Plain Virtualization

After the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, there has been announcement on simplifying the way VMware software licensing will work. That was a very bold step to really help customers. There maybe lots of comments over it, but if you have never been into an architecture discussion and having to also coming out a licensing strategy, you might not appreciate this change. In additional, in totality, customer will find that the cost might just be much affordable than before. Contact your VMware Account Manager to find out more. So let's go back to the present. Existing customer who might have renewal ending and would definitely need to know how much license they would need to procure. The well known William Lam, definitely not leaving VM Admin challenges. He has created a PowerCLI script to help customer pull out those needed information to help existing brownfield customers forward.  Next to help understand what are the new criteria needed to purchase the new license, this is a kb ...

A very busy month for me and also traveling to take a break from work. Finally to sit down and compose which got confused by many of my co-workers. It came across to me many people are confused over the windows 2016 licensing. I have previously explained how it is licensed here . However, there are cases where customer like to know what will be the break-even point if they are running on Windows 2016 Standard licensing instead of Windows 2016 Datacenter edition. Someone has also done up some scenario to explain the cost and break-even point here . Basically, the 13th Windows VM that you run on a physical server will make more sense to run Windows 2016 Datacenter edition license. That is if your consolidation is high which is subject to your server specifications as well as VM workload. Just to give you the explanation from my post previously, whether it is a standard edition or datacenter edition, the way you license in cores doesn't change. But in the standard edition, you...

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...

With vSAN 6.2, the support for ROBO site been introduced.  There have been lots of questions regarding how do we license the witness in a more effective manner.  Some of the thought in using vSphere ROBO licenses, vSphere Essentials licenses, and even free ESXi hypervisor. Here this article is to explain the do-able methods that have not been very clear.  Before we start, check out the vSAN 6.5 Licensing Guide . First of all the common way to place the vSAN Witness are normally in a vSphere cluster.  So this cluster is already licensed.  It doesn't matter if its the lowest Essential Edition to Enterprise Plus Edition.  So if you like to run this even using a vSphere ROBO license, this can be done since ROBO is meant for a small site, not more than 25 VMs.  Do take note that, using vSphere ROBO, you will not be able to power on more than 25 VMs (assuming your license is 25VMs pack and has not been divided).  You cannot combine the license. ...

Many of the times, many of us get really confused by the different channels of communication of licensing.  In this case for VMware Horizon. The most confusing part is always Named and Concurrent user license.  In my previously article on Horizon Suite, which is the current Horizon bundle, this has not change. To keep things simple, I am going to put down the sources and wordings in case any of the sources ever get removed. From VMware Product Guide , page 56 for Horizon Enterprise: Active Connection : any connections to Powered On Desktop Virtual Machines, Terminal Services Sessions and physical computers. Concurrent Users : the total number of users accessing or using the Software at any given time to maintain an Active Connection to their desktop through an endpoint device. Named User : Your single designated employee or Third Party Agents who have been authorized by You to use the Software in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. The confusion comes wh...

Awhile a go I wrote an article about how the different vSphere Desktop licensing is for and the entitlement. Having meeting many customer with big and small environment, projects or used cases for certain requirements.  There were some question revolving around vCenter licensing especially for the desktop related. Here is an article of the FAQ on vSphere Desktop licensing.  One of the question in this article states: Q. Do I need a separate vCenter Server for my VDI hosts?  A. Yes, like Horizon 7 deployments on vSphere 5.x, you will need a separate VMware vCenter Server® for your VDI hosts. vCenter is not included in vSphere Desktop.  Let me further explain the above.  If you are running a 3rd party VDI solution riding on vSphere Desktop licensing, vCenter is not included.  You would need to purchase vCenter Standard to manage that environment. However if you are a Horizon customer, the bundle include vCenter Desktop use to manage a vSphere Des...

Windows 2016 is announced and there are many great features included especially containers support.  One of the major improvement is reducing the number of management console as well which is greatly appreciated. There are also some changes to the licenses. Remember the licensing cost in Windows 2012R2 Datacenter edition  was increased compared to Windows 2012?  Windows 2016 has also some changes not in price but in the way it is licensed stated here .  Refer to Question 7 of the FAQ . Below is the table to see the pricing since Windows 2012 to Windows 2016. Datacenter Standard Windows 2012 $4,809 $882 Windows 2012 R2 $6,155 $882 Windows 2016 $6,155 $882 Taking Datacenter Edition, it seems that from Window 2012 to Windows 2012R2 was the only price increased and Microsoft has kept the cost the same for Windows 2016.  However, there are some changes not known unle...

There are some confusion out there on VMware Horizon 6 Bundle.  You can take a look at the available products that are in Horizon Standard, Advanced and Enterprise Edition https://www.vmware.com/products/horizon-view/compare. Here we will use the Horizon Enterprise bundle as an example as the products which are available in the Advanced Edition will be what we will be going through. All editions from the bundle except Horizon Standard (only CCU) comes in both Named Users (NU) and Concurrent Users (CCU) licensing.  However there are products in the bundle that has no way in doing a CCU licensing even if you have purchase the CCU licensing.  This is because the way it is used is an active connections or active user and not possible to be a concurrent connection method. Let's take for example: Horizon View, this can be in NU or CCU.  Reason is simple you can have a fixed number of users who will always access the virtual desktops, that will help with a NU licensin...