vSphere 5 for Desktops license
Just within 2 days after my blogpost about Xendesktop says goodbye to vSphere on vSphere anymore with the new license model, VMware published a document which “introduces” the vSphere 5 for Desktops license. This is the exact same license as a vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus license, only there is no vRAM limit, you’re only allowed to use it for desktop VMs and it is priced per powered on VM.
We are happy again 
What happens to the example I used before:
I need to host 500 Windows 7 desktop VMs on a cluster. Each VM needs 2 GB of vRAM. Suppose I can host 7 VMs per core and I use servers with 2 CPUs with 6 cores each. Per server I’m able to host 2*6*7= 84 VMs. Because of the memory technologies used in vSphere, I don’t need 84 x 2GB = 168GB RAM in each server, but 128GB RAM should be enough (I know, it depends, but it’s an example and pretty close to what I see in real environments). Using 6 of these servers, I’ll be able to host 504 VMs. For this calculation, let’s use 500 VMs.
XenDesktop says goodbye to vSphere? (update 2)
In a lot of VDI deployments VMware vSphere is used as the hosting platform. There a couple of reasons that you can think of about why this is:
- The company uses VMware vSphere as a platform for virtualizing their servers. They don’t want to manage other types of hypervisors for the VDI environment, so they want vSphere for their VDI as well.
- VMware vSphere has multiple memory management technologies (TPS, ballooning, Memory compression) which work extremely well in an environment where the VM’s are very similar.
- In case of VMware View, there is no choice of hypervisor, vSphere is the only option.
In case of Xendesktop deployments (or Quest vWorkspace or other VDI vendors that supports vSphere), VMware vSphere is often used because of the first two reasons. This may change this year, unless VMware takes action.
UPDATE: I’ve just learned that VMware will release a Desktop edition of vSphere 5. This is very good news!
“A vSphere Desktop edition – This was quietly added on the partner SKU list for non-View VDI implementations. This provides a low cost hypervisor for XenDesktop implementations (a fairly common occurance).” (source: Knudt Blog)
vSphere 5: What’s in Enterprise Plus?
One of the most popular posts on VirtualFuture.info is about licensing vSphere 4 and the difference vSphere 4 Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Apparently, the information is hard to find or not simply explained somewhere. Now that vSphere 5 is announced, I might as well blog about this version as well.
First of all, the limit on the number of cores are gone. With vSphere 4 Enterprise you were limited to 6 cores per CPU socket. With Enterprise Plus, this limit was 12 cores per CPU socket. The new vSphere licensing model eliminates the restrictive physical entitlements of CPU cores and physical RAM per server, replacing them with a single virtualization-based entitlement of pooled virtual memory (vRAM). This will simplify the process of purchasing deploying and managing vSphere while facilitating the move to shared infrastructure as a service. The vSphere 5.0 licensing model is per processor (CPU) with pooled vRAM entitlements.
The vRAM licenses come in a number of flavors:
VMware launch event: July 12, 2011
VMware CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod will be presenting on the next generation of cloud infrastructure. Join this online event and experience how the virtualization journey is helping transform IT and ushering in the era of Cloud Computing. The event is called: “Raising the Bar, Part V” and vSphere 5 will probably be a big part of this event. I wonder if there is anything else going to be announced…
The program for the online event looks very promising with three tracks of deep dive breakout sessions!
9:00-9:45 Paul and Steve present – live online streaming
10:00-12:00 three tracks of deep dive breakout sessions
10:00-12:00 live Q&A with VMware cloud and virtualization experts
The event is free and you won’t want to miss this!
There will also be a couple of vExperts on-site at the event:
- Eric Siebert (@ericsiebert, vSphere-land)
- David Davis (@davidmdavis, VMware Videos)
- Bob Plankers (@plankers, The Lone Sysadmin)
- Bill Hill (@virtual_bill, Virtual Bill)
These vExperts will be covering the event live! (Also watch for live-tweeting from @VMwareEvents and @jtroyer with the #vmwarecloud hashtag)
After the event, you’ll still be able to ask questions on Twitter. And on Wednesday, we’ll be recapping the event on our VMware Community Roundtable — join us for an hour of live Q&A.
Register now for this online event and then join the online event on July 12 to be entered into a drawing for the free VMworld pass.
Hands-on with Ericom AccessNow for VMware View
Do you remember when you first saw Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect in action? Playing games without a controller! It looked kind of dumb at first, people standing in front of a TV making exaggerated and weird moves, but when you tried Kinect yourself for the first time, it was fun to do and it worked pretty well. However, after a while it turns out that Kinect is a 1.0 version with it’s own limitations and you’ll have to wait for a year before new games will come out that use all the capabilities of the Kinect.
This is kind of the feeling I have now about Ericom AccessNow for VMware View, the HTML5 client for VMware View. At first you think it’s probably not that good without a “real” VMware View client installed, but once you try it, you’re amazed how easy it is to setup and use it. After a short while, you’re starting to see the limitations the product still has and you’d rather wait for a next version which has more features and has a better user experience.
