vsphere_pricing.pdf

VMware

vSphere 5

Licensing, Pricing and Packaging

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VMware vSphere 5

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ...................................................3

VMware vSphere Licensing Overview ...................................3

VMware vSphere 5 Licensing: Per-Processor with vRAM Entitlements ....3

Licensing Unit: Per Processor (CPU) .................................3

No Limits on Physical Resources ....................................3

vRAM Entitlements ................................................3

vRAM per VM .....................................................3

Compliance .......................................................3

Increasing the Pooled vRAM Capacity ...............................3

Monitoring of Pooled vRAM Capacity ...............................4

Why a Change Was Necessary ........................................4

Licensing vSphere 5 for virtual desktops deployments ...................5

License Management .................................................5

Centralized Licensing with No Single Point of Failure ..................5

Decentralized Licensing Option .....................................5

Licensing Example ...................................................5

VMware vSphere and vCenter Server Packaging .........................6

VMware vSphere Editions ............................................6

VMware vSphere Hypervisor ..........................................7

VMware vSphere Desktop .............................................7

VMware vSphere Kits .................................................7

vCenter Server Editions ...............................................8

Upgrade Entitlements for Existing Customers ............................9

Upgrading Between VMware vSphere 5 Editions .........................9

FAQ ................................................................10

How to Buy ..........................................................12

Learn More ..........................................................12

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VMware vSphere 5

Executive Summary

VMware® vSphere® is the industry-leading virtualization platform

for building cloud infrastructures. VMware vSphere accelerates

the shift to cloud computing for existing datacenters. It also

underpins compatible public cloud oferings, paving the way

for the industry’s only hybrid cloud model.

vRAM Entitlements

Each vSphere 5 license provides a vRAM capacity entitlement.

vRAM is deined as the memory conigured to a virtual machine.

When a virtual machine is created, it is conigured with a certain

amount of memory (vRAM) available to the virtual machine.

The vRAM entitlements of VMware vSphere processor 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) .

With the introduction of VMware vSphere 5, VMware is evolving

the product’s licensing model to give customers the opportunity

to move to a more cloud-like, “pay for consumption” approach to

IT. The changes lay the foundation for a more modern IT cost model

that is based on consumption and value rather than components

and capacity.

There are no restrictions on how vRAM is conigured across virtual

machines and CPUs. At any given point in time, the amount of vRAM

conigured by powered on virtual machines on a CPU could exceed

the base entitlement of the VMware vSphere 5 license assigned to

that CPU. There are also no restrictions on how many VMs can be

run in a pool. As long as the total conigured vRAM across all virtual

machines managed by a VMware vCenter instance or multiple linked

VMware vCenter instances is less than or equal to the total available

vRAM, VMware vSphere is correctly licensed.

The new vSphere licensing model continues to be based on processor

licenses and eliminates the restrictive physical entitlements of CPU

cores and physical RAM per server, replacing them with a single

virtualization-based entitlement of pooled virtual memory (vRAM).

VMware vSphere Licensing

Overview

In this chapter we will review the details of the new vSphere 5

licensing model.

vRAM per VM

When a virtual machine is powered on, the vRAM conigured to that

virtual machine counts against the pooled vRAM capacity up to a

maximum of 96GB (i.e. a virtual machine with 128GB of conigured

vRAM will only use 96GB from the pooled vRAM capacity). All

powered on VMs, including virtual appliances or service VMs created

by vSphere features or solutions running on vSphere, count against

the vRAM pool capacity in the amount equal to their conigured

vRAM up to a maximum of 96GB.

VMware vSphere 5 Licensing: Per-Processor with

vRAM Entitlements

VMware vSphere 5 is licensed on a per-processor basis with a

vRAM entitlement. Each VMware vSphere 5 processor license

comes with an entitlement to a certain amount of vRAM capacity,

or memory conigured to virtual machines. Unlike in vSphere 4.x

where core and physical RAM entitlements are tied to a server

and cannot be shared among multiple hosts, the vRAM entitlements

of vSphere 5 licenses are pooled, i.e. aggregated, across all vSphere

servers managed by a vCenter Server instance or multiple vCenter

Servers instances in Linked Mode.

Compliance

To maintain licensing compliance, at any given point in time the

following conditions must be met:

•Eachactivephysicalprocessor(CPU)musthaveatleastone

license assigned

•The365-daymovingaverageofdailyhighwatermarkofvRAM

conigured to all powered-on virtual machines in aggregate

cannot exceed the pooled vRAM capacity. This is the same

algorithm used for VMware’s management products licensed

on a per VM basis.

Licensing Unit: Per Processor (CPU)

Like VMware Sphere 4.x, VMware vSphere 5 is licensed on a per-

processor basis. Each physical processor (CPU) in a server needs to

have a least one vSphere 5 processor license key assigned to be able

to run vSphere. vSphere 5 license keys can be purchased, deployed

and managed in the same way they were with vSphere 4.x.

Customers must purchase vSphere licenses in advance of use.

Increasing the Pooled vRAM Capacity

If necessary, the easiest way to expand pooled vRAM capacity is

to add more VMware vSphere CPU licenses of the same edition

to the vRAM pool. Alternatively, customers can upgrade all CPU

licenses in the vRAM pool to a VMware vSphere edition with a

higher vRAM entitlement.

No Limits on Physical Resources

VMware vSphere 5 licensing removes all restrictions on physical

cores and physical RAM. This change eliminates barriers to deploying

VMware vSphere on new multicore server conigurations, improving

customers’ ability to choose server hardware that best meets

their requirements.

SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.

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VMware vSphere 5

Monitoring of Pooled vRAM Capacity

Available and conigured vRAM capacity can be monitored and

managed using the licensing-management module of VMware

vCenter Server. Customers can create reports and set up alerts to

obtain automated notiication of when the level of vRAM used

surpasses a speciied level of the available pooled capacity.

Figure 1 shows a comparison between the VMware vSphere 4.x and

VMware vSphere 5 licensing models.

VMware vSphere 4.1

and prior

Per CPU with Core and

Physical Memory Limits

VMware vSphere 5.0

and later

Per CPU with vRAM

Entitlements

Why a Change Was Necessary

With the modiication to vSphere licensing, we accomplish

two objectives:

Licensing Unit

CPU

SnS Unit

CPU

•Freecustomersfromrestrictivehardware-basedentitlements

•AlignthevSpherelicensingmodelwithITasaservice

Restrictions by vSphere

editions

- 6 cores for Standard

and Enterprise, ESS,

ESS+

- 12 core for Advanced

and Ent. Plus

Unlimited

Core per proc

To understand reasons for the change, we should irst examine the

legacy VMware vSphere model. VMware vSphere 4.x is licensed on

a per-physical-processor (CPU) basis with limits on:

Restrictions by vSphere

edition

- 256GB for Standard,

Advanced and

Enterprise, ESS, ESS+

- Unlimited for

Enterprise Plus

•ThenumberofphysicalcoresperCPU

•PhysicalRAMcapacityperserver

Physical RAM

Capacity per host

Unlimited

Signiicant innovations in hardware design—such as CPUs with

ever-larger number of cores, high-density memory chips, solid-

state drives and hyperthreading—were causing the hardware

limits in VMware vSphere 4.x licensing to become outdated. In

the 24 months since the release of VMware vSphere 4.0, multicore

capacity of x86 CPUs grew from 2–4 cores per CPU to 8–12 per

CPU. Processor manufacturers have announced plans to introduce

CPUs that will exceed 12 cores. CPU manufacturers have introduced

or plan to introduce technologies—such as hyperthreading—that

work at the subcore level and increase processing power by

improving parallelization of computations. Similar growth and

innovation trends are also happening on the memory side, with

RAM chip density growing from 4GB per DIMM to 8GB and 16GB

per DIMM and new types of memory technologies—such as solid-

state-drive (SSD)—becoming mainstream. This innovation trend

in server hardware technologies is rapidly making the hardware

restrictions of VMware vSphere 4.x licenses outdated posing

diiculties for customers to plan future investments in

infrastructure and virtualization.

Entitlement by

vSphere edition

- 32GB vRAM for

Essentials Kit

- 32GB vRAM for

Essentials Plus Kit

- 32GB vRAM for

Standard

- 64GB vRAM for

Enterprise

- 96GB vRAM for

Enterprise Plus

vRAM entitlement

per proc

Not applicable

YES - vRAM

entitlements are pooled

among vSphere hosts

managed by a vCenter

or linked vCenter

instance

Pooling of

entitlements

Not applicable

96GB - a powered on

VM will count for a

maximum of 96GB

against the pool

regardless of its actual

conﬁgured amount

Max amount of

vRAM per VM

counted

Not applicable

• Purchase in advance

of use

• 12 months rolling

average of daily

high watermark

• Purchase in advance

of use

• High Watermark

Compliance

policies

YES - built-into vCenter

Server 5.0

Monitoring tool

Not applicable

Figure 1. vSphere 4.x vs. vSphere 5 Licensing Comparison

SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.

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VMware vSphere 5

Licensing vSphere 5 for virtual desktops deployments

VMware introduced a new vSphere edition, vSphere Desktop,

speciically designed for licensing vSphere when used to run VDI.

vSphere Desktop is not subject to vSphere 5 licensing with pooled

vRAM entitlements. It can only be used as virtualization platform

for VDI deployments with either VMware View or other third

party connection brokers. For more details see next chapter.

Licensing Example

In this section we will go over the key elements of VMware

vSphere 5 licensing using an example.

Licensing new hosts with vSphere 5

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 a minimum of four VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise

licenses are required. Each VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise license

provides a vRAM entitlement of 64GB. This means that with 4 vSphere

Enterprise licenses the user creates a vRAM pool of 4 x 64GB = 256GB

So far the user has not created any virtual machines, so he has not

conigured any capacity of the vRAM pool.

License Management

VMware vSphere 5 licenses are still simple license keys (25-character

alphanumeric strings) that contain encrypted information about

the VMware vSphere edition or kit purchased and the processor

quantity. These license keys do not contain any server-speciic

information and are not tied to a speciic piece of hardware. This

means that the same license key can be assigned to multiple VMware

vSphere hosts, as long as the sum of physical processors on those

hosts does not exceed the encoded license quantity in the license key.

Hosts

CPUs

Centralized Licensing with No Single Point of Failure

VMware vCenter Server is the recommended interface for license

assignment to VMware vSphere hosts. When a license key is assigned

by VMware vCenter Server, it is copied to the host and saved in a

persistent format. If the host becomes disconnected from VMware

vCenter Server, the license key remains active on the host indeinitely,

even after a host reboot. Only a deliberate licensing operation by

the user can remove or replace a host license key.

VMware vSphere licenses

4 (Enterprise Edition)

vRAM capacity

256GB (4 licenses x 64GB/license)

vRAM used

0GB

Pooling allows DRS and vMotion across hosts

Next, the user starts to create virtual machines. The user creates

50 virtual machines each having 4GB of vRAM, and plans to deploy

them across the two hosts (~12 virtual machines per CPUs). Both

hosts are in the same vRAM pool as they are connected to the same

vCenter Server and are running the same VMware vSphere edition.

This vRAM pool allows VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler

(DRS) and VMware vMotion to move the virtual machines between

any of the CPUs without needing additional licenses. Even if all

50 virtual machines were running on a single CPU, no additional

vRAM capacity would be required, because the pooled vRAM

entitlement would not be exceeded.

Decentralized Licensing Option

Although VMware recommends that customers assign all

VMware vSphere licenses centrally through VMware vCenter

Server, customers also have the option to assign their license

keys directly to individual hosts. There is no diference between

directly and centrally assigned license keys. When a VMware

vSphere host is added to the VMware vCenter Server inventory,

any license key already on the host will become available for

management, reporting and assignment in VMware vCenter

Server, just like any license key added directly via VMware

vCenter Server. For more information on VMware vSphere

licensing, visit http://www.vmware.com/support/licensing.html .

Hosts

CPUs

VMware vSphere licenses

4 (Enterprise Edition)

vRAM capacity

256GB

200GB

(50 virtual machines x 4GB/virtual machine)

vRAM used

SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.

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