VMware license question...

obrith

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 11, 2004
Messages
267
So we just got our renewal quotes from VMware... Not much change in pricing except they're telling us that our 2x VMware Essentials Plus clusters will now require us to also pay 2x support contracts for VSA to go with them - something we've never used, don't require, and don't want. It doubles the support costs of the 2 clusters.

The VMware rep is telling us that they started bundling VSA as a required part of Essentials Plus and now require a support contract.

Our Enterprise cluster is not impacted (yet?).

Sound like typical games? Is this, if fact, "normal" now? They're quite literally trying to spin it to us as "we GAVE you VSA!". In my book $875/year (each) is not free.

We will gladly move both of those clusters to KVM if our support doubles - one is simply a test cluster anyways.
 
VSA is total crap, no one in their right mind is using it.

Ask for a supervisor, the whole thing sounds like bullshit to me. Also, if I were you I'd only pay support for one Essentials Plus bundle at this point. That way you can call if need be and just buy a new Essentials Plus whenever there's a major VMware upgrade.

If you have a super simple environment you may even consider to not renew support at all. I have been paying for years and I think I called VMware twice in all this time. Once I got ping-ponged between VMware and Dell EQL and got fed lines of BS from both about why my SAN had shitty performance and once was when I first bought VMware 3.5 with some setup issue I didn't know about because I was a noob.
 
@obrith We were in a similar situation with a couple clusters. Ultimately we were told by our c-level that our analysis was lacking when we presented a move to KVM + R720's + EMC. Our "decision makers" just felt more comfortable shelling out for EQL shelves + VMware. We have never had to call VMware.

@Thuleman Dell EQL + their VMware partner read off a teleprompter. I've always had better results with CDW and their teams. HP, they call us a month later apologizing that they forgot that we needed something. This is always when evaluating new gear. We don't need to call them for support. Its just "insurance" that gets checked off on our PO's by those above us.
 
@obrith We were in a similar situation with a couple clusters. Ultimately we were told by our c-level that our analysis was lacking when we presented a move to KVM + R720's + EMC.

Unless you have a really simple environment KVM is quite literally in a different solar system from VMware. I have a really hard time to imagine that there's any rational basis for picking KVM over VMware in a production environment.

EQL does have the advantage of not having to pay for software licensing, but overall I find their hardware underwhelming. I bought my EQL PS5000E when I was a rookie and trusted the VAR. Today I wouldn't buy an array that doesn't allow me to split out physical drives into raid groups, no matter which vendor the array is from. After that it's about dual active/active controllers, the ability to put your own disks into the array, and low/no cost annual maintenance. JetStor fits the bill for me. Can't say enough good things about them.
 
Agreed, but in our situation we clean sheeted infrastructure.
Each colo we have 6 racks and 3kw.
Getting rid of PE 860-3950 and sata 2 era EQL shelves was the easy.
What was hard was the blue moon environments that wouldn't be straight across retail capacity.
You'd have proposal from a 1gb/daily etl vApp shopping for a solution that wasn't going to cost $300/minute on amazon/rackspace...but they weren't ready to go with customer owned...and you end up with having to dial in seldom used capability into your refresh PO.

$55k+ for SAN, $100k for hosts, and a 3-pack of Enterprise licenses on top of the $340k you actually need becomes a rock and a hard place.

No matter what I'm translating IOPs and capacity into revenue.
My SE went down the Citrix and KVM route.
I proposed that seldom used capacity as essentially partner built proof of concepts for clients. They're shopping BTW customer owned/hybrid/full cloud and should best be served by used C6100's +VNX5300 with flash/spindles. I'd be deploying the test environments in partnership with our SE and their staff because most of the time these are preliminary environments that arent fixed in contract.

That whole question of how to provide capacity and services competitive with amazon/Rackspace has resulted in the SE and I in VCP classes with an eye toward becoming a vCloud service provider. Every provider is trying to work up propositions in a dominated environment.

Now the direction...that's above my pay grade, or becomes resume fodder for my next gig.

Unless you have a really simple environment KVM is quite literally in a different solar system from VMware. I have a really hard time to imagine that there's any rational basis for picking KVM over VMware in a production environment.

EQL does have the advantage of not having to pay for software licensing, but overall I find their hardware underwhelming. I bought my EQL PS5000E when I was a rookie and trusted the VAR. Today I wouldn't buy an array that doesn't allow me to split out physical drives into raid groups, no matter which vendor the array is from. After that it's about dual active/active controllers, the ability to put your own disks into the array, and low/no cost annual maintenance. JetStor fits the bill for me. Can't say enough good things about them.
 
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