vmware esxi5 licensing thoughts v11.17.07.txt
At surface level it looks to set an expectation of two things for their hypervisor: an assumed amount of memory allocated to a VM, and the role of the VM (server or client based). Unfortunately they are basing this off of today's model.
Example:
Server role: paying $6990 per 96GB RAM sounds like 24-32 VMs per box (2cpu,4core)
Now when you have a (2cpu,12core) host with 192GB RAM, they lost an additional $6990 revenue and you gained 24-32 more VMs. The new licening model is a way for VMware to get that money back before the cores/RAM grow too quickly. That is the smart move on their part to capitalize on Intel and AMD's progress.
Unfortunately, it stiffles innovation: ie allocating large RAM amounts to VMs for system cache (thinking Citrix PVS and other RAM caching software) that would dramatically reduce SAN IOPS. How thoughtful of them considering EMC is their parent company, since we all can agree that the most compelling reason to increase the RAM on a VM is to decrease the OS interaction with the slower disk subsystem. So long are the days of dreaming of a read-only OS with all system and application exectuables and dlls pre-cached in RAM ready to serve out apps with near 0 READ IOs and an efficient use or WRITE IOs when there is something important to put on disk.. We'll all continue to run Java QuickStarter, Adobe SpeedLaunch, and AntiVirus programs that thrash our disk arrays with wasted READ and WRITE IOs and buy bigger and better caching storage arrays to mitigate the problem.
Client role: with the desktop virtualization license from VMware, they now consider the role of the VM running on their hypervisor to matter? This is a very blurry line as we move out a few years and does provide incentive to only run their View product on ESXi 5 instead of any other brokers (thinking XenDesktop). Will there soon be a new cost for using 3rd party security VM appliances instead of vShield because of the role of the VM? When does running Microsoft Windows explorer.exe as your desktop shell not matter, and launching Windows applications from Apple IOS and Google Android desktop OS back to a multi-user Windows "Server" OS running Terminal Services and XenApp finally defeat spinning up hundreds of "Client" OS VMs? Maybe when VPNs die and application virtualization matures.. maybe..
Example:
Server role: paying $6990 per 96GB RAM sounds like 24-32 VMs per box (2cpu,4core)
Now when you have a (2cpu,12core) host with 192GB RAM, they lost an additional $6990 revenue and you gained 24-32 more VMs. The new licening model is a way for VMware to get that money back before the cores/RAM grow too quickly. That is the smart move on their part to capitalize on Intel and AMD's progress.
Unfortunately, it stiffles innovation: ie allocating large RAM amounts to VMs for system cache (thinking Citrix PVS and other RAM caching software) that would dramatically reduce SAN IOPS. How thoughtful of them considering EMC is their parent company, since we all can agree that the most compelling reason to increase the RAM on a VM is to decrease the OS interaction with the slower disk subsystem. So long are the days of dreaming of a read-only OS with all system and application exectuables and dlls pre-cached in RAM ready to serve out apps with near 0 READ IOs and an efficient use or WRITE IOs when there is something important to put on disk.. We'll all continue to run Java QuickStarter, Adobe SpeedLaunch, and AntiVirus programs that thrash our disk arrays with wasted READ and WRITE IOs and buy bigger and better caching storage arrays to mitigate the problem.
Client role: with the desktop virtualization license from VMware, they now consider the role of the VM running on their hypervisor to matter? This is a very blurry line as we move out a few years and does provide incentive to only run their View product on ESXi 5 instead of any other brokers (thinking XenDesktop). Will there soon be a new cost for using 3rd party security VM appliances instead of vShield because of the role of the VM? When does running Microsoft Windows explorer.exe as your desktop shell not matter, and launching Windows applications from Apple IOS and Google Android desktop OS back to a multi-user Windows "Server" OS running Terminal Services and XenApp finally defeat spinning up hundreds of "Client" OS VMs? Maybe when VPNs die and application virtualization matures.. maybe..
Comments