Following my previous post VMware have just announced a change to the License entitlements to vSphere 5, I know I work for VMware and therefore my view is obviously slightly tainted but I personally think this is a good move and it proves that they do listen and value their customers opinions.

So what changes have been made ?

1. VMware have increased vRAM entitlements for all vSphere editions.
2. The amount of vRAM has been capped at 96GB of vRAM, so if your VMs have over this amount it will only count the first 96GB.
3. The amount of vRAM is now calculated as a 12 month average of allocated vRAM

New Entitlements

The changes mean that the following vRAM entitlements per edition will now be granted:

I know for sure the people with home labs using the free version will certainly be happy about the change from 8 GB to 32 GB but remember this limit will only allow you to use 32 GB of physical memory, not the average usage like other license versions.

Also worth a mention is that Essentials and Essentials Plus have a hard enforcement. This is set at 6x32GB = 192GB, this will also be displayed in the report.

Just a reminder that also VMware View environments will not be subject to this licensing, for more information view the blog post here.

Remediation

If you are over on the vRAM then don’t panic! There are things you can do which might mean things will still equal out with your current licenses.

You might want to think about the following steps:

• Make sure all licenses are loaded into vCenter Server
• Link vCenter Servers if one vCenter has excess vRAM entitlement
• Turn off unused VMs
• Rebalance licenses from undeployed vCenters to the current vCenter
• Ensure the vRAM configured to VMs is appropriate (right sizing)
• Rebalance VMs to use other hosts which have available vRAM from hosts with different editions of vSphere

License Validator 2.0

I have updated the License Validator script to include these new changes, the script will detail each license type and tell you how much vRAM you will be entitled to and how much you currently have allocated (note this is not an average of the last 12 months but will give you a good indication of your current ).

How to use the script

1. Install PowerCLI (If you need some instructions on this then please follow this great blog post)

2. Download the script from the bottom of this post

3. Watch the below video on how to run the script

Not included / Help

This script doesn’t account for linked mode, so make sure you use it against each vCenter and add the vRAM figures (Pooled vRAM Capacity and vRAM Used) together for each vSphere Edition to make sure you entitlements are correct.

This script requires vSphere 4.1 or higher.

This script requires Windows PowerShell V2 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968930)

I have added log file which will be created in the same folder as the html file, if you have any issues please email the log file and html result to contact(at)virtu-al.net for further help with the results.

How to run

Sample Output

Download License Validator sample output

License Validator Script

Download License Validator 2.1 Script
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-Alan