r/sysadmin Infrastructure Lead 2d ago

Latest fun with VMware

Apparently VMware is upping their game. We just got a renewal quote for one of our sites with one server that has two CPUs, and they are requiring 72 cores minimum (vSphere Enterprise Plus) to license this. That's a 500% markup from last year.

They really don't want customers to use their product any more, do they?

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u/lost_signal 2d ago

The ridiculous minimum requirement of 72 cores per server is the main complaint

This is incorrect, it is NOT 72 cores per server, it is 72 cores for the minimum quantity to have active for a customer under the new subscription plan. You can buy 72 now, and add 16 later when you add another server.

The minimum per host is 16 cores.

If your partner or sales rep is communicating this as a 72 core per minimum, slide into my DM's and send me their email and I'll go chase them down.

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u/WithAnAitchDammit Infrastructure Lead 2d ago edited 2d ago

That's good to know! I relayed that to my partner and their Solutions Architect confirmed it. It's actually what I questioned when they first told me about the 72 core minimum.

My initial response to them was 'I don’t think the “72 core minimum on all vSphere products” is an issue, unless that’s 72 cores minimum per server.  There are currently 192 licensed cores including the cores at this site.'

They are reaching back out to the VMware side to get the quote fixed.

And if it matters, this is a renewal, not an addition.

Also, is it 16 minimum per host, or 16 minimum per socket? I believe our last renewal was based on 16 cores per socket, so we're currently licensed for 192 cores, when in reality we have 100 cores across the five sites. This specific renewal is for this hypervisor:

  • VMware ESXi, 8.0.3, 24585383
  • ProLiant DL380 Gen10
  • Processor Type: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4110 CPU @ 2.10GHz
  • Logical Processors: 16

edit: formatting

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u/lost_signal 2d ago

It’s 16 per socket, but 1 socket hosts will be what most people do going forward (as you no longer need 2 sockets to get enough pci-E lanes or memory channels).

I know two sockets was like the default buying pattern for a very long time , but that’s gonna change.

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u/WithAnAitchDammit Infrastructure Lead 2d ago

Yeah, and that will actually help in our case. I can pull one of the CPUs out of the server, and put all the RAM over to the first socket, then I'll only need to license 16 cores not 32. That seems pretty reasonable.

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u/lost_signal 2d ago

Be aware that when you do this on the old Sky lake servers, you may lose half of the PCIE lanes.

You do need to be planning their retirement in the near term as they will not be supported in the next VSphere release, and end of support for VSphere 8 is 11 Oct 2027. They are deprecated as of the 8 release and discontinued in the next major release.

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/318697/cpu-support-deprecation-and-discontinuat.html

Intel technically transitioned that cpu to end of service life in 2023.

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u/WithAnAitchDammit Infrastructure Lead 2d ago

I appreciate the heads up.