VMWare Updates Licensing Model, Setting 32-Core Limit per License

[claes]

Because most users are investing tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) on hardware and the licensing fees pale in comparison, as you pointed out

 

[notb]

Because most users are investing tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) on hardware and the licensing fees pale in comparison, as you pointed out

Based on a single system bought by a company for internal use - yes, the hypervisor cost is small. The whole system itself isn't (shouldn't be) a major cost for an enterprise. So we're talking about 1% of 1%. Tiny, irrelevant, hidden by rounding.

But you mentioned buying thousands of CPUs, i.e. large datacenters (cloud services etc). And in that case you're selling the infrastructure so - suddenly - that extra 1% of platform cost may be worth fighting for.
Anyway, cloud service providers use other hypervisors (usually custom made based on open-source projects: KVM or Xen).
What VMware offers is more suitable for traditional purpose-built servers (on-premise).

BTW: please quote the post you're answering (at least include a reference to the author). Discussions are easier to follow that way.

 

[csendesmark]

It's an Epyc fail that VMWare license fee been Ryzen

 

[Berfs1]

You guys are nuts. You do realize that the majority of companies who actually use this software is buying thousands (yes, not hundreds, *thousands*) of cores at a time, right?

Which is why this can be an actual issue, because the licensing cost scales much higher now.

Its not giving a free license where do you see that they do so?
This clearly is to hurt AMD the most because they have a long term dealing with intel, and clearly comes out of the shareholders not being happy that their friends gets hurt by AMD.
Its pure nonsense if you had ages the per socket license and now switch to core count, there is no other reason than hurt those companies who went for the not intel brand.

They do say they are giving free licenses in their press update on the license

 

[Bronan]

My IT department where i worked for the gov. had at that time 760 multicore servers and several thousand of heavy workstations and a enormous amount of clients
The current servers and workstations are being refreshed and replaced by more powerfull versions this includes rome and many amd machines.
If i look at the old number of licenses for databases and vmware clients, these products alone where almost 28 million.
These costs allways will be somehow paid by consumers or by the people of the country (taxes).
I actually had a talk with the current head of office and he told that its actually a very painfull decision made by vmware.
Some projects had to be cancelled because the sudden increase in licenses do have a big impact in the renewal fase already.
So yes i am absolute sure it is intended to protect intels market share, and not for any other reason.

 

[Gasaraki]

This seems very suspicious when you look that DELL is a major shareholder and they have a really good relationship with Intel.

It's not some conspiracy. People are going to just get one socket or two sockets instead or two and four socket servers since AMD is offering so much cores in one socket. If I was running VMWare, I would be shtting my pants and saying, wtf my income is going to drop by half, potentially. I would do the exact same thing they are doing, limit the amount of cores on a socket that a license supports. What happens if AMD or Intel start doing 128 cores on one socket, etc, etc. Where does it end?

 

[andreask]

What about if you have 2 CPUs of 15 Cores each?
Does one 32 Core License covers you (Because in total are 30 Cores) or you need 2 Licenses?

 

[windwhirl]

What about if you have 2 CPUs of 15 Cores each?
Does one 32 Core License covers you (Because in total are 30 Cores) or you need 2 Licenses?

You will need two, I think. VMware mentions per-CPU licensing. So, since you will have two CPUs, both below the 32 core limit, you will need two licenses, one per processor.

 

[remixedcat]

What kind of people is still using VMWare? There is some new version where you don't need Window like Proxmox, Xenserver?

Vsphere/esx or the like. Used in a lot of DCs. Also HPC clusters. Hyper v is getting better but still kludgy compared to.