vSphere v5 Licensing

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VMwarevSphere 5.0Licensing,PricingandPackaging

W H I T E P A P E R


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VMware vSphere 5.0

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3VMware vSphere Licensing Overview 3

Why a Change was Necessary 3

VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing: Per-Processor with Pooled

vRAM Entitlements 3

Licensing Unit: Per Processor (CPU) 3

No Limits on Physical Resources 4

vRAM Entitlement 4

Pooled vRAM Capacity 4

Increasing the Pooled vRAM Capacity 4

Monitoring o Pooled vRAM Capacity 4

Benefts o vSphere 5.0 Licensing 4

License Management 5

Centralized Licensing with No Single Point o Failure 5

Decentralized Licensing Option 5

VMware vSphere and vCenter Server Packaging 7

vSphere Editions 7

vCenter Server Editions 8

vSphere Kits 8

Upgrade Entitlements or Existing Customers 9Upgrading Between vSphere 5.0 Editions 10

FAQ 10

How to Buy 11

Learn More 11


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VMware vSphere 5.0

SnS is required or all vSphere purchases.


VMware vSphere 5.0

Executive SummaryVMware vSphere is the industry-leading virtualization platorm or

building cloud inrastructures vSphere accelerates the shit to cloudcomputing or existing datacenters It also underpins compatible

public cloud oerings, paving the way or the industrys only hybrid

cloud model

With the introduction o VMware vSphere 5, VMware is evolving

the products licensing model to give customers the opportunity

to move to a more cloud-like, pay or consumption approach

to IT The changes lay the oundation or a more modern IT cost

model that is based on consumption and value rather than

components and capacity

vSphere has made it possible or customers to maximize hardware

utilization and eciency through pooling With these licensing

changes, VMware is extending this concept rom technology to the

business o IT The new vSphere licensing model eliminates therestrictive physical entitlements o CPU cores and physical RAM

per server, replacing them with a single virtualization-based

entitlement o pooled virtual memory (vRAM) This will simpliy

the process o purchasing deploying and managing vSphere while

acilitating the move to shared inrastructure as a service

The vSphere 50 licensing model is per processor (CPU) with

pooled vRAM entitlements It oers customers the ollowing

benets relative to the previous vSphere 4x model:

Simplicity Removes two physical constraints (core and

physical RAM), replacing them with a single virtual entitlement

(vRAM) Customers now have a clear path to license vSphere

on next-generation hardware congurationsFlexibility Extends the concept o resource pooling rom

technology to the business o IT by allowing aggregation and

sharing o vRAM entitlement across a large pool o servers

Fairness Better aligns cost with actual use and value derived,

rather than with hardware congurations and capacity

Evolution Allows customers to evolve to a cloud-like pay or

consumption model without disrupting established purchasing,

deployment and license-management practices and processes

VMware vSphere Licensing

OverviewThe licensing model or vSphere 50 is designed to simpliy and

optimize the purchasing, deployment and support experience

or all customers

Why a Change was Necessary

With the modiication to vSphere licensing, we accomplish

two objectives:

Free customers rom restrictive hardware-based entitlements

Align the vSphere licensing model with IT as a service

To understand reasons or the change, we should rst examine the

legacy vSphere model vSphere 4x is licensed on a per-physical-

processor (CPU) basis with limits on:

The number o physical cores per CPUPhysical RAM capacity per server

Signicant innovations in hardware designsuch as CPUs with

ever-larger number o cores, high-density memory chips, solid-

state drives and hyperthreadingwere causing the hardware

limits in vSphere 4x licensing to become outdated In the 36

months since the release o vSphere 40, multicore capacity

o x86 CPUs grew rom 4 cores per CPU to 8 per CPU

Processor manuacturers have announced plans to introduce

CPUs that will exceed cores CPU manuacturers have

introduced or plan to introduce technologiessuch as

hyperthreadingthat work at the subcore level and increase

processing power by improving parallelization o computations

Similar growth and innovation trends are also happening on thememory side, with RAM chip density growing rom 4GB per

DIMM to 8GB and 6GB per DIMM and new types o memory

technologiessuch as solid-state-drive (SSD)becoming

mainstream This innovation trend in server hardware technologies

is rapidly making the hardware restrictions o vSphere 4x licenses

outdated posing diculties or customers to plan uture

investments in inrastructure and virtualization

Moreover, vSphere 4x licensing did not refect the act that

vSphere excels at pooling physical hardware resources across

the entire datacenter and presenting them as a single, unied,

shared inrastructurean innovation that is one o the core pillars

o cloud inrastructure The hardware-based licensing model o

vSphere 4x made it dicult or customers to transition to theusage-based cost and chargeback models that characterize

cloud computing and IT-as-a-Service

VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing: Per-Processorwith Pooled vRAM Entitlements

vSphere 50 will be licensed on a per-processor basis with a

vRAM entitlement Each vSphere 50 CPU license will entitle the

purchaser to a specic amount o vRAM, or memory congured

to virtual machines The vRAM entitlement can be pooled across

a vSphere environment to enable a true c loud or utility based

IT consumption model Just like VMware technology oers

customers an evolutionary path rom the traditional datacenter

to cloud inrastructure, the vSphere 50 licensing model allows

customers to evolve to a cloud-like pay or consumption model

without disrupting established purchasing, deployment and license-

management practices and processes

Licensing Unit: Per Processor (CPU)

vSphere 50 is still licensed on a per-processor basis, allowing

customers to continue leveraging established purchasing,

deployment and license-management processes


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The pooling o vRAM makes vSphere 50 licensing extremely

fexible and can reduce the number o required vSphere licenses

because vRAM entitlements can be shared among multiple

hosts There are no restrictions on how vRAM is consumed

across virtual machines and CPUs At any given point in time,

the amount o vRAM consumed by active virtual machines on

a CPU could exceed the base entitlement o the vSphere 50

license assigned to that CPU As long as the total consumed

vRAM across all virtual machines managed by a VMware vCenter

instance or multiple linked VMware vCenter instances is less or

equal to the total available vRAM, vSphere is correctly licensed

Increasing the Pooled vRAM Capacity

I necessary, the easiest way to expand pooled vRAM capacity

is to add more vSphere CPU licenses o the same edition to

the vRAM pool Alternatively, customers can upgrade all CPU

licenses in the vRAM pool to a vSphere edition with a higher

base vRAM entitlement

Monitoring o Pooled vRAM Capacity

Available and consumed vRAM capacity can be monitored

and managed using the licensing-management module o

VMware vCenter Server Customers can create reports and

set up alerts to obtain automated notication o when the

level o vRAM consumption surpasses a specied level o

the available pooled capacity

Benets o vSphere 5.0 Licensing

The new vSphere 50 licensing model provides

Simplicity Removes two physical constraints (core and

physical RAM), replacing them with a single virtual entitlement

(vRAM) Customers now have a clear path to license vSphere

on next-generation hardware congurations

Flexibility Extends the concept o resource pooling rom

technology to the business o IT by allowing aggregation and

sharing o vRAM entitlement across a large pool o severs

Fairness Better aligns cost with actual use and value derived

rather than hardware congurations and capacity

Evolution Allows customers to evolve to a cloud-like pay or

consumption model without disrupting established purchasing,

deployment and license-management practices and processes

Figure shows a comparison between the vSphere 4x and

vSphere 50 licensing models

No Limits on Physical Resources

vSphere 50 licensing removes all restrictions on physical cores

and physical RAM This change eliminates barriers to deploying

vSphere on new multicore server congurations, improving

customers ability to choose server hardware that best meets

their requirements

vRAM Entitlement

We have introduced vRAM, a transerable, virtualization-based

entitlement to oer customers the greatest fexibility or vSphere

conguration and usage vRAM is dened as the virtual memory

congured to virtual machines When a virtual machine is created,

it is congured with a certain amount o virtual memory (vRAM)

available to the virtual machine Depending on the edition, each

vSphere 50-CPU license provides a certain vRAM capacity

entitlement When the virtual machine is powered on, the vRAM

congured or that virtual machine counts against the total vRAM

entitled to the user There are no restrictions on how vRAM capacity

can be distributed among virtual machines: a customer can

congure many small virtual machines or one large virtual machine

The entitled vRAM is a ungible resource congured to meet

customer workload requirements

Pooled vRAM Capacity

An important eature o the new licensing model is the concept o

pooling the vRAM capacity entitlements or all processor licenses

(see Figure ) The vRAM entitlements o vSphere CPU licenses are

pooledthat is, aggregatedacross all CPU licenses managed by

a VMware vCenter instance (or multiple linked VMware vCenter

instances) to orm a total available vRAM capacity (pooled vRAM

capacity) I workloads on one server are not using their ull vRAM

entitlement, the excess capacity can be used by other virtual

machines within the VMware vCenter instance At any given point

in time, the vRAM capacity consumed by all powered-on virtual

machines within a pool must be equal or lower than the pooled

vRAM capacity

Figure 1.vSphereBringstheBeneftsoPoolingtoLicensing


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VMware vSphere 5.0


Centralized Licensing with No Single Point o Failure

VMware vCenter Server is the recommended interace or license

assignment to vSphere hosts When a license key is assigned by

vCenter Server, it is copied to the host and saved in a persistent

ormat I the host becomes disconnected rom vCenter Server, the

license key remains active on the host indenitely, even ater a host

reboot Only a deliberate licensing operation by the user can remove

or replace a host license key

Decentralized Licensing Option

Although VMware recommends that customers assign all

vSphere licenses centrally through vCenter Server, customers

also have the option to assign their license keys directly to

individual hosts There is no dierence between directly and

centrally assigned license keys When a vSphere host is added

to the vCenter Server inventory, any license key already on the

host will become available or management, reporting and

assignment in vCenter Server, just like any license key added

directly via vCenter Server For more inormation on vSpherelicensing, visit http://wwwvmwarecom/support/licensing

Licensing Example

In this section we will go over the key elements o vSphere 50

licensing using an example

Creating the vRAM Pool

For this example, a user has two -CPU hosts that they wish to

license with vSphere Enterprise edition Note that the vRAM

entitlement or vSphere Enterprise is 3GB per CPU Each physical

CPU requires a license, so a minimum o our vSphere Enterprise

licenses are required More licenses will be required i the user needs

to use more vRAM than the 4 x 3GB = 8GB o vRAM that isentitled with the our licenses So ar the user has yet to create any

virtual machines, so 8GB o vRAM is more than adequate In sum,

the user purchases and deploys our licenses o vSphere Enterprise,

yielding a vRAM capacity o 8GB o vRAM

Hosts

CPUs 4

VMware vSphere licenses 4

vRAM capacity 8GB (4 licenses x 3GB/license)

vRAM used 0GB

License Management

vSphere 50 licenses are still simple license keys (5-characteralphanumeric strings) that contain encrypted inormation about

the vSphere edition or kit purchased and the processor quantity

These license keys do not contain any server-specic inormation

and are not tied to a specic piece o hardware This means that

the same license key can be assigned to multiple vSphere hosts,

as long as the sum o physical processors on those hosts does

not exceed the encoded processor quantity in the license key

Figure 2.vSphere4xvsvSphereLicensingComparison

Licensing Unit

Core per proc

SnS Unit

Physical RAM

Capacity per host

Compliance

policies

Pooling ofentitlements

Monitoring tool

vRAM Capacity

per proc

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Documents

vSphere v5 Licensing