Windows Server 2016 Pricing
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@mlnews said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Side point: Switching horses in midstream to Hyper-V would require using Starwind for the local shared storage component, as I don't think 2016's Storage Spaces Direct is the way we'd want to go. I have no idea what Starwind licensing is like, but wouldn't that be a similar argument about future costs as sticking with Vmware? Either way we will have to continue paying licensing.
You are correct on all points. Starwinds would introduce cost (maybe, not necessarily, you have a ton of VSAN induced cost there), and SSD is not remotely ready for prime time yet. But even in the worst case, Starwind is fractional compared to VSAN and Hyper-V is totally free compared to... well, anything.
But it sounds like a lot of your costs in hardware terms as well come from VSAN. I would guess that if you left the VMware world, you could reduce to two hosts and go to 100% free Hyper-V and Starwind.
That's what I was thinking as well. VMWare requires at least 3 host for VSAN but recommends 4. 48 VMs aren't really that many and unless you have IOPS number ready you won't really know one way or the other if two hosts can handle what you are speccing 4 hosts for.
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Organization has no opinion; he is director of IT and has sole discretion over IT infrastructure budget/purchases.
Who does he report to in the command chain?
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Again, I didn't say we "can't afford 2016". I'm just having a hard time justifying the price increase as applies to our current environment.
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@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Organization has no opinion; he is director of IT and has sole discretion over IT infrastructure budget/purchases.
Who does he report to in the command chain?
City Manager.
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@coliver said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@mlnews said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Side point: Switching horses in midstream to Hyper-V would require using Starwind for the local shared storage component, as I don't think 2016's Storage Spaces Direct is the way we'd want to go. I have no idea what Starwind licensing is like, but wouldn't that be a similar argument about future costs as sticking with Vmware? Either way we will have to continue paying licensing.
You are correct on all points. Starwinds would introduce cost (maybe, not necessarily, you have a ton of VSAN induced cost there), and SSD is not remotely ready for prime time yet. But even in the worst case, Starwind is fractional compared to VSAN and Hyper-V is totally free compared to... well, anything.
But it sounds like a lot of your costs in hardware terms as well come from VSAN. I would guess that if you left the VMware world, you could reduce to two hosts and go to 100% free Hyper-V and Starwind.
That's what I was thinking as well. VMWare requires at least 3 host for VSAN but recommends 4. 48 VMs aren't really that many and unless you have IOPS number ready you won't really know one way or the other if two hosts can handle what you are speccing 4 hosts for.
Yeah, 48 VMs is a two server scenario at least 80% of the time. And at least 5% of the time is just a single server scenario. Three or more isn't unheard of, but quite unlikely.
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Again, I didn't say we "can't afford 2016". I'm just having a hard time justifying the price increase as applies to our current environment.
Understood. In the "do we update now" world, it makes sense to possibly hold off. But, I would say, that that should make every single person immediately say "and now we are moving off of Windows because we no longer see it as financially viable." Not that you can't afford it, that it isn't a good ROI for you.
Once you can't justify the spend to run Windows "well", it means that WIndows is the wrong toolset. That's the general rule. Not afford, justify.
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@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Running a Windows environment has huge value to us.
What value is that? That you can't get to supported, secure versions generally is an indicator that Windows is a huge negative value, rather than a positive one. Not 100% of the time, but 99%+
Well that really depends on the answer to my earlier question:
@Dashrender said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
The question is why do you have those 2003 servers? Lack of funds to upgrade, lack of motivation to upgrade? lack of support from vendors to upgrade?
If it wasn't lack of funds, but other reasons for not moving, i.e. lack of motivation, then being on another platform won't solve that problem. really the same could be said for vendor software that can't update to a new version of the OS.
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Again, I didn't say we "can't afford 2016". I'm just having a hard time justifying the price increase as applies to our current environment.
What do you mean justifying? OH you're talking about justifying 2016 vs 2012 R2. I'm assuming there's already been sign off on the Windows licensing, but the new higher cost for the soon to be current OS is the concern. i.e. how do you sell it to management to buy the new one and not the old one - I think Scott is telling you that you don't, instead you change the entire approach.
Heck, have him read this thread.
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@Dashrender said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Heck, have him read this thread.
There you go.
Here is how other professionals see this decision. What if an auditor was brought in and looked at these decisions....
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@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@Dashrender said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Heck, have him read this thread.
There you go.
Here is how other professionals see this decision. What if an auditor was brought in and looked at these decisions....
Seriously? An auditor? Like they would even understand the question.
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OK there's a barrage of posts coming in so single quoting them is getting tough.
I just want to step back for a moment. I REALLY appreciate the logical replies and hard-hitting questions. It's giving me a lot to think about. What follows will no doubt sound like excuses, but I promise I am trying to keep an open mind here:
I don't think anyone can just declare that we should eliminate Windows from our environment. You don't know our budget, current applications, workflow, user count, or anything else. Yes, I am sure that through application of simple logic and analysis you could make a convincing argument against staying on Windows, especially looking at the situation as presented through a handful of posts. But that in no way allows for all of the soft-costs associated with this. For a team of our size to engineer and execute an organizational wide replacement of an entire operating architecture would be a near impossibility, to say nothing of our other ongoing projects. Recent organizational investments in Windows-based 3rd party applications (including ongoing painful user training and data migrations) alone would kill this in its tracks.
We're kind of getting down in the weeds here. I recognize that there are most likely BETTER ways to do IT in this organization. But the fact is, we are where we are. It has been decades of decisions made over a long time based in the old IT world, and we are very well entrenched. But I can't change that overnight. I am not the key decision maker. My job title is simply "Specialist", and while I can advise and implement, in the end it isn't my call. There is absolutely zero chance of me selling a "take off and nuke the site from orbit" scenario here.
What I am trying to do is make the best of the resources and influence I do have. We're not leaving Windows, at least not during this administration. But yes, maybe Hyper-V is a realistic alternative that we should stop and take a harder look at.
Looking forward to getting this post shredded in 3...2..
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I think that the biggest issue here is that there are loads of decisions that sound unlikely to make sense and all depend on one another. We can't really get a good picture without knowing the whole picture. We are picking apart portions that seem crazy, but they might not be. Likely they are, but we cant really know. We don't have enough info.
But the suspected problem is that the IT manager has an emotional tie to VMware and is funneling them money (not suggesting a kickback, just that he wants to support a vendor that he likes, it's a normal emotional response) and is using this "going to give them money no matter what" opinion to build all other decisions off of. He didn't, we assume, consider lower cost Starwind options instead of VSAN, VSAN drove his sizing, sizing drove his licensing, and so on. If we pull out the VMware linchpin, we are guessing that the rest all falls apart. But we can't be sure until we know all of the factors.
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It's not about tweaking little pieces of the puzzle. It's about getting a new puzzle.
Current setup... four hosts, VMware ESXi, VSAN, Windows of all versions
Possible setup.... two hosts, Hyper-V, StarWind, Windows OR Linux of modern versions
Being able to cut the hardware in half, removing the biggest licensing hurtles, etc. is enormous. Not only does it cut the hardware costs roughly in half, remove the VMware costs, remove some or all of the VSAN costs, but it cuts the Windows licensing costs dramatically as well!
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@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
I think that the biggest issue here is that there are loads of decisions that sound unlikely to make sense and all depend on one another. We can't really get a good picture without knowing the whole picture. We are picking apart portions that seem crazy, but they might not be. Likely they are, but we cant really know. We don't have enough info.
But the suspected problem is that the IT manager has an emotional tie to VMware and is funneling them money (not suggesting a kickback, just that he wants to support a vendor that he likes, it's a normal emotional response) and is using this "going to give them money no matter what" opinion to build all other decisions off of. He didn't, we assume, consider lower cost Starwind options instead of VSAN, VSAN drove his sizing, sizing drove his licensing, and so on. If we pull out the VMware linchpin, we are guessing that the rest all falls apart. But we can't be sure until we know all of the factors.
A fair assessment.
It feels like we're just at the end of a very long chain of decisions, almost like reaching terminal velocity, that looking back we're at the only place we could have ended up based on our original trajectory. And without getting too detailed, I can think of a lot of reasons why A led to B led to C.
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@crustachio No one is really trying to shred your posts. Just trying to dig into the logic of the decision making.
You're right we don't know a lot about your environment but from the logic you are using in the previous posts it seems pretty certain that the additional cost of Server 2016 broke the camel's back and you(the organizations) sees staying on 2012R2 as the only option.
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
For a team of our size to engineer and execute an organizational wide replacement of an entire operating architecture would be a near impossibility, to say nothing of our other ongoing projects.
Actually, I'd make the argument that it is because you are a small team with limited resources that getting to easier to support, lower cost options are an imperative.
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@coliver said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio No one is really trying to shred your posts. Just trying to dig into the logic of the decision making.
I know, sorry I am coming off defensive, it is hard to have so much salt rubbed in the wounds though
Call it half defensive instinct learned from fighting my manager at every turn, half joking.You're right we don't know a lot about your environment but from the logic you are using in the previous posts it seems pretty certain that the additional cost of Server 2016 broke the camel's back and you(the organizations) sees staying on 2012R2 as the only option.
Again, I don't think it breaks the camel's back at all. We can afford it if there was justifiable value in this version. But why spend the extra money if there's no return? Anyway, we've covered that aspect well enough.
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Again, I don't think it breaks the camel's back at all. We can afford it if there was justifiable value in this version. But why spend the extra money if there's no return? Anyway, we've covered that aspect well enough.
If that's the only question of consequence for now - then starting with the latest and greatest considering how infrequently you update (looking at those 2003 machines) shows you'll just have that much longer on the support tree. Even if we assume you installed the 2003 servers in 2008, right before 2008 was released, that still makes them 8 years old.
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
I think that the biggest issue here is that there are loads of decisions that sound unlikely to make sense and all depend on one another. We can't really get a good picture without knowing the whole picture. We are picking apart portions that seem crazy, but they might not be. Likely they are, but we cant really know. We don't have enough info.
But the suspected problem is that the IT manager has an emotional tie to VMware and is funneling them money (not suggesting a kickback, just that he wants to support a vendor that he likes, it's a normal emotional response) and is using this "going to give them money no matter what" opinion to build all other decisions off of. He didn't, we assume, consider lower cost Starwind options instead of VSAN, VSAN drove his sizing, sizing drove his licensing, and so on. If we pull out the VMware linchpin, we are guessing that the rest all falls apart. But we can't be sure until we know all of the factors.
A fair assessment.
It feels like we're just at the end of a very long chain of decisions, almost like reaching terminal velocity, that looking back we're at the only place we could have ended up based on our original trajectory. And without getting too detailed, I can think of a lot of reasons why A led to B led to C.
I can see it in the descriptions. Someone likely made a firm decision in a vacuum while ignoring the fact that their decision was much, much more widespread. For example, they chose ProductA thinking "no big deal, it's just one little product." They ignored the fact that it required SQL Server, AD, only runs on Windows 2003, needs Windows clients, doesn't have support, isn't supportable, isn't secure, etc. They make it sound like "I only chose ProductA", but in reality they were given the power to define the entire IT infrastructure.
This is why holistic IT decision making is absolutely critical. Someone has to look at the big picture when decisions are being made and make sure that little decisions aren't made without someone thinking through would it really means or to make sure that someone can't use a small decision making power to "social engineer" an environment of their choosing that doesn't fit the needs of the organization.
In this case, it might be as simple as the VMware mandate. Or maybe it is the Windows apps. Or both. It's often easy to find these problem apps because they are mandates, rather than exposed decisions. Instead of an open conversation about what's the best option, they are a piece that is "unquestionable". Look for these, they are often done as a means to hide chain reaction design decisions that someone wants to enact without a reason to justify them.
Or it can be an accident of someone that doesn't understand the necessities of planning.
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@Dashrender said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Again, I don't think it breaks the camel's back at all. We can afford it if there was justifiable value in this version. But why spend the extra money if there's no return? Anyway, we've covered that aspect well enough.
If that's the only question of consequence for now - then starting with the latest and greatest considering how infrequently you update (looking at those 2003 machines) shows you'll just have that much longer on the support tree. Even if we assume you installed the 2003 servers in 2008, right before 2008 was released, that still makes them 8 years old.
Definitely true... And a factor on my mind. Part of me is assuming that MS will somehow force everyone to the cloud by then though
