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YoutubeUnderstanding the vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Model
With the Cloud Infrastructure Launch on July 12 we announced changes to the vSphere 5 licensing model. vSphere 5 will continue to be licensed per physical processor with a new vRAM entitlement pooled across the entire environment.
We're monitoring the feedback very closely, we take it to heart, and we do want to do the right thing for our customers. In this post, I’d like to point out a couple of things that may have gotten lost in the discussions, share with you some of the thinking behind the vSphere 5 licensing model, and point you to a tool can help you assess what these changes will mean to you.
We are noticing a critical misconception that is permeating many of the discussions around the changes we’ve made. I’d like to clarify: the new licensing model is NOT based on physical RAM. It is based on the amount of virtual RAM (vRAM) configured to a virtual machine. We have seen a lot of instances where people are trying to calculate the number of vSphere 5 licenses needed by taking the physical RAM in a server and dividing it by the vRAM entitlement for a particular vSphere edition. That isn’t quite how the new model works.
The vSphere 5 licensing model has a pooled vRAM entitlement. vRAM is total amount of virtual RAM allocated to all VMs, and it is important to note that the total allocated vRAM for most customers is substantially smaller than the available physical RAM. Most customers reserve at least 20% of spare physical RAM capacity that is not allocated as vRAM.
To really get an understanding of how many vSphere 5 licenses a customer needs, you need to sum up the total amount of vRAM allocated in all powered-on VMs, and divide that total amount by the entitlement for the particular vSphere 5 edition you are running. Let’s look at an example: if you have 100 VMs with 4GB of vRAM each, then you need a vRAM pool of 400GB. If you are running vSphere 5 Enterprise (with 32GB of vRAM entitlement per processor license) then you need 400GB / 32BG = 13 licenses. As you notice, there is no mention of physical RAM in this calculation. To recap, vSphere 5 licensing needs are determined by only 3 factors:
- Number of VMs
- Amount of vRAM per VM
- What vSphere 5 edition you are running. The entitlements for the different editions are available here.
Our Technical Marketing team has developed a tool that can help you add the total amount of vRAM allocated in your VMs so that you can run this calculation. There is also an accompanying video explaining how to use the tool. In addition, we have noticed a few similar tools developed by the community.
How we got to vRAM
When we began the process of developing the new model, we set out to find a way to evolve vSphere’s licensing to lay the foundation for customers to adopt a more "cloud-like" IT cost model. We were looking to develop a model that would be more congruent with the technology architecture of the virtual and cloud world, where resources are pooled for maximum utilization. In short, we wanted a model based on consumption and value rather than physical components and capacity.
The design point of the licensing change was not to increase licensing costs, and we believe 90+% of our customers will not see a licensing cost increase. Before we introduced the new vSphere 5 licensing model, which is based on pooled vRAM entitlement, we did a great deal of research, and carefully analyzed available customer data. Let me tell you what we found:
- The average amount configured vRAM per VM is 3GB
- The average number of VMs per physical processor is 5.7. I know this may be counter-intuitive to some customers who are pushing the envelope, but the detailed distribution of consolidation ratios is on the graph below.
So based on the above two metrics, even if you disregard the effect of vRAM pooling, the vRAM entitlements far exceed the common customer practice. In fact, some customers may see a decrease in their licensing costs: customers of vSphere Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, and Enterprise had 6-core per proc restrictions in the previous licensing model. In order to deploy vSphere on a new server with more than 6 cores per processor, these customers would have had to purchase additional vSphere licenses.
We are confident that as we move into the cloud computing era, our vSphere 5 vRAM licensing model will allow our customers to best take advantage of the benefits and flexibility of cloud computing by allowing the pooling of licenses for maximum utilization and value:
- As Forrester’s James Staten writes in his blog: “This change ties licensing more to the use of the product and encourages greater VM consolidation as it counts VMs by size, rather than per physical server. This incents packing lots of VMs on a single system and even lets you share vRAM entitlements across physical systems to accommodate more seamless growth of your environment and management of the pool, a key operational change called out in our Virtualization Maturity Model. Basically, now you can entitle your virtual environment in total, based on its capacity and fill it up as much as you want. This is much more consistent with their service provider pricing model; and if your goal is to build a private cloud, isn’t that the point? All in all, this shows that VMware gets it and is taking an active role in helping educate its customers that virtualization and cloud operations are two different things and making these distinctions clear is critical to their and your success. Well done, VMware.” http://blogs.forbes.com/forrester/2011/07/12/the-cloud-computing-market-grows-up/
- And as the Taneja Group remarked: “We welcome this new approach, and believe it addresses the majority of licensing concerns that we’ve heard from VMware customers over the past couple of years. First, it’s much simpler – users can now focus on how they actually use vSphere virtual resources on a given pool of physical servers, versus having to worry about how those underlying servers’ processor and memory configurations might grow. And since baseline licensing is still tied to number of server cpu’s, the new licensing will not force changes to customers’ existing purchasing and budgeting processes.” http://tanejagroup.com/news/blog/cloud/vmware-takes-vsphere-licensing-to-the-cloud
To wrap up, I would like to point to some of the advantages of the new model as articulated by some of our customers:
-
The great thing about the new licensing model is that you don’t have to buy all your licensed capacity up front if you think you’re going to be running a large amount of vRAM eventually. You can license the minimum and then purchase licenses just when required to be in compliance.
--Michael at http://lonesysadmin.net/2011/07/12/the-five-stages-of-vmware-licensing-grief/#comments -
VMware has now leveraged itself to provide a very measurable licensing cost per VM that Cloud providers can then accurately charge back to their customers. In VMware’s eyes this goes for both internal private clouds and external public clouds. http://www.vtesseract.com/post/7557543715/vsphere-licensing-doing-some-math
I encourage you to download the tool and estimate you actual vRAM usage across your entire environment. Talk to your VMware or partner sales team to go through the numbers. For more information and materials, visit the vSphere 5 Upgrade center.
Bogomil Balkansky
VP, Product Management
I have 50 servers that have quad hexacore and 512 GB RAM The average vm has 3 GB RAM. We have no choice but to use the subscription model Enterprise Plus,and be charged for half of the configured VM ram. The Vmware consultant went over everything and confirmed my fears. And what a pretty corporate spin he was giving me. He told me the subscription is based on the first 50% of configured RAM, and "you guys ARE going to be charging your customers when they go over 50%"!!!!!! Are you serious dude!!!! 170 VM's x 50 servers = 8500 VM's totaling 25 TB of RAM (obviously I will need more servers to not max out). However, by Vmwares own calculations the subscription price comes to $91000 per month. You read that correctly, per month!!!!! Oh that's right, I'm supposed to charge the customer when they use more than 50% RAM. That should yield a few hundred dollars per year. On another note Site Recovery Manager is now $495 per vm. Let me see, I have a customer that has 1000 VM's, wants SRM and it costs $495000? I seriously think SRM will be a player. It would be cheaper for me to hire 2 or 3 programmers and script our own version. These numbers were confirmed folks. We are still on Vsphere 4.1 and will be converting to HyperV. Not looking forward to the mass conversions but vSphere 5 will put us out of business.
Posted by: Rick Wininger | 11/24/2011 at 10:18 PM
We are in the process of migrating to a completly virtual environment. VMware WAS the preferred vendor until we saw the new pricing model.
The CFO just told us that VMware is OUT of the selection mix. This means we are almost assured to go HyperV now.
I really don't understand how a company can do this? Microsoft has never REDUCED capability, then just make new features an additional CAL. This still hurts, but if your an SA customer you get the new CALs for free. If you don't want the new features your not stuck.
If I was still working for a consulting company that sold VMware I would be getting my techs trained ASAP on the competition.
Microsoft execs must be laughing. VMware is HANDING them customers.
Posted by: matt | 11/17/2011 at 12:02 PM
I've always wanted to learn about VMware, Thank you very much.
Posted by: vpn provider | 11/02/2011 at 12:47 AM
Recently VMware released the new version of vSphere. One of the biggest announcements of the release is that in 2011, VMware ESX will go away and be replaced with ESXi. And now VMware Classes are becoming more popular and in demand.
Posted by: VMware Class | 10/17/2011 at 01:52 AM
Thankyou vmware, you are making this easy for me. I've been a huge fan of you're esxi free server to sell into our SMB marked customers, so that I later could purphase a license since they already had vmware installed. But no more. Not with this BS. We will most likely be switching to eighter Hyper-V or XENserver if you keep up with this pricing. You're way to expensive
Posted by: Not happy | 08/02/2011 at 11:48 AM
VMware, if you're smart double the vRAM for Enterprise+ license otherwise you will lose big, no one will virtualize enterprise workloads anymore, it will just be too expensive!
There's no reason to have a 1TB VM possible if it costs close to $100k in licensing alone, it's much cheaper to go physical.
Posted by: Mihai | 07/30/2011 at 07:13 PM
>> When we began the process of developing the new model, we set out to find a way to evolve vSphere’s licensing to lay the foundation for customers to adopt a more "cloud-like" IT cost model. We were looking to develop a model that would be more congruent with the technology architecture of the virtual and cloud world, where resources are pooled for maximum utilization. In short, we wanted a model based on consumption and value rather than physical components and capacity.
For 1 VM with 32 vCPU/1TB RAM you will need to buy 21 (twenty one) vSphere5 Enterprise Plus licenses or $73.500 !!!
(1TB : 48GB per license = 21 licenses * $3.500 = $73.500)
This VM can be hosted on 1x vSphere DL580 G7 4CPU 8Cores X7550 1TB RAM.
VMware has tried to tell us that this new license model was done to benefit the customer. If that is the case let the customer choose between a V4 and a V5 model and let the customer decide what is best. Problem solved and everybody happy!
What do you think most of them would choose?
Posted by: DanPan | 07/26/2011 at 04:35 PM
>> The design point of the licensing change was not to increase licensing costs, and we believe 90+% of our customers will not see a licensing cost increase.
Are you sure?
Enterprise customers who invested in a scale-up infrastructure strategy will see a HUGH increase in licensing cost when migrating to vSphere 5.
Some cases:
Host 1 (HP DL580G7)
Sockets 4
Cores 32 (4*8)
RAM 1TB
no memory/CPU overcommitment
32x VM 1vCPU/32GB
vSphere 4 = 4 Licenses Enterprise+ (4 * 1)
same config above upgraded to vSphere 5 = 21 Licenses Enterprise+ (32 * 32 / 48)
==> from 4 to 21 = increase of 425% on license cost!!
-----------------------------------
Host 2 (HP DL580G7)
Sockets 4
Cores 32 (4*8)
RAM 512GB
no memory/CPU overcommitment
32x VM 1vCPU/16GB
vSphere 4 = 4 Licenses Enterprise+ (4 * 1)
same config above upgraded to vSphere 5 = 11 Licenses Enterprise+ (32 * 16 / 48)
==> from 4 to 11 = increase of 175% on license cost!!
-----------------------------
Host 3 (HP DL580G7)
Sockets 4
Cores 32 (4*8)
RAM 256GB
no memory/CPU overcommitment
32x VM 1vCPU/8GB
vSphere 4 = 4 Licenses Enterprise+ (4 * 1)
same config above upgraded to vSphere 5 = 6 Licenses Enterprise+ (32 * 8 / 48)
==> from 4 to 6 = increase of 50% on license cost!!
-----------------------------
Host 4 (HP DL580G7)
Sockets 2
Cores 16 (2*8)
RAM 128GB
no memory/CPU overcommitment
16x VM 1vCPU/8GB
vSphere 4 = 2 Licenses Enterprise+ (2 * 1)
same config above upgraded to vSphere 5 = 3 Licenses Enterprise+ (16 * 8 / 48)
==> from 2 to 3 = increase of 50% on license cost!!
-----------------------------
Please show me how i can migrate these realistic workloads to vSphere 5 with an increase on license cost LESS than 50%.
You can not...
Why: VMware based there vRAM entitlement on a ratio 5:1 and max. 48GB / phycical CPU, which is NOT the reality for enterprise customers!
Posted by: DanPan | 07/26/2011 at 04:11 PM
>> Let’s look at an example: if you have 100 VMs with 4GB of vRAM each, then you need a vRAM pool of 400GB. If you are running vSphere 5 Enterprise (with 32GB of vRAM entitlement per processor license) then you need 400GB / 32BG = 13 licenses.
In this example I would suggest to run the 100 VMs on 2 hosts (4CPU/256GB), buy vSphere 5 Enterprise licenses, downgrade them to v4 (no vRAM entitlements) and run the VMs on vSphere4 host.
With this setup you only need 8 licenses (2x4) instead of 13.
cost saving 13->8 or 62,5% or $17,5k
To wrap up, stay on 4.1 for another year or two and then migrate to a competing platform.
Posted by: DanPan | 07/26/2011 at 03:38 PM
First official response from VMware regarding community feedback!
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1798992#1798992
Posted by: Rotem Agmon | 07/25/2011 at 01:48 PM
This is just wrong in sooooo many ways....
I'll stick to 4.1 until my HW dies then move on with Citrix or HyperV....
Thanks you VMware for screwing us!
Posted by: Marc | 07/25/2011 at 11:52 AM
sad to see that this company is once again pissing their customers into the face, probably best to stay as long as possible with 4.1 and then go KVM, for the saving from licencing costs we can employ a bunch of people who are managing the cluster. and we definitely should not allow a company that over and over again misleads their customers to be successful. when you look how ridiculous it is how the vmware marketing army is depicting stuff like this as an improvement it is really time to go elsewhere, you can't take those guys serious anymore
Posted by: Rod | 07/25/2011 at 06:10 AM
I believe VMware has chosen the correct new licensing model but think the amount of vRAM per socket is considerably less than most of your customers are using. I'm not sure where you got 5.7 but I believe most large customers whom have been using VMware for more than a year or two would have much higher ratios. I think VMware should consider and look to allocate about twice the vRAM per license model. This is based from my own epxerience where the average VM vRAM has been increasing due to W2K8 and x64 OS's and consolidation ratios are more like 10:1 to 25:1.
http://runningvm.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/vsphere-5-release/
Posted by: Paul Woodward | 07/25/2011 at 04:15 AM
I have 16 sockets with Enterprise Plus on ESXi 4.1. We have 48GB of RAM per socket deployed.
Prior to the new licensing by VMware, we were going to 24 sockets with 96G/RAM per socket. The new licensing makes dense RAM configurations not cost-effective.
Given that EMC owns VMware this move is not surprising and was a long time in the making. BTW, we are no longer running on EMC since it is also not cost-effective ....
Bye, bye VMware. RIP. It was fun while it lasted.
Xen, Hyper-V and Citrix look really interesting now ....
Posted by: Mike | 07/22/2011 at 05:48 AM
We will not be upgrading to vSphere 5. We have most of our hosts with 256GB RAM, we have 30 hosts. We haven't even installed Hyper-V, now we will be investigating it's use. How stupid can a company be to not realise what this change would cause. This happened from 3.x to 4.x with the additional features of Enterprise Plus and having to pay extra for them, which still leaves a bad taste. VMware have lost out trust and we will not be forced down this licensing model. Just to re-iterate we have never installed Hyper-V, but now we will be doing so.
Posted by: Flan5ter | 07/22/2011 at 02:01 AM
If VMware is going with a cloud-based licensing model, why is it still based on physical CPU's? Why not license based on vCPU's and vRAM instead? And skip the whole Standard/Enterprise/Enterprise Plus versions. That way customers can put whatever hardware they want - they're licensing VM resources instead, and can grow licensing based on the VM's they're running.
Posted by: Sid | 07/21/2011 at 06:45 AM
I guess I'll start taking a closer look at hyper-v now. This is ridiculous.
Posted by: Rick | 07/20/2011 at 03:05 PM
So my existing Enterprise Plus licenses for unlimited physical RAM will now be limited to 48GB of vRAM?
And this is supposed to be an upgrade, right?
So a dual-socket 128GB box now requires 3 licenses to be fully utilized, and 4 if overcommitted 20%? Under 4.1 Ent+, this was all included.
Also, if this is supposed to get rid of the "outdated" model of capacity-based licenses, then why is it still bound to CPU sockets? License on sockets, or license on vRAM... not both at the same time. Give us the option, or at least keep Enterprise Plus unlimited.
I can't believe the license doc actually says this model can require less licenses. That's not possible because the minimum number of licenses it STILL based on CPU sockets, and the maximum number of licenses is now based on vRAM, which means an increase in licensing for all large deployments. Small shops don't use VMWare anyway because the licenses cost more than the hardware required to remain physical and no CFO will sign off on the soft benefits.
Posted by: James | 07/20/2011 at 12:47 PM
If I'm reading this correctly, the license model is based on existing customers, the vast majority if which are running 3 gig memory systems.
??
So, we've now configured a pricing model for every school, NotForProfit, Govt.Agency, home-sk00led fanboy and we're applying it to the rest of us that actually work for a living trying to make money so we can support your idiotic 3-gig calculation per VM.
Like they say in the movies, 'It never pays to go Full Retard"
Congrats, I think you've done it.
Posted by: C. Smith | 07/20/2011 at 11:39 AM
Preliminary results here:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1795012#1795012
How do the new vRAM entitlements affect you?
Please take 2 minutes of your time to fill out this vSphere 5 migration survey:
http://wuffers.net/2011/07/18/vsphere-5-migration-survey
We need more data! Results will be posted in the main vSphere 5 licensing thread over at VMTN:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/320877
Posted by: wuffers | 07/20/2011 at 11:12 AM
Bottom line is most existing customers will have to pay more to upgrade to vSphere 5. We are now getting a charge for how much vRAM we use and the vRAM limits that have been proposed are a joke for most medium to large companies using vSphere. Another thing is I have been loyal to vSphere whilst other have been really looking at other virtualisation products, now I have egg on my face.
Posted by: Henry Foblers | 07/20/2011 at 10:39 AM
This article starts out correctly. Many people are confusing the new vaporRAM licensing with actually RAM. They are different. If you have a server with 48GB of RAM and a 20% vaporRAM overcommitment, you will NOT be charged $4369 for an enterprise license, you will instead be gouged $8738 for 2 Enterprise plus licenses. That's correct, you will be charged for the 58GB of allocated vaporRAM.
This article really is smoke and mirrors. VMware is calling this change a memory "entitlement". That is a misnomer. An entitlement is a guaranteed beneficial extra. In other words, an entitlement gets you more of something and a guarantee that it will be available in the future. So let's look at that.
Prior to this licensing change, we could use an infinite amount of vRAM. VMware themselves encouraged us to over-commit vRAM (using more RAM than we actually had) in order to increase consolidation and ROI. This new licensing model caps vRAM commitment, This is not an entitlement, but rather a restriction or, since we are using economic terms, rationed allotment.
This creates a huge cost increase for many of us in terms of virtualization. Further, since VMware themselves encouraged us to scale-up our server farm virtualizations, this move amounts to a bait and switch tactic. After getting customers to commit to a product feature, they jack the price out the roof. The trouble here is two-fold. Not only did VMware gouge their customer base, they also encouraged customers to move in a direction that pinched them in a corner. It borders on a breach of ethics.
Here is a last set of numbers for you. If your server farm has dual 12 core CPUs in each server and 256GB of real RAM with a 20% RAM overcommitment, your previous scale-up cost of virtualization for each server was $4,369. Now, under the new "cap and ration" model, your scale-up cost will be $26,214 per server. This buys 6 Enterprise plus licenses which "entitles" you to use 288MB of vaporRAM. OOPS!! Don't forget the 20% overcommitment of RAM!! That's right, the 20% overcommitment of RAM means that you allocated 308GB of vaporRAM as VMware encouraged you to do. This server now costs you $30,583 instead of the $4,369 you originally budgeted. That is a whopping 700% increase in cost!! If you have 25 physical servers in your server farm, your budgeted cost of upgrading would have been $109,225. You real cost is now $764,575. Yup, you read that right. Your cost increase from $110,000 for upgrades to over three quarters of a million dollars!! To put it bluntly, your CFO ain't gonna be happy, but VMware's CFO will love you!
Posted by: John E Pace II | 07/20/2011 at 09:08 AM
It appears as if the pricing wizards at EMC have finally placed their price jacking for capacity hands in the cookie jar. Huge mistake by VMWare! The math of quad proc 8 core boxes that max at 198gb ram to break even with todays pricing model is simply unrealistic of the way machines can grow today. Quad proc boxes that can max 2TB of memory to really take advantage of scale requires roughly 40+ licenses under the new pricing model vs. 4. I'm not sure VMWare's key business partner Cisco is going to like their UCS dual proc 384gb ram boxes requiring roughly $30k in software licensing each. For the pricing not to affect you, it'll require more money in hardware as smaller memory footprint pc's are required with more proc power that will just sit wasted due to memory constraints. If VMWare thinks they are untying the licensing from physical hardware they are sadly mistaken. One Ent Plus license is now tied to 48gb or Ram. Sounds like a physical hardware limitation to me
Posted by: Adam | 07/20/2011 at 07:35 AM
I agree with this comment above:-
The vRAM Entitlement should be something like: Std 64GB Ent 128GB Ent Plus 256GB
This would make more sense and provide the same value as 4.1.
I have been specifying VMHost Servers with 120GB of RAM for either Essentials Plus or Standard edition. The proposed new licensing model is very unfavourable for some of our 2, 3 or 4 x VMHost Server environments.
We're not a huge reseller but do have quite a few successful deployments of Ess Plus, Standard and Enterprise.
We'll be re-assessing our VM vendor strategy based on the unfavourable licensing model proposed in vSphere 5
Posted by: Marcus, Bristol. UK. | 07/20/2011 at 03:30 AM
Remember one ESX update patch fiasco years ago that put our licensing in doubt and we couldn't start our vms once stopped? - Well i recall that i tried vmware phone support that day and all lines where flooded including the ones outside my country. I only got support through local reseller...
That gave me the idea to us act as one:
I suggest to all with support contract or not to call country vmware phone assistance on the 29 July to tell to the operator what are our polite thoughts about the new licensing and how it affects our organization if not discontinued. Those on vacation can delegate task to coworker.
-what better customer dislike feedback vmware gets through their phone recording assistance system?
If you actively approve please post this message in all community forums where not available to pass the message.
Posted by: mrideia | 07/19/2011 at 04:01 PM