VMWare's new Licensing Fees Changes Focus on High Core-Count CPUs

[Doobeedoo]

I thought this model would eventually change though, I get that twice the cores can than be put in like 1s vs 2s but still. Certain enterprise licensing just looks lame. 

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

You need Xen Orchestra for a comparable hosting platform compared to even basic license levels of VMware so you may as well pay money to the one with the most mature and complete product set. Xen Orchestra is way cheaper in really large deployments but VMware Essentials Plus is cheaper for the same features.

 

If you need other VMware product capabilities like VMware SRM then getting similar from any other market option is way harder and more time required.

 

I'd rather go with OpenStack in a situation where I wouldn't use VMware.

 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

 

So? What I said is true. VMware Essentials Plus is $4,625 and the comparable Xen Orchestra is $6000. There's a couple of key features in Premium that people need over Enterprise, otherwise for $2400 it would be cheaper.

[jagdtigger]

On 2/4/2020 at 8:29 PM, leadeater said:

So? What I said is true. VMware Essentials Plus is $4,625 and the comparable Xen Orchestra is $6000. There's a couple of key features in Premium that people need over Enterprise, otherwise for $2400 it would be cheaper.

Hm, i couldnt find that on their site, just vsphere plus which costs more than xcp+xen.... (for the basic support)

 

(Sorry about the late reply, didnt meant to ignore you, im in night shift again[im in a shift model where every third week is night shift)]

Edited February 6, 2020 by jagdtigger

[thechinchinsong]

This article by servethehome also provides some decent insight into this licensing change.

https://www.servethehome.com/licenseageddon-rages-as-vmware-overhauls-per-socket-licensing/

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Hm, i couldnt find that on their site, just vsphere plus which costs more than xcp+xen.... (for the basic support)

 

(Sorry about the late reply, didnt meant to ignore you, im in night shift again[im in a shift model where every third week is night shift)]

Once you go to a VMware license that isn't a fixed socket/host count flat fee it's really expensive, really really expensive. That's where Xen wins out cost wise but it's not so great at integrating in with other tools like backup software, storage array advanced features (vvols, snapshots, clones) and then VMware has other tools of their own like VMware SRM that still make sticking with VMware attractive enough.

 

Xen is actually really popular in the cloud hosting providers because it's really good, has all the features you'd need for hosting purposes, and that cost factor. Like if you have 500 CPU sockets there is no way in hell you're going to pick VMware for that, even with volume discount.

[jagdtigger]

10 hours ago, leadeater said:

but it's not so great at integrating in with other tools like backup software, storage array advanced features

It has them built-in so no surprises there...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9cgi3ctnkpzwdnz/Screenshot from 2020-02-07 08-24-40.png?dl=0

 

Plus it supports NFS so in most cases you wont have issues hooking it up to the storage server.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

It has them built-in so no surprises there...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9cgi3ctnkpzwdnz/Screenshot from 2020-02-07 08-24-40.png?dl=0

 

Plus it supports NFS so in most cases you wont have issues hooking it up to the storage server.

That is not at all anything like what actual backup software does. Being able to trigger a VM backup is not the same as using a proper backup tool that can actually cater to complex environments with the ability to be application aware of what is inside the VM and trigger native backups for those applications  e.g. MSSQL/MySQL etc.

 

Plus these backup software have much better scheduling capabilities and policies around where and how long data is kept, with the ability to restore a VM to any cloud provider or across any on-perm hypervisor.

 

As for storage array I said advanced features and listed what those are, being able to store a VM on an NFS share is not 'advanced features'. That's the literal most basic thing, otherwise it's not storage.

 

Right now I can using Commvault backup every VM we have in minutes using the native capabilities of the Netapp storage (NFS access protocol) completely offloaded from the VM host so no data is moved by the host with full application awareness, mirror that to another Netapp then Vault it to another offsite Netapp for long term storage all offloaded to the storage layer handled by Commvault plugging in to VMware and Netapp. Additionally I can stand up any of these retention points from any copy on site or offsite as full running VMs in minutes also in either a sandbox or real recovery, then when the fault is fixed handle the replication of the changes back to the primary location and switch back.

 

Commvault, Veeam etc do support XenServer/XCP-NG but you can't do as much as you can compared to ESXi/vCenter. But this comes back to are you really using such backup tools for cloud hosting? Likely not.

 

Cheap cloud hosters/VPS's have it super easy because they have zero complexity outside the ability to host a VM, that's just not what everyone else has to deal with including their customers. Capabilities come with a cost and you pay for them if you need them, nothing is free on-prem or in the cloud.

 

Also for your information I've been virtualizing since the technology first came to existence and have experience using VMware, Citrix XenServer (father of XCP-NG), Hyper-V, KVM, NTNX/AHV and now diving in to OpenStack. Aus/NZ is the most virtualized region in the world and has the highest adoption rate each and every year, it's a really important market to all the hypervisors because of this and how quickly we are at trying new features they offer, for a long time we have been the testing ground for these companies. I'm more than qualified and experienced to give an evaluation of the products on the market, as are a lot of people in my region.

[RejZoR]

Didn't Windows have similar idea of limiting licenses per core number? I wonder what's the limit for Windows Home now compared to Pro in terms of core limitations. Or is it per sockets. Consumer is only 1 socket and I don't know, 128 cores where Pro allows more sockets and thus cores? I know there was something, but I can't remember where I've seen the chart and if it still applies today.

[jagdtigger]

I was only able to find this:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-versions-cpu-limits/905c24ad-ad54-4122-b730-b9e7519c823f

Quote

Windows 10 supports a maximum of two physical CPUs, but the number of logical processors or cores varies based on the processor architecture. A maximum of 32 cores is supported in 32-bit versions of Windows 8, whereas up to 256 cores are supported in the 64-bit versions.

 

I wonder when they will make the same stupid decision as nvidia an restrict virtualization to enterprise and server....

Edited February 7, 2020 by jagdtigger

[jagdtigger]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Also for your information I've been virtualizing since the technology first came to existence

Didnt meant to upset you.  

[Guest willies leg]

VMware is owned by EMC, and is owned by Dell.

I'd get off that stuff as fast as possible. Most of the development for VMware is offshored. And some products are now completely in China thanks to mass firings a few years ago (VMware Fusion, I think workstation too). They forced their Silicon Valley employees to train their replacements. Some of which had been working for VMware for years. Judging from the recent code quality it didn't go well. How could it? Show some other person all you know about kernel design in less than a month....

But the bean counters are happy.