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VMware, in a fit of generosity, has announced it is slashing prices for SMB customers purchasing 3 licenses of VMware ESX. I thought a quick head-to-head comparison with XenEnterprise v4 might help to convince you what a steal this deal really is, and remind you to keep your hands on your wallet.
First, the deal offers 3 ESX licenses with Virtual Center thrown in for free. But the Virtual Center version they offer is limited so that it can only connect to 3 ESX servers. And the ESX servers are just ESX servers recycled from their VI3 Starter package, already priced at $1000 per host today, and with a severely hobbled feature set.
Of course, when you want to buy your 4th ESX Starter server it will cost you $6,000. That's $5,000 for a full version of Virtual Center plus another $1,000 for an additional ESX Starter license. And here's what that ESX starter license won't offer you:
- No SMP support for VMs (1 CPU per VM)
- Limited to using 8GB of host memory
- Limited to 4 sockets per host
- No resource pooling, VMFS cluster file system, VMotion or other fancy features
By Comparison, if you wanted only 4 VMs per server, then XenExpress is completely free and has built in management. But for a true head to head comparison compare their offering with XenServer, our product that offers 8-way SMP support for Linux and Windows, no per-socket limits, certification with up to 128GB memory, up to 32GB memory per guest and up to 32 physical CPUs, and with built in management of multiple servers via XenCenter, for $3240 including support.
Here are the bundle details:
- A single sku for 3 VI3 Starter licenses for $3k.
- Includes a limited VCMS, allowing for management of 3 licenses.
- Does not include S&S (21% of license cost) = $630.
- Support needs to be purchased for all 3 licenses. = $1,890.
No upgrade: VMware has said no upgrade skus will be made available at launch. Channel partners I've been talking to really dislike that. Instead, if the customer wants to upgrade to VI3 Enterprise they need to upgrade all 3 licenses rather than upgrading piecemeal. This would also require a full featured upgrade of Virtual Center at full price.
In addition, to upgrade a customer from GSX you need to use their Converter to convert the VMs to the ESX 3 virtual hardware - at an additional charge. Other drawbacks of this package include the following: No VMotion, No SMP, No Drs, etc; No SAN support - it requires local storage to be used. (This appears to be viewed as a drawback from the channel partners who want to sell the profitable shared storage solutions).
Overall, rather underwhelming.
Comments (1)
Jan 25, 2008
Anonymous says:
You don't need Converter to import GSX VMs. You can do it from the command line ...You don't need Converter to import GSX VMs. You can do it from the command line using vmkfstools -i. But if you want to do it from within a windows application, Converter is the thing. VMware Converter exists in a free edition so they're not forcing you to buy it.
Regarding VMware ESX Server Starter edition: It has been rebranded and is now a different product than the one you described here (as announced in October and released in December, and the 8G memory limit is gone):
VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation (previously called "Starter") will include VMware ESX Server, VMware ESX Server 3i, VMware Consolidated Backup and the new VMware Update Manager. Unlike the previous VMware Infrastructure 3 Starter, VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation will have no restrictions on shared storage connectivity, memory utilization or number of CPUs of the physical server. VMware Infrastructure Foundation list price will be $995 per 2 processors.
By Comparison, if you wanted only 4 VMs per server, then VMware Server is completely free and has built in management. VMware Server actually supports 64 vcpus. That means 64 uni cpu VMs or 32 smp VMs. (on a linux host)
As of today I also think allocating 8 vcpus to a guest doesn't make much sense. Atleast not until you're running Oracle or some other app that scales well on smp. Most VMs will typically require a single cpu each. vsmp also has some contention issues, but the multicore technology is helping out here.
That being said, XenServer is also an impressing product and during my testing it has also shown very good storage IO performance compared to quite a few other products I tested hereand here.
Just my €0.02
Lars
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