Sysadmin

(Though don't get the idea I'm defending VMware. I'm not.)

cyberguypr

Has anyone been following VMware communities? The general consensus is that VMware is screwing their customer. Many talking about trying Citrix or M$ virtualization. That is one heated discussion. Even an InfoWeek reporter posted his info asking for people to provide feedback on record for the new licensing model.

tbgree00

I read the examples in the vSphere 5 pricing pdf and it said that vRam is the amount of ram in the machines you have deployed. Your 2 CPU server can have 500GB but with 2 enterprise plus CPU licenses you can only use 96GB of that. I like that they dropped the core limitation.

The pricing guide is on this page Licensing for VMware vSphere: Upgrading from VMware vSphere 4

bertieb

The whole licensing saga has sadly, but understandably, over-shadowed the launch of what is another solid product by VMware.

My thoughts on the licensing changes? I hate them. Most of our internal kit and client solutions are 2 processor machines with 128GB+ (roughly 50% are 256GB). Most are even over-committed with most VM's being 8GB or 16GB allocated. Even with vSphere4 Enterprise Plus in use, if we wanted to upgrade we'd be screwed. It kinda makes TPS/compression and memory over-commit in general pointless, as does any host with large amounts of RAM. I understand that the licensing model needed to be changed for a few reasons, but this was out of the blue and I do not like this kind of 'surprise'!

The community has reacted in a similar fashion, and it's no surprise that they have dubbed it #vTax on Twitter. I guess I need to dig out the XenServer and Hyper-V books again because if I went to my specific clients and gave them the figures to upgrade they would laugh me out of the room. Obviously not everyone will be in the same boat but for my various production solutions, I really have to consider the alternatives now.

Everyone

People that use the free version will be the first to switch to a competing product. In turn those people, who may have eventually upgraded to the paid version, will probably buy the paid version of the competing product instead.

The free version now has an 8 GB vRAM limitation. That means that if you have 8 VMs, the total vRAM (virtual RAM) assigned to all of them can't exceed 8 GB. So you could have 8 VMs with 1GB each, or 16 with 512MB, or 12 VMs, 8 of them with 512 MB, and 4 with 1 GB, etc. It doesn't matter how much RAM the host has, you can't use more than 8 GB of vRAM total.

This is a pretty stupid limitation, if you consider the fact that VMWare Workstation 7.1 (current version) is only limited by the amount of RAM installed on the host. Not to mention the fact that ESXi 4.1 did not have the limitation either.

I've always liked VMWare, and never really like Citrix, but I've started looking at Xen, which is free/open source virtualization based on Citrix's solution, because of this new licensing.

dave330i

General question to those looking at alternate solutions due to VMware's licensing policy for ESXi 5. Why not stay with ESXi 4.1U1 longer?

Starke

Because if there is no way they are going to migrate to 5 then they need to start planning now. No one is going to run a legacy version of a product forever.

dave330i wrote: »

General question to those looking at alternate solutions due to VMware's licensing policy for ESXi 5. Why not stay with ESXi 4.1U1 longer?

dave330i

Starke wrote: »

Because if there is no way they are going to migrate to 5 then they need to start planning now. No one is going to run a legacy version of a product forever.

Companies have ran on WinXP for 10+ years, skip Vista and migrated to Win7. Similar scenario is possible with VMware (assuming ESXi 6 goes to CPU based licensing or increase the RAM limit).

Just curious as to if anyone's thought about it.

blargoe

Everyone wrote: »

People that use the free version will be the first to switch to a competing product. In turn those people, who may have eventually upgraded to the paid version, will probably buy the paid version of the competing product instead.

The free version now has an 8 GB vRAM limitation. That means that if you have 8 VMs, the total vRAM (virtual RAM) assigned to all of them can't exceed 8 GB. So you could have 8 VMs with 1GB each, or 16 with 512MB, or 12 VMs, 8 of them with 512 MB, and 4 with 1 GB, etc. It doesn't matter how much RAM the host has, you can't use more than 8 GB of vRAM total.

This is a pretty stupid limitation, if you consider the fact that VMWare Workstation 7.1 (current version) is only limited by the amount of RAM installed on the host. Not to mention the fact that ESXi 4.1 did not have the limitation either.

I've always liked VMWare, and never really like Citrix, but I've started looking at Xen, which is free/open source virtualization based on Citrix's solution, because of this new licensing.

I didn't look at the changes to the free version. 8GB? That. Is. Stupid. I personally think the lack of enterprise features, management, and redundancy in the free version is enough motivation to not try to run dozens of VM's on a single server. 8GB is so limiting that it's almost useless except for small lab scenarios.

I guess this is the point where we will see the real divergence between enterprise customers and smaller shops. VMware won't lose that many large customers; I don't think this change is as impactful to them. This licensing change, coupled with the required costs of the training to be eligible for certification, will make VMware even that much more "eliteist" (not that this is bad, I just couldn't think of a better word at the time).

cyberguypr

dave330i wrote: »

Companies have ran on WinXP for 10+ years, skip Vista and migrated to Win7. Similar scenario is possible with VMware (assuming ESXi 6 goes to CPU based licensing or increase the RAM limit).

Just curious as to if anyone's thought about it.

That would be betting which doesn't really work when architecting solutions. Betting/hoping on future changes (licensing or features) is not a good plan. For all I know VMware could keep losing market share to Citrix or MS and be forced to change licensing again.

Current customers can definitely hang on to 4.1 as they would be better off that way. But what about those interested in the new features present in vSphere? They are simply screwed.

In my case I was planning for two powerful boxes with 512GB RAM each to consolidate a whole bunch of physical servers. My plan was to use VMware but right now there is no way I can do this with the budget I originally contemplated. It won't be fun justifying the increased cost to the suits signing the checks. As most mentioned this is forcing me to contemplate the competition which I never really cared for.

tbgree00

The more I think about the RAM limitations the more I get mad about this. I feel like it's a "eat our cake and have it to" sort of situation. I wish you could pay for RAM separate from CPUs. To run our infrastructures in commited vRam we have to upgrade 8 CPUs to Enterprise Plus (we have 12 cpu and 4 are already EP). Then we have to buy 2 more CPU licenses. We don't have a host to throw those on and even if we did we couldn't really leverage it since we couldn't be in compliance if we turned on more machines.

I know people would complain if it was $X per cpu and then Y per bundle of RAM but it would be a good compromise to me. It wouldn't cause SMBs to overbuy and would let big companies scale. I am surprised that there isn't a super expensive unlimited license.

cyberguypr

tbgree00 wrote: »

I know people would complain if it was $X per cpu and then Y per bundle of RAM but it would be a good compromise to me. It wouldn't cause SMBs to overbuy and would let big companies scale.

Agree. From what I see many would be willing to accept buying additional vRAM entitlements.

tbgree00

cyberguypr wrote: »

Agree. From what I see many would be willing to accept buying additional vRAM entitlements.

Yeah, I don't disagree with the idea of pay for what you use but I want it to go both ways. I want to pay for all I use but not pay for stuff I don't. I think having to upgrade so many licenses to the biggest entitlement and buy two extra cpus just to keep our existing infrastructure in compliance on RAM is a bit much.

This isn't a case of having to upgrade licensing to use new features or losing a non-critical feature when you migrate. This is a case of losing legal functionality on 2/3 of my VDI environment if we migrate.