6 cores limitation per socket for vSphere enterprise
Posted by craig 
- on April 22nd, 2009 in Virtualization, vSphere | 3 Comments »
As the new licensing model from VMware vSphere 4, it clearly show that you may require additional 620USD per sockets to entitle yourself for the enterprise plus if which come with 12 cores per sockets, host profiles, distribution switch and etc.
For existing enterprise users, they will no longer entitle everything as they did in the past due to the new scheme that will apply by vmware. There is a clause which stated by the official documentation released from vmware.
” vSphere Enterprise is available for USD$2,875 per one processor with up to six cores for use on a server with up to 256GB   of   memory. “
This clearly stated as six cores per sockets is the max you can go if you are previous or new enterprise customer. Here is the concern now, as six cores is in the market now, and soon we will see 8 cores and 12 cores in the market too. When the hardware technology improve and provide more cores per CPU, we will end up require to pay for additional charges to entitle the features due to this licensing model.
Personal point of view, to provide alternative licensing model with new features should be acceptable, but it shouldn’t fix the limit for number of cores to be allowed in each CPU sockets licenses. A customer may end to pay more not because the new features they really need, it may just purely due to the maximum number of cores per socket is allowed. I hope VMware should reconsider the clause they had included in the release.
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Tags: License, VMware, vSphere, vsphere 4, vsphere enterprise
3 Responses
Actually you can upgrade from Enterprise to Enterprise Plus for $295/CPU thru 12/31/2009. Read the bottom here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/upgrade.html
I knew this before I post this article, as you stated here is valid until 31st of December 2009. What about after that? and to the users who may not interest to go for enterprise plus? That will make the users or customer to pay extra money due to the new licensing model, and not really something they want or need
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