Licensing – latoga labs

vSphere 5 License Advisor Available

August 11, 2011 Leave a Comment

Following on the vSphere 5 License adjustment, VMware recently released the vSphere 5 License Advisor. This is a tool that you can use to run against your vSphere 4.1, vSphere 4.0, or Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 deployments to understand how the vSphere 5 vRAM licensing entitlement will affect your installation.

Note: I’ve heard some comments that the tool may have some reporting issues in the GUI with deployments in excess of 1000 VMs, but that the exported report is correct. I would appreciate anyone who can validate these reports…

VMware Listened: vSphere 5 Licensing Changes

August 3, 2011 2 Comments

So VMware announced a change in licensing with vSphere 5…the customers reacted…and VMware listened and adjusted the licensing in about 3 weeks. Quite a rarity in the enterprise software industry…

When I talked to my clients about the licensing changes that were coming with vSphere 5, the reaction wasn’t really one of shock to a change (they had realized that VMware would eventually need to change licensing somehow as the server industry moved to larger sized servers) but rather a raising of concerns over Enterprise Plus only having a 48GB vRAM entitlement and concern that the new vRAM entitlement in general would limit the desire to virtualize more Tier 1 applications. Non-production groups also had concerns over the transient nature of their dev/test environments which could have short spikes in vRAM usage when lots of VMs get deployed. Apparently, my clients were not unique in their concerns…

Today VMware announced a change to the new vSphere 5 licensing:

Raising the vRAM entitlements per vSphere editions

Essentials / Essentials Plus / Standard are now 32GB of vRAM per license
Enterprise is now 64 GB of vRAM per license
Enterprise Plus is now 96 GB of vRAM per license

vRAM consumption per running VM is now capped at 96GB

a VM configured with 96GB up to 1 TB of vRAM will only reduce the vRAM entitlement pool by 96GB.

vCenter will calculate & report on a 12 month trailing average of vRAM usage rather than a high watermark

This will reduce the risk of transient VM environments requiring additional vRAM licenses.
Note: This change will not be reflecterd in the vSphere 5 reporting capabilities at GA time; it will appear in an vSphere 5 future update release but be trackable via a free utility from VMware until then.

Remember that vRAM is a pooled entitlement across an entire vSphere cluster (all hosts managed by one vCenter Server). And if you have multiple vCenter Servers linked together, their vRAM entitlements are pooled together as well. This pooling is often overlooked or mis-understood by users. The Pooling helps to even out your vRAM consumption across your enterprise.

Make sure you take the time to run the calcualations for your environment. I did that this afternoon with one client group and their vRAM entitlement was more than 3x their current environment and still more than 50% more than their planned upgrade environment.

The following chart is a good summary of the vSphere 5 licensing and features per edition:

VMware also announced a new vSphere Desktop license package for those environments that use vSphere to host Virtual Desktops. This new license only counts the total number of powered on virtual desktops and is available in packs of 100 desktop licenses. Most View users usually purchase a View bundle which includes the vSphere licenses. For those users who run non-View manage desktops on vSphere, they would purchase those licenses via this new vSphere 5.0 Desktop license pack.

Quick Guide to vSphere License Portal

May 21, 2009 5 Comments

Today was the day everyone has been waiting for, vSphere 4 is now publicly available! This also means that all existing VMware customers who want to migrate to vSphere need to start working with the new vSphere license keys instead of the old license files. While a change like this is never easy, the vSphere team has done a good job on make this process as simply as possible through the launch of an updated License Portal.

I’ve had a number of clients already ask me about this portal and working with the new License Keys, so I thought I would help the entire VMware community by creating this quick guide to the new portal. Keep in mind that the change of licensing in vSphere means that the old VI3 licenses that were associated to a pair of CPUs are converted to License Keys that are associated to a single CPU. This is the reason why you may see your license counts double.

vSphere License Portal

When you log into your VMware License Portal, you will still land on the page that allows you to manage your VI3 licenses. You can switch to your vSphere licenses by clicking on the tab in the upper right corner, or the vSphere link at the top of the table showing your VI3 licenses.

On the vSphere License Keys page, you will see a list of the different vSphere 4 licenses you are entitled to. Expand the row of specific license type to see all keys that are currently available. The first time you view your vSphere keys, you will most likely have a small number of keys that contain all the CPUs that you purchased. This is where the ability to Divide and Combine your License Keys comes in.

Dividing License Keys

When you click on the Divide button, you can select a License Key that you would like to divide. You can only divide up one License Key at a time. Select the key and click Continue.

Now a dialog box will pop up which will allow you to divide up the CPUs from the selected Key. You can chose to divide the key into 2 or more keys. Simply select the number of new keys from the drop down list, and then enter the combination of CPUs you want in the new keys. The information about the order that purchased the original license key is displayed for your reference. The Total value at the bottom of the screen will show you in real time if you’re new keys have used all the CPUs from the original key.

Lastly, a dialog box will pop up confirming the new license key division you just configured. There is also a warning that the change you are about to make could affect others. By clicking Confirm you old license key will be divided up into your selected number of new License Keys.

The division process is what you will use to take your original license key containing all your entitled CPUs and carve out smaller license keys for deployment across your organization.

Combining License Keys

From your list of License keys, clicking on the combine button will also you to select which existing License Keys you want to combine into a new larger License Key. Select the specific keys using the check boxes on the right, then click Continue button.

Confirming Your vSphere License Key Combination

Next a confirmation dialog box will appear to confirm these are the keys you want to combine. Again, a nice and concise warning about affecting other users and your EULA.

Adding Comments to a vSphere License Key

After combining (or dividing) your License Keys, you will see an updated list of vSphere License keys. By expanding a single license key, you can add additional comments to the license key in the portal. This is valuable to keep track of who a license may have been created for within your organization.

Searching License History

Searching Your vSphere License Key History

Under the License Key History tab, you will find the ability to search through your list of License Keys. Most Enterprise customers will end up with hundreds of license keys created by and for multiple groups within their company. The search capabilities now allow you to search based upon the Event Type associated with a key. So if you’re looking for history on who divided a key, you can find it.

Conclusion

While not an all inclusive guide to the new vSphere License Portal, hopefully this quick guide will help you get up to speed dealing with the migration from VI3 to vSphere 4. For a full tutorial on vSphere Licensing, make sure to check out the vSphere Migration – Licensing video. Also check out the vSphere4 Licensing Guide (pdf) and VMware Product Licensing Center.