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:
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).
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@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
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.
This is not moot. The point was that KVM has "less to do" than alternatives. People keep saying it is hard to install, the point is that it is not, it is easy. Easier than the things that people keep pointing to where they need to ...
- Install the product in question.
- Find and decide on a management tool.
- Install a platform for the management tool.
- Deploy the management tool.
While none of those steps are hard, they often take as much time as deploying the original product itself. No matter how you try to trivialize the KVM advantages, the reality is is that even little things become big when viewed comparatively to KVM's install itself. And since the point was that KVM was "so hard" to install, these things are the opposite of moot.
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@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
You do this have how many installations of Hyper-V and install the management tool on a Windows 10 system.
It's actually a decently big deal. We constantly deal with customers who either have to deploy operating systems that they don't want to have, or can't update Hyper-V, due to the scale and complexity of this requirement.
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@scottalanmiller 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:
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.
This is not moot. The point was that KVM has "less to do" than alternatives. People keep saying it is hard to install, the point is that it is not, it is easy. Easier than the things that people keep pointing to where they need to ...
- Install the product in question.
- Find and decide on a management tool.
- Install a platform for the management tool.
- Deploy the management tool.
While none of those steps are hard, they often take as much time as deploying the original product itself. No matter how you try to trivialize the KVM advantages, the reality is is that even little things become big when viewed comparatively to KVM's install itself. And since the point was that KVM was "so hard" to install, these things are the opposite of moot.
All of these same steps must be performed with KVM.
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@DustinB3403 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:
@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
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.
This is not moot. The point was that KVM has "less to do" than alternatives. People keep saying it is hard to install, the point is that it is not, it is easy. Easier than the things that people keep pointing to where they need to ...
- Install the product in question.
- Find and decide on a management tool.
- Install a platform for the management tool.
- Deploy the management tool.
While none of those steps are hard, they often take as much time as deploying the original product itself. No matter how you try to trivialize the KVM advantages, the reality is is that even little things become big when viewed comparatively to KVM's install itself. And since the point was that KVM was "so hard" to install, these things are the opposite of moot.
All of these same steps must be performed with KVM.
No, they don't. That was the point. I get this out of the box for basic functionality. I have step 1, not 2, 3 or 4. Assuming Fedora/KVM or any of several others. They include this all.
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@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
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.
This is not moot. The point was that KVM has "less to do" than alternatives. People keep saying it is hard to install, the point is that it is not, it is easy. Easier than the things that people keep pointing to where they need to ...
- Install the product in question.
- Find and decide on a management tool.
- Install a platform for the management tool.
- Deploy the management tool.
While none of those steps are hard, they often take as much time as deploying the original product itself. No matter how you try to trivialize the KVM advantages, the reality is is that even little things become big when viewed comparatively to KVM's install itself. And since the point was that KVM was "so hard" to install, these things are the opposite of moot.
All of these same steps must be performed with KVM.
No, they don't. That was the point. I get this out of the box for basic functionality. I have step 1, not 2, 3 or 4.
Virt-Manager and oVirt are just two of them, you have to choose. Or you have to know what to "use".
Just because Virt-Manager gets installed, doesn't mean it's a decision you didn't make. The choice of using KVM on Fedora gave you a default suite of tools to use, including Virt-Manager and or Cockpit.
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@DustinB3403 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:
@DustinB3403 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:
@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
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.
This is not moot. The point was that KVM has "less to do" than alternatives. People keep saying it is hard to install, the point is that it is not, it is easy. Easier than the things that people keep pointing to where they need to ...
- Install the product in question.
- Find and decide on a management tool.
- Install a platform for the management tool.
- Deploy the management tool.
While none of those steps are hard, they often take as much time as deploying the original product itself. No matter how you try to trivialize the KVM advantages, the reality is is that even little things become big when viewed comparatively to KVM's install itself. And since the point was that KVM was "so hard" to install, these things are the opposite of moot.
All of these same steps must be performed with KVM.
No, they don't. That was the point. I get this out of the box for basic functionality. I have step 1, not 2, 3 or 4.
Virt-Manager and oVirt are just two of them, you have to choose. Or you have to know what to "use".
No, you CAN choose an ADDITIONAL way with KVM. That's totally different because the native one is there by default. Can you switch or add, yes, of course. It doesn't take away options. But unlike the other three, it comes with the GUI out of the box in a default install. It's very different. You can argue, like @stacksofplates has, that the GUI it comes with is not yet complete enough to qualify, but you can't argue that it isn't there.
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@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
Just because Virt-Manager gets installed, doesn't mean it's a decision you didn't make. The choice of using KVM on Fedora gave you a default suite of tools to use, including Virt-Manager and or Cockpit.
It installs both, but one is the default GUI. It's not just the default GUI in this situation, it's the native GUI of the Fedora platform.
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And in theory, but only a theory as I've not done this to prove it, you can use Cockpit for multiple hosts, not just one.
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@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
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.
This is not moot. The point was that KVM has "less to do" than alternatives. People keep saying it is hard to install, the point is that it is not, it is easy. Easier than the things that people keep pointing to where they need to ...
- Install the product in question.
- Find and decide on a management tool.
- Install a platform for the management tool.
- Deploy the management tool.
While none of those steps are hard, they often take as much time as deploying the original product itself. No matter how you try to trivialize the KVM advantages, the reality is is that even little things become big when viewed comparatively to KVM's install itself. And since the point was that KVM was "so hard" to install, these things are the opposite of moot.
All of these same steps must be performed with KVM.
No, they don't. That was the point. I get this out of the box for basic functionality. I have step 1, not 2, 3 or 4.
Virt-Manager and oVirt are just two of them, you have to choose. Or you have to know what to "use".
No, you CAN choose an ADDITIONAL way with KVM. That's totally different because the native one is there by default. Can you switch or add, yes, of course. It doesn't take away options. But unlike the other three, it comes with the GUI out of the box in a default install. It's very different. You can argue, like @stacksofplates has, that the GUI it comes with is not yet complete enough to qualify, but you can't argue that it isn't there.
I've not argued that there isn't a management interface, I've said you are either using Virt-Manager, virsh CLI or something else. You have to know what to use and or make a choice to not use something different.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
And in theory, but only a theory as I've not done this to prove it, you can use Cockpit for multiple hosts, not just one.
Yes indeed you can.
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@FATeknollogee 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:
And in theory, but only a theory as I've not done this to prove it, you can use Cockpit for multiple hosts, not just one.
Yes indeed you can.
I've seen pictures of it, but never figured out how they set it up to do it.
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@scottalanmiller said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse:
@FATeknollogee 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:
And in theory, but only a theory as I've not done this to prove it, you can use Cockpit for multiple hosts, not just one.
Yes indeed you can.
I've seen pictures of it, but never figured out how they set it up to do it.
That would be a weird limitation. You mean I have 15 KVM servers all with their own workloads, and I need to open 15 tabs to manage each host and the guests they have?!
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@DustinB3403 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:
@FATeknollogee 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:
And in theory, but only a theory as I've not done this to prove it, you can use Cockpit for multiple hosts, not just one.
Yes indeed you can.
I've seen pictures of it, but never figured out how they set it up to do it.
That would be a weird limitation. You mean I have 15 KVM servers all with their own workloads, and I need to open 15 tabs to manage each host and the guests they have?!
No one said it was a limitation, just we have not set it up
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@JaredBusch my point was that it is weird that Scott has 1) never tried and 2) has never had anyone who has asked about it.
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@DustinB3403 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:
@FATeknollogee 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:
And in theory, but only a theory as I've not done this to prove it, you can use Cockpit for multiple hosts, not just one.
Yes indeed you can.
I've seen pictures of it, but never figured out how they set it up to do it.
That would be a weird limitation. You mean I have 15 KVM servers all with their own workloads, and I need to open 15 tabs to manage each host and the guests they have?!
No, you can do it all through one. Most of our customers, being in the SMB, only have one server, so they aren't all in one system. It wouldn't be normal to combine lots of clients into one system. No one with Hyper-V or VMware would do that either, it would be weird. You would treat each customer individually.
In the SMB, single servers is the norm by far today. So that's how it is normally done. For shops with more than one server, often they've not done a large refresh, so you aren't seeing loads of multi-KVM deployments out there yet.
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Based on my past findings, if you purchased an Essentials license (this is all I have ever purchased) you do not lose any functions after support expiration. vCenter even keeps working to my knowledge. You no long have software updates and if you want to re-up they will charge a re-up fee along with support fee.
As for retail pricing, Essentials is $666 for first three years of software upgrades and $180 for three year software upgrades. A licensee can pay per hour for support if needed.
To me, being in SMB, $850 for 6 years is reasonable. Many of these same clients have no issue paying for Sonicwalls, Fortinet and Watchguard UTM's either and we have had many discussions on the cost of those.
