Big VMware Announcement!

[Chilly]

Thankfully all my Essentials and Essentials Plus customers are going to be fine, but when you hear from your rep

"I'll take a look at this and get back to you with pricing, but it isn't going to be cheap"

you don't get a fuzzy feeling. If Microsoft can really enhance Hyper V's other OS support, and bring their game up on their HA / management I see a lot of people ditching ESX for Hyper V.

Unfortunately(because I DO think VMware has the better/stronger product) due to licensing costs, I think that more and more people and businesses are going to look at HyperV.

vRam licensing ISN'T the issue, the low amount initially allocated(24GB/32GB/48GB per socket, REALLY? Should be AT LEAST double) and high cost of compliance(why must I buy a full license to get more ram, why can't they license vRam allocation separately at a much lower cost). Frankly if VMware launched the new licensing with double the vRam allocations and ability to buy vRam allocation separately and at a lower cost then a full socket license, there would of been ALOT less complaints. You can't please everyone but at least if they did the changes as stated above it would be much more reasonable.

 

[Child of Wonder]

Right now we are going to have to wait and see. With all of the backlash coming out of the community VMware still has time to change things before 5.0 ships. It wouldn't suprise me if they bumped up the vRAM per license. It also wouldn't suprise me if the just left it like it is and hope that they don't lose many customers. They currently have the best product on the market with all of the features vSphere has. They are banking on no other product being able to compete with that. This is a good time for Microsoft to step up their game with Hyper-V and start truly competing with VMWare.

What I'm hearing from people is that despite VMware's feature advantage over their competitors, those features don't justify the massive increase in licensing costs.

They still have time to fix this by either increasing the vRAM limits or creating vRAM only licenses that are cheaper.

 

[mct]

What I'm hearing from people is that despite VMware's feature advantage over their competitors, those features don't justify the massive increase in licensing costs.

They still have time to fix this by either increasing the vRAM limits or creating vRAM only licenses that are cheaper.

I hope they will fix it. For us right now we are good with our licensing and it would not cost us anything to upgrade. Things may change for us in the future especially when UCS blade servers are becoming so memory dense.

 

[Vader]

I have a rather large View deployment dependent on a fair amount of memory...anything different in cost on the View front?

 

[adi]

What I'm hearing from people is that despite VMware's feature advantage over their competitors, those features don't justify the massive increase in licensing costs.

They still have time to fix this by either increasing the vRAM limits or creating vRAM only licenses that are cheaper.

At the same time it should show people how bad vendor lock in can get. With every release you might have to re-calculate license costs and start planning to move off the platform even if the company does eventually reverse those changes.

This is even more true for projects nearing the purchasing stages, as until VMware changes the new licensing, people are going to scramble to find a working solution that has a clear, stable(pricewise) upgrade path that won't possibly double or triple the cost of the project.

 

[nitrobass24]

I really hope that MS steps up their game and we can see some true competition between MS and VMware. It should be good for prices and features.

 

[adi]

I really hope that MS steps up their game and we can see some true competition between MS and VMware. It should be good for prices and features.

Microsoft announced some things about Windows 8 and the Server portion based on it, and new hyper-v features yesterday, but it was all overshadowed by VMware's licensing. Nothing set in stone since it will be released next year, but apparently September will have some more announcements.

 

[NetJunkie]

I have a rather large View deployment dependent on a fair amount of memory...anything different in cost on the View front?

Supposedly View licensing will stay the same...buy the View packs and you get the vSphere licenses to host it.

 

[NetJunkie]

vShield 5.0 could be beneficial especially for organizations like us that are bound by HIPAA and PCI regulations. I am still not sold on this however. I would have to see it being successful in real world before I would consider it.

vShield is out in many places. Anone using vCloud Director is using it plus many, many more than have deployed vShield Zones, App, Edge, and Endpoint. vShield 5 isn't a big feature change over previous. It's very dependable and also very, IMHO, underutilized.

 

[defuseme2k]

Licensing conversations rage over on the VMware communities. I doubt VMware leaves this unchanged after this kind of a push back. This will end up being VMware's "New Coke". We asked the customers! We taste tested it! There is a VMware employee in that thread trying to defend it. He's going to get slaughtered doing that, especially since people are not really agreeing with his ideological view of it. Most customers will come out ahead he says... right. Not one I've talked to today will.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1789448#1789448

 

[NetJunkie]

Can you please elaborate on this? Wouldn't you have 96 GB of RAM to allocate across two usable hosts? (2 Essentials Plus license on each host to support 2 procs)?

Essentials plus is 6-sockets of licensing (3 hosts with 2 sockets each). Each socket is 24GB. 24GB * 6 = 144GB. Usually people will leave one host's worth of resources free in the event of a hardware failure so if you could have 3 hosts each with like 72GB of RAM and be fine....assuming you're not overcommitting much.

 

[NetJunkie]

I

vShield 5.0 could be beneficial especially for organizations like us that are bound by HIPAA and PCI regulations. I am still not sold on this however. I would have to see it being successful in real world before I would consider it.

Also...vShield isn't just for people under HIPAA or PCI. It's for anyone that wants virtual firewalling or other edge services in their environment. Very useful.

 

[Wally Simmonds]

Any idea when it's going to be available for download?

 

[ND40oz]

Also...vShield isn't just for people under HIPAA or PCI. It's for anyone that wants virtual firewalling or other edge services in their environment. Very useful.

We just skipped it and went with the Nexus 1000Vs.

Anyone heard anything on Fault Tolerance and if we can use more then 1 vCPU with vSphere 5?

 

[NetJunkie]

We just skipped it and went with the Nexus 1000Vs.

Not really a comparison, though. The 1Kv can do basic ACLs and that's it, unless you add in the VSG. Be interesting to see how much traction the 1Kv maintains with the upgrades in the dVS.

 

[ND40oz]

Not really a comparison, though. The 1Kv can do basic ACLs and that's it, unless you add in the VSG. Be interesting to see how much traction the 1Kv maintains with the upgrades in the dVS.

VSG in active-standby (HA), hopefully it maintains traction, it took some tinkering to get going. The networking guys like it since they don't have to use vCenter to admin stuff and I like it because they don't have to be in vCenter

 

[Churnd]

So any idea when ESXi 5.0 "free version" will be available?

 

[NetJunkie]

Same time as paid. August.....though it could appear as a download sooner. Wouldn't be too surprised. It's done.

 

[mct]

Also...vShield isn't just for people under HIPAA or PCI. It's for anyone that wants virtual firewalling or other edge services in their environment. Very useful.

No doubt it would benefit others. I was just stating how it could directly benefit my place of work.

 

[RESTfulADI]

NetJunkie,

Is it true the free ESXi 5.0 will be capped at 8GB ram?

I understand you may not be at liberty to answer (the other vExperts at the official forums have been repeating the company line), but should be we stocking up on 4.1 free license for home use?

If I buy Essentials Plus 4.1 now for my planned 3x 2P 196GB ram cluster, how long until I can't get support without upgrading to 5 and being forced to buy Standard, at a 300% cost increase?

 

[zEp]

I'm just happy the Essentials/Essentials Plus license for the most part stays the same. With three hosts in your cluster, your total pooled vRAM is 144GB--which is more than enough for my SMB customers.

Yep. And remember..it's allocated space. So if you do 3 hosts and leave one for HA, like you should, that gives you 72GB of RAM to allocate across two usable hosts.

Depends on what you consider staying the same. Essentials+ price just went up 25% and they put HARD limits on the memory for Essentials/Essentials plus. If you want more you need to get Standard at 300% more than Essentials plus costs and the only *feature* you get for all that money is the ability to spend even more on CPU licenses so you can add more ram.

We currently have three large projects that customers have verbally approved and were just waiting on final numbers to sign off on. Now we have to go and explain to them what to expect going forward and I honestly expect all these projects going back to the drawing board or just telling us to get out. That is a lot of money out of my pocket and vmw's.

I guess it is what to be expected from a company owned by EMC. They have a history of selling you the crack for a reasonable price to get you hooked then double it.. Really hope I learn this time.

 

[DeChache]

NetJunkie,

Is it true the free ESXi 5.0 will be capped at 8GB ram?

Egh tell me that isn't true

 

[RiDDLeRThC]

NetJunkie,

Is it true the free ESXi 5.0 will be capped at 8GB ram?

I understand you may not be at liberty to answer (the other vExperts at the official forums have been repeating the company line), but should be we stocking up on 4.1 free license for home use?

If I buy Essentials Plus 4.1 now for my planned 3x 2P 196GB ram cluster, how long until I can't get support without upgrading to 5 and being forced to buy Standard, at a 300% cost increase?

If true this will suck, my T110 at home is maxed out at 16gb of ram and is just a test box

 

[NetJunkie]

I guess it is what to be expected from a company owned by EMC. They have a history of selling you the crack for a reasonable price to get you hooked then double it.. Really hope I learn this time.

Now that's not really fair. Over the last 3 years of me selling EMC products they have done nothing but push pricing DOWN. Licenses for things like RecoverPoint/SE are a FRACTION of what they used to be. Same with Avamar...same with Data Domain after the acquisition. They bring out technologies/features like FAST VP that allow me to deliver a storage to a customer for 1/3 less money than without those features.

EMC doesn't tell VMware what to do. This was a VMware decision.

 

[NetJunkie]

NetJunkie,

Is it true the free ESXi 5.0 will be capped at 8GB ram?

I understand you may not be at liberty to answer (the other vExperts at the official forums have been repeating the company line), but should be we stocking up on 4.1 free license for home use?

If I buy Essentials Plus 4.1 now for my planned 3x 2P 196GB ram cluster, how long until I can't get support without upgrading to 5 and being forced to buy Standard, at a 300% cost increase?

Unfortunately, free ESXi will be 8GB. I just confirmed that. That's.....terrible to be honest.

No one says you ever HAVE to upgrade...just depends if you want the features or support. I estimate you'll be able to get support for 5 more years (with extended support contracts)...good for 3 more years on regular support:

http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/lifecycle/enterprise-infrastructure/eos.html

 

[Wally Simmonds]

Honestly what the hell were vmware smoking. There goes my test lab.

 

[ND40oz]

No one says you ever HAVE to upgrade...just depends if you want the features or support. I estimate you'll be able to get support for 5 more years (with extended support contracts)...good for 3 more years on regular support:

http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/lifecycle/enterprise-infrastructure/eos.html

Yup, it looks like you get 5 years from the date of first release, so ESX/ESXi 4.x was released on 5/21/2009, you have support through 5/21/2014 with an additional 2 years of technical guidance.

Now they aren't required to support new hardware for that entire time either, they use an 18 month window when a major/minor release happens. So you probably only have 18 months of hardware support from the 4.1 date of release, IIRC it was release in mid-July of last year, so you have another 6 months of hardware support on it. After that, you'll have to use 5.0 to support any new hardware.

 

[Churnd]

Unfortunately, free ESXi will be 8GB. I just confirmed that. That's.....terrible to be honest.

No one says you ever HAVE to upgrade...just depends if you want the features or support. I estimate you'll be able to get support for 5 more years (with extended support contracts)...good for 3 more years on regular support:

http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/lifecycle/enterprise-infrastructure/eos.html

Case in point, you can still get ESXi 3.5.

8GB is terrible. I'll go out on a limb and ask if that's per VM guest?

Looks like I will be sticking with 4 for my main development box. I'll probably install 5 in VM to test it out.

 

[RiDDLeRThC]

Case in point, you can still get ESXi 3.5.

8GB is terrible. I'll go out on a limb and ask if that's per VM guest?

Looks like I will be sticking with 4 for my main development box. I'll probably install 5 in VM to test it out.

Now if its per VM I would be okay, my only VM at home with 8GB is Exchange and it doesnt really need it.

 

[RESTfulADI]

Not per vm. Total allocated memory, or as they call it, "vRAM"

A poster on the official forums made an amusing analogy in response to someone who was defending vmware by comparing them to BWM and MB. Can you imagine if you paid premium for a BWM (I did, and I was ready to pay for vmware) but couldn't get out of 2nd gear or had an arbirtrary mph limit until you bought another engine, even though the one in the car can do it? For years we were told to buy vmware because of the superior consolidation ratios and memory over-allocation benefits, now they say we're doing it wrong and need to right-size. At least they can come out and say, "we don't like that you can do so much with so little cpu even though you bought our stuff do to just that, so we're gonna charge you on memory you already bought." Instead they invent new terms and try to call piss rain.

 

[DeChache]

Unfortunately, free ESXi will be 8GB. I just confirmed that. That's.....terrible to be honest.

No one says you ever HAVE to upgrade...just depends if you want the features or support. I estimate you'll be able to get support for 5 more years (with extended support contracts)...good for 3 more years on regular support:

http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/lifecycle/enterprise-infrastructure/eos.html

Time to start evaluating other options here I guess. All my guests are Microsoft servers so i guess Hyper-V here I come.

 

[MassiveOverkill]

Guess for non-HA environments, we'll be using the new version of Workstation, which doesn't have that ridiculous limit. Really though..........for small-scale deployments, Workstation looks much more attractive. You don't have the headaches and nightmares associated with setup and administration, and gives more control to the user as well as needs less education on how to use.

Hell, might as well set up a MS cluster in workstation for your high availability.

 

[Child of Wonder]

This is VMware's Novell moment. Are they going to give in to greed and attempt to bend over their customers or find ways to stay competitive and retain their market share?

I can say with 100% confidence that if the new licensing model holds, we will all think back to VMware in 10 years the same way we do Novell now.

 

[RESTfulADI]

It seems like they feel entitled to a cut of the money companies have saved on hardware by using their software, even though the whole point of buying vmware was to maximize hardware savings. vSphere will be a harder sell to management without ROI from a superior consolidation ratio, I guess they are calculating the cloud components will carry the product forward.

 

[defuseme2k]

This is VMware's Novell moment. Are they going to give in to greed and attempt to bend over their customers or find ways to stay competitive and retain their market share?

I can say with 100% confidence that if the new licensing model holds, we will all think back to VMware in 10 years the same way we do Novell now.

I thought much the same thing. After I went home last night I really thought about it through and through, and I've come to one conclusion that I cannot escape. If VMware doesn't change this, then companies WILL evaluate competing products. I am fully dedicated to VMware. It is my job. It is the only thing I work on. I think diversifying too much spreads you thin (good a lot, master of none). Currently I work as a contractor at DISA working on cloud projects which are rapidly growing (its a lot of fun ). The problem with it for me is if I choose to stay a VMware total nerd, that it will not serve my future. The minimum that will happen is far more diversity in hypervisors. That is already happening, but there is no questioning VMware's current dominance.

I calculated our numbers on our current licensing across the board -- we will actually come out with enough vRAM that we will not have to buy more licensing and at our current consolidation ratios that should not change. It took me a little while with literally thousands of VMs and several hundred ESX(i) servers. What I think VMware should do is reevaluate the licensing model once more. I suggest decoupling the licensing from the pCPUs and marginally increasing the vRAM allocation. That way people aren't forced to buy a license for a socket even though they've not allocated their entitlement of vRAM. This would also allow as many physical ESXi boxes as you wish... what would they be losing here exactly by doing this? It allows lower consolidation ratios without a penalty and probably still nets them more revenue overall.

 

[Child of Wonder]

It seems like they feel entitled to a cut of the money companies have saved on hardware by using their software, even though the whole point of buying vmware was to maximize hardware savings. vSphere will be a harder sell to management without ROI from a superior consolidation ratio, I guess they are calculating the cloud components will carry the product forward.

Then they haven't learned anything from how the economic downturn has affected business and IT. Companies are not going to simply swallow a 200%+ increase in licensing costs. They're going to look for ways to save money and they don't care if that means using a competing product so long as it can do what they need for less money.

Nearly every client I work with understands the paradigm shift and has embraced it. This is why VMware has become so popular. It's a shame that out of all the hard lessons of the recession, VMware doesn't get it.

 

[Vader]

I haven't been over to the VMware forums yet..i'm assuming if there is backlash here, then they must be getting it from all sides on their official Forums?

Then they haven't learned anything from how the economic downturn has affected business and IT. Companies are not going to simply swallow a 200%+ increase in licensing costs. They're going to look for ways to save money and they don't care if that means using a competing product so long as it can do what they need for less money.

Nearly every client I work with understands the paradigm shift and has embraced it. This is why VMware has become so popular. It's a shame that out of all the hard lessons of the recession, VMware doesn't get it.

I think the problem is really, that, and i'm not trying to start a flame war here, is that there really isn't a competing product that offers the Entire package. If Microsoft would put some real effort into the Hyper-V platform, they could really take advantage here, if VMware continues down this path. Right now, there just isn't a comparable solution if you look at it from a total solution perspective.

Bottom line is it's a business, and you are in business to make money. I don't think this really will hurt them as much as you think. Show customers the competetion and they will be less than impressed with the comparison.

Now, if they change this model, I think they would benefit even more in the fact that they listen to their customers, and really looked into the model and see that it really isn't offering any benefit other than forcing the end user to manage their resources better and provision properly.

 

[defuseme2k]

I haven't been over to the VMware forums yet..i'm assuming if there is backlash here, then they must be getting it from all sides on their official Forums?



I think the problem is really, that, and i'm not trying to start a flame war here, is that there really isn't a competing product that offers the Entire package. If Microsoft would put some real effort into the Hyper-V platform, they could really take advantage here, if VMware continues down this path. Right now, there just isn't a comparable solution if you look at it from a total solution perspective.

Bottom line is it's a business, and you are in business to make money. I don't think this really will hurt them as much as you think. Show customers the competetion and they will be less than impressed with the comparison.

Now, if they change this model, I think they would benefit even more in the fact that they listen to their customers, and really looked into the model and see that it really isn't offering any benefit other than forcing the end user to manage their resources better and provision properly.

I agree with you at the enterprise levels, but below that ... well I think the competition might not have all the features, but at the price points, well, that certainly is going to be hard to overcome.

I'm not so worried about existing customers, especially at the enterprise levels. I think they will ultimately take their current environments forward (and pay if necessary), but they will start evaluating competing products and it will get a foot hold in the environment. Much the same with Novell and MS back in the day. The comparison is quite legit. Companies have so much sunk cost already and not just in licensing costs. It takes man hours to convert from physical to virtual -- or from one virtual platform to another. So just switching it out for the competitor probably still doesn't make sense even with the increase in licensing costs. Besides just man hours, does the current backup product meet all your policies and requiremements for the competitor's hypervisor? What about DR? What about in house expertise and training? In those cases what you've said is true, and I think companies will eat it for what already exists. What worries me is new customers and diversification of existing.

 

[Child of Wonder]

I haven't been over to the VMware forums yet..i'm assuming if there is backlash here, then they must be getting it from all sides on their official Forums?

The backlash there is pretty big. So far the largest thread is sporting 228 posts.

I think the problem is really, that, and i'm not trying to start a flame war here, is that there really isn't a competing product that offers the Entire package. If Microsoft would put some real effort into the Hyper-V platform, they could really take advantage here, if VMware continues down this path. Right now, there just isn't a comparable solution if you look at it from a total solution perspective.

Bottom line is it's a business, and you are in business to make money. I don't think this really will hurt them as much as you think. Show customers the competetion and they will be less than impressed with the comparison.

Now, if they change this model, I think they would benefit even more in the fact that they listen to their customers, and really looked into the model and see that it really isn't offering any benefit other than forcing the end user to manage their resources better and provision properly.

Companies don't care about all the bells and whistles when they realize they can pay far less money for a competitor and still get by. True, for some companies like public cloud providers, the extra features VMware offers will force them to shell out. However, the vast majority of customers don't see the value in spending egregious amounts of money for vSphere 5 plus all the bells and whistles (SRM, vCloud Director, etc.). Are all those extra features worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of hardware and operational expenses?

Hopefully they change up the licensing before vSphere 5 is released. Simply doubling the vRAM numbers would alleviate all this backlash and we can all go back to praising VMware again.

 

[Child of Wonder]

NetJunkie has probably seen this as well, but over the last year companies have finally started to open their wallets for IT projects that have been sitting on the back burner during the recession. However, unlike years ago, they're not simply signing off on every purchase order you send their way. They want to sit down and scrutinize almost every item to justify whether or not they need to spend the money or not. Gone are the days of money being blindly thrown at IT projects. Everyone, from the top down, wants to save do more with less.

With VMware's massive price hike, they're quite possibly pricing themselves out of the market. While VMware may be the "BMW" or "Mercedes" of the virtualization world, there comes a point when any business is going to ask themselves "I can still get to where I need to go with the Ford Taurus. Why am I spending 5 times as much for the BMW?"