I’ll keep this one short because the facts speak for themselves. Earlier this year, VMware announced (and then slightly backtracked) their new v5 licensing model. VMware introduced a limit on how much RAM each vSphere license would cover.
The impact has been huge. Locally, I’ve seen hardcore VMware partners (the people who drove demand for vSphere) start to sell Hyper-V. It seems like free with unlimited feature usage beats vTax with limited license features/capacity every time.
This morning, I read this quote on CRN (VMware to jump on social media bandwagon):
“… if you’re going to move to the cloud the license model has to be cloud-based and not physical-based.” Doug Smith, Global Vice President for Sales, VMware
Huh! So the license shouldn’t be physical based. How does that match up with the new RAM limited licensing?
Aidan,
>free with unlimited feature usage beats vTax
where is the free Microsoft alternative to vSphere? If you mean Hyper-V, there is also a free hypervisor form VMware.
Indeed VMware does have a free product. But it limits the amount of RAM you can use, doesn’t have HA, doesn’t have vMotion, etc. Whereas Hyper-V does have those …. and for free. And come next year, it’ll add all the new features, still for free.
Maybe we’re not giving VMWare credit – perhaps it was a calculated move to get rid of pesky small customers and they only want to keep large volume, high revenue customers, maybe not, either way, they have handed the SME space to Microsoft.
I think what you are seeing is only the initial trickle – I think that virtualisation under Win Server 8 is going to hit VMWare sales hard next year.
Brian
Actually, when you do the figures, the small biz has almost no price increases in VMware licensing. It’s actually the medium to large enterprises with a lot of host memory who are hurt the most. MSFT will take the SME by default, just because Hyper-V is free with all features built-in.
The vRAM entitlement is right in line with that quote. With their new licensing, it doesn’t matter how much physical RAM you have in your server, all that matters is how much vRAM you plan on using in your “cloud”.
I saw elsewhere Moritz actually said this was the first step in their licensing evolution. Look for their licening to be even MORE “consumption based” in the future.
I’m a big fan of “consumption based” licensing for cloud resources. Office365? Azure? Sure. Let me buy exactly the amount that I need and charge me accordingly. MS, or the Azure host had to buy the hardware it’s running on and they’re paying for maintenance, IT staff, power, cooling, etc. But when VMware’s trying to lease the hardware I purchased and maintain back to me with their vRAM entitlements, that’s a problem.
It’s easy to say that John. But for me, and most people I know who sign the checks, they want to predict their budgets a year in advance, if not more. I certainly know that any government stuff I’ve seen in the last 12-18 months, they want to know exact costs for the next 5 years! That’s hard to do with v5 licensing.
Keep in mind that vSphere licensing is based on virtual RAM (vRAM) not physical RAM.
Eric (VMware)
Thanks for the correction Eric. That makes it worse, considering that vSphere RAM is typically oversubscribed. Another tick for Hyper-V.