At the recent VMworld 2012 event, VMware announced the elimination of vRAM licensing for vSphere, moving back to the per-socket model (and eliminating core restrictions in the process).
There seems to be some confusion as to whether or not this applies to vSphere 5.0 or if the move was a sinister plan to force all customers to upgrade to the latest release, recently-announced version 5.1.
It’s simple: there is no more vRAM entitlement in any version of vSphere — not in 5.1 and not in 5.0.
In the VMware vSphere 5 Licensing, Pricing, and Packaging document, the FAQ section makes it very clear:
Q: Does the new VMware vSphere 5 licensing model – per-CPU
without limitation on the number of VMs, cores or amount
of physical RAM – apply to both vSphere 5.0 and vSphere 5.1?A: Yes. The VMware vSphere 5 licensing model applies to both
vSphere 5.0 and 5.1 customers.
VMware vSphere 5.1 is an awesome product, but you are not forced to immediately upgrade in order to enjoy the benefits of this recent change.
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So who install 5.1 won’t have this vRAM thinggie.
What about old users who have 5.0?? Do they need to install/do something?
No action necessary for existing 5.0 environments — simply ignore vRAM licensing.
I have not seen anywhere else that vRAM doesn’t still apply to instances of 5.0. Are you sure that the way in which the question from the FAQ is written (physical RAM) is actually saying that vRAM limitations no longer apply to 5.0?
In further research, it’s not so much the FAQ that makes it clear that vRAM no longer applies to 5.0, but rather what is written in the Executive Summary that states “The new vSphere licensing model for both vSphere 5.0 and 5.1, continues to be based on processor licenses. It eliminates the restrictive physical entitlements of CPU cores and physical RAM per server and has no limitation on the number of VMs or amount of virtual memory (vRAM) on each licensed processor.”
Ignoring the vRam licensing on 5.0 is easy to do, if you have a license that doesn’t have a hard-limit like Essentials+, for example. Anyone know what the fix is on Essentials/+ to get around the vRam hard-limit?
This will be fixed soon. Please stay tuned.
Any update on this? Does anyone know when there will be a patch to remove the vram hard limit from vSphere/vCenter 5.0 essentials?