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:
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.
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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:
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.
OK - I'll admit dealing with finding the licensing keys is a PITA for VMWare - but it's not really THAT hard. It might take an hour for a normalish IT person. And the rest of setup for VMWare itself is like 20 mins.
Are you saying that KVM can be done lock stock and barrel in 1:20 ? The toss in backups - you mentioned all kinds of tech for backups. Which did of course answer my question - but I feel that you're choosing to be obtuse and not giving a much simpler answer, like - for a single host customer we run KVM with blah backup to blah1 repository. I know you like to hide behind all customers are snowflakes so I can't give such an answer - but I call BS and say you can always have a starting point, even if it goes off the rails right away.
If you really truly can't do that - fine, then please provide three examples of current customers and their exactly SMB solution that you provide (all different please) to show how you've solve these issues, then also explain why you choose to do things differently in each case from the others.
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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:
@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.
That's not really a "no", that's a "yes". It's so complex that you had concerns that you pushed off instead of dealing with. That you now may or may not have an unlicensed systems with unknown costs and feature issues now is a huge deal and one that highlights this discussion.
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
OK - I'll admit dealing with finding the licensing keys is a PITA for VMWare - but it's not really THAT hard. It might take an hour for a normalish IT person. And the rest of setup for VMWare itself is like 20 mins.
An HOUR. Think about that. An hour of complex work that the average IT pro seems to get wrong, on top of having to pay $600 or more, just to get to the starting point of KVM or Xen.
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
Are you saying that KVM can be done lock stock and barrel in 1:20 ? The toss in backups - you mentioned all kinds of tech for backups.
That you think 1:20 is even hard, this shows how skewed Vmware has made you. Of course I can do it in 1:20. We normally do it in closer to :20.
Backups are neither here nor there. Vmware doesn't come with backups, you need all the same decision making and setup for those either way. Sure, Vmware people tend to assume that they will select X licensing to get access to Y backups and buy them from Z vendor, but all of that is money and over head. If you look at KVM the same way, it takes no more effort.
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@Dashrender said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
...but I feel that you're choosing to be obtuse and not giving a much simpler answer, like - for a single host customer we run KVM with blah backup to blah1 repository.
That no two customers are the same, and that we don't use boilerplate for this isn't obtuse, it's the truth. We lean to KVM but beyond that, we have no standard, and even that is trivial as we have as much or more Hyper-V. But newer deployments are nearly all KVM.
But we literally have no two with the same backup, I believe. And that is the same whether Hyper-V, VMware or KVM. Customers tend to be far less likely to be "all the same" when not pushed to be than people imagine. Some on StorageCraft, some on Unitrends, some on Veeam, some on Windows Backups, some on UrBackup...
But there's nothing to really know. Choose the backup tool you like for your environment. The decision really should not be so closely tied to the hypervisor. That's not something I've seen in the real world.
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So the complaint that I'm hearing from at least @scottalanmiller is that you can't immediately start creating VM's. The instant the hypervisor is setup (XenServer and XCP-ng) but you can, you can always use XAPI the equivalent to virsh commands on KVM.
Of course almost no one is going to do this, they are going to look for Virtual Machine Manager or some other gui.
So the complaint at least from @scottalanmiller is trivial and moot.
Making a complaint that "I have to use a separate tool to manage my hypervisor" is so inconsequential that it should never be brought up in any rational conversation.
You do this have how many installations of Hyper-V and install the management tool on a Windows 10 system.
@Dashrender my point about ESXi and Hyper-V being more difficult is in the overall management of it from turning on the server to creating VMs to managing licensing to everything.
Now I do use ESXi 6.5, and while it's functional enough (go to a web browser and login) it's just irritating to be forced to use such a limited solution and have so many additional limitations on the system (backup options, limited functionality etc).
