andrew-virtusolve Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 VMware have today announced the full details around ESXi 5.0, There are oodles of bits of information around the web, but I'll be updating the CONFIRMED major differences in vSphere 5.0 on our Blog as soon as we have the write up completed and checked against material already officially in the public domain. I expect plenty of this information will be around the web over the next few days anyway! Virtusolve Blog Quickie Headlines: No ESX, The Service Console is Dead - as expected, only ESXi - so you better start learning the vCLI commands you've been avoiding! HA has been completely re-architected, Virtual Geek's Blog Post on this has some details here VMFS v5 - again Virtual Geek has this covered 1
FN-GM Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Oo thanks, does anyone know when this will be release please? Thanks
andrew-virtusolve Posted July 12, 2011 Author Posted July 12, 2011 GA (General Availability) Dates are not available yet and VMware never announces them until they are rock solid - they have learnt from other bigger companies constantly slipping. vSphere 4.0 was GA about 8 weeks after this kind of announcement last time and VMworld 2011 is August 29th-September 1st in Las Vegas, so put 2+2 together if you dare...
Sylv3r Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 We've just finished installing vSphere 4 today!! I take it this is a paid for upgrade and not part of our 12 month support subscription?
andrew-virtusolve Posted July 12, 2011 Author Posted July 12, 2011 We've just finished installing vSphere 4 today!! I take it this is a paid for upgrade and not part of our 12 month support subscription? If you have support with your licenses (on the GA date) you will be entitled to an upgrade, am just covering licensing in the latest blog post, but to steal a march on that look here: Licensing for VMware vSphere: Upgrading from VMware vSphere 4 1
Sylv3r Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 If you have support with your licenses (on the GA date) you will be entitled to an upgrade, am just covering licensing in the latest blog post, but to steal a march on that look here: Licensing for VMware vSphere: Upgrading from VMware vSphere 4 Great, thanks. We have support through until 26th June 2012 - so we should be good to go.
Arthur Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 I don't like the new vRAM licensing system: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf 128GB of vRAM = 4 x vSphere Enterprise licenses. That's $11,500 (£7,215.46) before any kind of EDU discount!
andrew-virtusolve Posted July 12, 2011 Author Posted July 12, 2011 Yep, by far the biggest response on the blog so far is comments on Pooled RAM Entitlements under the new licensing method, but it was inevitable really. Processors are halving in number and a licensing method centered on them will do nothing but decline - I suspect some people will miss the point on understanding this (Arthur clearly has understood it), but it basically means you are potentially restricted on the amount of allocated vRAM in your VMware environment. I wouldn't worry too much though, with EDU licensing combined with the Accelerator or Essentials Kits its still a steal!
pete Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 (edited) There's a lot of people (in non-edu) annoyed by the licensing change. Microsoft and Citrix have clearly been sacrificing to the right dark gods. And how on earth 32GB counts as "enterprise" these days, I don't know - who builds a production virtual host in 2011 with less than 32GB? It does mean XenServer should get a bit more polish to attract ex-VMware customers though, which is good news for me. Edited July 12, 2011 by pete
bio Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 well...just finished VCP 4 a while ago seems like the lifespan of a VMware product shortens bio..
gshaw Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Does this mean licensing changes as you upgrade or just for new customers? We've got 3 hosts, 36GB RAM on each and dual quad CPU with Essentials Plus... so I'd guess in theory we should be OK as to hit the 144GB vRAM limit over 3 hosts I'd have to seriously oversubscribe on the RAM on each if I work on the logic that there's 18GB physical RAM \ CPU available all things being equal?
Arthur Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Calculate vSphere 5 Licenses with Powershell. $vCenterServerName = "MyVC1.domain.local", "myVC2.domain.local" # Enter your vCenter server name here. In case of multiple vCenter servers, separate using a comma. $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop" # Connect to vCenter(s) Write-Host "Connecting..." $VC = Connect-VIServer $vCenterServerName Write-Host "Counting physical cpu's and vRAM in your environment. Please be patient..." # Gather information $pCpu = (Get-VMHost | Get-View | Select -ExpandProperty Hardware | Select -ExpandProperty CpuInfo | Measure-Object -Property NumCpuPackages -Sum).Sum $vRAM = [Math]::Round((Get-VM | Where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"} | Measure-Object -Property MemoryMB -Sum).Sum/1024,0) Write-Host "======" "pCpu Count: {0}" -f $pCpu "vRAM (GB): {0}" -f $vRAM Write-Host "======" # Disconnect Disconnect-VIServer $vCenterServerName -Confirm:$false # Calculate required licenses $licCol = @() $licObj = "" | Select Edition, Entitlement, Licenses $licObj.Edition = "Essentials/Essentials Plus/Standard" $licObj.Entitlement = "1 pCpu + 24 GB vRAM" If (($vRAM/24) -gt $pCpu) { $licObj.Licenses = "{0} with {1} pCpu overhead" -f [Math]::Ceiling($vRAM/24), ([Math]::Ceiling($vRAM/24) - $pCpu) } Else { $licObj.Licenses = "{0} with {1} GB vRAM overhead" -f $pCpu, ((24 * $pCpu) - $vRAM) } $licCol += $licObj $licObj = "" | Select Edition, Entitlement, Licenses $licObj.Edition = "Enterprise" $licObj.Entitlement = "1 pCpu + 32 GB vRAM" If (($vRAM/32) -gt $pCpu) { $licObj.Licenses = "{0} with {1} pCpu overhead" -f [Math]::Ceiling($vRAM/32), ([Math]::Ceiling($vRAM/32) - $pCpu) } Else { $licObj.Licenses = "{0} with {1} GB vRAM overhead" -f $pCpu, ((32 * $pCpu) - $vRAM) } $licCol += $licObj $licObj = "" | Select Edition, Entitlement, Licenses $licObj.Edition = "Enterprise Plus" $licObj.Entitlement = "1 pCpu + 48 GB vRAM" If (($vRAM/48) -gt $pCpu) { $licObj.Licenses = "{0} with {1} pCpu overhead" -f [Math]::Ceiling($vRAM/48), ([Math]::Ceiling($vRAM/48) - $pCpu) } Else { $licObj.Licenses = "{0} with {1} GB vRAM overhead" -f $pCpu, ((48 * $pCpu) - $vRAM) } $licCol += $licObj # Displaying output Write-Host "Resulting license options:" $licCol Write-Host "======" Write-Host "NOTE: vRAM only counts memory allocated to vm's that are POWERED ON." -ForegroundColor Red Write-Host "NOTE: Please double check the results of this script, since hosts may have been omitted due to errors." -ForegroundColor Red Write-Host "Disclaimer: No rights can be deduced from this calculation." -ForegroundColor Red Write-Host "======"
Theblacksheep Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) There's a lot of people (in non-edu) annoyed by the licensing change. Microsoft and Citrix have clearly been sacrificing to the right dark gods. And how on earth 32GB counts as "enterprise" these days, I don't know - who builds a production virtual host in 2011 with less than 32GB? Do "enterprise" servers only come with one CPU socket? Two sockets would mean double the pool vram available. 64gb limit or 96gb with 'enterprise plus' licence on two socket systems. Edited July 13, 2011 by Theblacksheep
gshaw Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 The posts I've seen so far suggest those enterprise customers are on 128GB+ per host and bearing in mind it's virtual RAM assigned to VMs rather than the physical total per machine. One can only imagine the party going on in Microsoft's Hyper-V department just about now, it's probably the best bit of marketing and reason to switch from VMware to Hyper-V they've ever had!
CyberNerd Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 can someone recommend me a vsphere licensing reseller (who I can talk to re licensing) please /hijack
Tallwood_6 Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 The fact there is a 12 page white paper on the blog from vmware explaining the new licencing model says it all really. Do we know what vRAM entitlement is per CPU for each edition? I love the way if you want to licence more vRAM you have to purchase another CPU licence or change edition!
Theblacksheep Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) oooh, advanced4 to enterprise5 upgrade with the licence change brings DRS and storage vmotion. winning. xserver support is very interesting. vcenter appliance is a good step too. Edited July 13, 2011 by Theblacksheep
andrew-virtusolve Posted July 13, 2011 Author Posted July 13, 2011 The fact there is a 12 page white paper on the blog from vmware explaining the new licencing model says it all really. Do we know what vRAM entitlement is per CPU for each edition? I love the way if you want to licence more vRAM you have to purchase another CPU licence or change edition! As per my blog : Entitlement per processor by vSphere edition - 24GB vRAM for Essentials Kit (144GB with the kit as a whole) - 24GB vRAM for Essentials Plus Kit (144GB) - 24GB vRAM for Standard - 32GB vRAM for Enterprise - 48GB vRAM for Enterprise Plus There are certainly issues to be concerned about here, but it's unlikely to affect the majority of education consumers. We have some customers who are going to be worse off to a tune of around 50% if they choose to upgrade to vSphere 5, but they are few and far between and generally customers with very high specification kit (one for instance has 84 x Dual Hex-Core Nehalem Blades with 192GB RAM) and who's environments are very highly utilized. But, VMware's customer base has a choice to stick with the product versions they have already bought and paid for. this was inevitable really, when you have a product that is vastly superior to the competition folk will pay for it. Not that we as a company are loving the decision, there are some angry folk around here who are short about 15 Enterprise Plus licences when we upgrade :-( 1
Tallwood_6 Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 True theres not alot to worry educational customers but I see today Microsoft announced details of it's next server version combined with the new hyper v and system centre and I can see slot of business jumping ship especially now the feature gap is closing. Vmware have scored a bit of an own goal from what I can tell instead of creating a buzz around what's new and improved in v5 there is nothing but articles and comments from people complaining about the new licensing!
contink Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 True theres not alot to worry educational customers but I see today Microsoft announced details of it's next server version combined with the new hyper v and system centre and I can see slot of business jumping ship especially now the feature gap is closing. Vmware have scored a bit of an own goal from what I can tell instead of creating a buzz around what's new and improved in v5 there is nothing but articles and comments from people complaining about the new licensing! ... and VMWare are still intent on making use of as many buzzwords, confusababble BS and navigation feel like you need a flipping MSc in their design teams neural network just to understand where stuff really is... These guys would be flayed alive at any usability conference.
Arthur Posted July 14, 2011 Posted July 14, 2011 You missed one Andrew. From VMware's FAQ... Entitlement per processor by vSphere edition - 8GB vRAM for vSphere Hypervisor Based on ESXi - 24GB vRAM for Essentials Kit (144GB with the kit as a whole) - 24GB vRAM for Essentials Plus Kit (144GB) - 24GB vRAM for Standard - 32GB vRAM for Enterprise - 48GB vRAM for Enterprise Plus 1
Butuz Posted July 14, 2011 Posted July 14, 2011 And that's an important one really, as at the moment we are just using the Hypervisor with 16GB of ram so I guess it's game over for that! Butuz
Netman Posted July 14, 2011 Posted July 14, 2011 can someone recommend me a vsphere licensing reseller (who I can talk to re licensing) please /hijack Try IT Companies | IT Courses | IT Training | Dorset | Hampshire | Bournemouth | Poole :: Deverill - very good to deal with... 1
Leeoakley Posted July 21, 2011 Posted July 21, 2011 Cybernerd, Try Andy from Virtusolve already on this thread, they are great bunch of lads and should be able to run you through things. i have his number somewhere if its of use. 2
CyberNerd Posted July 21, 2011 Posted July 21, 2011 Cybernerd, Try Andy from Virtusolve already on this thread, they are great bunch of lads and should be able to run you through things. i have his number somewhere if its of use. Already done so, and signed up for VMWare essentials
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