VMware official presentation video on vSphere 5 pricing model

Directly from VMware.com site an interesting video covering the pricing / licensing of vSphere 5

Click on the image to view the presentation


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A cool presentation by Eric Sloof: new HA in vSphere 5

vSphere 5 introduces a new High Availability agent named FDM.

[...] There is no more AAM agent like in vSphere 4.1. Instead, there has been a new agent introduced which is named FDM – Fault Domain Manager. The Primary/Secondary concept with 5 primary nodes which has been known in vSphere 4, is gone. You no longer needs to worry not to loose all those 5 primary nodes at the same time …. and loose the HA functionality for the rest of the cluster. Now there is only one agent in the cluster which plays the role of Master. The agent is called FDM – Fault Domain Manager. One host takes the role of Master. The other agents on other hosts plays only roles as a Slaves, and can became Masters in case the master fails. [...]

read all the article "vSphere 5 – New High Availability Agent Introduced – FDM" (from vladan.fr) and have a look at Eric Sloof video presentation

View more presentations from Eric Sloof

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David Davis on ComputerWorld: opinion on new vSphere 5 pricing model

Hello all,
on ComputerWorld.com a three pages article on new vSphere 5 pricing model written by David Davis with deep dive into vRAM Pooled Pricing

[...] The per-virtual-machine (VM) pricing model has become standard for VMware products including vCenter Operations and vCloud Director. But some VMware shops don't like this pricing system, because it uses a flat price across all VMs, no matter the size of the VM -- and of course not all VMs are created equal. [...]

read all the article

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Nick Howell on "NetApp & Storage DRS" with vSphere 5

On NetApp blog, Nick Howell tells us about Storage DRS feature - new in vSphere 5 - with all the pros and cons, deep diving on deduplication:

[...]Let's talk about Deduplication first. As we've all known for some time, a Best Practice of ours is to stuff as many VM's as you can into a single Datastore [volume] in order to get the highest returns on deduplication. Users can see as high as 80%+ space returned (I know, I was one of them, and did) on their VM's by collectively placing them in the same container with no performance penalty for doing so. Moving data [i.e. vmdk's] between volumes will "un-dedupe" that data being moved, and you will have to re-run the original deduplication scan on that new volume in order to re-coop those savings after the move.[...]

Thank you Nick!

Read the full article

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Video: CTO Steve Herrod on vSphere 5

From YouTube channel vmwaretv

Unveiling VMware vSphere 5 -- http://www.vmware.com/cloud-infrastructure/ VMware CTO Steve Herrod discusses the launch of VMware vSphere 5 and the comprehensive cloud infrastructure suite that will strengthen the infrastructure foundation for the cloud computing era.

Watch the video:

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VmWare View Client for Android Tablet

hello all,
Tedd Fox (senior product manager for mobile clients) announced yesterday the availability of VmWare View Client for Android Tablet.

VMware View Client for Android features include:

• A new look and feel – The View Client for Android features the NEW blue look and feel of the VMware View clients!
• Multiple broker support – If you have more than one VMware View broker in your organization, you can can easily access your desktop from all of them via the Android client
• Desktop Shortcuts – Quickly connect with as many as four recent desktop via shortcuts
• Virtual trackpad – Control your desktop on a granular level just like you would control the mouse on a laptop
• Custom keyboard toolbar – Super easy access to all of the special keys not found on the Android default keynboard
• Honeycomb 3.x support – Made from the ground up for the new generation of Android tablets
• Custom gestures – Invoke keyboard, scrolling, etc are as easy as ever and simple to use
• VMware View Security Server support (best experience) – No need to have VPN when you use VMware View Security Server
• Background tasking – Switch between apps on your tablet and come right back
  

Have a look at some of the features in this video:

You can download the Android View Client from Android Market

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From VmWare.com: Introducing the Next Step in Cloud Infrastructure

hello all,
on official Vmware site you can watch a video with Bogomil Balkansky (VP Product Marketing, VMware) and have a look at what will be vSphere 5
follow the link

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vSphere 5 licensing: Some thoughts from Gabrie van Zanten blog

Hello all,
after the news about new vSphere 5 licensing a lot of threads spread in the Internet.
I've found a good post in "Gabes Virtual World" blog (by Gabrie van Zanten): in the article Gabrie does does math with examples to explain why, in his vision, the new licensing model is not that bad.

here's the full article (with lots of comments)
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vSphere 5.0: New Licensing

Hello all,
here's a link to a White Paper from VmWare that explain the new licensing model for VmWare vSphere 5.
The new pricing introduces the concept of "Pooled vRAM Entitlement"

in the paragraph "Why a Change was Necessary" we can read:

With the modification to vSphere licensing, we accomplish two objectives:
• Free customers from restrictive hardware-based entitlements
• Align the vSphere licensing model with IT as a service

To understand reasons for the change, we should first examine the legacy vSphere model. vSphere 4.x is licensed on a per-physical processor (CPU) basis with limits on:
• The number of physical cores per CPU
• Physical RAM capacity per server

Significant innovations in hardware design—such as CPUs with ever-larger number of cores, high-density memory chips, solidstate drives and hyperthreading—were causing the hardware limits in vSphere 4.x licensing to become outdated. In the 36 months since the release of vSphere 4.0, multicore capacity of x86 CPUs grew from 2–4 cores per CPU to 8–12 per CPU. Processor manufacturers have announced plans to introduce CPUs that will exceed 12 cores.
CPU manufacturers have introduced or plan to introduce technologies—such as hyperthreading—that work at the subcore level and increase processing power by improving parallelization of computations. Similar growth and innovation trends are also happening on the memory side, with RAM chip density growing from 4GB per DIMM to 8GB and 16GB per DIMM and new types of memory technologies—such as solid-state-drive (SSD)—becoming mainstream. This innovation trend in server hardware technologies is rapidly making the hardware restrictions of vSphere 4.x licenses outdated posing difficulties for customers to plan future investments in infrastructure and virtualization.

Moreover, vSphere 4.x licensing did not reflect the fact that vSphere excels at pooling physical hardware resources across the entire datacenter and presenting them as a single, unified, shared infrastructure—an innovation that is one of the core pillars of cloud infrastructure. The hardware-based licensing model of vSphere 4.x made it difficult for customers to transition to the usage-based cost and chargeback models that characterize cloud computing and IT-as-a-Service.

here's the link to the complete document
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