No more VRAM: VMware abandons controversial pricing model
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Good riddance to bad policy.
It was a cash grab, plain and simple, and they got burned.
It was a cash grab, plain and simple, and they got burned.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Yes even though we use vSphere, and we have tons of VRAM available, you could see that this was just a cash grab. With added pressure from Hyper-V now, I would have been shocked to see this terrible licensing model continue forward.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
glad to see they changed that model, at least, they are willing to hear customer's voice and do something.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Does this CPU based pricing not improve the attractiveness of Intel type iron vis a vis the upcoming competition from ARM?
Given that Mr Gelsinger has Intel antecedents and that Intel has been known to provide economic incentives to enhance the appeal of Intel devices, it seems a logical inference.
Given that Mr Gelsinger has Intel antecedents and that Intel has been known to provide economic incentives to enhance the appeal of Intel devices, it seems a logical inference.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Our clients started requesting other alternatives after VMware changed their pricing last year. The IT guys were already interested, the pricing change just made this issue seen at the CxO level.
Some clients are in the middle of large deployments of OpenStack infrastructure now after testing for 6 months. VMware was the default choice before, not any longer. Thousands of physical servers involved.
Other clients haven't changed anything in their VMware infrastructure due to pricing fears. The IT guys have been testing "other alternatives" and seem to be planning a migration for as many VMs as possible to F/LOSS hypervisors. They don't want to be at the whim of a vendor for something this important. VMware price swings have left a bad taste in their budget planning. This announcement may be just enough to stop them from leaving.
It really is too bad. VMware has an amazing product line and great 3rd party vendor support. Large price changes like this do not build trust with your customers and partners.
Some clients are in the middle of large deployments of OpenStack infrastructure now after testing for 6 months. VMware was the default choice before, not any longer. Thousands of physical servers involved.
Other clients haven't changed anything in their VMware infrastructure due to pricing fears. The IT guys have been testing "other alternatives" and seem to be planning a migration for as many VMs as possible to F/LOSS hypervisors. They don't want to be at the whim of a vendor for something this important. VMware price swings have left a bad taste in their budget planning. This announcement may be just enough to stop them from leaving.
It really is too bad. VMware has an amazing product line and great 3rd party vendor support. Large price changes like this do not build trust with your customers and partners.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
etudiant":1ueem37h said:
There is not really any competition from ARM in this space.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Looks like someone looked at Hyper-V and realized they might have priced themselves right into the competition's hands.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
We went with Hyper-V partially due to VMware pricing and have been happy with it thus far. If the rest of your infrastructure is MS then Hyper-V works just fine, and is relatively inexpensive to use. I'm just glad that there is real competition out there in the virtual machine software marketplace.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Techtate":1ve6q7to said:
It's funny because with VMware, you still need the MS license, but the MS license includes Hyper-V, so then you have to ask yourself why you are buying VMware at all.
Don't get me wrong, I love VMware and honestly it is likely one of the best products I have ever used. It's rare to get a product that so fully lives up to your expectations and even exceeds them like vSphere.
When we first deployed vSphere, there really wasn't much of a choice to make because Hyper-V was terrible at the time, but it has just matured so much in the last couple of versions. I mean, they are even going to have features that vSphere doesn't have in the Windows Server 2012 version. Live migration of machines from one server to another with no shared storage? Heck yes!
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Braumin":1f3l1vod said:
Actually with vSphere 5.1, it doesn't require shared storage for live VM migration either.
It seems you can now also vMotion and Storage vMotion a running VM in the same operation, both without shared storage.
I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread yet, but FT and Storage vMotion have both dropped down to the Standard edition of vSphere.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
antiwraith":3ftz8j8l said:
Sweet about time! Unfortunately I have not had a chance to read about the vSphere 5.1 announcement today. We've always had to make some sort of iSCSI share for a standalone server upgrade which is annoying.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
More like taking back a horrible pricing model is saving your own business, not something for others to get excited about.GreenEnvy":3s7fpwb1 said:
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
GreenEnvy":198od6pl said:
Probably because Vmware now have a rep of pretty much changing their licensing conditions with every new major and minor version. Just because they've now dropped something that should never have been there in the first place, it doesn't mean they won't just go and change something again next year. vSphere isn't the only thing either, they keep messing around with licensing changes for things like SRM, which makes a nightmare for those of us who use it.
I think a lot of people have lost confidence that whatever they buy this year isn't going to have a completely different pricing and licensing model next year...
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Great article. It will definitely be interesting to see what other VMware changes or advancements come from VMworld 2012.
Meaghen
Mosaic Technology
http://www.mosaictec.com
Meaghen
Mosaic Technology
http://www.mosaictec.com
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Digitlman":1uov53jo said:
^^
This. So glad to see this going bye bye. Sounds like someone wised up before it was too late.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
@ Braumin
You don't get all the bells and whistles with just your Windows Server licences, you really need SCVMM for that and it's not for free. vSphere is more expensive but it's a lot better than Hyper-V 2. I'm really curious to see Hyper-V 3 in action though. The main benefit of vSphere IMO is ease of use and third party support more so than features.
You don't get all the bells and whistles with just your Windows Server licences, you really need SCVMM for that and it's not for free. vSphere is more expensive but it's a lot better than Hyper-V 2. I'm really curious to see Hyper-V 3 in action though. The main benefit of vSphere IMO is ease of use and third party support more so than features.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
HisMajestyTheKing":8x5kwl78 said:
100% agree, but even so adding the SCVMM costs less than vSphere. Also the included version of Hyper-V offers more functionality than the ESXi free version.
Also the VRAM restriction on the free version of ESXi was ridiculous - 8GB? Seriously? Good riddance
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Braumin":1qpeqk4t said:
the price model from Microsoft is just temporary to lure customer, did you see how much be charged for office from MS?
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
The VMware Hypervisor was at 32 GB vRAM - and still is :-/
Sure, SCVMM is often cheaper than vSphere but with the licensing change (third in a row...) vSphere is quite competitive again. Had VMware continued on the ridiculous vRAM path they would probably have seen customers moving to Hyper-V in droves within the next year. Now, Hyper-V 3 will still be a serious challenger - more so than XenServer or any of the OSS solutions - but it's not a no-brainer to switch anymore.
Some good things are the differentiation between Standard and Essentials. For al practical purposes Standard used to be a bad choice in most circumstances as it had no compelling features over Essentials Plus besides being able to run more CPU's and unlimited vRAM. I think most customers would have gone at least Enterprise. Now standard has FT which Essentials Plus does not have and that may be a big differentiator, especially if FT isn't limited to 1 vCPU VM's anymore.
Another good thing is that even lowly Essentials isn't limited in RAM/vRAM or CPU anymore. At the price of 16 GB RDIMM's these days it becomes quite affordable building a cluster with 768 GB usable RAM (3 * 384 GB hosts, 1 failover) with only Essentials (Plus).
One thing that VMware should do is make clear what licensing will look like in vSphere 6. Personally I don't trust them. They screwed SnS customers by introducing vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus. vSphere 4.1 gave us HA and vMotion in lower end SKU's and then an uppercut with vSphere 5. They really need to show that they're a reliable partner and giving us information on future licensing would alleviate a lot of concerns.
Sure, SCVMM is often cheaper than vSphere but with the licensing change (third in a row...) vSphere is quite competitive again. Had VMware continued on the ridiculous vRAM path they would probably have seen customers moving to Hyper-V in droves within the next year. Now, Hyper-V 3 will still be a serious challenger - more so than XenServer or any of the OSS solutions - but it's not a no-brainer to switch anymore.
Some good things are the differentiation between Standard and Essentials. For al practical purposes Standard used to be a bad choice in most circumstances as it had no compelling features over Essentials Plus besides being able to run more CPU's and unlimited vRAM. I think most customers would have gone at least Enterprise. Now standard has FT which Essentials Plus does not have and that may be a big differentiator, especially if FT isn't limited to 1 vCPU VM's anymore.
Another good thing is that even lowly Essentials isn't limited in RAM/vRAM or CPU anymore. At the price of 16 GB RDIMM's these days it becomes quite affordable building a cluster with 768 GB usable RAM (3 * 384 GB hosts, 1 failover) with only Essentials (Plus).
One thing that VMware should do is make clear what licensing will look like in vSphere 6. Personally I don't trust them. They screwed SnS customers by introducing vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus. vSphere 4.1 gave us HA and vMotion in lower end SKU's and then an uppercut with vSphere 5. They really need to show that they're a reliable partner and giving us information on future licensing would alleviate a lot of concerns.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
@ figo
Microsoft just made their server licensing better: Server 2012 licensing has become stupidly easy and interesting for customers. VMware can learn from Microsoft in that regard.
Yes, Office is expensive but it's unrelated to Hyper-V.
Oh yes. And SBS is dead. Finally!
Microsoft just made their server licensing better: Server 2012 licensing has become stupidly easy and interesting for customers. VMware can learn from Microsoft in that regard.
Yes, Office is expensive but it's unrelated to Hyper-V.
Oh yes. And SBS is dead. Finally!
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
etudiant":1pr4vf2e said:
Upcoming competition from ARM? Whaat? VMware is exclusively x86. Few of the OSes one would virtualize on ESXi, Xen, or similar have any relevance to the discussion of ARM. Further, ARM processors have yet to reach the processing density of even older Atom based clusters, much less Xeon and Opteron systems.
ARM clusters could only be useful for servers which spend > 95% of their time idle, need very little RAM, but need to be available at a moment's notice, such as the bulk of webservers for small businesses. Even that approach is highly questionable because most webhosts manage to provision in such a way that x86 is still better for power usage because of the sheer number of websites you can host on just one 8-32 core server. Interconnects, backplanes, storage, RAM, and networking all take power at idle too. Even using Linux + KVM + LAMPP is beginning to become a losing proposition because newer versions of IIS + SQL Server are surpassing the transactional performance of Apache + MySQL with a lower RAM footprint for IIS (SQL Server actively uses about the same RAM as MySQL but typically will hold all the excess free RAM on a system as cache space instead of dropping it).
Is bringing up ARM with regards to server and cluster architecture just some new trolling tactic of which I am unaware?
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
HisMajestyTheKing":1u5myy13 said:
You make some great points.
My comment about the 8GB ESXi was the initial rollout of the VRAM agenda - it was going to be 8GB but then they changed it:
http://blogs.vmware.com/rethinkit/2011/ ... -2011.html
We got screwed by Enterprise Plus too. We had just got a contract for Enterprise on v3.5 when 4 came out with the "Plus" tier. Completey screwed us over. You would think when you buy the top tier + 24/7 support you would be in good shape but apparently not.
VMware has an amazing product but a terrible and greedy management team.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Now that VMware appears to be moving back in the right direction, maybe there's some hope for the return of VMTN subscriptions.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
aaronb1138":1kq7e5mo said:
I don't know if it's trolling or if people just don't understand just how slow an ARM cpu is.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
ARM is pretty useless for running anything CPU intensive. A bunch of websites perhaps but then again you can run a whole lot of Windows Server Datacenter vm's on a single physical x86 box. VM density will probably be higher and costs relatively low (but not free). ARM would probably be most interesting in large environments where one can have racks full of them. Just a few machines just doesn't make sense.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
ringofvoid
Ars Centurion
The vRAM pricing change came during our large Cisco UCS deployment and forced us to explore other options as the project budget couldn't expand to meet the increased cost. In our case, the result was a move to a two-tier structure of vSphere and XenServer. Through my contacts at other companies, this appears to have become a fairly common practice: vSphere for tier 1 servers and HyperV, XenServer, etc for tier 2.
VMware made a cash grab that forced IT departments to explore other alternatives. A large number of us have become adept at deploying & supporting an alternative hypervisor. We've spent a year identifying servers and workloads that fit well what will continue to be on a cheaper hypervisor. Even with this abject retreat on their pricing initiative, it's unlikely we and many others will ever be a exclusively VMWare shop again.
VMware made a cash grab that forced IT departments to explore other alternatives. A large number of us have become adept at deploying & supporting an alternative hypervisor. We've spent a year identifying servers and workloads that fit well what will continue to be on a cheaper hypervisor. Even with this abject retreat on their pricing initiative, it's unlikely we and many others will ever be a exclusively VMWare shop again.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
VMWare woke up and realized that a "good enough" competitor is dangerous when you deliberately set out to rip off your customers.
For a year, Microsoft didn't have to have a better product, they just had to have an adequate product with reasonable pricing.
For a year, Microsoft didn't have to have a better product, they just had to have an adequate product with reasonable pricing.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
ringofvoid":2dxfea1t said:
I think this is the key point: VMware used to dominate the category but has been busy redefining themselves as only being for the most profitable enterprise space. If you're running a modern, OSS-heavy operation OpenStack is extremely appealing and KVM / Xen / RHEV are good options if you're not going that far; if you're a Microsoft shop, Hyper-V is increasingly competitive. I'm not sure how long VMware will even be able to stay competitive as developer momentum keeps going in more cloud-like directions (referring to simplified scalability rather than the traditional ultra-complex multi-tier apps half of VMware's toolchain is built for) than the enterprise customers they're chasing, particularly as IT staff experience with alternatives grows.
I'm not sure who's left for VMware but if I were a shareholder I'd be looking for a new CEO, preferably one whose familiar enough with the industry to remember how well this strategy has worked out for … well … everyone who's ever tried it.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
adamsc":1osf9kql said:
Are you saying the new CEO needs replaced already? Or are you talking about the previous CEO who just got replaced?
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
I hope VMware won't become the next Novel: good tech but horrible marketing. When Microsoft sees something like this they go for the jugular.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Microsoft is actively persuading customers to go HyperV and there are tons of discounts they are willing to throw to make the numbers look good if management is willing to give it a thought.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
antiwraith":2mrox95i said:
Thanks for the correction - I'd completely missed Maritz being replaced. I was thinking that in addition to a more competitive strategy they really need something convincing for customers who are worried they'll try something similar. Being able to say that the guy who came up with the policy is gone might be enough.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
- Status