vSphere Decisions: Enterprise vs. Enterprise Plus
When vSphere was first released, the new features and their alignment to existing investments created lots of confusion. Customers that have an active Support and Subscription (SnS) agreement were entitled to a certain level of vSphere features. There were no direct mappings to the Enterprise Plus level of vSphere that did not involve the promotional pricing to upgrade all processors to Enterprise Plus, however.
At the time, the Enterprise level of vSphere licensing was slated to be available for sale for a limited time. To this day, Enterprise is still available for sale. For anyone considering between the two versions, I will definitely nudge you towards Enterprise Plus. Here are a few reasons why:
- vSMP support: Enterprise currently limits a virtual machine to 4 vCPU, effectively still functioning at the same level as ESXi 3.x. vSphere is capable of 8 vSMP to a single virtual machine, but it isn't licensed to that level unless Enterprise Plus is utilized.
- Cores per processor: Enterprise limits this to six cores per socket. While the current mainstream processors are available with six cores and will easily fit most installations, consider the future and any licensing that will be reapplied to new servers.
- Distributed switch functionality: This is somewhat forward-looking, but if at any point vCloud Director would be a consideration in the future; this is made much easier with the heavy networking investment.
- Host profiles: This vSphere feature allows customized host configurations for almost any manageable value to be applied centrally to vCenter after a host ESXi system is installed.
The full breakdown of Standard, Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus licensing levels is here.
The other side of the coin is, if all of these levels bring too much cost into the picture and the features are not required, VMware has made a serious leap forward with the revised Essentials Plus offering. Basically, small and remote sites that need a virtualized infrastructure will see it as a winning solution; but not all of the features of the big datacenters. Check out the Essentials Plus offering here.
Enterprise Plus may not be needed for all installations, but if the decision rests between Enterprise and Enterprise Plus; it should be pretty clear which way to go.
Have you made the case to stay on Enterprise? If so, share your comments here.
Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/21/2010 at 12:48 PM