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VMware Back-Pedals On vRAM Scheme, Back To Per-Socket Pricing

Posted by timothy on from the old-ways-is-best-ways dept.

Last year VMware introduced a complex pricing scheme based on the size of the memory associated with each virtual machine instance. New CEO Pat Gelsinger announced this week that this system (which he described as "a four letter word") has been deprecated, and VMware is back to more straightforwardly charging per physical processor. Adds reader hypnosec: "Pricing hasn't been announced yet but a file [PDF] present on VMware's site does give an indication about the new pricing."
Update: 08/28 17:18 GMT by S : Updated the headline and summary to reflect that the price is per processor, not per core.

17 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't that per socket, not per core? by hawguy · · Score: 4, Informative

    The summary says this:

    VMware is back to more straightforwardly charging per physical processor core.

    But I think they mean per socket. (or maybe per physical processor, but not per core)

    1. Re:Isn't that per socket, not per core? by Galestar · · Score: 2
      timothy needs to l2RTFA, which states:

      per-CPU licensing, with no restrictions on the available cores per processor or the physical RAM per machine.

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    2. Re:Isn't that per socket, not per core? by bruce_the_loon · · Score: 2

      Yep, reading the linked PDF. "For this example, a user has two 2-CPU (each with 6 cores) hosts with 128GB of physical RAM each that they wish to license with VMware vSphere Enterprise edition. Each physical CPU requires a license, so four VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise licenses are required. No additional licenses will be needed regardless of the number of virtual machines, amount of virtual memory (vRAM) or physical cores or RAM."

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    3. Re:Isn't that per socket, not per core? by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not really. Sometimes there just isnt a budget for multiple machines, and it is better to start by consolidating old Windows 2000 systems off of incredibly old hardware onto newer hardware.

      If the budget ever arises, we can quickly set up a full vSphere environment and migrate guests around; but there is a place for virutalization even if you cannot afford a SAN or any of the HA/DRS stuff. By consolidating, we have removed a lot of bad hardware and massively lowered switching and UPS requirements, which is incredibly helpful in this instance. The vSphere client also fits the needs of the customer particularly well, since before he relied on zillions of KVMs.

      I cant go into many particulars, but sometimes youre given a bad network and not a huge budget to work with. Ideally we would have a SAN and at least 3 boxes with Enterprise licensing. We dont have that, but its not the end of the world and I still have a job to do.

    4. Re:Isn't that per socket, not per core? by Dishevel · · Score: 2

      I cant go into many particulars, but sometimes youre given a bad network and not a huge budget to work with. Ideally we would have a SAN and at least 3 boxes with Enterprise licensing. We dont have that, but its not the end of the world and I still have a job to do.

      No shit. I am looking at a Network with 2 old SCO unix 5 boxes with one just acting as a slaved backup in case of Master failure. A 7 year old windows server 2003 box that is a domain controller. Two 7 year old XP pro boxes with specialized hardware a 2 year old windows server taking care of a PCI compliant CC database, and a brand new server that is fairly powerful just to run as a server for our mobile app. If I were to add a bunch of RAM and a second CPU to the new box add a SAN and a second box just like it with virtualization I could save power, have better back up and replace the 2 SCO Unix boxes the 2 windows servers and the mobile app server.
      I would have power to spare everything would be backed up and we would still be able to expand if I wanted. Heck I might even have some extra power in the server room. Getting really low there.
      But like you. There are issues with management and systems that mean that it will be like this for a while. I just have to make sure it works anyway.

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  2. Too late, EMC by charnov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Too late, EMC, we have already discovered KVM and are happily running on it.

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  3. I used to love VMware by AdmV0rl0n · · Score: 2

    But I don't anymore. They have morphed into a 'giant' that now has a homepage with a million products. And each one comes with 20 price plans, and innumerable gotcha's in licensing terms and have only one interest - squeezing people for more revenue.
    When as far as I could see, ESXi got worse from 4.1 to 5, this only underwrote the problem.

    When I spent some time trying to talk to VMware people, and this was when I was trying to formulate a Hypervisor move at work, because we were SM/E - I can't tell you how disinterested, and in fact off putting VMware folks were. So the company chose HyperV over their product. I'm not a HyperV fan - and I try out different vendors at different times, but appalling lic terms, screw you attitude from their people, and 5.1 actually looking poor meant I lost interest in being a VMware supporter/invoker.

    Since then they did an about turn and decided that in fact, if they lose the tech's and SM/E, they lose the next inbound group of people buying virt - and they started calling and wanting to talk. But damage has been done.

    They still have great tech to be honest, but its being utterly ruined by 'marketing/management' for a lack of better wording, and given so much virtualisation is free these days, I can't see anything but death by a thousand nibbles.

    It used to be that you could onbly really virt stuff their their products, but its simply becoming an untruth. Wether is server, or workstation, other options exist.

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    1. Re:I used to love VMware by LordLimecat · · Score: 3, Informative

      When as far as I could see, ESXi got worse from 4.1 to 5

      In what way? Better HA, datastore heartbeating, removal of the 2TB-per-datastore limit, DPM, better ways of dealing with RAM contention (page sharing)...
      there are a LOT of ways ESXi got better in version 5. Only regression Im aware of is that the VUM no longer does guest updates, but TBQH who really cares? Just use WSUS or your package manager in Linux.

    2. Re:I used to love VMware by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 2

      True. 5.1 was a definite "disimprovement" - a Microsoft-like "change for change's sake." The company appears to be suffering MBA-itis (i.e. irritation caused by MBAs who think they are intelligent, managing people who actually are).

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    3. Re:I used to love VMware by bpgslashdotaccount · · Score: 2

      Can't access guest consoles via free browser plugin anymore on Linux.

  4. Amazing what competition does by MoToMo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To rephrase the headline:

    "VMWare realizes that Hyper-V in Server 2012 is now competitive with vSphere in features; lowers prices in an attempt to lose fewer customers."

    1. Re:Amazing what competition does by bertok · · Score: 2

      Yes, really, Hyper-V 2012 might be usable.

      Version 1.0 and 2.0 were "me too" products that weren't mature. Nobody in their right mind would use them for anything serious. Some people did, of course, but only because of some non-technical manager deciding they wanted "all Microsoft" or some-such nonsense.

      Read the technical whitepapers on the 2012 release, it looks like someone at Microsoft finally "got it". It doesn't just have feature parity, it has some interesting new ones too that nobody else has, like good support for >10Gbps Ethernet. Apparently they took the zero-copy and low-latency network stack from the old HPC edition of Windows Server, and bolted it onto the generic server editions. Supposedly it can do 40 Gbps for a single TCP stream without special tuning! For comparison, it's hard to find a Windows server that can do more than 3 or 4 Gbps in loopback, let alone across the wire for a single stream. Combined with Microsoft fixing most of the issues with SMB2, it looks like using plain file server clusters might be not just a viable replacement for a low-end SAN, but a serious performance upgrade. For small business or workloads without critical data, this is going to massively reduce costs.

  5. This is why I use VirtualBox... by RocketRabbit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    VirtualBox costs a very reasonable $50 if you want to deploy it commercially. It competes well with VMware on features and speed, and is user-friendly enough to recommend to small businesses.

    VMware is expensive, the licenses are confusing, and overall it's just become a gigantic pain in the ass.

    1. Re:This is why I use VirtualBox... by Bugler412 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      EMC purchases a company then that company's licensing becomes confusing, expensive and fragmented?! No way that could happen! /sarcasm

    2. Re:This is why I use VirtualBox... by CimmerianX · · Score: 2

      VirtualBox and VMWare ESXi hosts are 2 different products. If you need a small 1-4 PC environment for testing or coding or whatever, run from a PC or server for free... virtualbox is the way to go.

      For a large enterprise, Virtbox will not cut it. Lack of many of the features that esxi has for centralized data, moving virtual hosts between physical hosts... HA, etc...

      Citrix Xen Server is a nice alternative, but still lacks the maturity of vmware.

    3. Re:This is why I use VirtualBox... by RocketRabbit · · Score: 2

      VirtualBox has long had support for centralized data, moving running virtual machines between physical hosts, HA, etc. In fact, the whole thing can be controlled and scripted from the command line. Last I checked ESXi still had features that can not be accessed thusly.

      Perhaps the 2.x branch of VirtualBox didn't compete with ESXi, but times have changed.

    4. Re:This is why I use VirtualBox... by Kalriath · · Score: 2

      No, there's no host OS, only the hypervisor. Once the Linux kernel (vmkernel) bootstraps ESXi, vmkernel itself gets contained into a VM which operates as a sort of control session. That's how I've heard it explained anyway. No host Linux at all.

      And of course, you have no evidence of your backdoor claim, so you just shot all your credibility in one fell swoop.

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