VMware vSphere 5 Licensing and Virtual RAM Limitation

VMware’s new vSphere 5 licensing model and pricing will upset some users because it is going to change the machine sizing rules. The new structure of licensing and limitation is not based on the physical CPUs and physical RAM per server, it is actually based on per CPU with a limitation on vRAM per license for a specific version of vSphere.

Memory limitation and prices for each vSphere edition are:

• Standard Edition: 24GB per $995 license
• Enterprise Edition: 32 GB per $2,875 per license
• Enterprise Plus: 48 GB per $3,495 per license

Means that you can only share VRAM capacity among licensed servers according to the edition of vSphere. However, VMware calls this memory of law a soft limitation. On the other side, you can use more memory than licensed in the VRAM pool, as it will not prevent you from powering on your virtual machines (VMs).

The positive side of these changes are no licensing restrictions based on physical cores and memory. It is quite similar to the cloud concept, “pay for what you use”. But you will have to purchase multiple CPU licenses if the amount of memory in use crosses the limits. Means, its time for you to re-evaluate your infrastructure and analyze what Vms are running on it now.