With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse
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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.
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@DustinB3403 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:
@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.
I never implied that any system did not have a learning curve. I, in fact, specifically stated that the learning curve for KVM was higher. To normal people this means I am comparing learning curves.
I did not include your favorite toy, because I have no direct experience with it after my first test of it years ago was crap.
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@JaredBusch why do you think XenServer and or XCP-NG are toys?
Wouldn't it take but a few minutes to re-evalute them and the solutions for them be worthwhile?
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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.
You always assume that I have some magic learning or skill advantage and always assume that I ignore learning curves.
But obviously, I work with all of these and have tested all of their learning curves. That's precisely what I'm talking about here. You are acting like that's not the very thing I just discussed. It's like saying that Car X is faster than Car Y in my testing, and then pretending like you think I didn't even know Car Y existed in a conversation about how I tested it!
If you've used these, you should know that all of them having a learning curve. And my experience is that anyone, not just me, finds Hyper-V the hardest and ESXi the next hardest if they don't conveniently ignore the complexities of licensing.
Pretty weird to be acting like ESXi has no learning curve in a long thread discussing confusing aspects of the most basic ESXi installs.
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@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:
@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.
I never implied that any system did not have a learning curve. I, in fact, specifically stated that the learning curve for KVM was higher. To normal people this means I am comparing learning curves.
except that was in response to us specifically talking about how it was lower, compared to those others.
KVM takes no special knowledge to have a basic system up and running with a nice GUI in minutes. Just pop in the disk and install and connect to the GUI it presents. No licensing questions, no paperwork, no difficult bits. VMware is close, but not as easy. More steps, more confusion, more pieces. Hyper-V isn't even in the game.
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@JaredBusch said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
I did not include your favorite toy, because I have no direct experience with it after my first test of it years ago was crap.
It was not crap fifteen years ago, it blew the doors off of Vmware's offerings at the time. Easy to use? No, not at the time. But powerful and enterprise ready when VMware was unable to make VoIP work due to timing and performance issues.
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@DustinB3403 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:
@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.
huh - if you are saying VMWare has a learning curve - I wonder how much you really used it? It was stupid easy when I used it. Though I have zero VMWare 6.0+ experience, so perhaps it's harder now?
I'll agree that Hyper-V just sucks!
XenServer with XenCenter was in general just as easy as VMWare/VMWare C++ client, though having to setup a XCP-NG while not hard - definitely not simple.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
ESXi the next hardest if they don't conveniently ignore the complexities of licensing.
Definitely one of the hardest things about ESXi - but meh - it's a one time deal, or at least one time per version, I don't consider it so bad.
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@Dashrender 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:
@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.
huh - if you are saying VMWare has a learning curve - I wonder how much you really used it? It was stupid easy when I used it. Though I have zero VMWare 6.0+ experience, so perhaps it's harder now?
You say that, and yet you were wondering what happens if your license expires, you believe you've had a license expire, you didn't know the cost to keep using what you have currently, and there is a real possibility you had to run it unlicensed due to the high level of complexity.
This thread alone, I feel, demonstrates exactly how complex it is. Complex enough that people using it are often totally overlooking the complexity and they see it as a monster for someone else to tackle.
You can't say it was stupid easy, given the questions and concerns its complexity caused for you here. This thread's entirety is demonstrating that it is more complex than its users tend to admit to.
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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:
ESXi the next hardest if they don't conveniently ignore the complexities of licensing.
Definitely one of the hardest things about ESXi - but meh - it's a one time deal, or at least one time per version, I don't consider it so bad.
Right, conveniently, the most complex parts of ESXi are almost always ignored to make it seem easy when very obviously, it is not. And if trained IT pros with loads and loads of experience with ESXi and licensing, and peer review and such have questions like this, imagine how hard it is for someone doing virtualization for the first time!
And this is what Jared was warning about... that we tend to ignore the complex parts we've already learned and tackled. It is a large learning curve (IMHO, larger than getting KVM installed and running) compared to other options.
If we discount pieces of the learning curve that are at or smaller than the ESXi licensing, or parts that are a "one time deal", then KVM would be seen has having zero learning curve, which of course makes no sense.
It's not that Vmware is hard, it's that it is significantly harder, relative to KVM.
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
XenServer with XenCenter was in general just as easy as VMWare/VMWare C++ client, though having to setup a XCP-NG while not hard - definitely not simple.
Right, which is quite a bit harder than KVM. Not hard, heck no. None of them are truly hard. It's all easy. It's just that some was quite a bit easier than others.
Need to install Windows, then having to install a proprietary application just to manage the system, while easy to do, is all more to know and more to do than a Fedora/KVM install requires. When we are comparing to something so ridiculously easy, these things add up.
My point here is that nearly always, people "poo poo" KVM for being "too hard" but overlook that it is pretty obviously easier than the alternatives they are claiming to be picking because they see them as simpler.
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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:
@DustinB3403 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:
@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.
huh - if you are saying VMWare has a learning curve - I wonder how much you really used it? It was stupid easy when I used it. Though I have zero VMWare 6.0+ experience, so perhaps it's harder now?
You say that, and yet you were wondering what happens if your license expires, you believe you've had a license expire, you didn't know the cost to keep using what you have currently, and there is a real possibility you had to run it unlicensed due to the high level of complexity.
No - I never wondered until this thread happened. As I said - I have a client who stopped paying, and nothing has happened to them. Their machine keeps working just fine.
Of course you might toss in that well - they aren't getting updates anymore, etc.. sure, that's true.
