Licensing changes brought by vSphere 5.1 release - no vRam entitlements

While I have been torn apart by temptation to learn all new features of vSphere 5.1 by creating a long list of documents and blogs to read I have missed probably the most important change in VMware vSphere Licensing model - the is no more vRAM entitlement/limitation.

VMware claims they have carefully listened to their clients:

"Our customers spoke clearly," VMware Chief Marketing Officer Rick Jackson said at a press conference after Monday's opening keynote. "They don't want to think about things like vRAM. We're changing it back to what our customers want."

To me it seems more like another answer to Microsoft Hyper-V 3.0 which is about to be released and has already changed the virtualization market's landscape. But I personally liked the fact that VMware has enough courage to admit they had made a mistake with presenting vRAM.

"Yes, it is an admission that we had made things overly complex, and we are rectifying that mistake," outgoing VMware CEO Paul Maritz says bluntly. "Mea culpa."

So, there is no more vRAM and Cores per CPU limits now. Plain and clear licensing model with only requirement to have 1 license per each CPU/Socket in your server. It is quite an improvement which definitely makes life of VMware customers and VMware salesmen easier. I guess the total number man-hours spent last year worldwide in debates about vRAM could have been sufficient to build a space ship.

Another significant benefit of new licensing and pricing model is that all vSphere editions (except Essentials Kit) have gotten plenty of nice features included:  vSphere Replication, vShield Endpoint, High Availability and Data Protection (previously known as VMware Data Recovery). 

Free vSphere Hypervisor's limitations have caused some confusion as different part of VMware website and documents were providing different information. Here is the latest and most precise information from GabesVirtualWorld

“There is no vRAM in vSphere 5/5.1, including the free vSphere Hypervisor. If a host licensed with vSphere Hypervisor has more than 32GB of physical RAM it will error when applying the license or on boot. Before the vSphere Hypervisor license is applied, it will be running in 60-day evaluation mode (functionally equivalent to Ent+).  So in the case of a host with more than 32GB of physical RAM, when assigning the vSphere Hypervisor license fails the host will remain in the evaluation mode. If they do want to proceed they either need to find a box with 32 or less or go into the BIOS of the offending machine and turn off the additional RAM.”

The last interesting new fact is the special vSphere Standard edition which includes vCenter Operations Management Suite Advanced and vCenter Protect Standard. I am wondering why there is no similar Enterprise Edition? 

Now I am looking forward to the 11th of September when vSphere 5.1 will be available for download so I can start rebuilding my home lab.


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