With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
When using ESXi, I could obviously use the free edition with it's limitations, but if I purchase support for the first year or 3 and I let it lapse after that, what happens?
To my knowledge, VMWare is not perpetual.
So, you are back on the Free Edition.Holy shit! That makes it even more expensive!
You have to keep paying, there is no secret about that. Requires annual maintenance.
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@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
VMWare Essentials is not expensive.
Actually it is pretty expensive. The version necessary for each size of organization and what you get for it is pretty low. The cost relative to other pieces of an IT budget is actually really high. Considering you aren't displacing something with the cost, but just spending the money.
Even if you look at the cheapest, $600 up front, and $150 or so a year, that's a lot for a really small company to spend without any reasonable benefit. Small shops tend to already struggle with the cost of software. Adding that on top is a big deal.
Shops that are larger, need vastly more expensive versions. And the problem starts again.
It's not that Vmware doesn't have value, but "cheap" it is not.
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@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
The abilities gained make it very worth it. XS, & KVM are not ready for the SMB market because of the lack of 3rd party block level backup solutions with CBT, forever incremental, etc. The things that make Veeam such a rockstar product.
But first, you have Hyper-V to compete against if you believe that.
But beyond that, this is all just opinion. If you feel CBT and agentless backups are required, then it makes VMware seem a lot more valuable than it is because you are not evaluating the whole picture together, but creating a false requirement on its own that specifically makes VMware's paid offerings seem better.
But to an SMB, that's almost always absurd. When you could do agent based backups for free with free hypervisors, paying for agentless (or maybe getting it free) and locking into a pay up front and pay to maintain hypervisor ads up quickly.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
VMWare Essentials is not expensive.
Actually it is pretty expensive. The version necessary for each size of organization and what you get for it is pretty low. The cost relative to other pieces of an IT budget is actually really high. Considering you aren't displacing something with the cost, but just spending the money.
Even if you look at the cheapest, $600 up front, and $150 or so a year, that's a lot for a really small company to spend without any reasonable benefit. Small shops tend to already struggle with the cost of software. Adding that on top is a big deal.
Shops that are larger, need vastly more expensive versions. And the problem starts again.
It's not that Vmware doesn't have value, but "cheap" it is not.
$600 up front and $150 a year for 3 Hypervisors is nothing.
$600 is like 9 hours of SMB admin time and $150 is 2 hours.The time the admin saves using a simple tool will outweigh the cost very quickly.
A skilled admin with knowledge of other solutions, no of course not. But that is not most SMB.
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Not worth skipping over XenServer and XCP-NG both have Xen Orchestra which is agentless.
And while XenServer isn't really free any longer, you can still use it for free and Xen Orchestra is open source, so of course that is free to use.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
If you feel CBT and agentless backups are required
Because I work in reality. Where most SMB do not have the skills to handle offsiting large backup files. When a solution like Veeam can handle it for them.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
When using ESXi, I could obviously use the free edition with it's limitations, but if I purchase support for the first year or 3 and I let it lapse after that, what happens?
To my knowledge, VMWare is not perpetual.
So, you are back on the Free Edition.Holy shit! That makes it even more expensive!
You have to keep paying, there is no secret about that. Requires annual maintenance.
I did not know maintenance was a requirement to use to the full product. I'm positive that I have a client who's licensed server did not roll back to 'free' when they stopped paying.
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@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
$600 up front and $150 a year for 3 Hypervisors is nothing.
In a dream world it is nothing. First of all, $600 isn't "nothing" to any SMB. That's money out of the company's pocket. Find me the owner / CEO who thinks that burning $600 without a clear reason is ever nothing. It's not, successful companies don't set money on fire just because the number isn't "that high".
Second, the "three hypervisors" thing is a red herring. Most companies that can use the unsupported version of ESXi don't need three hypervisors, they need two at most and mostly only need one. That's misdirection and Vmware says both those things all of the time "$600 is cheap and you get three", but that's obvious marketing.
Many companies who waste that money already tend to them deploy more (wasting even more money) because they end up in an emotional reaction to the wasted money and through the sunk cost problem end up wasting even more to make it seem like they didn't screw up before. But that's mixing up the cause and the effect.
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@Dashrender I thought things like vCenter stopped working if your license lapsed. Hence why I asked.
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
When using ESXi, I could obviously use the free edition with it's limitations, but if I purchase support for the first year or 3 and I let it lapse after that, what happens?
To my knowledge, VMWare is not perpetual.
So, you are back on the Free Edition.Holy shit! That makes it even more expensive!
You have to keep paying, there is no secret about that. Requires annual maintenance.
I did not know maintenance was a requirement to use to the full product. I'm positive that I have a client who's licensed server did not roll back to 'free' when they stopped paying.
Might just have rolled to "unlicensed." Which is worse, in a way.
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@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
If you feel CBT and agentless backups are required
Because I work in reality. Where most SMB do not have the skills to handle offsiting large backup files. When a solution like Veeam can handle it for them.
In the REAL world, backups are almost always trivially easy and there isn't some big offsite or large file difficulty. No idea what probem you are imagining, but this like never comes up.
And in the real world, it's cheap to hire skilled pros, and insanely expensive to buy software to try to do that work for you. That's dangerous, as if you can't handle taking a backup, you can't safely do so even with expensive software. Especially software without support.
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Now don't get me wrong, loads and loads of SMBs, lacking in any good ability to evaluate their needs will buy anything that they are told to buy and will throw money and things like this all day long if no one stops them. That the will or can spend it isn't in question. It's how is it actually lowering their overall cost that I can't generally see.
Spending $600 instead of $0 in the hopes of not needing to have anyone involved who can take a system backup is insane.
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@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@Dashrender I thought things like vCenter stopped working if your license lapsed. Hence why I asked.
Don't use it - don't know.
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The times when Vmware ESXi really start to make sense are when you are doing complex things or have severe support requirements and are desiring to intentionally acquire Vmware support. Most enterprises do this, but they also do it to get extreme high end features, and they do so on enterprise agreements where they negotiate the cost down way, way below what SMB's pay for it, even in the Essentially pack. SMBs pay the crazy cost "per hypervisor", while the Enterprise that they think they are mimicking are getting twice the product at a fraction of the price.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
When using ESXi, I could obviously use the free edition with it's limitations, but if I purchase support for the first year or 3 and I let it lapse after that, what happens?
To my knowledge, VMWare is not perpetual.
So, you are back on the Free Edition.Holy shit! That makes it even more expensive!
You have to keep paying, there is no secret about that. Requires annual maintenance.
I did not know maintenance was a requirement to use to the full product. I'm positive that I have a client who's licensed server did not roll back to 'free' when they stopped paying.
Might just have rolled to "unlicensed." Which is worse, in a way.
I thought unlicensed stopped working after 30-90 days or something? I can tell you there's is still working years later.
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
When using ESXi, I could obviously use the free edition with it's limitations, but if I purchase support for the first year or 3 and I let it lapse after that, what happens?
To my knowledge, VMWare is not perpetual.
So, you are back on the Free Edition.Holy shit! That makes it even more expensive!
You have to keep paying, there is no secret about that. Requires annual maintenance.
I did not know maintenance was a requirement to use to the full product. I'm positive that I have a client who's licensed server did not roll back to 'free' when they stopped paying.
Might just have rolled to "unlicensed." Which is worse, in a way.
I thought unlicensed stopped working after 30-90 days or something? I can tell you there's is still working years later.
I know ESXi 6.5 keeps working, this is for certain. I currently have the free edition (never paid for licensing for this single host).
I'm not sure what functionality I'm actually missing though as the web console still works. I don't have a vCenter server setup and I've never used support (obviously).
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Scott - what is your go to solution for a single host VM server and what for backup of the VMs? and what are you backing up to?
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
Scott - what is your go to solution for a single host VM server and what for backup of the VMs? and what are you backing up to?
I rarely have a single "go to". We use KVM for most environments that we manage end to end because the overall cost to maintain is so low compared to Hyper-V or VMware ESXi that no cost anywhere else in the system is able to offset the huge cost reduction in management (acquisition, install, upgrades, patching, remote access, etc.) Every step is less effort than other platforms. Over time, all those little pieces, even just making remote access faster and more reliable, add up to make it cost far less to support.
We then typically use some combination of backup tools like Windows backup, scripts, DevOps style, full images, Veeam, URBackup, Unitrends, etc. based on the individual needs of the environment.
But we also use Hyper-V a lot, but mostly because a client thinks that it makes it "easier" for them in some way. Almost never do we see Hyper-V being used with agentless backups, even when otherwise it seems like the logical choice. Often due to hardware limitations.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
We use KVM for most environments that we manage end to end because the overall cost to maintain is so low
For you.
Because you know KVM.That is an entire learning curve of its own that you always conveniently exclude.
It is a higher cost learning curve than Hyper-V or VMWare in my direct experience.
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@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
We use KVM for most environments that we manage end to end because the overall cost to maintain is so low
For you.
Because you know KVM.That is an entire learning curve of its own that you always conveniently exclude.
It is a higher cost learning curve than Hyper-V or VMWare in my direct experience.
Worth noting, but Hyper-V and VMWare also have a learning curve, that doesn't seem to exist with XenServer/XCP-NG in my experience.
