Avoiding Future VMware Costs

VMware is an unlikely target in your software compliance efforts.

The virtualization giant has inbuilt mechanisms for license deployment, so your license status is likely to be either correctly licensed or over-licensed.

For Software Asset Managers the opportunity with VMware is negotiating down annual maintenance charges based on actual usage or avoiding buying new licenses by making better use of existing purchases.

I recently spoke with Dave Harding of 1E, who are having a big push on VMware cost optimization to tie-in with the launch of V4 of AppClarity.

In a nutshell:

1. AppClarity has been extended to include server environments
2. Since AppClarity on desktops is dependent on SCCM – deployment in server environments involves two options: a) Agentless scan from 1E of Microsoft and Non-Microsoft servers or b) more advanced server usage using ‘Useful Work’ – which goes beyond whether apps are running and looks at whether they are actually performing useful work in the datacentre.

See a full review of 1E AppClarity in our SCCM plug-ins comparison from February 2012.

1e claim that if a company has deployed VMware Enterprise Plus licenses up to 20% of ESX hosts could be downgraded to cheaper editions based on their feature usage.

A working example using figures from 1E:

• Number of Servers in Organization = 2,000
• Assume 60% are virtualized = 1,200 VMs
• Number of ESX hosts (assuming 5 VMs per host): 240
• Assume conservative estimate of 20% of ESX hosts not using full scope of Enterprise Plus License: 48 ESX Hosts
• Annual Maintenance savings on downgraded licenses: around $70K a year

This does not include making better use of existing licenses when new projects or growth requires more licenses or bargaining power for those on an VMware Enterprise License Agreement (ELA).

The new version from 1E also includes a cost comparison calculator for those looking to compare swapping out VMware with Hyper-V.

More info here: www.1e.com