Authorization

For better control and security, it is recommended to specify the list of authenticated servers that can replicate rather than allowing replication traffic from any authenticated server. While enabling a Replica server, there are two sets of inputs which are required - Authentication and Authorization.

When allowing replication from specific servers, each entry in the list is called an "authorization entry". An authorization entry contains:

·         Server(s) that are allowed to replicate (Primary Server)

·         Default location where the Replica virtual hard disk files is to be created (Storage Location)

·         Tag to group a set of such allowed primary servers into a trust zone (Security Tag).

Primary Server

The primary server can be one of the following:

·         A single server identified by the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) (e.g., R2.constoso.com)

·         FQDN using wild-card (*.advertisement.contoso.com). Wild-card is supported only in the first octet, e.g., "*.advertisement.*", but not "advertisement*"

·       If the primary server is part of a cluster, you should specify the FQDN of the CAP (Client Access Point) of the Hyper-V Replica Broker of the primary side cluster. This allows you to add or remove nodes from the primary cluster without having to change the authorization entry in the Replica server.

Storage Location

The storage location specifies the folder where the virtual hard disk files for the Replica virtual machines will be created. If the Replica server is part of a cluster, then only a CSV or SMB file path can be provided.

If the storage location for an authorization entry is changed after a replica VM has been created, only subsequent replica VMs will be created in the new location.

Security Tag

A security tag needs to be specified for each authorization entry. A group of primary servers, with the same security tag can be considered to be part of a “trust zone”.

How is this useful? Hyper-V Replica allows replication to continue seamlessly when virtual machines are migrated either on the primary server/cluster or Replica server/cluster. Hence the replication traffic for a given Replica virtual machine cannot be tied only to the server that enabled replication of the virtual machine.

For the Replica server to allow replication traffic for a Replica virtual machine from a set of primary servers (the servers amongst which the primary virtual machine can move), those set of primary servers should be grouped into the same trust zone i,e the same security tag.

The security tag can be used for another scenario - in the above picture, servers in “Trust Zone 2” (say, security tag "TZ-2") will be able to send replication traffic for Replica virtual machines that were created by any of the servers in that trust zone. A server in “Trust Zone 2” will not be able to send replication traffic for a Replica virtual machine that was created by a server in “Trust Zone 1” (say, security tag "TZ-1"). This will ensure that in case a server from trust zone 2 gets compromised, the attacker cannot use replication to tamper the Replica virtual machine belonging to “Trust Zone 1”.

Security tag is a plain text, and can be created on the fly. No meta-data needs to be created for the same.

Using Powershell

• To add a new authorization entry

New-VMReplicationAuthorizationEntry -AllowedPrimaryServer <Server to be authorized> -ReplicaStorageLocation <Location where Replica files should be created> -SecurityTag <Tag>

Example:

New-VMReplicationAuthorizationEntry -AllowedPrimaryServer *.constoso.com -ReplicaStorageLocation E:\Replica -SecurityTag Finance

• To remove an existing authorization entry

Remove-VMReplicationAuthorizationEntry -AllowedPrimaryServer <authorized primary server> 

Example:

Remove-VMReplicationAuthorizationEntry -AllowedPrimaryServer *.constoso.com

• To add authorization entries, the "AllowAnyServer" property on the server should be set to FALSE.

Set-VMReplicationServer -AllowAnyServer $FALSE

• To query the current authorization entries, use the following cmdlet:

Get-VMReplicationAuthorizationEntry

If you are in Bangalore, India between March 21st and March 23rd, visit us at TechEd, India!

We have a product tent and a booth for Hyper-V Replica - drop in, meet us and learn more about HVR.

- Praveen

The new Windows Server “8” Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture poster is now available from the Microsoft Download Center.

This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V technologies in Windows Server “8” Beta. This new Hyper-V poster focuses on Hyper-V Replica, networking, virtual machine mobility (live migration), storage, failover clustering and scalability.

If you haven’t seen them previously, the following posters are also available:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Component Architecture (with Service Pack 1)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Component Architecture
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components poster
• Windows Server 2008 Component Posters

Cheers,
John.

An often asked question from early HVR deployments has been about the product’s certificate requirements. This post captures the pre-requisites for enabling replication using certificate based authentication.

HVR uses machine level mutual authentication, which requires you to install the certificates in the Personal certificate store of the local computer.

View/Import Certificates

To view or to import the certificates

   i.  Launch mmc from the command prompt.

   ii. Click File->Add/Remove Snap-in... and choose Certificates from the available list of snap-ins.

   iii. Choose 'Computer Account' in the Certificate snap-in pop up

     iv.   Open the Certificates store under the Personal store.

Primary Server Certificate Requirements

To setup a replication relationship, the certificate in the primary server must meet the following conditions:

• Enhanced Key Usage must support both Client and Server authentication

• Set the Subject field or the Subject Alternative Name using one of the following methods:
• Set the Subject field to the primary server name (e.g.: primary1.contoso.com).  If the primary server is part of a cluster, ensure that the subject field is set to the FQDN of the HVR Broker (install this certificate on all the nodes of the cluster).

(or)

• Subject field can contain a wildcard (e.g.: *.department.contoso.com).

 (or)

• For a SAN certificate, set the Subject Alternative Name’s DNS Name to the primary server name (e.g.: primary1.contoso.com). If the primary server is part of a cluster, the Subject Alternative Name of the certificate should contain the FQDN of the HVR Broker (install this certificate on all the nodes of the cluster).

• Ensure that the valid X.509v3 certificate is not revoked.
• Check if the root of this certificate is present in the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” of the replica server certificate store.

Replica Server Certificate Requirements

To enable a server to receive replication traffic, the certificate in the replica server must meet the following conditions

• Enhanced Key Usage must support both Client and Server authentication
• Set the Subject field or the Subject Alternative Name using one of the following methods:
• For a SAN certificate, set the Subject Alternative Name’s DNS Name to the replica server name (e.g.: replica1.contoso.com). If the replica server is part of cluster, the Subject Alternative Name of the certificate must contain the replica server name *and* FQDN of the HVR Broker (install this certificate on all the nodes of the cluster.)

(or)

• Set the Subject field to the replica server name (e.g.: replica1.contoso.com). If the replica server is part of cluster, ensure that a certificate with the subject field set to the FQDN of the HVR Broker is installed on all the nodes of the cluster.

(or)

• Subject field can contain a wildcard (e.g.: *.department.contoso.com)

• Ensure that the valid X.509v3 certificate is not revoked.
• Check if the root of this certificate is present in the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” of the replica server certificate store.

Validate using certutil

After the certificate is installed, run the following command from the command prompt on both the primary and replica server:

certutil –store my

At least one of the certificates in your output should resemble the following sample output such that the Encryption test (not just Signature) has passed.

==============================Certificate 1 =====================================================

For a sample HVR deployment scenario using makecert certificate, see Appendix C of the UTG which is available here.

In the next few weeks , we will be posting an end to end workflow for enabling replication using certificates.

- Hyper-V Replication Team

Hyper-V Replica (HVR) is a new feature in Windows Server “8” Beta that provides asynchronous replication of Hyper-V virtual machines for BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) scenarios.  

Watch this space for in depth blogs from the Hyper-V Replica team on how-to’s, tips & tricks, sample PS cmdlets, commentary on some of the engineering decisions (eg: why do we support server names in the product and not IP addresses, why did we design resync and scenarios where it would be used).

To know more about HVR, see Understand and Troubleshoot Hyper-V Replica. A quick summary which demonstrates the feature capabilities is available here.

We want this to be an interactive dialogue between you and the engineers that built this - so appreciate your comments/feedback !

Stay tuned and watch for posts with the HVR tag...

- Hyper-V Replication Team

Take a look at Jeffrey Snover's blog post, Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect for Window Server, where he discusses standards-based storage management in the next release of Windows Server codenamed "Windows Server 8".

Read Jeffrey's post on the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform blog.

Check out Thomas Pfenning's blog post, General Manager Server and Tools, where he discusses the storage and availability enhancements in the next release of Windows Server codenamed "Windows Server 8". 

Read Thomas' post on the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform blog.

Take a look at Bill Laing's blog, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft's Server and Cloud business, to get an overview of the next release of Windows Server codenamed Windows Server 8.

Read Bill's post on the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform blog.

Yesterday we kicked off the “Microsoft Path to the Private Cloud” Contest, read official rules.  Today we have another Xbox to give away, so see below for second question in the series of three for the day.

A reminder on how the contest works: We’ll be posting three (3) questions related to Microsoft’s virtualization, system management and private cloud offerings today (8/31), one per hour from 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. PST.  You’ll be able to find the answers on the Microsoft.com sites.  Once you have the answers to all three questions, you send us single Twitter message (direct tweet) with all three answers to the questions to the @MSServerCloud Twitter handle.  The person that sends us the first Twitter message with all three correct answers in it will win an Xbox 360 4GB Kinect Game Console bundle for the day.

And the 8/31, 10 am. Question is:

Q:  What is the name of the Microsoft program which provides an infrastructure as a service private cloud with a pre-validated configuration from server partners through the combination of Microsoft software; consolidated guidance; validated configurations from OEM partners for compute; network; and storage; and value-added software components?

Remember to gather all three answers before you direct tweet us the message. Be sure to check back here at 11:00 a.m. PST as well for the next question.

Reminder - the 8/31, 9 am. Question was:

Q: Which Microsoft offering provides deep visibility into the health, performance and availability of your datacenter, private cloud and public cloud environments (such as Windows Azure) – across applications, operating systems, hypervisors and even hardware – through a single, familiar and easy to use interface?

Yesterday we kicked off the “Microsoft Path to the Private Cloud” Contest, read official rules.  As of the posting of this blog, we still have not received a tweet with the winning answers.  That means there are still two Xboxes on the table. But we're keeping things moving and today is the final day of the contest so see below for first question in the series of three for the day.

A reminder on how the contest works: We’ll be posting three (3) questions related to Microsoft’s virtualization, system management and private cloud offerings today (8/31), one per hour from 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. PST.  You’ll be able to find the answers on the Microsoft.com sites.  Once you have the answers to all three questions, you send us single Twitter message (direct tweet) with all three answers to the questions to the @MSServerCloud Twitter handle.  The person that sends us the first Twitter message with all three correct answers in it will win an Xbox 360 4GB Kinect Game Console bundle for the day.

And the 8/31, 9 am. Question is:

Q: Which Microsoft offering provides deep visibility into the health, performance and availability of your datacenter, private cloud and public cloud environments (such as Windows Azure) – across applications, operating systems, hypervisors and even hardware – through a single, familiar and easy to use interface?

Let the contest begin!!  Remember to gather all three answers before you direct tweet us the message. Be sure to check back here at 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. PST as well for the next two questions.

Hear more from Edwin Yuen, Director of Cloud and Virtualization Strategy, about Microsoft's approach to private cloud and how that differs from VMware's:

Yesterday in his keynote, Paul Maritz’s said VMware’s “heart” is in infrastructure.  He also talked a lot about VMware’s focus on the cloud.  Well, if your heart is in infrastructure (read: virtualization), and you’re focused on the cloud, we think that leads to a virtualization-focused approach to cloud.
 
At Microsoft our approach to private cloud delivers business value through a focus on the application, not the infrastructure. And, we believe economics is a fundamental benefit of cloud – it is one that customers should benefit from, not just us.
 
VMware’s private cloud solution reflects that infrastructure/virtualization heart, and that heart beats pretty loudly in their licensing – which is per-vm and per product.  So, as your cloud grows, and density increases, your costs grow - right along with it.  That doesn’t seem very cloud friendly to me - especially when a VMware private cloud solution can cost 4 to nearly 10 times more than a comparable Microsoft private cloud solution.  If you’d like to take a look at the research behind these numbers take a look at the new whitepaper my team just published.

Your cloud, on your terms, built for the future, ready now – take a look & let us know what you think.

Thanks for reading,

Edwin Yuen

Take a look at  Brad Anderson’s, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, perspective on Microsoft’s
cloud computing strategy, our private cloud solutions and the economics of those solutions versus VMware.
Click here to read more.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the new Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform website
(http://www.microsoft.com/server-cloud).  

The new site is a comprehensive source for information relating to our private cloud
and virtualization solutions, as well as other solutions based on Windows
Server, System Center, Forefront and related products.  It is designed to
help connect you to relevant information across Microsoft web destinations,
including TechNet, MSDN, Pinpoint and more - making it a great place to
understand what we offer, why you should consider it and how to get started.

Enjoy the new site and stay tuned to the blog for the latest Server & Cloud
Platform updates!

Your opportunity to win one of two Xbox 360 4GB Kinect Game Console Bundles!

Starting next week on August 30^th at 9:00 a.m. PST, we’re kicking off our
Microsoft Path to the Private Cloud Contest. During the contest you’ll have the
opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of Microsoft virtualization, systems
management and private cloud offerings by being the first to provide the
correct answers to three questions posted daily on the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform blog.

Virtualization Nation,

In my last blog, Beware the VMware Memory Tax; Plus Good News for Hyper-V…, I responded to the flood of emails we’ve received about the VMware Memory Tax introduced in vSphere 5. We discussed the changes in the new vSphere 5 Licensing model and reviewed a number of additional items including:

• Reaction from the industry
• Feedback from VMware customers
• VMware’s response
• Responded to questions from you

Moreover, we included analysis comparing vSphere 5 and its new Memory vTax with both Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Microsoft ECI, a suite that includes unlimited licenses for Windows Server, System Center and ForeFront. Since I posted my last blog and after widespread customer outrage, VMware has retreated from the unfathomable original vSphere 5 terms. Here’s what VMware said:

“Partners, OEMs and others … quite frankly were much more forthcoming with additional information than they were before we announced,” said Alberto Farronato, a senior product marketing manager for VMware.

After backpedaling from the original, vSphere 5 Licensing 1.0 Terms (announced July 12^th, 2011), VMware is now back with new vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms (announced August 3^rd, 2011). I’ve coined the terms vSphere 5 Licensing 1.0 Terms and 2.0 Terms to be clear which VMware Licensing terms I’m referring to. I’ve also done so in case VMware attempts to fix their licensing terms again with vSphere 5 Licensing 3.0 terms.

While VMware is delivering their best marketing spin to the situation claiming they are “customer focused,” trumpeting “they listened,” and hoping that the furor will die down, VMware is continuing to misjudge the situation and engage in selective listening with their customers. Even after modifying the vSphere 5.0 memory entitlements, the fundamental tax on memory still exists, which is an anathema to customers, and VMware is still receiving colorful feedback from their customers.

With the release of the vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms, we’ve been flooded with email again asking what we think of these changes. Let’s take a quick look at what changed, examine those modifications, perform some analysis based on the new VMware vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms and answer your questions. I’ll get into the details, but specifically, here’s what you’re asking:

1. “What do you think of these changes?”
2. “Will you confirm that after the recent VMware licensing changes [referring to the Aug 3^rd update], that Microsoft is not considering any type of memory entitlements or other such vTax?”

In a word, NO. Let me confirm and reiterate emphatically, that we have no intention of imposing a VM Memory vTax, a VM Core vTax or a VM Replication vTax. Let’s discuss.

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Overview of vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms

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For a full description of the changes in the vSphere Licensing 2.0 Terms, you can read their announcement. Here’s an abridged version summarizing the changes:

…we are announcing three changes to the vSphere 5 licensing model that address the three most recurring areas of customer feedback:

• We’ve increased vRAM entitlements for all vSphere editions, including the doubling of the entitlements for vSphere Enterprise and Enterprise Plus.
• We’ve capped the amount of vRAM we count in any given VM, so that no VM, not even the “monster” 1TB vRAM VM, would cost more than one vSphere Enterprise Plus license.
• We adjusted our model to be much more flexible around transient workloads, and short-term spikes that are typical in test & dev environments for example. We will now calculate a 12-month average of consumed vRAM to rather than tracking the high water mark of vRAM.

Let’s take a closer look at each one of these changes.

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Change #1: Upped the Memory Entitlement

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Below is a table from VMware detailing the new memory entitlements with vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms. BTW, I’ve seen it reported in a number of places that VMware doubled the memory entitlements. That’s partially true. vSphere Standard only got an 8 GB bump, only Enterprise and Enterprise Plus were doubled. Here are the changes from VMware:

“To recap, here is a comparison of the previously announced and the currently unveiled vSphere 5 vRAM entitlements per vSphere edition.”

[ii] this limit is GB of physical RAM per physical server

While an improvement, the memory entitlements are still a tax on memory. In addition, VMware fails to recognize or even acknowledge that, from a memory standpoint, vSphere 5 is a downgrade. No matter how hard VMware tries to spin this change, folks see right through this.

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Change #2: Capped the Amount of vRAM for Monster VMs

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With the original vSphere 5 Licensing 1.0 running a single “monster” virtual machine with 1 TB of memory cost over $70,000 in licensing costs alone. After customers pointed out how ridiculous this was, VMware improved their licensing scenario for running large VMs. While this is an improvement, the change addresses an edge case. The more common scenario is that you have servers with large amounts of physical memory running lots of virtual machines. The real effect of this change is relatively minimal for customers compared to the fact that VMware still taxes you on the more common scenario running large physical memory footprints running lots of VMs.

Which option would you prefer?

1. Paying more for large VMs
2. Paying more for running more VMs
3. Neither, licensing the whole server and running your VMs as you see fit

Me too.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Change #3: Added Variable Pricing for Transient Workloads

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The third change is required to deal with fundamental issues created by the vTax and adds new problems of its own. Here’s the change:

“We’ve adjusted our model to be much more flexible around transient workloads, and short-term spikes that are typical in test & development environments for example. We will now calculate a 12-month average of consumed vRAM to rather than tracking the high water mark of vRAM.”

While it a nice gesture to see that a customer won’t get a $70,000 budget hit for simply turning on a 1 TB VM, the whole concept of a rolling average creates new problems like variable pricing. The rolling average vTax adds complexity and variability. How do you budget for this? Assume worst case and hope for the best? What about unplanned capacity needs? In the past, you likely added more physical memory to your servers and ran some more VMs. Now, it’s likely you’ll need to pay a tithe to VMware first. How do you effectively plan for the future?

How does this benefit you?

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Expect More vTaxes in the Future

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Here’s what VMware said with the introduction of vSphere 5 and the move to the memory vTax:

”With the introduction of VMware vSphere 5, VMware is evolving the product’s licensing to lay the foundation for customers to adopt a more cloud-like IT cost model based on consumption and value rather than physical components and capacity” - Mark Peek, VMware CFO

And here’s what you think of this new cost model:

VMware says: “This new licensing is great for cloud computing.” If this new licensing is a step toward cloud computing, we’re in big trouble. Virtualization has been helping us save money. We run more apps on fewer servers. You’re now saying that’s not true anymore. The more apps, the more it costs. Say again? Why am I moving to the cloud? This contradicts everything vmware has said for years.

With the vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms has anything fundamentally changed? No.

If you’re wondering if VMware’s vTaxes are here to stay, wonder no more. This statement says it all:

“We are confident that our vSphere 5 licensing model based on pooled vRAM is the right one for the cloud computing era.” - Bogomil Balkansky, VMware VP

Despite customers explicitly telling VMware in no uncertain terms that the vTax model is the problem, VMware has reiterated that the new vTax model is here to stay. Considering VMware’s regular licensing increases, one can easily expect further vTaxes in the future. Today, it’s the VMware Memory vTax. I wouldn’t be surprised to see additional taxes in the future such as a:

• VMware Storage vTax
• Capacity? IOPs?
• VMware Network vTax
• …and more…

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Twitter: #vTax

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After the vSphere 5 Licensing 1.0 Terms were announced, users quickly created a new hashtag devoted to the new vSphere Memory Tax topic #vtax and roundly derided the new vTax. This time, with the release of the vSphere Licensing 2.0 announcement, VMware quickly flooded Twitter #vtax with VMware employees trumpeting that “VMware heard their customers” in a desperate effort to sweep this mess under the rug.

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Industry Reaction

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A few days after VMware backed down from the vSphere 5 1.0 Licensing Terms and announced the release of the vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms, press and analysts point out that the vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms still results in a price increase. Here are some examples and a sampling of quotes from a few articles:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/vmware-backs-down-vsphere-5-pricing-only-partway-169030

“As a result, this example customer is paying 50 percent more under the revised vSphere 5 license than with vSphere 4 -- but at least it’s not 300 percent more, as was the case with the original vSphere 5 licensing model.”

And…

In explaining the change, VMware said customers could use a 1TB VRAM virtual machine while reducing their vRAM allotment by only 96GB from the total VRAM pool. Customers would still need sufficient vSphere CPU-based licenses to use the 1TB (or however much) of physical RAM available on the system. In other words, this change applies only to how much VRAM is used from within the VRAM pool. Thus, you may need additional vSphere CPU-based licenses if you exceed the total pooled VRAM allotment later on.

And…

Despite the changes, your costs go up, so don't put all your eggs in the VMware basket
But the cost still goes up for many customers. And risk remains that it will continue to go up: Although VMware backed off somewhat from its original fee structure, the new licensing may change in the future, after customers are heavily reliant on VMware for even their Tier 1 applications.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/04/vmware_vsphere_price_change/

In this case, vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus would have cost $150,285 – that's eight licenses to cover the eight sockets in the sever with 48GB each plus another 35 licenses to boost the memory to 2TB. After these changes, vSphere 5 just costs $27,960 - exactly what vSphere 4 cost with half as much physical and virtual memory supported.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/08/vmware-capitulates-over-vsphere-5-pricing-kinda.ars

Ars Technica Comment 1:

Ars Technica Comment 2:

I'm something that VMware seems care even less for; one of their SMB customers with fewer than 20 physical servers. A little over a year ago I convinced my company to BUY a PAID suite (Essentials+) that met our needs initially and have watched its long-term viability decline with the v5 license changes. I've no issue with the performance or reliability of VMware's product, but there's seriously mixed signals from v4 to v5 on how buinsesses are expected to make production use of virtualization. The loss of that focus is disconcerting for someone tasked with extracting actual value from an IT infrastructure...i.e. "work". As it is, we'll adapt, in this case likely by choosing a less capable but adequate product instead of drinking the "best of breed" kool-aid in the future.In the last month, VMware made a hell of a lot of extra work for me instead of "freeing IT up to focus on productivity". In fact, no one should expect to have a vendor yank the carpet out from under them on a product they've already bought. As for my complaints on the Hypervisor product, I'm using said product for its advertised purpose as a low-cost entry-level hypervisor and proof of concept to spur virtualization adoption in our enterprise. What do you know, it DID result in the purchase of their paid product at our headquarters.VMware's chiseling began in earnest right after we bought a paid product. I lost the ability to manage/perform backups in a streamlined manner on our remote office servers (i.e. VMware made 3rd party backup API access a violation of license), the ability to run a free vCLI appliance on my free hypervisor (an upgoming gem in the v5 license) in my remote offices, and now 4GB of already installed RAM in each server will effectively go dark if I upgrade (again due to license stipulations in v5). See a trend? I am. Successful products are supposed to increase in capability over time, not stagnate or decline.

Ars Technica Comment 3:

...Please allow me to remove your confusion. Or at least let you know how an IT department on a limited budget operates. We plan for things, usually the more money being spent, the more planning has to be done. It's reasonable to have a set of expectations for how you'll use a product over the term of support for said product. You can't plan for what was changed in v5. It's upset me. Upset people complain.I bought Essentials+, and 3 years of support about a year ago. I justified the cost of paying in advance in the fair certainty that at least one major new version of the software would be released during over 2010-2013. In order to leaverage one of the prime benefits of having that ongoing support, you'd expect to be able to upgrade to newer versions/capabilities over the covered term. The newly introduced original entitlements of v5 limit blew the living snot out of our scale-up plans...you know the whole marketing drivel VMware spouted about upgrading host machines to meet client performance expectations rather than adding costly servers as of v4 and over the past 5-7 years?Staying pat (and eventually dropping off the edge of support) IS an answer, but not a very palatable one. It's the response I'd expect coming from the licensing vendor, not from someone such as yourself. Forgive me my surprise.It's a little better with the likely announcement this thread references...but it is galling treatment from a vendor.

Ars Technica Comment 4:

http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/vmware-changes-vram-licensing-on-vsphere-5-after-customer-feedback-on-vtax/

http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/231300048/vmware-changing-vsphere-5-licensing-to-allow-monster-vms.htm;jsessionid=Va3NR0st+JroIy7vS9Iyug**.ecappj01

Given the amount of heat VMware took from customers and partners after revealing the vSphere 5 licensing changes, it's not surprising to see VMware change its terms, one channel partner told CRN.

"Aside from the customers yelling, I imagine that the server manufacturers were also screaming their heads off about the initial vSphere 5 limitations," said the source, who requested anonymity. "I could see customers calling their server manufacturers and trying to return the RAM they purchased because they couldn't even use it."

Let’s now take a look at VMware’s own Community Forums.

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VMware’s Community Forums

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VMware vSphere 5 Licensing 1.0 Terms: In the first two and a half weeks after the release of vSphere 5 Licensing 1.0 and VMware’s first attempt at new licensing increases, VMware’s own community forum had over 83 pages with over 1250 posts (~75 a day) from disgruntled customers. Their comments and colorful metaphors expressed their lack of enthusiasm for the new vSphere 5 licensing model.

From: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/320877?start=1305&tstart=0

With the release of the updated vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms and VMware promising that the new announcement would “address all your concerns,” surely the thread would die down and customers would be supportive.

VMware vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms: Despite VMware’s assurances, VMware customers clearly feel otherwise. Generally, customers on VMware’s community forums are supportive, but for the second time in a row—not so much. Since the release of the vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms, the thread has now grown to over 100 pages with over 1500 posts. Below are just a few comments:

Comment 1:

Comment 2:

Comment 3:

Comment 4:

Comment 5:

Comment 6:

Comment 7:

Comment 8:

Comment 9:

This last comment got me wondering if VMware has any licensing sessions at the upcoming VMworld 2011 conference (in a couple weeks) to further explain and clarify the new licensing model and listen to any additional customer feedback.

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VMworld 2011 Licensing Sessions?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I did a quick search in the VMworld Session Builder to check and yes, there is a new session titled, “What’s New with VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing and Pricing (Twitter hashtag: #PAR2368).”

Unfortunately, it’s a session in the Partner Track and customers aren’t allowed. I suppose VMware isn’t interested in anymore feedback. Maybe next time.

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Follow-Up From the Last Blog: So What’s Really Happening

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In the preceding blog, “Beware the VMware Memory Tax,” I wrote this:

Personally, here’s what I think is happening. It looks like VMware decided to release the new vSphere Licensing and push the licensing fees as high as possible. In many cases the price increase is 2x-4x (in some cases higher).

I surmise that VMware knows full well they pushed these increases too high and will come back at VMWorld to “fix things.” I can see their CEO, Paul Maritz, start the conference by saying, “We heard you and tweaked the memory entitlement numbers. Now let’s stop talking about licensing and hey, look at this shiny thing over here…”

In essence, what all that would mean is that maybe VMware won’t get a 4x-8x price increase, but after they “fix things,” VMware still extracts a hefty 2x price hike and can hope their customers think a 2x price hike looks good in comparison—or better, don’t notice.

I revisit this topic up because I read this post in VMware’s Community Blog which appears to confirm my suspicion. Note the highlighted area.

BTW, I was mistaken about one thing, the timeline. It’s now abundantly clear that VMware is trying to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible and before VMworld so Mr. Maritz and VMware can avoid the vTax topic altogether.

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Examining the Facts: Preface

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Now that we’ve reviewed customer feedback, let’s analyze a few configurations and include real world figures. Before we do, let me be transparent as to what we’re comparing. VMware will be the first to tell you that their new licensing model isn’t based on physical memory. Here’s an exact quote from VMware’s licensing documentation.

VMware vSphere 5.0: Licensing, Pricing and Packaging p.3VMware vSphere 5 is licensed on a per-processor basis with a vRAM entitlement. Each VMware vSphere 5 processor license comes with an entitlement to a certain amount of vRAM capacity, or memory configured to virtual machines.

While I understand and acknowledge their licensing isn’t based on physical memory, this begs a few questions:

• How many people purchase servers and do not try to fully utilize them?
• What’s the point of purchasing a server and loading it with memory if not to use it?
• Isn’t better hardware utilization one of the many great reasons we use virtualization?

In fact, according to VMware’s own website, the top reason touted for virtualization is:

“Reduce costs by increasing energy efficiency and requiring less hardware with server consolidation.”

So, for the analysis below, I’m going to make the rash assumption that you would like to fully utilize the memory in the server or pool. If you disagree, for example:

• You want to calculate for active & passive failover nodes
• 4 Active Nodes + 1 Passive Node
• 8 Active Nodes + 2 Passive Nodes
• Etc.
• You only want to target 60%/75%/<insert your own value here> of physical memory use per node

…please feel free to do so and apply some sort of discount. I don’t know what your target utilization is and I’m not going to guess, so I’m going to assume maximum utilization.

The analysis below is all based on the vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms announced on August 3^rd 2011.

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1 Server: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1

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Let’s compare a single server populated with various memory configurations.

In this first comparison, let’s analyze the effect of the VMware Memory Tax and focus on the hypervisor layer. For this comparison, I’m going to use VMware vSphere 5.0 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 is our stand-alone hypervisor available as a free download. This comparison allows us to focus on the ability of the hypervisor to fully utilize memory resources in a physical server for virtual machines. Let me preface this example by stating, this comparison doesn’t include hardware, guest operating system licenses, storage, networking, or systems management.

This comparison includes VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing. I was going to be charitable and omit the SnS subscription, but then I read in the VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging whitepaper at the bottom of pages 3-11 in the fine print it states, “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.” Thus, I included the SnS License per VMware’s requirement. It should be noted that because the VMware Memory Tax requires purchasing more licenses for larger memory footprints and because "a Support and Subscription (SnS) contract is required for every vSphere Edition purchase", the SnS requirement acts as a subtle, additional tax even if the user is purchasing the extra license for vRAM capacity.

The first comparison is vSphere 5 to Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Table 1: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 (1 Server)

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10 Servers: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1

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Now, let’s compare populating a pool of virtualization servers with various memory configurations.

In this second comparison, let’s analyze the effect of the VMware Memory Tax on a 10 node cluster (or two 5 node clusters if your prefer). This second comparison also allows us to focus on the ability of the hypervisor to fully utilize memory resources in a pool of physical servers for virtual machines. Like the first example, let me preface this by stating, this comparison doesn’t include hardware, guest operating system licenses, storage, networking or systems management. This comparison does include VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing per VMware’s requirement that “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.”

Table 2: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 (10 Servers)

At this point, you’re may be thinking, “Doesn’t VMware offer a free ESXi version?”

Yes, which VMware promptly downgraded from the previous version. The free version of vSphere ESXi 5 is now limited to supporting a total of 32 GB of physical memory.

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1 Server: vSphere 5 vs. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

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In this next analysis, let’s look at the full stack and the effect of the VMware Memory Tax on the complete equation. For this comparison, I’m going to use VMware vSphere 5.0 and the Microsoft ECI Suite.

The Microsoft ECI Suite includes: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter Edition and System Center Datacenter Edition and Forefront Security. At a very high level, this provides:

• Unlimited number of virtualized Windows Server instances
• Management for an unlimited number of virtual machines (and more importantly the apps running within those VMs) for all of System Center including:
• Operations Manager
• Configuration Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Service Manager
• Opalis (Orchestrator)
• This product was released this past year and automatically added to the System Center Suite this past year. Existing customers received this automatically added at no additional cost.
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Forefront for unlimited number of virtual machines which provides a unified, multilayered, and highly manageable approach to protecting servers from malware

The VMware figures below include VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing per VMware’s requirement that “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases” and include the cost of providing unlimited Windows Server Datacenter instances to more closely match the Microsoft ECI offering. The VMware figures do not include System Center or Forefront licensing. Like the previous examples, this example doesn’t include server hardware or storage.

Table 3: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft ECI (1 Server)

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10 Servers: vSphere 5 vs. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

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In this final analysis, let’s look at the full stack and the effect of the VMware Memory Tax on the complete equation. For this comparison, I’m going to use VMware vSphere 5.0 and the Microsoft ECI Suite.

The Microsoft ECI Suite includes: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter Edition and System Center Datacenter Edition and Forefront Security. At a very high level, this provides:

• Unlimited number of virtualized Windows Server instances
• Management for an unlimited number of virtual machines (and more importantly the apps running within those VMs) for all of System Center including:
• Operations Manager
• Configuration Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Service Manager
• Opalis (Orchestrator)
• This product was released this past year and automatically added to the System Center Suite this past year. Existing customers received this automatically added at no additional cost.
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Forefront for unlimited number of virtual machines which provides a unified, multilayered, and highly manageable approach to protecting servers from malware

The VMware figures below include VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing per VMware’s requirement that “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases” and include the cost of providing unlimited Windows Server Datacenter instances to more closely match the Microsoft ECI offering. The VMware figures do not include System Center or Forefront licensing. Like the previous examples, this example doesn’t include server hardware or storage. Let’s take a look at a 10 node cluster (or two 5 node clusters if your prefer).

Table 4: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft ECI (10 Servers)

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What History Tells Us About VMware

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Here’s a quick overview of the past three VMware releases, how it impacts you and what it portends for the future.

VMware ESXi3: VMware Clamps Down on Development for Free Hypervisor

• Veeam creates a backup product for VMware’s free hypervisor
• VMware demands Veeam stop development for the free ESXi hypervisor
• VMware prefers to upsell you on their solution for the paid for hypervisor
• Veeam complies per VMware resulting in no more backup solutions for the free hypervisor

VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.x (VI3) –> VMware vSphere 4.x

• VMware adds a Core Tax
• Standard & Enterprise Editions limited to 6 cores per processor
• Advanced & Enterprise Plus Editions limited to 12 cores per processor
• VMware adds new editions
• vSphere Advanced Edition is added which costs less than Enterprise, but supports more cores per processor. The net effect is that a former top tier customer has been effectively downgraded and is required to pay for an upgrade to Enterprise Plus to fully utilize newer hardware with more cores.
• VMware removes features from lower editions and moves them to higher editions to force customers to upgrade
• Hot Add Virtual Disk removed from VI 3 Standard and moved to vSphere 4.x Advanced & Higher. For customers to regain the lost Hot Add Virtual Disk functionality is a 282% increase in licensing costs.

VMware vSphere 4.x –> VMware vSphere 5

• VMware removes the Core Tax and Adds a Memory Tax
• vSphere 5 Licensing Terms 1.0
• VMware introduces new, unspeakably awful licensing terms. Customers outraged.
• vSphere 5 Licensing Terms 2.0
• VMware tweaks the terms in hopes to appease customers and ignores the fundamental issue of the tax on memory
• The new VMware Memory vTax Licensing model also means that many vSphere 4.x customers who were licensed to fully utilize the memory in their systems cannot anymore without paying for an upgrade because the Memory Entitlements don’t fully cover the amount of physical memory in the existing system. The net effect is that customers are seeing a downgrade in the amount of memory they can use due to the new memory restrictions.

History clearly shows VMware has a pattern of reducing core functionality to force upgrades while changing the Licensing Terms to extract more revenue from their customers.

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Microsoft Hyper-V Server: Customer Driven

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In contrast, let’s compare the previous three Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 releases with VMware’s previous three releases. I chose to use Microsoft Hyper-V Server to point out how we’re focused on providing a high performance, enterprise class virtualization platform for everyone.

• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
• Released in October 2008
• High performance, single purpose hypervisor
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
• Released July 2009
• Per customer feedback we added:
• Live Migration (aka VMotion)
• High Availability
• Support for 1 TB of physical memory
• Support for VMs with up to 64 GB of memory each
• Core Parking to further reduce power consumption
• …and more…
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1
• Released August 2011
• Per customer feedback we added:
• Dynamic Memory
• RemoteFX

Notice that every change has benefited you. More scale. More VM Mobility. More VM capabilities. All at no charge.

In addition, Microsoft Hyper-V Server’s has a publicly documented management interface and we encourage, not discourage, folks to develop for our free hypervisor. Here’s just one example from 5Nine software.

Here’s a table to illustrate just a few of the improvements over the last three versions.

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 has been flying under the radar for quite some time, but adoption is steadily and quietly increasing. More on this in a future blog.

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What VMware Quietly Removed in the vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms

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The first version of the vSphere 5.0 Licensing 1.0 Terms contained this text in a number of places. It has been quietly removed in vSphere 5.0 Licensing 2.0 Terms.

It’s pretty obvious why this text was removed. These statements don’t ring true.

· Simplicity Complexity. While the vSphere 5 Licensing removes the VMware Core Tax, it replaces the VMware Core Tax with a new VMware Memory Tax and attempts to sell this tax as a “feature.” Now customers have to worry anytime they upgrade the physical memory in their servers to ensure they’re in compliance with the new VMware Memory Tax. Because of the complexity of the new vSphere 5 Licensing, VMware has had to create new tools to help customers. Worse, VMware has now added variability to the equation. You can’t just purchase a pool of servers, license them fully and use them in any way you see fit. Now, you can buy a pool of servers, license them per the new model and see licensing costs fluctuate and vary. Budgeting for the future is now more difficult. How do you budget for this? Assume worst case and hope for the best? What about unplanned capacity needs? In the past, perhaps you upgraded the memory and added ran some more VMs. Now, it’s likely you’ll need to pay a tithe to VMware first. How do you effectively plan for the future?

· Flexibility Inflexibility & Intransigence. The VMware Memory Tax introduces a new concept of limiting a fundamental server resource, memory, and discourages users from scaling up virtual machines. In addition, the new vTAX creates new artificial vRAM pools because you cannot mix and match different vSphere editions in the same pool. Want to run vSphere Enterprise Plus and a few copies of vSphere Standard to increase the memory in the pool and save some money?

Sorry, VMware doesn’t allow mixing and matching.

VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging p.7“Note that all hosts in a vRAM pool must be licensed with the same VMware vSphere edition or, in other words, VRAM entitlements are pooled by VMware vSphere Edition. It is possible to manage mixed environments of hosts licenses with different VMware vSphere Editions from the same vCenter, however this will create multiple vRAM pools. vRAM capacity can only be shared among servers licensed with the same VMware vSphere Edition.”

The end result is that introduction of the VMware Memory Tax creates silos of vSphere hosts based on Edition reduces flexibility and increasing complexity.

· Fairness Unfair to customers. With the new memory tax, if a customer decides to buy 4 servers with 32 GB of memory for virtualization and then upgrades the servers with more memory to run more or larger virtual machines in six months, they now have to go back to VMware and pay more licensing costs for the entitlement to use the memory they just purchased.

· Evolution De-Evolution. The VMware Memory Tax flies in the face of cloud computing which is to maximize hardware utilization, drive up density and reduce costs. VMware is turning this model upside down taxing customers for achieving better density. This concept is exactly the opposite of cloud computing and an anathema to customers.

How does this benefit you?

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The Crux of the Problem: VMware’s Model is Upside Down

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The VMware vSphere 5 Licensing 2.0 Terms are an attempt by VMware to sweep this debacle aside, get you to accept a new, more expensive way to purchase virtualization and tightly lock you into these new terms. From VMware:

VMware vSphere 5.0: Licensing, Pricing and Packaging p.10Q: When upgrading existing licenses for VMware vSphere 4.x or older to VMware vSphere 5.x, may I maintain the VMware vSphere 4.x licensing model?
A: No. In order to complete the upgrade, the new VMware vSphere 5 EULA must be accepted.

Here’s the crux of the problem and why VMware wants to move you to these new terms. VMware’s new consumption based business model is completely upside down.

• Consumption based costing works well as a method of charging someone else for resources you own. For example, Windows Azure, AWS, Fasthosts and Rackspace provide 100% of the hardware resources and shoulder 100% of the operational costs and thus license based on consumption. This makes sense as a method of charging someone else for resources you own.
• If you’re building your own private cloud infrastructure, you own the hardware already. In essence, VMware is telling you to pay 100% of the hardware and 100% of the operational costs and then attempting to rent back to you your own capacity.

Read that last paragraph again.

Show your boss. Show your CFO. Ask them if this is the long term strategic decision your company wants to make. Make sure you go into this new licensing model with your eyes open. Because, like the last three releases, VMware will raise their licensing again. Even VMware’s own Experts believe the new model is fundamental flawed.

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Summary

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There’s very little to say that hasn’t already been said by VMware’s own customers. VMware’s Memory tax fundamentally contradicts the economics of the private cloud and undermines what you have come to expect from virtualization. Namely, you want to fully utilize your hardware to achieve better density and lower costs.

What’s unfathomable is that we’re having this conversation at all. Increased hardware utilization, better density, and lower costs are why people gravitated to virtualization in the first place. This is Virtualization 101.

VMware also fails to recognize what is important in virtualized environments today, especially as we move towards private cloud solutions. Aspects such as management and monitoring of applications and cross-platform support have been overlooked, and with vCloud Director, VMware’s private cloud story is still focused on VMware-only infrastructures. vSphere 5 is the latest VMware toll booth erected on the road to the private cloud in a history where increased licensing costs are a regular occurrence. Two years ago it was the Core Tax where many saw there licensing increase over 200%, and now it’s the Memory Tax where many VMware customers are seeing licensing costs increase again.

With Microsoft, customers can build scalable virtualized infrastructures on Hyper-V and with System Center, accelerate their progression towards private cloud environments with deep application monitoring, protection and management along with rich self-service capabilities. All of this, without the restrictive licensing that accompanies vSphere, ensures that a Microsoft private cloud provides the greatest value at the lowest costs.

As for scalability, you should know that scalability and performance are ongoing development priorities at Microsoft. Scalability and performance work is never complete. If you look at Windows Server, we have improved the scalability, performance, and capabilities in every release. Needless to say, the next version of Windows Server will improve on these numbers, and you can expect even more capabilities.

At Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2011, we demonstrated some of the new capabilities of Windows Server “8,” specifically around Hyper-V.  With an ability to create VMs with more than 16 virtual processors and built-in replication with Hyper-V Replica, Microsoft is showcasing its deep commitment to its customers, and our relentless pursuit to provide even more value, at no extra cost.  These are just 2 of the hundreds of features coming in the Microsoft Private Cloud, of which you’ll be able to find out more about at Microsoft’s BUILD conference, September 13^th-16^th in Anaheim, CA.

Finally, I don’t understand how VMware can claim a memory tax benefits customers. I’ve had the privilege of working on virtualization for over a decade and not once has a customer told me, “I really wish you would license virtualization by the memory assigned to a VM.”

Not once.

I also want to reiterate loudly and clearly.

Question: Does Microsoft plan to do anything similar to the vTax?

Answer: NO, we have no intention of imposing a VM Memory vTax, a VM Core vTax or a VM Replication vTax.

Per VM taxes are what virtualization vendors do, not strategic cloud providers.

YES, the amount of memory in a Hyper-V “8” VM is going to go up. Way up.

See you at Build,

Jeff Woolsey

Windows Server & Cloud

Virtualization Nation,

The last few weeks have been buzzing with virtualization news. Just two examples are the Windows Server “8” Hyper-V Sneak Peek at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) and VMware’s creation of the Memory vTax.

WPC: A Sneak Peek at Windows Server “8” Hyper-V

At WPC, I participated in a keynote and got to demo the first sneak peek at the next version of Hyper-V. If you’d like to see the Windows Server “8” sneak-peek demo, go here and fast forward to 36:50 of this online video. Don’t wait. I don’t know how long the video will be up. Judging by the tens of thousands of views in the first couple of weeks, I think there’s a bit of interest.

Here’s what we showed:

• Greater than 16 virtual processors within a Hyper-V VM. We are keenly aware that our customers want more virtual processors within a virtual machine to support large scale up workloads and the new version goes above and beyond in addressing that need. I demoed a 16-virtual-processor virtual machine under heavy load. I pointed out that 16 virtual processors is not the maximum number of virtual processors. It was simply the largest server I was able to ship for the demo. As for support for more virtual processors, I’ll just say, “Stay Tuned” for some good news.
• Hyper-V Replica. It’s time to democratize VM replication. Hyper-V Replica is asynchronous, application consistent, virtual machine replication. Hyper-V Replica lets you replicate a virtual machine from one location to another, using Hyper-V and a network connection. Hyper-V Replica works with virtually any vendor’s server hardware, networking and storage products. In addition, we will provide unlimited VM replication in the box. What do I mean by unlimited VM replication? I mean exactly that. Replicate as many virtual machines as you want. Whether it’s 1, 100, or 10,000 VMs, replicate as much as you want. Would you like to replicate VMs:
• from your primary site to your secondary site?
• from your branch office to your corporate office? Vice versa?
• to a private cloud hoster?

We think you should be able to do those things—without paying a per-VM Replication Tax.

This is what our valued customers have asked for, and what we’re delivering.

The VMware Memory Entitlement (vTax)

We’ve been deluged with email this week asking about the new VMware vRAM entitlement which has quickly been dubbed the “VMware vTax.” Here’s a quick description From VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging, p. 3

“vSphere 5.0 will be licensed on a per processor basis with a vRAM entitlement. Each vSphere 5.0 CPU license will entitle the purchaser to a specific amount of vRAM, or memory configured to virtual machines.”

I’ll get into the details below, but specifically, here’s what folks are asking:

1. What do you think about the new VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing Changes?
2. Does this make sense to you?

In a word, NO. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s see what VMware’s customers, think of these changes, starting with Twitter.

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Twitter: #vTAX

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On Twitter, folks have created a new hashtag devoted to the new vSphere Memory Tax topic #vtax.  Many of the Tweets contain language that is not appropriate for this blog, but here are a few tweets that I’m able to copy and paste.

So VMware customers immediately grasped the cost implications of this new model and were not hesitant to make their feelings known. But the broader IT community also expressed concern.

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Industry Reaction

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A few days after the appearance of VMware press releases on the vSphere 5 launch, press and analysts are now chiming in about the customer backlash on the licensing changes. Here’s a sampling of quotes from just a few articles.

1. The Register: VMware Taxes your Virtual Memory

Customer Comment: “We are getting Dell R800's: Two 10 core cpu's and 512 GB of ram. That gives us 20 real cores and 40 from a scheduling perspective. We rarely need CPU, so you can oversubscribe the crap out of it. What we need is memory. With 4.x we needed 2 Enterprise Plus licenses. Now we need 10. A 500% increase so that the cost of the license is now significantly more than the hardware.”

2. ZDNet: Customers Wary of vSphere 5’s Revamped Pricing Model

"This new licensing model is going to hurt small shops the most I think. We currently have over 40 VMs [virtual machines] running each dual CPU 128GB RAM host," TysonL wrote on the forum on Tuesday. "To fully use the RAM in our servers we will have to pay 50 percent more [than] currently budgeted. Seeing as I work at a public university that is going to be fun to try and justify."

...and…

VMware has said the pricing change is designed to simplify the cost of licensing its hypervisor, but some customers view it as a tax on server RAM.

...and…

"Very shocked here, I can't go to my boss and explain that our recent investment in three new bladeservers with 128GB memory and 2 CPUs has to be licensed with extra VMware licences because there's 'so much RAM' in it," Vince77 wrote on the forum on Wednesday.

3. CRN: VMware Customers Fuming over VSphere Licensing Changes

VMware customers are venting their spleen over the licensing changes coming in vSphere 5, which in some cases will amount to a significant price hike.

…and…

Evidence of customers' frustration can be found on Twitter, where the #Vtax hashtag has sprung up and attracted a steady stream of vitriolic -- and sometimes colorful -- commentary. "Meet us at Boston Harbor -- we are dumping copies of VMware Workstation.

4. ITNews: VMware Users Rail Against Licensing Changes

“Some required to double, triple VMware licenses.”

5. TechTarget: VMware Pricing Changes Add Cost To The Cloud

Analyst Comment: “VMware’s controversial licensing and pricing changes in vSphere 5, leaked today are positively uncloud-like when it comes to cost…”

6. Ars Technica: What Will the VMware vSphere 5 Licensing Changes Mean For You

Comment: “We literally just deployed a few million dollars worth of Cisco B230 M2 blades with dual E7-2850s and 256GB each. We're already pushing north of 20:1 consolidation ratio and if this licensing stands, our VMware bill will _more than double_. <Expletive Deleted> VMware.”

The preceding links and quotes are just a few from industry sites. There are plenty more. Customers on VMware’s community forums are generally supportive. In this case—not so much.

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VMware’s Community Forums

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In just over two weeks since the release of vSphere 5.0, VMware’s own community forum has over 83 pages with over 1250 posts (~75 a day) from disgruntled customers. Their comments and colorful metaphors express their lack of enthusiasm for the new vSphere 5 licensing model. Below are just a few comments:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/320877?start=0&tstart=0

Comment 1:

I took a minute to read the licensing guide for vSphere 5 and I'm still trying to pull my jaw off the floor. VMware has completely screwed their customers this time. Why?

What I used to be able to do with 2 CPU licenses now takes 4. Incredible.

Today

BL460c G7 with 2 sockets and 192G of memory = 2 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses
DL585 G7 with 4 sockets and 256G of memory = 4 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses

Tomorrow

BL460c G7 with 2 sockets and 192G of memory = 4 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses
BL585 G7 with 4 sockets and 256G of memory = 6 vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses

So it's almost as if VMware is putting a penalty on density and encouraging users to buy hardware with more sockets rather than less.

I get that the vRAM entitlements are for what you use, not necessarily what you have, but who buys memory and doesn't use it?

Forget the hoopla about a VM with 1 TB of memory. Who in their right mind would deploy that using the new license model? It would take 22 licenses to accommodate! You could go out and buy the physical box for way less than that today, from any hardware vendor.

Anyone else completely shocked by this move?

Comment #2:

Re: vSphere 5 Licensing

It isn't just you. We just purchased ten dual-socket servers with 192GB RAM each (enterprise license level) and we'll need to triple our license count to be able to use all available RAM if allocated by VMs. Ridiculous

Comment #3:

The new licensing model is even worse on the SMB side:

Today:

2 x DL380 G7, 2 CPUs and 96 GB RAM each = Essentials Plus Kit

Tomorrow:

2 x DL380 G7, 2 CPUs and 96 GB RAM each = Standard Kit

That is about 300% (yes, THREE HUNDRED PERCENT) increase in price. Good luck explaining the added cost to your boss

Comment #4:

> Anyone else completely shocked by this move?

Yes, I am totally floored by it... We're going to end up with 6 dual CPU servers with 1.5TB of memory (so 12 CPU Enterprise Plus licences). With the new scheme, it looks like we're going to have to purchase an additional 20 CPU licences just to use what we have.

We were looking to move an SQL over to ESXi - it's a 256GB monster, so we were going to dedicate a host for it (it's good for DR). Rather than the 2 CPU licences we would have needed, we're going to need 6 now - just for the one server. So three times as many licences now.

Comment #5:

Also, from the VMware Community Forum.

Okay, here is a real world scenario for you:

· 7 Dell PowerEdge R815s with 512GB of memory each (448 usable with spare row configured), and 4 cpus

· 4 Dell PowerEdge R715s with 128GB of memory each and 2 cpus.

With vSphere 4.x, this takes 36 Enterprise Plus licenses and gives us access to all the memory.

Assuming we hold out 448GB of memory (the largest increment) in reserve for failover, we will have 3200GB of memory available for use.

After upgrading to vSphere 5.x, we will only be licensed for 1728GB NOT the previous 3200GB.

We will have to purchase 31 additional Enterprise Plus licenses to regain the ability to use all of that memory.

That’s an additional $108,345 in licensing the customer will need to pay VMware to use the memory they already paid for and we’re using with their previous version.

Comment #6:

Comment #7: Here’s another comment from VMware’s public blog:

VMware, I know you’re looking for ANY reason to divert attention from the vsphere 5 Licensing Disaster, but this article isn’t going to do it. Can we just call a spade a spade? The vsphere 5 licensing change is a plain money grab/<expletive deleted> customers by VMware and you guys are pitching this as good for me. STOP INSULTING MY INTELLIGENCE.

You have stated that most people will not be affected. Is anyone from VMware reading their own forums? There are 50+ pages of ticked off VMware customers. Twitter has started numerous hash tags including VTAX and the VMware response is, “no really, it’s not that bad” or “it’s your fault right size your vms,” or “scale out not up.”

THIS IS HOW YOU TREAT US?

If you think about what you’re saying, the guidance vmware has been giving their customers for years and how vmware is marketed you realize just how ridiculous, misguided and insulting this licensing is to customers.

VMware says the new VTAX/Memory Tax is “really not that bad.” This is simply not true. Read your own forums. We’ve done the math and we’re going to see just over a 300% increase. 300%. My boss is <expletive deleted> beyond words.

Vmware states “Vsphere 5 for desktops is great for VDI.” Haven’t looked and don’t even care. The last thing we’re going to do is even consider VMware for VDI (or anything else) after this. NOT A CHANCE. We’re not going to take the chance of deploying vmware for VDI only to have you jack up the price the next time around.

VMware says: “Hardware constraints have been removed.” This is a shell game. No, you have replaced one dumb constraint that you created with a new worse constraint and you’re telling us this is good for us. SERIOUSLY, DO YOU THINK WE’RE STUPID? I loathe writing in all caps, but considering there are 50 pages in the forums that are saying the same exact thing (which you are ignoring), maybe this will get someone’s attention.

VMware says: “This new licensing is great for cloud computing.” If this new licensing is a step toward cloud computing, we’re in big trouble. Virtualization has been helping us save money. We run more apps on fewer servers. You’re now saying that’s not true anymore. The more apps, the more it costs. Say again? Why am I moving to the cloud? This contradicts everything vmware has said for years.

VMware says: “Scale out over Scale Up.” I’ve been advocating scale out over scale up, but vmware has been telling us FOR YEARS to scale up so we the followed the guidance. That’s what we’ve been doing. Now you’re screwing us for FOLLOWING YOUR GUIDANCE.

VMware says: “Enforce customers to better right size.” Isn’t virtualization supposed to help me with this? Aren’t all your memory optimizations supposed to do this for me? Oh thats right, now you’re penalizing me for this fact. BTW, thanks for calling us stupid and demanding more money. We, your customers, love that. We don’t know any better. Perhaps you’d like to kick my dog too.

That’s a small sampling of feedback from VMware’s customers, and there are hundreds of additional comments. It’s interesting to note that while VMware is telling the press that “the furor over the vTAX has died down,” public sentiment shows quite the opposite.

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How Does VMware Respond?

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Here are some public reactions from VMware, including quotes from a Co-President and their CEO.

Response #1: In response to the scathing and derisive customer feedback, VMware held an online webinar on 6/18/2011. The speaker repeated the same licensing and messaging. Here’s what one VMware customer had to say (in VMware’s Community Forum) after attending this webcast:

Response #2: In a video interview with CRN, VMware Co-President Carl Eschenbach (@2:45 in the video) says,

“I actually think our channel and customers are excited about this change” (the new licensing).

-VMware Co-President, Carl Eschenbach

Response #3: In another interview with CRN, VMware CEO, Paul Maritz, says in an interview with CRN:

"We believe that 95 percent of customers will see no change in their licensing costs. From our calculations, most customers will see no change and won't be required to pay us more money," Maritz said in a Q&A during VMware's Q2 earnings call.

"It’s a metric that reflects the value [customers are] getting out of the software as opposed to the hardware packaged underneath it. That is the whole direction that cloud in general is heading -- pay as you drink, provisioning everything up front," said Maritz. "It's not so much that we're trying to give customers a better or worse deal, we're trying to change the metric we use to measure value."

It appears Mr. Maritz, Mr. Eschenbach and VMware are not in sync with their customers.

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Examining the Facts: Preface

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Now that we’ve reviewed customer feedback, let’s analyze a few configurations and include real world figures. Before we do, let me be transparent as to what we’re comparing. VMware will be the first to tell you that their new licensing model isn’t based on physical memory. Here’s an exact quote from VMware’s licensing documentation.

VMware vSphere 5.0: Licensing, Pricing and Packaging p.3

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 process of pooled virtual memory (vRAM).

While I understand and acknowledge their licensing isn’t based on physical memory, this begs a few questions:

• How many people purchase servers and do not try to fully utilize them?
• What’s the point of purchasing a server and loading it with memory if not to use it?
• Isn’t better hardware utilization one of the many great reasons we use virtualization?

In fact, according to VMware’s own website, the top reason touted for virtualization is:

“Reduce costs by increasing energy efficiency and requiring less hardware with server consolidation.”

So, for the analysis below, I’m going to make the rash assumption that you would like to fully utilize the memory in the system. If you disagree, please feel free to consider your memory utilization rate and apply some sort of discount. I don’t know what your target utilization is and I’m not going to guess, so I’m going to assume maximum utilization.

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Examining the Facts: Putting this in Perspective

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Example 1: vSphere 5.0 & Monster VMs

VMware has touted vSphere 5.0 as providing “Monster VMs.” If by Monster VMs they mean, vSphere 5.0 will devour budget faster than ever, then I understand the analogy. VMware is touting virtual machines with up 1 Terabyte of memory. Let’s analyze the licensing implications and cost of a 1 TB VM with real world figures.

To simply create and turn on a VMware virtual machine with 1 TB of memory on a single physical server, this costs:

• $42,785 in VMware Licensing for vSphere 5.0 Standard
• $74,874 when you include the required VMware Support and Subscription (SnS) license
• $76,890 in VMware Licensing for vSphere 5.0 Enterprise Plus
• $134,558 when you include the required VMware Support and Subscription (SnS) license

This is just VMware licensing costs to run one virtual machine.

Suppose you wanted to run this single VM with High Availability and for Live Migration, you need licenses for both servers.  For Enterprise Plus that costs over a quarter of a million dollars, or $269,116 to be precise to run one virtual machine. That's still without the cost of the server, the physical memory, storage, hardware, guest OS, or apps to run in this 1 TB virtual machine.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Example 2: Compare 1 Terabyte of Virtual RAM with 1 Terabyte of Physical RAM

Let’s compare the aforementioned VMware Entitlement for 1 TB of RAM with an actual server with 1 TB of physical RAM. A 4 socket Dell R910 with 1TB RAM lists for approximately $85,000—so the new VMware licensing either increased the cost of the server by ~87% ($74,874 with SnS) or more than doubled the cost of the server ~158% ($134,558 with SnS) depending on which license you purchase.

Example 3: A Common Server Configuration

Now, let’s take a look at a common server configuration for virtualization: A dual socket, six core server with 192 GB of physical memory.

• With vSphere 4.x, you would buy two standard licenses @$995 each because VSphere 4.x had no memory tax. Total cost: $1990.
• With vSphere 5.x, you would need to buy 8 standard licenses @995 each because Standard only provides up to 24 GB of memory so you need to purchase 8 licenses to support 192 of memory in the hosts. Total cost: $7960.

That’s a 3x increase just for the virtualization layer. No hardware. No guest licensing. No apps.

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So, What’s Really Happening?

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Personally, here’s what I think is happening. It looks like VMware decided to release the new vSphere Licensing and push the licensing fees as high as possible. In many cases the price increase is 2x-4x (in some cases higher). Here’s a very simple example to illustrate this perception.

Assuming a 2 CPU host, the vSphere 5 licenses cost increases 2x-4x from vSphere 4.1 as shown in the chart below. With vSphere 5, on a 2 CPU host with 128 GB RAM, the max vRAM entitlement is 96 GB (2 x 48GB for each CPU license), so to use the remaining 32 GB RAM, customers would need to buy an additional vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus license, something they wouldn’t have required with 4.1.

I surmise that VMware knows full well they pushed these increases too high and will come back at VMWorld to “fix things.” I can see their CEO, Paul Maritz, start the conference by saying, “We heard you and tweaked the memory entitlement numbers. Now let’s stop talking about licensing and hey, look at this shiny thing over here…”

In essence, what all that would mean is that maybe VMware won’t get a 4x-8x price increase, but after they “fix things,” VMware still extracts a hefty 2x price hike and can hope their customers think a 2x price hike looks good in comparison—or better, don’t notice.

Now let’s do some comparisons of vSphere 5, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

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1 Server: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1

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Let’s compare a single server populated with various memory configurations.

In this first comparison, let’s analyze the effect of the VMware Memory Tax and focus on the hypervisor layer. For this comparison, I’m going to use VMware vSphere 5.0 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1. This comparison allows us to focus on the ability of the hypervisor to fully utilize memory resources in a physical server for virtual machines. Let me preface this example by stating, this comparison doesn’t include hardware, guest operating system licenses, storage, networking or systems management.

This comparison includes VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing. I was going to be charitable and omit the SnS subscription, but then I read in the VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging whitepaper at the bottom of pages 3-11 in the fine print it states, “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.” Thus, I included the SnS License per VMware’s requirement. It should be noted that because the VMware Memory Tax requires purchasing more licenses for larger memory footprints and because "a Support and Subscription (SnS) contract is required for every vSphere Edition purchase", the SnS requirement acts as a subtle, additional tax even if the user is purchasing the extra license for vRAM capacity.

 The first comparison is vSphere 5 to Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Table 1: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 (1 Server)

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10 Servers: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1

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Now, let’s compare populating a pool of virtualization servers with various memory configurations.

In this second comparison, let’s analyze the effect of the VMware Memory Tax on a 10 node cluster (or two 5 node clusters if you prefer). This second comparison also allows us to focus on the ability of the hypervisor to fully utilize memory resources in a pool of physical servers for virtual machines. Like the first example, let me preface this by stating, this comparison doesn’t include hardware, guest operating system licenses, storage, networking or systems management.

This comparison includes VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing per VMware’s requirement because “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.” It should be noted that because the VMware Memory Tax requires purchasing more licenses for larger memory footprints and because "a Support and Subscription (SnS) contract is required for every vSphere Edition purchase", the SnS requirement acts as a subtle, additional tax even if the user is purchasing the extra license for vRAM capacity.

Table 2: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 (10 Servers)

At this point, you’re may be thinking, “Doesn’t VMware offer a free ESXi version?”

Yes, and VMware has promptly downgraded it. The free version of vSphere ESXi 5 is limited to 8 GB of memory.

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1 Server: vSphere 5 vs. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

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In this next analysis, let’s look at the full stack and the effect of the VMware Memory Tax on the complete equation. For this comparison, I’m going to use VMware vSphere 5.0 and the Microsoft ECI Suite.

The Microsoft ECI Suite includes: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter Edition and System Center Datacenter Edition and Forefront Security. At a very high level, this provides:

• Unlimited number of virtualized Windows Server instances
• Management for an unlimited number of virtual machines (and more importantly the apps running within those VMs) for all of System Center including:
• Operations Manager
• Configuration Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Service Manager
• Opalis (Orchestrator)
• Opalis was released this past year and added to the System Center Suite this past year. Existing customers received this automatically added at no additional cost.
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Forefront for an unlimited number of virtual machines which provides a unified, multilayered, and highly manageable approach to protecting servers from malware

The VMware figures below include VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing per VMware’s requirement that “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases.” It should be noted that because the VMware Memory Tax requires purchasing more licenses for larger memory footprints and because "a Support and Subscription (SnS) contract is required for every vSphere Edition purchase", the SnS requirement acts as a subtle, additional tax even if the user is purchasing the extra license for vRAM capacity. The VMware figures below also include the cost of providing unlimited Windows Server Datacenter instances to more closely match the Microsoft ECI offering. The VMware figures do not include System Center or Forefront licensing. Like the previous examples, this example doesn’t include server hardware or storage.

Table 3: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft ECI (1 Server)

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10 Servers: vSphere 5 vs. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

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In this final analysis, let’s look at the full stack and the effect of the VMware Memory Tax on the complete equation. For this comparison, I’m going to use VMware vSphere 5.0 and the Microsoft ECI Suite.

The Microsoft ECI Suite includes: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter Edition and System Center Datacenter Edition and Forefront Security. At a very high level, this provides:

• Unlimited number of virtualized Windows Server instances
• Management for an unlimited number of virtual machines (and more importantly the apps running within those VMs) for all of System Center including:
• Operations Manager
• Configuration Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Service Manager
• Opalis (Orchestrator)
• Opalis was released and added to the System Center Suite this past year. Existing customers received this automatically added at no additional cost.
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Forefront for an unlimited number of virtual machines which provides a unified, multilayered, and highly manageable approach to protecting servers from malware

The VMware figures below include VMware’s Support and Subscription (SnS) licensing per VMware’s requirement that “SnS is required for all vSphere purchases” and include the cost of providing unlimited Windows Server Datacenter instances to more closely match the Microsoft ECI offering. The VMware figures do not include System Center or Forefront licensing. Like the previous examples, this example doesn’t include server hardware or storage. Let’s take a look at a 10 node cluster (or two 5 node clusters if you prefer).

Table 4: Memory Tax: vSphere 5 vs. Microsoft ECI (10 Servers)

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Your Questions Answered

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So let’s return to your two questions:

1. What do you (Microsoft) think about the new VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing Changes?
2. Does this make sense to you?

There’s very little to say that hasn’t already been said by VMware’s own customers.

VMware’s Licensing changes lay the foundation to lock customers into high priced software and into a business model that is based on taxing customers for achieving greater density and maximizing hardware resources. These changes fly in the face of the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing. Specifically, the vSphere Licensing Model has devolved from per processor with physical core restrictions, commonly referred to as the VMware Core Tax, to per processor with vRAM entitlements, a new VMware Memory Tax. VMware’s Memory tax fundamentally goes against the economics of the private cloud and undermines what you have come to expect from virtualization. Namely, you want to maximize hardware utilization, drive up density and reduce costs.

What’s unfathomable is that we’re having this conversation at all. Increased hardware utilization, better density and lower costs are why people gravitated to virtualization in the first place. This is Virtualization 101.

VMware also fails to recognize what is important in virtualized environments today, especially as we move towards private cloud solutions. Aspects such as management and monitoring of applications and cross-platform support have been overlooked, and with vCloud Director, VMware’s private cloud story is still focused on VMware-only infrastructures. vSphere 5 is the latest VMware toll booth erected on the road to the private cloud in a history where increased licensing costs are a regular occurrence. Two years ago it was the Core Tax where many saw there licensing increase over 200% and now it’s the Memory Tax where many are seeing licensing increases of upwards of 200-400% and higher.

With Microsoft, customers can build scalable virtualized infrastructures on Hyper-V and with System Center, accelerate their progression towards private cloud environments with deep application monitoring, protection and management along with rich self-service capabilities. All of this, without the restrictive licensing that accompanies vSphere, ensures that a Microsoft private cloud provides the greatest value at the lowest costs.

As for scalability, you should know that scalability and performance are ongoing development activities at Microsoft. Scalability and performance work is never complete. If you look at Windows Server, we have improved the scalability, performance, and capabilities in every release. Needless to say, the next version of Windows Server will improve on these numbers and you can expect even more capabilities.

At the Worldwide Partner Conference 2011, we demonstrated some of the new capabilities of Windows Server “8,” specifically around Hyper-V.  With an ability to create VMs with more than 16 virtual processors and built-in replication with Hyper-V Replica, Microsoft is showcasing its deep commitment to its customers, and our relentless pursuit to provide even more value, at no extra cost.  These are just 2 of the hundreds of features coming in the Microsoft Private Cloud, of which you’ll be able to find out more at Microsoft’s BUILD conference, September 13^th-16^th in Anaheim, CA.

Finally, I don’t understand how VMware can claim a memory tax benefits customers. I’ve had the privilege of working on virtualization for over a decade and not once has a customer told me, “I really wish you would license virtualization by the memory assigned to a VM.”

Not once.

Next question: Does Microsoft plan to do anything similar to the vTax?

NO, we have no intention of imposing:

• A VM Memory vTax
• A VM Core vTax
• A VM Replication vTax

Per VM taxes are what virtualization vendors do, not strategic cloud providers.

See you at Build,

Jeff Woolsey

Windows Server & Cloud

P.S. YES, the amount of memory in a Hyper-V “8” VM is going to go up. Way up.

If you’re in IT you are likely pulled between an almost infinite need for more computing power to deliver business solutions and the ever increasing demands for greater agility, higher efficiency and lower costs.  Fortunately, you can now deliver on these seemingly contradictory demands by leveraging the benefits of cloud computing with our public and private cloud solutions.  And they are only going to get better.

Today we are excited to give you a sneak peek at the next step in private cloud computing by showing you just two of hundreds of new capabilities coming in the next version of Windows Server, internally code-named “Windows Server 8.”

At 36:50 of this online video we demonstrate how Windows Server 8 virtual machines will help you build private clouds of greater scale by supporting (at least…) 16 virtual processors fully loaded with business critical workloads like SQL Server.  Then we show you how you can deliver improved fault tolerance and flexibility, without the added tax or complexity of additional hardware, tools and software licenses, by using the new built-in Hyper-V Replica feature.  All it takes is a few clicks, a network connection and Windows Server 8.

But this is just the beginning!  We’re looking forward to sharing more about Windows Server 8 at Microsoft’s BUILD conference, September 13-16, in Anaheim.

The next version of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit—version 6.0— is now available for free download.

Planning a customer journey to the cloud just got easier. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 6.0 includes assessment capabilities to evaluate workloads for both public and private cloud platforms. With MAP 6.0, you now have the ability to identify customers’ workloads and estimate the infrastructure size and resources needed for both Windows Azure and Hyper-V Fast Track. Also new to MAP 6.0 is an Office 365 client assessment, enhanced VMware inventory, and Oracle Schema discovery and reporting. Expanded assessment and discovery capabilities from MAP help you simplify planning for your next migration project. Plan what's next with MAP.

 New Features and Benefits from MAP 6.0 help you:

•  Accelerate private cloud planning with Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track Onboarding.
• Analyze customer’s portfolio of applications for a migration to the Windows Azure Platform.
• Identify migration opportunities with enhanced heterogeneous server environment inventory.
• Assess your client environment for Office 365 readiness.
• Determine readiness for migration to Windows Internet Explorer 9.
• Identify web browser compatibility issues prior to Windows 7 deployment.
• Discover Oracle database schemas for migration to SQL Server.

MAP works with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Security Compliance Manager to help you plan, securely deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies—easier, faster, and at less cost. Learn more.

Next steps:

• Download MAP 6.0
• Learn more about the MAP Toolkit
• Send your questions or comments to the MAP Team.

Get the latest tips from Microsoft Solution Accelerators—in 140 characters or less! Follow us on Twitter: @MSSolutionAccel.

And here’s how to stay up-to-date on all the latest Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform news during and after WPC:

• Read our new Server and Cloud Platform blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/
• “Like” us on our new Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Server.Cloud
• Follow us on Twitter: @MSServerCloud

Thank you.

Microsoft Server & Cloud Platform Team

There’s a lot of hype around the evolution of virtualization and management, and the emergence of cloud computing. One thing that everyone can agree upon however is that most customers want to take virtualization and management to the next level by migrating to a cloud infrastructure and are looking to partners to help them decide on the best path to get there. So virtualization and management deliver new business opportunities today, and expansion into cloud computing, specifically private cloud, offers the prospect of even more opportunities in the future. With this in mind, Microsoft is announcing a series of new initiatives designed to aid channel partners in designing effective, profitable business models while working with their customers to stay on top of their datacenter infrastructure and cloud computing needs.

Microsoft Management & Virtualization Competency
Firstly, we are merging together the Systems Management and Virtualization competencies to form a new competency which reflects this continued convergence of management and virtualization and prepares partners to deliver a new breed of Private Cloud solutions. Whether you design, sell, deploy, or consult on server infrastructure, the Microsoft Management & Virtualization competency will help you to expand your role as a trusted advisor, create new business models, and generate new cloud-based revenue streams. Attaining this new competency will provide you with access to relevant resources, tools, and training for Microsoft System Center, virtualization and private cloud technologies and help to grow your business. And reaching Gold competency status will qualify you to earn channel incentives through the Management & Virtualization Solution Incentive Program (SIP) and through Private Cloud, Management and Virtualization Deployment Planning Services (PVDPS). The new Management and Virtualization competency won’t go live until May 2012 but to qualify partners will be required to demonstrate expertise in both Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center. So you’ll have plenty of time to attain any new exam requirements – and with this in mind stop by our booth (# 1221) at WPC to learn about our readiness offer and save at least 20% on virtualization and management training.

Microsoft Solutions Incentives Program (SIP)
The second announcement we are making is an enhancement to the Microsoft Solutions Incentives Program (SIP) which rewards partners that identify and sell solutions that include Microsoft Virtualization, Systems Center and Forefront solutions, as well as associated licensing suites (ECI, SMSD, SMSE). This year we are increasing the size of payouts, so Core Infrastructure partners with a Gold competency, can earn fees up to 30% of the deal size on eligible opportunities. Read the FAQ for partners or contact your Microsoft Partner Account Manager (PAM) to learn more.

Microsoft Private Cloud, Management & Virtualization Deployment Planning Services (PVDPS)
Complementing SIP is our third announcement and a brand new program called the Microsoft Private Cloud, Management & Virtualization Deployment Planning Services (PVDPS). This program helps Software Assurance (SA) customers take advantage of infrastructure solutions based on Windows Server, Systems Center and Hyper-V and can greatly reduce their datacenter costs and increase business agility. Customers can redeem their SA vouchers and receive a structured consulting engagement through partners that have attained a Gold competency in either Virtualization, Systems Management, Server Platform or Identity and Security. To learn more about PVDPS and to register to become a provider, visit the PVDPS website.

Microsoft Sales Specialist Accreditation
Our final announcement is about the Microsoft Sales Specialist accreditation which is designed to help sales professionals strengthen their solution knowledge and gain recognition for solution selling expertise associated with select Microsoft solutions. At WPC we are introducing a new Private Cloud sales accreditation to help professionals communicate the benefits of private cloud computing, help customer overcome obstacles, and position product, technology and licensing requirements to differentiate a Microsoft solution from the competition. Attaining the Private Cloud sales accreditation will not only strengthen your solution knowledge, but help you to move business forward and deliver solutions more quickly – leading to deeper customer relationships and greater revenues. Go to Microsot Sales Specialist website to learn more.

In conclusion if you are not enrolled in the Microsoft Sales Specialist program, if your organization is not active in the Solutions Incentive Program, or if you don’t qualify for Deployment Planning Services, you should consider attaining a Gold Core Infrastructure competency, which can not only help to differentiate your organization in the market but qualify your organization to earn valuable rewards and incentives. You should also start thinking about how you can drive revenue by migrating existing server infrastructure solutions to the cloud, building Hyper-V-based virtualization and System Center into your business practices and service offerings, and looking for ways to engage with Microsoft on joint private cloud opportunities.

I’d be happy to discuss any of your questions if you stop by our Private Cloud and Server Platform lounge at WPC and introduce yourself. Here’s how to stay up-to-date on all the latest Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform news during and after WPC:

• Read our new Server and Cloud Platform blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/
• “Like” us on our new Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Server.Cloud
• Follow us on Twitter: @MSServerCloud

All the best

Mark Hassall

Director, Partner Marketing, Windows Server & Management Business Group

Cloud computing is as big a transformation, and opportunity, as the technology industry has ever seen. Partners and customers can look to Microsoft for the most comprehensive cloud strategy and offerings, in order to improve their business agility, focus and economics. Today, at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft announced tools and solutions to help partners capitalize on the opportunities, as well as examples of partners and customers already finding success.

Read more

The 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) is kicking off today, and with over 12,000 attendees expected, it promises to be an exciting event. The Server and Cloud team at Microsoft has been working furiously over the last few months to make this a successful event for our partners. Over the next few days, our team will provide you regular updates about the announcements and events at WPC. As with all WPCs, there’s a lot going on at the event, so we’d like to highlight some locations and events that our core infrastructure partners will find useful.

• Breakout Sessions: You can find a complete list of the Server and Cloud breakout sessions here. Our sessions cover a variety of topics, ranging from the how the Private Cloud can help expand your business, to a preview of the benefits that the upcoming System Center 2012 release can bring to your infrastructure practice. Each session will have partner speakers featured as well, so be sure to add these sessions to your schedule builder!
• Private Cloud and Platform Servers Booth: Please visit our booth (#1221) in the Solutions Innovation Center. In addition to demos of our latest products, you will find some really exciting offerings there:
  • In partnership with Microsoft, Global Knowledge (2011 Learning Partner of the Year) is offering partners who visit our booth a discount of at least 20% off the list price on qualifying Microsoft Virtualization and Systems Center courses across the world.
  • In partnership with Dell and HP, we shall be running live Private Clouds in our booth. Come see a real private cloud in action!
  • Happy Hour with Server and Tools Execs: Join us at the Server and Tools Lounge (located at LACC West near the entrance close to Staples Center) on Monday, July 11^th from 4:30-6:30.
  • Programs and offers: At WPC, we will be announcing a number of new programs for our partners – be sure to ask our team at the Private Cloud booth about:
    • Private Cloud, Management and Virtualization DPS Program (PVDPS) - click here to find out more
    • Changes to our Management and Virtualization Solution Incentive Program (SIP)
    • The Cloud Assessment Tool
    • The MPN Private Cloud Sales Specialist program

Stay up to date with the latest Server and Cloud information! Follow us on twitter (@MSServerCloud) on our blog (http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud) and “Like” us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Server.Cloud) to get access to WPC 2011 previews. And don’t forget tag your own twitter messages with #hyperv and #WPC11

Please remember that this is your event, and we want to hear from you! Please let us know what you liked, and didn’t like, at WPC 2011.We’ll be back over the next few days with many more updates for you.

Varun Chhabra

Partner Marketing, Windows Server and Management Business Group

Everyone is talking about the Cloud. At next week’s Worldwide Partner Conference, you and 12,000 other partners will be encouraged to take the cloud conversation to the next level from traditional virtualization to cloud-based computing.  As your customer’s trusted advisor, you will best be able to propose solutions when you understand opportunities around private clouds and public clouds.

At WPC 2011, you’ll learn about our Hyper-V based Private Clouds and Windows Azure-based Public Clouds that can be managed by System Center 2012.  Most importantly, you’ll learn how Microsoft can help you ramp up on cloud technologies, generate new revenue streams, and ultimately take your Infrastructure practice to the next level.  

We look forward to seeing you at WPC. Please read on for more event-specific information.

Cheers,

Kevin McCuistion

Director of Partner Marketing, Server and Tools Business

Take Advantage of the Microsoft Virtualization and System Center offer from Global Knowledge

Global Knowledge, 2011 Microsoft Learning Competency Partner of the Year, is offering partners who visit our booth a discount of at least 20% off the list price on qualifying Microsoft Virtualization and Systems Center courses. Make sure to come to our Microsoft Private Cloud and Server Platforms booth #1221 in the Solutions Innovation Center to learn more!

Don’t miss our sessions led by our executives on Tuesday, July 12th.

Call to Action

• Sign up for Server and Cloud sessions today!
• Visit the Private Cloud and Platform Servers booth (#1221) in the Solution Innovation Center to take advantage of our readiness offer, and to see a Private Cloud solution from HP and Dell in action!
• Join us in the Server and Tools Lounge (located at the entrance to LACC West) for Happy Hour with Top Server and Tools Executives on Monday, July 11th from 4:30 – 5:30pm
• Stay up to date with the latest Server and Cloud information! Follow us on twitter (@MSServerCloud) on our blog (http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud) and “Like” us on Facebook (Facebook.com/Server.Cloud) to get access to WPC 2011 previews. And don’t forget tag your own twitter messages with #hyperv and #WPC11.

Great news to share with our virtualization blog readers - Gartner published the 2011 Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure, in which Microsoft is listed among the leaders, along with Citrix and VMware.

Microsoft’s Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of the Management & Security Division, discusses how Gartner’s results are changing the conversation with customers on the Cloud Power Blog. Click here to read more!