Recently VMware announces some changes to their licensing policy for vSphere – http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-vSOM-Pricing-FAQs.pdf.

The main change is that vSphere  Enterprise will not be available after June 30, 2016. After that date, partners and clients can purchase only vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise Plus and

vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus licenses. They also slightly increased the retail prices for all range of their vSphere licenses.

Existent clients with vSphere Enterprise have two options to choose from, as follows:

• use this version till it reaches the End of Support date on March 12, 2020
• upgrade to vSphere Enterprise Plus with 50% discount (that will be available till June 25, 2016). VMware just recently published the information about 50% discount on their web-site – http://www.vmware.com/promotions/2016-vSphere-vSOM-upgrade.html.

The benefits that vSphere Enterprise Plus can bring to the virtual environment help further automate and standardise it – https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2109507.

In my opinion, these features are :

• vSphere Distributed Switch – provides a centralized interface from which you can configure, monitor and administer virtual machine access switching for the entire datacentre, – http://www.vmware.com/au/products/vsphere/features/distributed-switch.html;
• vSphere Host Profiles – configuration settings that are shared by a group of VMware vSphere hosts are stored in a host profile, – http://www.vmware.com/au/products/vsphere/features/host-profiles.html;
• vSphere Storage I/O Control – provides I/O prioritisation for virtual machines running on a group of VMware vSphere hosts that have access to a shared storage pool, – http://www.vmware.com/au/products/vsphere/features/storage-io-control.html;
• Network I/O Control – is used to configure rules and policies at the virtual machine level and to assure that I/O resources are always available for your business-critical applications, – http://www.vmware.com/au/products/vsphere/features/network-io-control.html;
• vSphere Storage DRS – continuously balances storage space usage and storage I/O load while avoiding resource bottlenecks to meet application service levels, – http://www.vmware.com/au/products/vsphere/features/storage-drs.html;
• Flash Read Cache – provides a high performance read cache layer that dramatically lowers application latency, – http://www.vmware.com/au/products/vsphere/features/flash.

The good news is that VMware gives 25 Operating System Instance (OSI) pack of vRealize Log Insight for vCenter Server is now available for free to all vCenter Server Standard customers. This product allows to centralise the log files collection from hosts and vCenter, and it helps a lot to troubleshoot issues with the virtual environment – http://www.vmware.com/au/products/vrealize-log-insight.

For the productive environment, I would suggest upgrading to a special type of vSphere license called “vSphere Remote Office Branch Office Advanced” (or ROBO) – https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-Remote-Office-Branch-Office-Editions-Datasheet.pdf.

Instead of licensing hosts by number of sockets, ROBO is licensed by pack of 25 VMs / per one site. One pack can be redistributed among many sites. However, only one pack can be used per site. So, three packs will be enough to license all productive sites, and it gives the same benefits as Enterprise Plus license – http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/compare.html

Prices in AUD