VMWare upgrade costs & alternatives

[CapnPugwash]

Hi,

 

We run VMware 4.1 (enterprise edition) on 4 hosts. We don't have a support contract (I couldn't persuade the finance dept to part with the money) We need to start building some Server 2012 VMs.... but 4.1 doesn't support 2012! We have a number of 2003 VMs that I need to upgrade over summer. One machine needs to be 2012 to run A new version of the Cashless Catering software system we use.

 

I've just had a quote for an upgrade to the latest version and with the 'backdated support' and 're-instatement fee' it comes to over 8K!!!

 

Is there any alternatives to this... even barmy alternatives. I need to look at everything. The 're-instatement fee' is over a grand... I don't think the powers that be are going to suck that up.

 

I guess I could set up Server 2012 on a high spec desktop machine and upgrade my Server 2003 VMs to 2008... which might see us through to 2020?

 

All opinions and ideas welcome!

[mrbios]

Move to Hyper-V if you can't afford vmware, it's quite a bit cheaper and they're pretty much identical in terms of what they can do in the latest version.

 

The only reason not to would be if you had any virtual appliances that were vmware compatible only (Like me )

 

Obviously if they're not willing to pay out for one or the other then highlight the major issues to them, but one persuasion towards hyper-v could be the far cheaper costs in the long term compared to what vmware costs for support.

Edited May 22, 2014 by mrbios

[glennda]

Move to a 3 host cluster and buy Essentials Plus. Nowadays you can easily get the memory/cpus in 3 hosts cheaply enough for 3 hosts to be fine.

[teejay]

*puts BOFH cap on* switch off finance server and claim you can't fix it because it's a vmware problem and you have no support:troll:

 

More seriously, if you are on Microsoft EES then look at Hyper-V, the 2012 version is very good.

[3s-gtech]

We run both side by side (though we have ESXi free, because I'm a cheapskate). Hyper-V is properly winning me over - perhaps due to the licensing with Datacentre - but it's seriously quick and easy to manage. I plan to keep a mix for a good while - stick with ESXi for older VMs licensed with Select, and Hyper-V for everything else. Just need to work out how to sort the backups for Hyper-V - Veeam Free will need manually running, where I can schedule GhetoVCB to run.

[john]

Or move over to Citrix XenServer which is also free and the latest version is very nice and has plenty of shiny toys in it and a number of geeks use it, I know @bossman uses it and likes it

[pantscat]

Move to a 3 host cluster and buy Essentials Plus. Nowadays you can easily get the memory/cpus in 3 hosts cheaply enough for 3 hosts to be fine.

 

Definitely this. If you're comfy with using vmware and already have that skillset then Essentials Plus will be more than sufficient. Unless you're doing VDI/Citrix type stuff 3 hosts should be absolutely fine.

[synaesthesia]

As above, essentials plus is good value for money. Or evaluate if you even need to use anything more than the free version.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yep. Don't "upgrade" through vmware direct - paying right now in a lump sum for support you never recieved is not ideal.

 

Just buy new copy of essentials plus from a random reseller (suggest one of the edugeek ones) and install it on to USB stick for each server, put your new licence keys in, then you can boot your new, fully licenced 5.5 essentials plus and access the existing datastore off 4.1.