VMWare Licensing - OEM vs OLP

Hey all,

We may be looking at getting a small time VMWare setup for our office for the sole reason of needing a new computer to support a very old OS (RHEL5).

Not sure what license we should be getting - OEM or OLP? There are some documentation on this floating around the web but my main takeaway on this is that these are essentially the same licensewise but the difference lies primarily in the support.

I'm going to ask my vendors to quote both for me, but the main question at this point is... which is better overall assuming I only forsee having simple issues with this?

Also, for a new implementation, is there any reason to go with a lower version of VMWare/ESXi vs the newest?

Thanks!

Just for one VM?

Run ESXi free, community support for it is pretty damn good.

Unfortunately, I'll be needing more than 8 CPU cores for the VM.

Currently deciding between the standard version and the essentials for a 2 socket CPU.

We may go as many as 3-4 VMs but only to host test instances.

Definitely recommend OLP, for perpetual licenses if you replace/upgrade the hardware in the future you can transfer the license.
Its a better choice from a business perspective even if its not in the foreseeable future.

For your use case Essentials is the way to go as it'll unlock all the resource restrictions, but only cost about $600 for a 6CPU license + vcenter, giving you room for expansion if needed.
Standard will run you about $2500+ for 2CPU by itself (with a 1 year basic support ~ VMware requires support to be purchased).
The big features missing from essentials are HA and vMotion (plus the advanced ones as well), so as long as you don't plan on needing those you can save substantial cost.

6.7 just got released as GA a couple of weeks ago, so depends on what version you're most comfortable with. (5.5 is being EOL in September though)
The only reason you'd need to stay on 6.0 or earlier is if you need the local client for some reason instead of using the web flash/html.

Thanks for this. Thinking about going straight to VMWare instead for the online license (the vendor is a PITA).

Looking to try 6.7 now, using a makeshift desktop computer / server, 6.5 was quite slow with SSDs.

No problem, I do reccomend the HTML5 version, its a bit different, but very speedy compared to flash and has about 95% functionality now.
Plus when they release v7 later it will be the only interface option, flash is being phased out also.

Make sure to renew your support and/or buy the 3y coverage, so you can get updates/patches.

mda said:

Looking to try 6.7 now, using a makeshift desktop computer / server, 6.5 was quite slow with SSDs.

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I tried 6.5 for about 2 days and couldn't stand it. getting away from the thick client was hard but definitely 6.5 made it worse.
did you get to try 6.7 yet? I have it up and running at home and work and it runs great. So much better and way cleaner. I need to upgrade my 6.0 at work to 6.7 soon... free license part works great for my use and has been a great experience.

TeleFragger said:

I tried 6.5 for about 2 days and couldn't stand it. getting away from the thick client was hard but definitely 6.5 made it worse.
did you get to try 6.7 yet? I have it up and running at home and work and it runs great. So much better and way cleaner. I need to upgrade my 6.0 at work to 6.7 soon... free license part works great for my use and has been a great experience.

Click to expand...

Apparently the G4500 I used as a makeshift server wasn't powerful enough to max SCP over a single gigabit connection on a Linux VM.

I found that odd since a 4 Core Yorkfield @ 2.3 ghz did about the same speed over SCP.

Our new server arrived (dual Xeon Silver 4114) and the same version performed without a hitch.

Can't move to 6.7 yet since Veeam only supports up to 6.5...

I'm pretty new to both VMs so I don't really have as much experience playing with them.