Plain Virtualization

With the new SKU release in simplifying customer purchase, there are certain guideline in place in purchasing the different license SKU.  To help architects from partners and also end user, I have created this simple calculator for ease of sizing the license needed. Do note this is accurate at time of publishing and there might be changes. Here is the link to VMware License Calculator. Feel free to leave me any comments below. Update 13th Feb 2024 The minimum requirement for vSAN Add-on has been removed. There is no longer a 8TiB per CPU requirement as updated on KB .

Hot from the oven, VMware by Broadcom has just release their first announcement regarding the go to market since acquisition here . This definitely is much welcome. In the past, it take someone to study the licenses to really make sense and advise customer the right way to purchase them. That complicate things. However, with this new introduction, its makes it much easier for customer to consume. Many might be very surprise, what many have assumed how Broadcom will do to their customer by increasing x amount in pricing ends up reducing it and easier to consume. Basically from all the products and their editions, all have been collapse to just two product: VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation. Clearly the above are targetted to two different segment of customers. Also to note that both are only available in subscription offering and works either in connected or disconnect mode. As per FAQ, for customer who are on perpetual licenses, will no longer be able to purchase ne...

With the introduction to vSphere + licensing, there are some beneficial in term of licensing which many might not notice. Announcement Reference Video White Paper In a nutshell, software companies are all moving to SaaS and subscription licensing basis. So VMware have also introduce vSphere+ to cater to the needs of customer and adapting to changes in the industry. As an architect, you will have to take consideration on what is needed often with the Bill of Material so a need to understand the licensing differences from perpetual license is often required. In the traditional perpetual licensing, it was licensed in per CPU/socket basis and each CPU only alllows up to 32 cores. ie. if you have a CPU that has e.g. 48 cores, that CPU will require two CPU licensing. In top of that, you will also have to license an instance of the number of vCenter Server needed in your environment with active Subscription and Support (SnS) to be eligible for upgrade and support call. With the new vSphere+ l...

Recently recent questions on the impact with license expiry. Especially important when most licensing are going into subscription model. But regardless of the license type, the effect are the same. Let just dive right in. During vSphere 5, I did an article regarding this issue where license expires on vCenter Server. The KB that was describing it has also been removed. The functions are partially working as stated. In fact, in vSphere 5.5, this has been documented . Today with vSphere 7, vCenter Server expiry of license is now shown in the doc . As well for the ESXi Server is documented . It is a now a clear cut that all ESXi hosts will be disconnected which also means no vSphere HA or vSphere DRS will work since this requires the hosts to be managed by vCenter Server. For other solutions, please check the respective documentation of the products to have a better understanding.

There are so many blogs and articles been posted by many. You can refer to some of the official ones below. What's New in vSAN 7 U2 Duncan's What's New in vSAN 7 U2 Here I am going to list some of the great feature found in vSAN 7 U2 which will help in everyday operations or use cases. vSphere Lifecycle Manager Once feature which was covered in vSphere 7 U2 post, was the ability to upgrade or patch the ESXi with Suspend of memory with Quick Boot. In vSAN, this reduces resynchronization efforts We also mentioned that more vendors hardware support for updates is now available. With the new vLCM, you can now dictate a desired state with an image and a prescribe outcome as a desired result. vSAN Data Persistence Platform (DPp) In vSAN 7 U1, support for a new framework for integrating stateful aps working with Kubernetes Operators such as MINO, DATASTAX, etc. was introduced providing the vSAN Data Persistence platform. In vSAN 7 U2, not j ust providing a easy deployment when the...

If you haven't heard, VMware is implementing a new licensing on his products which will be effective 30th April 2020. This means, if you were to purchase any license prior to that, it will still have no restriction. So what is new in these licensing changes? Basically, VMware is introducing a physical core licensing to its per-CPU license. VMware software has always been licensed by per physical CPU with unlimited physical cores on that CPU. With this change, each CPU license will be limited to 32 physical cores. Will the customer be affected? Most customers, will not be affected since most servers are using Intel CPU which currently has not exceeded 36 physical cores. However, those running the latest AMD CPU, will be affected as there will be more licenses required. Here is the VMware announcement. This will apply to all VMware software. One of the questions that are commonly asked, will be if my CPU has more than 32 cores (example 48 cores) and I am using two physical C...

With the release of vCenter 6.5, a built-in native High Availability (HA) feature was introduced. This has been a long-awaited feature since the end of availability  of vCenter Server Heartbeat since vCenter 5.x. With the release of VCHA, I came across many times people asking how can we implement it? There are a few articles from VMware that show some of the supported topologies. However, with the realize of vSphere 6.7 U2, the recommended vCenter Server deployment is with embedded PSC. In this case, we will just look at the topology that has an embedded PSC. This is welcoming since we have less component to handle and need not require a load balancer just to load balance PSC. Let us go through some of the common questions been asked. How many instances does VCHA deploy? With VCHA, you would have three instances of vCenter namely: vCenter Server  (Active), vCenter Server (Passive), vCenter Server (Witness). How many vCenter Server licenses do I need and which edit...

Recently encounter valid license key but not accepted by the system. This was done on vRealize Operations as shown below. Was adding the license key for vRealize Operations for Horizon Adapter. A license gotcha here, it seems that VMware has a fixed format for all the license key. It should come in 5 segments instead of 4, each with 5 digits. Sometimes simple things like this might just slip our eyes.

Recently a colleague hit into an issue with his setup on vCenter due to the expiry of license. A new license will be used however he is still hitting some problems. A quick check, he was using vCenter ROBO edition license and ESXi is running vSphere Enterprise Plus. So here is to clarify the different editions of vCenter from VMware and the features available and limitation. Do note some features is dependent on the vSphere editions. Refer to this KB for some of vSphere 6.x features comparison. I have also previously illustrated in vCenter 5.x here which basically stays the same other than new features in vCenter 6.x. For vCenter Desktop that would be another article here . vCenter Edition Essential Foundation Standard Availability Bundled in Essential/Plus Kit Sold separately. Manage up to 4 hosts (3 prior to 6.5 U1) Sold separately. Manage vSphere Essential/ Plus vSphere Standard and above vSphere St...

Recently there was some discussion over licensing in Facebook vExpert group . One of the users questioned about licensing 3 hosts, each placed at one location. He wants to be able to do a snapshot and monitor the health of the ESXi host. He intends to add a fourth host in future. He was also told by the account executive that vSphere Essential cannot meet this requirement. Let me explain some of the information which might be not clear enough. vSphere Essential and Essential Plus kit is a bundle that comes with vCenter Server Essential (which is not available for sale) and vSphere Essential/Essential Plus licensing. ]vCenter Server Essential can only manage up to three ESXi servers. The vSphere Essential kit allows you to license up to 3 hosts or 6 CPUs whichever come first. But you cannot license more than 3 hosts even if each only has 1 CPU. This is because vCenter Essential can only manage up to 3 ESXi hosts. Also, the licensing would not allow you to manage using a vCenter S...

Recently got into a requirement from a customer that a need for using vRealize Operations as a centralized monitoring and pulling in the metrics from other apps.  This would need to cover physical and VMware virtual environment. The first thing that came to my mind was to use vSphere Enterprise Plus and utilize the old vRealize Operations Insight which comprises of vRealize Operations and Log Insight.  However, this bundle has EOA as stated here . That was a bummer.  As cost is a big issue, we cannot just quote vCloud Suite (vCS) Enterprise where vRealize Operations Enterprise is provided and App Monitoring will be covered.  However, there are many components in it which my customer will not be using and cost does not justify it (though it would be nice for me :) but bad for my customer's pocket). Just for those who ain't aware vCloud Suite just consists of vRealize Suite + vSphere Enterprise Plus.  The editions of vCloud Suite is in line with vRealiz...

VMware announced the release of NSX 6.2.3 with the release notes .  So what is unusual of this release you might ask.  Well other than feature and functions or bug fixes, this also something on licensing. So what on licensing you might ask other than the previous announcement on having Standard, Advanced and Enterprise editions of NSX. Finally moving forward, vCNS Manager which has always been the key function for vShield Endpoint for AV offloading function is been replaced by NSX in this release. Looking the release notes: " Change in default license & evaluation key distribution : default license upon install is "NSX for vShield Endpoint", which enables use of NSX for deploying and managing vShield Endpoint for anti-virus offload capability only. Evaluation license keys can be requested through VMware sales. " This means default installation of NSX will be enabled with vShield Endpoint function just like vCNS Manager which is ending its support soon. ...

Like to share this incident which I encounter twice.  Once was during our ASEAN demo lab and the next is one incident that was reported by one user in our VMUG-ASEAN Group in Facebook. VMs started shutting down after 1 hour by itself automatically and on vCenter you start to see memory status changes. Source: VMUG-ASEAN group in Facebook From the above, you see that memory state changes.  The first thing most people thought was there must be some issue or misconfiguration on the vSphere portion. Further checks and view, the host and VM seems to be healthy and this is affecting a majority of VMs.  Further isolation, all these were running Microsoft Windows. The first thing I wanted to confirm was to run a VM that is non-windows to make sure this is not due to OS issue.  Instead of installing one, you can use a tiny VM version small and won't take up much resource from here . The VM runs normal and nothing happens.  This confirmed is not a vSphere ...

As of 1st June 2013, VMware Horizon Suite adds a new licensing type for Concurrent user. With the launch of VMware Horizon Suite , arises many questions on licensing.  Here I have summarize some of the scenarios of licensing which will help you understand better. First we need to understand what is in the Suite.  VMware Horizon Suite comprises of Horizon Workspace, Horizon View and Horizon Mirage.  Each has its own licensing if purchase ala cart. Horizon Workspace - Named User Horizon View - Concurrent User Horizon Mirage - Named User From VMware Product Guide: Named User - Means your employee or Third Party Agent who has been authorized by You to use the Software in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. Named User - Specified user that is licensed to used the software.  No sharing licenses among users. License can be transfer to a new user if previous leave the company. From VMware Product Guide: Concurrent User -  Means t...

VMware has announced the end of availability (“EOA”) of VMware vSphere ESX hypervisor 4.x and VMware Management Assistant (“vMA”) versions 1 and 4, effective August 15, 2013. Support will be as per support policy however the binary and license key for the above will no longer be available after the 15th August. For users who are still requires the above, do remember to download and keep a copy. Please refer to the announcement here . For Support matrix refer here .  Click on Lifecycle Support Matrix. Update 21st Feb 2013 Even after 15 Aug, you are still able to purchase vSphere and downgrade via the myVMware portal to vSphere 4 and use it to license the ESX 4.x.  EOA does not restrict user from downgrading. Downgrading to vSphere 4 will be disabled only when the product has End of Life (EOL).

Decided to write a post on this as I receive just too times the questions from different customers due to the confusion. Say if you are using a free edition of the vSphere Hypervisor or you are on any purhcased editions of vSphere, and you like to licensed it or upgrade to the next edition.  Now you have the new license key what do you do? This is the most asked question: 1. Do I need to reinstall the ESXi server applying a new license key? Answer is No.  You just need to either go to the Hypervisor via the vSphere client, select the host and on the right under the Configuration Tab and choose Licensed Features.  Click on Edit and enter your serial key.  Alternative if  you have a vCenter, just select Home>Administration>Licensing and choose Manage vSphere Licenses.  The features of the edition you have purchased or licensed will be activated and shown. 2. Can vSphere 5.0 serial keys work in vSphere 5.1? Answer is Yes.  All vSphere...

So you have been running the evaluation license.  The evaluation period would be 60 days for ESXi server and 30 days for vCenter. Say you like to run on evaluation while getting your license and you couldn't get the license in time and 30 days has reached and your vCenter is expired. What happens after the evaluation period? I did a test and these are my findings. vCenter remain to be operational. All features are still enabled. You will receive a notice below once in awhile. Any action that result in disconnection of the ESXi servers will not be able to join back to vCenter e.g. reboot of ESXi server.  A direct connection using vSphere client is required to manage the VMs on the host. Any changes in configuration will not be possible and can cause any licensed functions not to function. Powered Off VMs cannot be power on.  Refer to KB . In summary, after license expired, all operations remains as it is and no changes even with simple things like power on ...