And this is the question that always pops up when discussing Auto Deploy in a vSphere design: “What if the Auto Deploy tool isn’t available? Then I can’t boot my ESXi hosts anymore!”

That is true, but fortunately there is a way around that. Daniel Hiltgen, Senior Staff Engineer at VMware, explains how to architect your Auto Deploy environment and make it highly available. This also prevents the “chicken-egg” problem. So have a quick look at this short, but interesting video!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also my on personal career took a turn when I joined VMware and just after 3 months I can say that I’m very happy that I made that step. It’s fun being in the front seat of consulting in virtualization and cloud computing and I’m grateful that I got the opportunity to do so.

My blogging was a little bit slow the last couple of months. Mainly due to my career switch. Since I’ve now settled down a little bit I will now spend some more time writing down my experiences. One of my New Year’s resolutions : Share more!

Saying this I would like to wish everybody a happy New Year and remember: Think©Loud!

And today, the 31st of August 2011, is the day I can announce to everybody what my answer is:

On the 1st of October I will be joining VMware (PSO) as Senior Consultant !

I’m really looking forward to working with the great minds in the field of virtualization and cloud computing.

And I would like to thank everybody who was involved in the process of me moving toward VMware. Thanks for the effort and the support!

So what’s in this new release? Where to start. VMware has improved a lot of features that where also available in vSphere 4.1, but also included a lot of new features that make vSphere more and more a flexible and dynamic cloud OS. With more then 140 new features this sure is a masterpiece of work by VMware.

To get more information about the new release have a look over here at the following links :

Where to download the good stuff? vSphere 5 over here!

Release notes – Documentation – What’s New in vSphere 5.0 – The book on vSphere 5 Clustering

This change isa the result  of some good discussion about the vSphere 5 licensing change. In my opinion these new vRAM entitlement are a better representation of the 90% of customers, the amount that VMware was targeting, that should not be affected by the licensing change. This makes it possible for most vSphere 4 customers to migratie to version 5 without having to buy extra licenses and I think that was the message that came out of the discussion between VMware, its customers and its partners.

These are the changes made by VMware with regards to licensing :

An increased vRAM entitlements for all vSphere editions, including the doubling of the entitlements for vSphere Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. This change addresses concerns about future-looking business cases that were based on future hardware capabilities and the previous vSphere licensing model.  Below is a comparison of the previously announced and the new vSphere 5 vRAM entitlements per vSphere edition:

A capped amount of vRAM is counted in any given VM, so that no VM, not even the “monster” 1TB vRAM VM, would cost more than one vSphere Enterprise Plus license. This change also aligns with our goal to make vSphere 5 the best platform for running Tier 1 applications.

An adjusted of the model to be much more flexible around transient workloads, and short-term spikes that are typical in test & development environments for example. We will now calculate a 12-month average of consumed vRAM to rather than tracking the high water mark of vRAM.

For more information see the blog post on the VMware partner blog site here.

Within vSphere 4.1 and previous versions this was based on the CPU and memory load which was generated by the virtual machines that were hosted on top of vSphere. Now with vSphere 5 VMware has added Storage DRS. This extends DRS with the storage stack.

Storage DRS provides smart virtual machine placement and load balancing mechanisms based on I/O and space capacity. Overall this comes down to four nice features that Storage DRS provides :

1. Smart initial placement of the VMDK on the LUNs
2. Migration recommendations (manual and automated)
3. Affinity and anti-affinity rules
4. Storage maintenace mode

Basically these features are similar to the features you see with “normal” DRS. It adds a whole new dimension to vSphere and makes it more flexible and contributes to the fact that vSphere is a cloud operating system. In my opinion this will make life a lot easier and in the end it will save time and money in operating your virtual infrastructure.

To see how Storage DRS in action, have a closer look at the following video created by VMware :

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more information on the topic of Storage DRS see :

VMware product page
What’s New in vSphere 5.0 – Storage

And if you really want to dive into the new features of DRS, including Storage DRS, you have to take a look at the book written by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman : VMware vSphere 5 : Clustering Technical Deepdive.

For more information on the book see the following pages on Yellow-Brick.com and FrankDenneman.nl.

vSphere Desktop is a new edition of vSphere for deploying desktop virtualization.  It provides the full range of features and functionalities of the vSphere Enterprise+ edition allowing you to achieve scalability, high availability and optimal performance for all of your desktop workloads.

Also, vSphere Desktop enables you to realize high virtual desktop consolidation ratios at a lower cost as it comes with unlimited vRAM entitlement. The vSphere Desktop edition is intended for customers who want to purchase only vSphere licenses to deploy desktop virtualization. In addition to the vSphere Desktop edition, VMware also sells a comprehensive end to end desktop and application virtualization solution – VMware View. 

vSphere Desktop is already included in the View Bundle – The desktop and application virtualization product from VMware. This offer gives customers the option to purchase vSphere Desktop as a standalone vSphere edition outside of the View Bundle.

vSphere Desktop is licensed based on the total number of Powered On Desktop Virtual Machines. It is available in a pack size of 100 desktop VM at a license list price of $6500 USD.

vSphere Desktop can be used only for hosting a VDI environment.

The article below also gives a good example on how this new edition impact licensing cost in contrast to vSphere Enterprise Plus license.

vSphere Desktop is the cost effective vSphere SKU for deploying desktop virtualization.

Example: Customer deploying 1000 Win 7 desktops

Assumptions:

Memory/VM =1 GB
vSphere Ent+: List Price: $3495/CPU with vRAM
entitlement of 48GB
vSphere Desktop: List Price $65/VM, Unlimited vRAM
entitlement for desktop VMs

# of vSphere Enterprise+ licenses required = (Total pooled vRAM required for all desktop VMs / MIN (vRAM used per processor, vRAM entitlement per processor)) = (1000 desktop VM *1GB / MIN (vRAM entitlement used,48GB) )

# of vSphere Desktop licenses required = # of desktop VMs

More information see this FAQ doucment over here.

“Also I need to mention that VMware changed it’s licensing model from a “per CPU with core / physical memory” to a “per CPU with vRAM entitlement limitation”. No longer the limitation is on the amount of cores or physical RAM memory in a server, but the limitation is in the amount of virtual memory (vRAM) consumed by the hosted virtual machines.”

In this post I will try to explain the per CPU with vRAM licensing model by using the example below. I hope this will make things a lot easier to grasp. After all it’s about licensing, so it’s about money! And in the end you don’t want to end up in a situation that you’re unable to power-on new virtual machines.

In the example we have 2 ESXi host that both have 2 processors. The amount of cores does not matter anymore when using vSphere 5. There is no longer a limitation on the amount of cores or the amount of physical memory in a server. But as mentioned above, VMware has introduced a new limitation with regards to licensing : vRAM entitlement.

vRAM entitlement

vRAM entitlement comes with each “per CPU” license. The amount of vRAM depends on the vSphere edition that is being used.

* vSphere 5 Standard Edition gives you 24 GB vRAM
* vSphere 5 Enterprise Edition gives you 32 GB vRAM
* vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus Edition gives you 48 GB vRAM

So this means that for each CPU license that you buy, you’ll get a certain amount of vRAM entitled. In the example above there are 2 physical CPUs in each ESXi host. Making a total of (2 x 2 = ) 4 physical CPUs you’ll need to license for VMware vSphere 5. In the example I’m using Enterprise licenses, which entitle me to 32 GB of vRAM per CPU license. This makes a grant total of 128 GB of vRAM which I can use.

The total vRAM is also known as a vRAM entitlement pool. This is the combined total of all the ESXi hosts managed by a vCenter instance or a set of linked vCenter instances. Every vRAM entitlement is aggregated into one pool which can be used by all virtual machines managed by vCenter.

vRAM usage

The usage of vRAM comes with the amount of virtual machines that is powered-on. Each time a virtual machines is powered-on, licensing will check if enough vRAM is available in the vRAM pool. The amount of vRAM used by the virtual machine is then added to the total amount of vRAM used by all virtual machines combined.

The total of the used amount of vRAM must be equal of lower then the total amount of vRAM in the vRAM pool. If this is not the case, the virtual machine will not be powered on and you’ll need to buy more licenses or upgrade to a higher vSphere Edition (if possible).

In the example above we have 18 virtual machines, all configured with different amounts of vRAM per virtual machine. The total amount of vRAM used by all virtual machines is 68 GB.

Summary

So looking at the example again. I’ve got 128 GB of vRAM in my vRAM pool. At this moment I’ve got 18 virtual machines that combined have a vRAM usage of 68 GB.

So to calculate the amount of vRAM I still have left I need to take total licensed vRAM minus the vRAM that is already used by the virtual machines :

Total licensed vRAM – Used vRAM = Available vRAM

In the end this comes down to 128 GB (Total licensed vRAM) – 68 GB (Used vRAM) = 60 GB of vRAM that still available for new “to-be-powered-on” virtual machines.

I hope this gives a good impression of how the vRAM entitlement works in vSphere 5. For more information have a look at the VMware vSphere 5 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging Whitepaper over here.

Update  : PowerCLI guru Luc Dekens already wrote a Powershell scrip to verify if your vSphere environment is covered by the new vRAM licensing model. See for yourself over here.

As you can see VMware will release vSphere 5 into 3 Editions : Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. These can be bought individually, but can also be purchased in Acceleration Kits which will give you a fixed amount of vSphere CPU / vRAM licenses and a vCenter license for a standard price out of the box.

Also I need to mention that VMware changed it’s licensing model from a “per CPU with core / physical memory” to a “per CPU wit vRAM limitation”. No longer the limitation is on the amount of cores or physical RAM memory in a server, but the limitation is in the amount of virtual memory (vRAM) consumed by the hosted virtual machines.

Besides the vSphere Editions you can also buy the (SMB) Essentials kits. These are specifically targeted at small businesses. Not all vSphere features are included in these releases, but enough to run your SMB workloads.

For more information about licensing and how to obtain vShere 5 over here.

vSphere accelerates the shift to cloud computing for existing datacenters, while underpinning
compatible public cloud offerings, paving the way to the only hybrid cloud model.

New Features include :

Scalability and Performance – Enables Virtual Machines (VM) to grow up to 32 virtual CPUs, can support 1TB vRAM, and a variety of next-generation hardware, such as 3D graphics processors and USB 3.0 devices.

High Availability – Deliver the right availability services with groundbreaking simplicity for any application.

Auto-Deploy – Deploy more vSphere hosts running the ESXi hypervisor architecture in minutes.

Flexible Hybrid Cloud Management – The vCenter Server Appliance is a Linux-based virtual appliance and the Web Client works from any browser anywhere in the world.

From my point of view this release is again a major (r)evolution in path towards a cloud operating system that can be used for both private as public clouds. vSphere is the base for all the VMware products and indeed like the online event suggested VMware raises the bar again for the competition to follow. This results in a cloud operating system which more and more becomes hardware independent. Which in the end will make IT infrastructure a lot more flexible and easier to maintain.

More information about VMware vSphere 5 is available over here.