VMware vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Amendment

In reaction to the huge demand of VMware customers after the announcement of the new vSphere 5 vRAM licensing Schema, VMware has announced the changes of its vRAM entitlements  & few other licensing items to respond to customers demands. In this article, I will be covering just that. Its important to note, I am a bit late on bringing the news here as it was announced on August 3rd. The reason on me being late to report this, I have been really busy lately covering for my two colleagues who went on vacation for the past 2 weeks. OK, so what has changed & why?

If you have not heard about the new vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Schema you might want to start by reading my following article first:  7 reasons why VMware vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing is not as bad as it Look at First Glance. After the initial vRAM licensing announcement, although most customers did not have a problem with the approach and were not affected many had a concern about the vRAM entitlements and Large VMs. VMware had listened to its customers, & modified its vRAM Licensing Policy Accordingly. Below is a summary of these changes:

1- Increasing the vRAM entitlement in every  Edition, where many of the entitlement has even doubled from the original announcement. Below is a comparison of the original vSphere 5 vRAM Entitlement and the new vRAM Entitlement:

vSphere Edition   Previous vSphere vRAM Entitlement    New vSphere vRAM Entitlement

Enterprise+                              48GB                                                        96GB

Enterprise                                 32GB                                                       64GB

Standard                                   24GB                                                       32GB

Essential+                                24GB                                                       32GB

Essential                                  24GB                                                        32GB

Free ESXi                                 8GB                                                          32GB

I believe the new entitlement is more fair to customers, and within the guidelines of customers suggestions after the initial vSphere vRAM Licensing Announcement. Further, I think the Free ESXi vRAM Entitlement change is a great improvement.

2- The amount of vRAM any Virtual Machine can consume as far licensing go is capped at 96GB of RAM, so no matter how much RAM you assign to a Virtual Machine the max it will consume of the vRAM entitlement is 96GB.

3- Rather than measuring the peak vRAM now it calculate a 12-month average consumed vRAM, which ensure customers don’t have to pay for their peak utilization days but a reasonable average usage.

For me that VMware has actually responded with these changes to its customers demand was quite encouraging and demonstrating they have been listening. It actually take a hell of courage to apply such changes in a short time, as a response to customers demand. I have seen an increased satisfaction of our customers after the vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Amendment when compared with the original announcement which is definitely encouraging.