This week, virtualization leader VMware launched its vSphere 5 release, expanding the power and capabilities of the virtualization platform. Alongside that release came news of a pricing change for VMware that rivals argue could mean a significant increase in costs.
VMware’s new pricing requires customers to consider and understand how much virtual memory or vRAM is associated with a deployment.
“First, we want to clarify that VMware vSphere 5 will still be licensed per CPU (processor); the change is to the entitlements associated with that CPU license,” Tim Stephan, sr. director, product marketing, VMware, told InternetNews.com. “We are replacing the vSphere 4.x entitlements of CPU cores and physical RAM with a single, virtualization-based entitlement of pooled virtual memory, or vRAM.”
That move could end up costing users a lot of money, according to Scott Crenshaw, VP of the Cloud Business Unit at Red Hat.