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Update 08/03/2011:
With the changes to vRAM (essentially doubling the amount of vRAM entitled per license) the post below no longer has applicable math – my entire environment is now fully covered by vRAM licensing. However, I am going to leave the post intact for historical purposes so later on we can all look back at how fun this has been. Now that I know I can afford to upgrade, I can all finally give 100% of my attention to the cool features in vSphere 5!
Now, back to the original post:
Amidst all the fun and geeky excitement of the July 12th announcement of vSphere 5, there was also the announcement of a new pricing model for vSphere host licensing. I’ll admit that this was not one of the things I was looking for this morning; I was busy digging into Frank and Duncan’s new vSphere 5.0 Deepdive book, absorbing news on the new enhancements, and getting my “tweet on” with fellow VMware buds. Now that the dust has settled and I’ve had some time to absorb the pricing change, I thought it would be good to have a look at my environments and how they would be impacted.
This isn’t a gripe session or meant to spit on anyone, but simply a look at one customer’s environment (being myself) and how this change will affect things with the information that is currently available. I’m not looking to start a flame war here.
I run a modest pair of datacenters, each with it’s own cluster.
Memory disclaimer: The environments that I oversee will (and in some cases do) consume the majority of the memory presented. I understand that the new vRAM licensing is a consumption based model, and that in the case where memory is not being utilized by VMs on one host it can be distributed to VMs on other hosts. However, I’m in the position where any idle capacity is snatched up readily. If you have idle memory sitting around in your environment, I’m jealous!
Datacenter A:
Current Setup:
- 4 Hosts (HA Cluster)
- 4 CPU sockets each = 16 CPUs
- 512 GB of memory each = roughly 1536 GB of memory available for VMs (N – 1 for HA)
- Using 16 sockets of vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus licensing
Upgrading to vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus:
- Would entitle me to use 48GB of memory per license on VMs.
- 48 x 16 = 768 GB of vRAM licensed for VMs.
- To achieve 1536 GB for VMs = 32 vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus licenses required in an HA config (16 additional)
Datacenter B:
Current Setup:
- 7 Hosts (HA Cluster)
- 2 CPU sockets each = 14 CPUs
- 192 GB of memory each = roughly 1152 GB of memory available for VMs (N – 1 for HA)
- Using 14 sockets of vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus licensing
Upgrading to vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus:
- Would entitle me to use 48GB of memory per license on VMs.
- 48 x 14 = 672 GB of vRAM licensed for VMs.
- To achieve 1152 GB for VMs = 24 vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus licenses required in an HA config (10 additional)
Total Datacenter Licensing Requirements for vSphere 5
Licenses Required to utilize maximum memory for VMs (in an HA config): 56
Licenses purchased with vSphere 4: 30
Net difference: 26 additional vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus licenses required (86.7% increase)
Update: Real World Numbers
Using the vRAM entitlement PowerCLI script, my actual licensing requirement at this time is as follows:
It’s too early to tell exactly how I feel about this licensing change. I’m happy that SnS will cover the 30 current licenses of vSphere 5, but justifying 26 more licenses is a bit tough to swallow. This is a steep additional licensing cost to enter the vSphere 5 era. Is it worth it, for all those new features (Storage DRS, the new HA, Auto Deploy, etc. etc.?). Jury’s out for now. I will admit that I want to use vSphere 5!
I do agree with a friend of mine who stated that “those that scaled up heavily” are up a creek. Even in the vSphere Design book, the question of scale up vs scale out is addressed as more of a technical and risk challenge. Is it now more of a licensing challenge?
