Month: July 2011

Impending VMware vSphere 5.0 license changes?

Update: VMware made an official announcement on August 3, 2011 and I've covered it in detail here.Since the announcement of vSphere 5.0, and the new licensing terms, much of the focus on the launch has sadly not been around the great new features but the changes in licensing terms. In...

vSphere 5.0 VDI Licensing Changes

Among the various license changes in vSphere 5.0, the way you can license VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) has also changed, or rather, now gives you more options. Specifically, if you are a XenDesktop or non-View customer, keep reading. If you use VMware View, then it's pretty much status quo from...

vSphere 5.0 Licensing Estimation Scripts

Wow, the changes VMware made to vSphere 5.0 have really stirred up a lot of passion on the subject from angry customers. Is all of it justified? Probably not all, but certainly some customers will be required to purchase additional licenses for their existing environment when they upgrade to 5.0....

SQL 2008 R2 SP1 hits the streets

In the midst of all the uproar about the vSphere 5.0 licensing changes, I missed the fact that Microsoft released SQL 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 yesterday. You can download it here. The master list of bug fixes can be seen here. The new features are listed below. For the full...

vSphere 5.0 Storage Improvements

If you a regular follower of my blog, you will probably notice I'm a bit of a storage geek. VAAI, FCoE, WWNs, WWPNs, VMFS, VASA and iSCSI are all music to my ears. So what's new to vSphere 5.0 storage technologies? A LOT. That team must have been working over time...

vSphere 5.0 Virtual Storage Appliance

One of the new features of vSphere 5.0 is a VMware VSA, or virtual storage appliance. VSAs are nothing new, as HP and FalconStor have offered VSAs for vSphere for a number of years. VSAs work by using DAS (direct attached storage, e.g. SAS or SATA) and turn it into shared storage...

vSphere 5.0 Licensing Changes

One of the major announcements today that has gotten customers worked up a little bit is the change in the licensing model with vSphere 5.0. In previous versions licenses were tied to the number CPU sockets, and the various editions had limitations on maximum physical memory supported and the number...

VMware vSphere 5.0 Announced!

In case you were living under a rock today, or don't have lots of RSS subscriptions for virtualization blogs, you may not have heard that VMware announced their vSphere 5.0 product today. Although not shipping until late in Q3 of 2011, the cat is now out of the bag and...