Free ESXi 5.0 8 GB vRAM Limit

T

tonyb

Limp Gawd
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As has been mentioned in other threads here, ESXi 5.0 (or vSphere 5 Hypervisor as its known) still has a free version, but it will now be limited to 8 GB of vRAM. vRAM is an allocation unit for the memory of the total number of powered up VMs running. So that means if you have a 16 GB system, you can only run 8 GB worth of VMs.

The previous free version was limited to 256 GB. Maybe a bit much for a free version, but 8 GB? In many cases, not even worth powering up considering what a server costs to run a month in electricity and what RAM costs. Time to move to XenServer.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html (check out the last FAQ entry).

My thoughts on it are here: http://datacenteroverlords.com/2011/07/17/free-esxi-now-with-8-gb-limit/
 
It appears this vRAM limit of 8GB for free ESXi now also makes it more delicate for the ESXi + integrated ZFS fileserver VM build with VT-D pass through setup. Usually for such setup, the frequent basic is to allocate large vRAM to ZFS-VM.

Now that total vRAM is only 8GB, cut the portion needed by ESXi itself you are left with rough estimate of 6GB for the VM. (the remaining 2GB is used by system and special host tuning to allocate so that the console/host has enough resources to pump 10Gb virtual VMXNET traffics). I guess this is now also difficult because usually you will have other VM also loaded to get their file-service from the ZFS-VM. With 8GB, you have little room for other VM to run on the same ESXi, thus unable to benefit from the virtual 10Gb VMXNET pumping from ZFS-VM fileservice.

For more aggressive users of such ESXi/ZFS build, sometimes they may look at more than 6GB for ZFS-VM fileserver build.
 
It looks like I will be remaining with 4.1 for the time being in my all-in-one. I would like it if they even bumped it to 16-24GB of RAM as a limit and charged maybe $100-$200. I can swallow that amount and others I am sure would pay for it as well. $500 is just way to much of a jump for a home lab.

Netflix and now VMware price jumps in the same week. Not very happy:(
 
hmm 8gb is useless. Looks like some will have to shell out of vsphere essentials license.
 
The 8 GB vRAM limit on the free version is definitely too low. I understand the limit and why it is there. I used the free version at my last job to do a standalone branch server deployment. I don't think that limit is going to hurt that particular use case. I think 16 GB would have been a much better choice.
 
I moved to XenServer a while back as I had been warned that this was an upcomming change. I like XenServer to be honest and it has the free "VMotion" as well
 
lightp2 said:
It appears this vRAM limit of 8GB for free ESXi now also makes it more delicate for the ESXi + integrated ZFS fileserver VM build with VT-D pass through setup. Usually for such setup, the frequent basic is to allocate large vRAM to ZFS-VM.

Now that total vRAM is only 8GB, cut the portion needed by ESXi itself you are left with rough estimate of 6GB for the VM. (the remaining 2GB is used by system and special host tuning to allocate so that the console/host has enough resources to pump 10Gb virtual VMXNET traffics). I guess this is now also difficult because usually you will have other VM also loaded to get their file-service from the ZFS-VM. With 8GB, you have little room for other VM to run on the same ESXi, thus unable to benefit from the virtual 10Gb VMXNET pumping from ZFS-VM fileservice.

For more aggressive users of such ESXi/ZFS build, sometimes they may look at more than 6GB for ZFS-VM fileserver build.
Click to expand...

vRAM only refers to the amount of RAM used up by VMs. So you could still potentially run a single VM that uses 8 GB if you had more than 8 GB in your system (ESXi doesn't use up that much, couple hundred MB).
 
My assumption is that they are trying to push people to the base Enterprise, which is like $540/list for 3 hosts. I keep pushing VMware to do some sort of TechNet-like offering for lab use.

BTW: I agree TonyB, I wish Cisco would release that damn CCIE Datacenter already.
 
I do wish they would offer a Technet-like subscription. I would buy that up in a heartbeat.

On a side note I do wish Cisco would offer a CCIE Datacenter cert. I have been contemplating going for the CCIE R/S however I would like to move towards the datacenter side of things with my career. If they offered a datacenter track for the CCIE I would be all over that.
 
mct said:
I do wish they would offer a Technet-like subscription. I would buy that up in a heartbeat.

On a side note I do wish Cisco would offer a CCIE Datacenter cert. I have been contemplating going for the CCIE R/S however I would like to move towards the datacenter side of things with my career. If they offered a datacenter track for the CCIE I would be all over that.
Click to expand...

CCIE Datacenter was announced back in April and confirmed at Cisco Live.

http://blog.ine.com/2011/07/14/cisc...e-voice-data-center-and-overall-ccie-program/
 
First their new enterprise licensing, now this? They really are just trying to push everyone to Xen and Hyper V aren't they?
 
C7J0yc3 said:
First their new enterprise licensing, now this? They really are just trying to push everyone to Xen and Hyper V aren't they?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what I'm gonna do yet. I have a couple servers running in production using the free version. They are needed systems that I couldn't justify physical servers for. I don't need the HA features or a VCenter server. I just want to consolidate ~15 servers on 2 physical hosts.
 
DeChache said:
I'm not sure what I'm gonna do yet. I have a couple servers running in production using the free version. They are needed systems that I couldn't justify physical servers for. I don't need the HA features or a VCenter server. I just want to consolidate ~15 servers on 2 physical hosts.
Click to expand...

Then pay <$500 and get Essentials.
 
DeChache said:
I'm not sure what I'm gonna do yet. I have a couple servers running in production using the free version. They are needed systems that I couldn't justify physical servers for. I don't need the HA features or a VCenter server. I just want to consolidate ~15 servers on 2 physical hosts.
Click to expand...

Well you have a couple options.

1: Leave them on 4.1. If you are testing the servers and not failover features etc, then no need to upgrade. 5 brings a lot of nice to have things, but nothing super significant for single server environmets. Many of the upgrades are aimed at vCenter, and custering.

2: Pay $500ea for a essentials license.

3: Convert to Hyper-V or Xen, however if your production is ESX then you would want to stick with that in the lab as well so that you don't have any hidden issues when you go from dev to prod.
 
C7J0yc3 said:
Well you have a couple options.

1: Leave them on 4.1. If you are testing the servers and not failover features etc, then no need to upgrade. 5 brings a lot of nice to have things, but nothing super significant for single server environmets. Many of the upgrades are aimed at vCenter, and custering.

2: Pay $500ea for a essentials license.

3: Convert to Hyper-V or Xen, however if your production is ESX then you would want to stick with that in the lab as well so that you don't have any hidden issues when you go from dev to prod.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna prob have to take option #2. The production cluster is ESX so that prob where I should stay. I was looking into the Essentials License anyway
 
tonyb said:
As has been mentioned in other threads here, ESXi 5.0 (or vSphere 5 Hypervisor as its known) still has a free version, but it will now be limited to 8 GB of vRAM. vRAM is an allocation unit for the memory of the total number of powered up VMs running. So that means if you have a 16 GB system, you can only run 8 GB worth of VMs.

The previous free version was limited to 256 GB. Maybe a bit much for a free version, but 8 GB? In many cases, not even worth powering up considering what a server costs to run a month in electricity and what RAM costs. Time to move to XenServer.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html (check out the last FAQ entry).

My thoughts on it are here: http://datacenteroverlords.com/2011/07/17/free-esxi-now-with-8-gb-limit/
Click to expand...

This should be cleared up in the licensing FAQ soon but it's 8GB per socket with a max of 4 sockets. So for most it will be 16gb some 32gb.

The ones I see getting the shaft is the home labs that likely will not want to shell out for a 2nd processor just to get 16gb.
 
zEp said:
This should be cleared up in the licensing FAQ soon but it's 8GB per socket with a max of 4 sockets. So for most it will be 16gb some 32gb.

The ones I see getting the shaft is the home labs that likely will not want to shell out for a 2nd processor just to get 16gb.
Click to expand...

Hmm shell out $400 for extra cpu or $500 for essentials kit license
 
Hmmm, I don't see where that improves things over just staying on ESXi 4.1. That may have to be the plan for now...
 
See most of us I think run single socket servers with 16gb of ram. I know my T110 servers both have 16gb but are only single socket. :(
 
If the limitations of ESXi are a non-issue, I would not switch either. However it still might be an option later, since the beta is actively moving into more Guest OS support. Yes experimental, but it's good to see them with the intent to make them better supported.

XenServer 6 Beta said:
Guest OS support updates
New Guest OS support includes Ubuntu 10.04 support, RHEL 5.6 and SLES 10 SP4 support updates. Experimental support for Solaris and Ubuntu 10.10.
Click to expand...
 
XenServer 6 is very nice hypervisor. I'm glad that i moved from ESXi :) Much better HW support, easy to manage, free livemotion when i want :) I've heard that in 2013 Citrix will have 50% market share in term of VDI :)
 
sybreeder said:
XenServer 6 is very nice hypervisor. I'm glad that i moved from ESXi :) Much better HW support, easy to manage, free livemotion when i want :) I've heard that in 2013 Citrix will have 50% market share in term of VDI :)
Click to expand...

They probably will..but the majority of those VDI sessions will be running on top of vSphere.
 
VDI on Hyper-V R2 with Microsoft's connection broker also works pretty rock solid. Citrix's tools also enhance it further if you want a full compliment of awesome. :)
 
I have to say View has come a long way. I've just rolled 4.6 last month and it runs extremely well. Love the Linked Clones, and persistant disks that can be detached and migrated to a new machine, PCoIP, Quickprep...etc. Very nice and running 300 machines with no issues right now. Looking to scale to about 600 by years end.


http://myvirtualcloud.net/

Great blog for VMware View users. This guy is very knowledgeable. I've read and followed many of his articles and i've had minimal issues.
 
Crap, there goes my esxi/zfs all-in-one box. Having 1 socket with a quad core and 12 GB ram. The 8 GB limit is really useless, im going to check out xenserver and see if I can move all my vms to that instead.
 
Legen said:
Crap, there goes my esxi/zfs all-in-one box. Having 1 socket with a quad core and 12 GB ram. The 8 GB limit is really useless, im going to check out xenserver and see if I can move all my vms to that instead.
Click to expand...

im not sure if you can pass through a disk controller to a VM in anything but ESXi... otherwise i would probably switch too
 
If only Hyper-V had better linux support I would ditch ESX and convert everything at home in a heartbeat. However my pfSense and untangle VMs say I have to stick with ESX, or build physical boxes. I used Xenserver a while back along with demoing ProxMox but they just weren't for me.

Alternatively I could run an ESX box just for my firewall and UTM and run everything else Hyper-V as the two only need about 8GB of RAM total.
 
Legen said:
Crap, there goes my esxi/zfs all-in-one box. Having 1 socket with a quad core and 12 GB ram. The 8 GB limit is really useless, im going to check out xenserver and see if I can move all my vms to that instead.
Click to expand...
You can still get ESXi 4.1U1 free which did not have this ridiculous vRAM limitation. Unless you need features that only v5 offers, you are fine. Even drivers for new hardware are often added to 'older' ESXi versions.
However this may just be a band-aid for a few years in case VMware doesn't change this license restriction in the future. Unfortunately, we don't know how the situation will look like in about 3 years from now (XEN server a good replacement? VMware adjusted their lic.? etc.).

For me, ESXi 4.1U1 is the proven stable solution and is going to be used for the new projects right now and those will be in use for quite a while (3+ years).
For work, it's likely that I need the "Essentials" license with ESXi 5 later as stability is king and easily outweighs the extra cost right now (incl. learning a new system).
At home (less critical environment), I might play with the new XEN server when the time comes...

-TLB
 
ripken204 said:
im not sure if you can pass through a disk controller to a VM in anything but ESXi... otherwise i would probably switch too
Click to expand...

I do think both xen and hyper-v at least can do RDM like esxi. My HW does not support pci pass through so its good enough for me :)
 
I have a very new build with xeon and server mobo that support vt-d passthru of my m1015, so anything that doesn't allow that is out. This is a home setup, so I guess I am fine with sticking with 4.1.
 
Hyper-V definitely supports passthrough disks. I used to use it with my WHS box on Hyper-V.
 
Passthru disks or controllers? And if disks, how does that work? I want my OI VM to have 100% control over the disks, including access to SMART info, able to hot-plug/unplug, etc...
 
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