On July 12th, VMware announced the release of VMware vSphere 5. This exciting new product comes with a lot of new features, but also important are the significant changes to the licensing structure. We recently conducted this webinar to help customers understand these changes and determine which licensing model is best for their organization.
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Softchoice Webinar: VMware 5 Release Summary
1. July 15, 2011 VMware vSphere 5 ReleaseLicense Changes
2. Agenda Understanding the Key Driver for Licensing Change vSphere 5: Licensing Changes Edition Consolidation and Upgrade Rights vRAM Definition and Entitlements vSphere 4: Staying Put Downgrade Rights VMware Support Model Questions and Answers Please include any questions in the chat window to the presenter and host
9. 15,000 North American Customers*Total Imputed Revenue of US$1. 874 billion **Computer Dealer News Magazine
10. Understanding the Key Driver for Licensing Change Moore’s Law states the number of transistors will double every two years RAM moving forward will be a better indicator of the number of VMs running on a host Customers can now leverage advanced CPU capacity
11. vSphere 5: License ChangesEdition Consolidation vSphere 4.x vSphere 5.0 Enterprise Plus Enterprise Plus Enterprise Enterprise Advanced Standard Standard Essentials Plus Essentials Plus Essentials Essentials
12. vSphere 5: License ChangesvRAM Pool Definition Atransferable, virtualization-based entitlement of RAM When a VM is powered on the vRAM configured for that virtual machine counts against the total vRAM vSphere 5.0-CPU license editions provide a certain vRAMcapacity vRAM Pool 32GB 32GB 32GB 32GB VMware vCenter Server vSphere Ent vSphere Ent 1 1 1 1 CPU CPU CPU CPU Host A Host B vRAM ≠ physical RAM
20. vSphere 4: Staying PutDowngrade Rights and Support Model Only the vSphere 5 SKU will be available on the Q3 2011 release vSphere 5 licenses include the right to downgrade one version VMware supports two versions back so vSphere 4 support will be available
21. In Summary Get an understanding of the amount of RAM you have allocated to VMs Leverage the free 60-day evaluation of vCenter Operations Manager to help gather the information
30. Q: How am I compliant with this licensing model? Is there a “hard stop” at my vRAM limit? A: To be compliant, allocated vRAMmust be equal to or less than the available pooled vRAM Entitlement. VMware vCenter Server will not impose a hard limit on consumed vRAM, but will provide alerts that consumed vRAM is approaching or has surpassed available pooled capacity. Q: If you are not RAM-constrained, is it possible to license fewer CPU's than you are using? A: No it’s required to license every single processor on your virtualized host. Top 10 Q&As
31. Top 10 Q&As Q: Is there a cost saving upgrade path from V4 to V5? A: As long as you have active Support and Subscription (SnS) there is no cost to upgrade from version 4 to version 5. If you have expired SnS then you’ll need to get that current to upgrade. Q: Does powered off virtual machines count towards the vRAMtotal? A: No powered off VMs contribute their allocated vRAM back to the overall vRAM Entitlement Pool.
32. Q: Is the new licensing model having RAM limit per processor or per core? A:In vSphere 5 there is no limit on the amount of cores per processor or the RAM a customer can install. So long as the processors are licensed and the customer stays within the vRAM Entitlement they are compliant. Q: Is vRAM counted on a per host basis, or is it the total of all vRAM across the whole cluster? A:The vRAM entitlements of vSphere CPU licenses are pooled—that is, aggregated—across all CPU licenses managed by a VMware vCenter instance (or multiple linked VMware vCenter instances) to form a total available vRAM capacity (pooled vRAM capacity). At any given point in time, the vRAM capacity consumed by all powered-on virtual machines within a pool must be equal or lower than the pooled vRAMcapacity. Top 10 Q&As
33. Top 10 Q&As Q: What if I have multiple clusters? A: As long as the total consumed vRAMacross all virtual machines managed by a VMware vCenterinstanceor multiple linked VMware vCenter instances is less or equal to the total available vRAM, vSphere is correctly licensed. Q. How does this affect VMware View licensing? A: For VDI Implementations nothing changes for View. It will still be licensed per concurrent user. If you are using VMware for the hypervisor layer of another VDI solution, VMware has released a licensing model for vSphere for Desktops link can be found here: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2011/07/vsphere-desktop-licensing-overview.html
34. Top 10 Q&As Q. We are using vSphere 4 with advanced license. We can continue to use until upgrading to 5, where we will be entitled for Enterprise, correct? A: Correct, so long as you have active Support and Subscription you can upgrade to vSphere 5 Enterprise from vSphere 4 Advanced at no additional cost. Q: I read something about having to run ESXi with vSphere 5. Will I need to run ESXi or can I stay with my ESX installs? A: You’ve heard correctly. ESXi is the only hypervisor supported with vSphere 5.
35. A Final Note If you would like to dig deeper into the changes and how they might affect your business , we recommend that your read Understanding the vSphere5 vRAM Licensing Model, from VMware . We received several very specific questions that are not outlined in this presentation. We would be glad to answer these questions in one-on-one meetings. Please contact us at vmware@softchoice.com to book an appointment and speak with one of our representatives. Thank You