Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment
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For companies that don't want downtime during hardware patching that shuffle workloads to accommodate , you need full mobility. For ones like mine that just want to protect against hardware failure and can happily run from a different node for 90 days, it's all the same.
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In my environment, I migrate all VMs that I need to stay up onto one server, and power down the other VMs. Then I update the host. Next, I migrate the VMs I hadn't migrated (and need to stay up) to the other server and update that host. Then they stay there until the next update session.
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@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
In my environment, I migrate all VMs that I need to stay up onto one server, and power down the other VMs. Then I update the host. Next, I migrate the VMs I hadn't migrated (and need to stay up) to the other server and update that host. Then they stay there until the next update session.
If you do that once a season, you'd be okay with SA. If you do it more than every 90 days, you'd need to over-provision licensing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
So with SA, what changes in this scenario?
Not a lot, but you can move workloads every 90 days. Which is plenty for a lot of companies.
You get free upgrades to the new version. I learned this the hard way buying Windows 2008 100 days before 2008R2 came out. Couldn't upgrade without re-buying stuff.
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@storageninja said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
So with SA, what changes in this scenario?
Not a lot, but you can move workloads every 90 days. Which is plenty for a lot of companies.
You get free upgrades to the new version. I learned this the hard way buying Windows 2008 100 days before 2008R2 came out. Couldn't upgrade without re-buying stuff.
Oh yes, that's the big thing, but within the context of moving things around, you don't get much. I'm a big believer in SA just being a cost of Windows. If you run Windows Server you need SA and/or you need to pay out of pocket for each upgrade. It's part of the base cost of maintaining a Windows infrastructure.
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@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
In my environment, I migrate all VMs that I need to stay up onto one server, and power down the other VMs. Then I update the host. Next, I migrate the VMs I hadn't migrated (and need to stay up) to the other server and update that host. Then they stay there until the next update session.
If you do that once a season, you'd be okay with SA. If you do it more than every 90 days, you'd need to over-provision licensing.
The problem is he patches both hosts in less than 90 days. That wouldn't work. He would need Datacenter, or to license both hosts for the full amount of VM's.
Considering he might be patching the host for something dangerous (like say driver version 7.700.50 that eats data) this could be a bigger concern.
One thing that does make patching a lot faster for ESXi now is it can skip the entire BIOS/initialization/Loading ESXi files.
Youtube VideoVMware update manager also can patch in a single reboot (used to use 2). These things together make patching a bit less aggressive.
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@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Oh yes, that's the big thing, but within the context of moving things around, you don't get much. I'm a big believer in SA just being a cost of Windows. If you run Windows Server you need SA and/or you need to pay out of pocket for each upgrade. It's part of the base cost of maintaining a Windows infrastructure.
Also if you have 300 users and use Windows at any scale, you need an EA.
A big benefit to EA/ELA's with vendors is it just simplifies the procurement discussion to a single agreement that should last you 3 years. This makes it easy for your staff to just deploy stuff rather than go through bid/procurement everytime they need to deploy something. -
@storageninja said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
In my environment, I migrate all VMs that I need to stay up onto one server, and power down the other VMs. Then I update the host. Next, I migrate the VMs I hadn't migrated (and need to stay up) to the other server and update that host. Then they stay there until the next update session.
If you do that once a season, you'd be okay with SA. If you do it more than every 90 days, you'd need to over-provision licensing.
The problem is he patches both hosts in less than 90 days. That wouldn't work. He would need Datacenter, or to license both hosts for the full amount of VM's.
Considering he might be patching the host for something dangerous (like say driver version 7.700.50 that eats data) this could be a bigger concern.
One thing that does make patching a lot faster for ESXi now is it can skip the entire BIOS/initialization/Loading ESXi files.
Youtube VideoVMware update manager also can patch in a single reboot (used to use 2). These things together make patching a bit less aggressive.
Season = 92 days
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@storageninja said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Oh yes, that's the big thing, but within the context of moving things around, you don't get much. I'm a big believer in SA just being a cost of Windows. If you run Windows Server you need SA and/or you need to pay out of pocket for each upgrade. It's part of the base cost of maintaining a Windows infrastructure.
Also if you have 300 users and use Windows at any scale, you need an EA.
A big benefit to EA/ELA's with vendors is it just simplifies the procurement discussion to a single agreement that should last you 3 years. This makes it easy for your staff to just deploy stuff rather than go through bid/procurement everytime they need to deploy something.Is 300 really enough for an EA? I'm really asking, not trying to sound incredulous. That's so small that often you are still in the "two server" range. At that size, you could be looking at EA basically for anyone, why even have anything but EA?
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Being that the 90-day limit also applies to DC, and you had 2 DC licences per host, would you still get stuck with not legally being allowed to move the same VM more than twice per 90-day period?
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@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Being that the 90-day limit also applies to DC, and you had 2 DC licences per host, would you still get stuck with not legally being allowed to move the same VM more than twice per 90-day period?
Not sure what you mean. You only ever have one on any given host. DC is a "one per host" product because it's unlimited use. Adding more licenses to a host would not get you anything.
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@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Being that the 90-day limit also applies to DC, and you had 2 DC licences per host, would you still get stuck with not legally being allowed to move the same VM more than twice per 90-day period?
You need one DC license for HOST1 and one DC license for HOST2. Then you are free to move VMs between the two as often as you like... If we're talking about DC. The same applies to Standard, you just need to have the same licensing on both hosts to cover the VMs that will be moving to the other host.
Edit : and if you are going that route, you may as well have a cluster set up with SW vSAN
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So with 2016 core licensing for an SMB with/without SA in say a two host cluster for <100, it seems that it is best to go back to multi-function servers to save on OS licensing. Is my thinking wrong here?
I do like single function guests but it could become much cheaper if a business combines on-prem Email, FileServices, DC, RDS, SW, SAP, or any combination of other applications into 2 or 3 VM's.
My logic could be faulty but with the limits on use of MS products, it just seems way more expensive than it needs to be. Don't get me wrong, I do understand value and if a company goes down the MS route, there is a price to pay and the rules must be followed.
Of course the real answer to the perceived high cost of MS, is to move as many services off of Windows as possible.
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@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
So with 2016 core licensing for an SMB with/without SA in say a two host cluster for <100, it seems that it is best to go back to multi-function servers to save on OS licensing. Is my thinking wrong here?
I do like single function guests but it could become much cheaper if a business combines on-prem Email, FileServices, DC, RDS, SW, SAP, or any combination of other applications into 2 or 3 VM's.
My logic could be faulty but with the limits on use of MS products, it just seems way more expensive than it needs to be. Don't get me wrong, I do understand value and if a company goes down the MS route, there is a price to pay and the rules must be followed.
Of course the real answer to the perceived high cost of MS, is to move as many services off of Windows as possible.
Once you get to a certain number of servers/functions the datacenter license becomes viable/less expensive (I think the break even point is 13 servers). With the Datacenter license you can virtualize as many guests on the hardware as you want/will fit.
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That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
If an SMB can combine functions from 14 VM's(random # ) down to 4 VM's, why pay the extra 3 OS licenses for each host in the cluster?
I guess it comes down to the usual price vs risk equation?
Just trying to wrap my head around all this.
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@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
All my SMBs do. The protection is important and once you have any number, DC makes the separation "free".
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@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
All my SMBs do. The protection is important and once you have any number, DC makes the separation "free".
We do here too but with the refresh coming up next year, I am debating on whether the value for us is actually there vs moving as much to linux as possible. I have a little while to figure it out but this thread has been very enlightening. Good stuff.
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@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
All my SMBs do. The protection is important and once you have any number, DC makes the separation "free".
We do here too but with the refresh coming up next year, I am debating on whether the value for us is actually there vs moving as much to linux as possible. I have a little while to figure it out but this thread has been very enlightening. Good stuff.
If it's possible (in a given scenario, all things considered) to replace a windows server with Linux, it's always valuable. Even on a DC host. There's always savings in some form.
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@obsolesce Yeah. Somewhere I saw the 90 day limit applied to DC. I guess if you have DC on both, it doesn't matter.
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My God reading things like this confuse me more lmao.
But am I right in summarizing this way:-
If I have a single VM that's "critical" and need to move/migrate it due to issues if all my hosts are licensed with DC with the correct core count and SA.
I can move that VM as often as I want? I.e every day(Or applied to unlimited number of VMs due to DC)
What if I had all hosts licensed with DC but no SA would I then be limited to the 90day limit?
