In the new Broadcom licensing model, you must license a minimum of 16 cores per socket, then additionally, license every core above that number. Therefore it seems clear that switching to 16 core processors (if workloads permit) is going to be key to optimising your licensing costs.
Like many of you, I have been buying servers with as many cores per processor (as budget would allow) for years, because why not. In the new model, those seemingly smart decisions many of us made at the time, are now going to be penalized, in some cases quite significantly.
Here a real world example based on a recent purchase - If you have 20 x ESXi servers with Dual Socket Xeon Gold 24 core processors, the new Broadcom model dictates you must license a minimum of 16 cores per socket (32 cores for both), with the crunch point being you also have to license the additional 8 cores per socket (16 for both), making 48 cores total.
Here is how this looks for VVF and VCF
(note these figures don't take into account any add-ons or discounts)
VMware vSphere Foundation - $135 per core x 48 cores, license cost = $6,480 per host. For 20 Servers, license cost = $129,600.
If i had used 16 core processors, license cost would have been $86,400 (33.3% less)
VMware Cloud Foundation - $350 per core x 48 cores, license cost = $16,800 per host. For 20 servers, the license cost = $336,000.
If i had used 16 core processors, license cost would have been $224,000 (33% less).
Product | Per Core MSRP | 16 Core (Dual socket) | 24 Core Dual Socket (48 cores) = 33% Premium | 28 core Dual Socket (56 cores) = 43% Premium |
vSphere Cloud Foundation | $350 | $11,200 | $16,800 | $19,600 |
vSphere Foundation | $135 | $4,320 | $6,480 | $7,560 |
vSphere Standard | $50 | $1,600 | $2,400 | $2,800 |
The more cores you have, the more you will be penalized for those extra cores. For example if you repeat the above calculations with 28 cores, the penalty for those additional cores increases to a 43% higher licence cost. The kicker here is you might have bought those extra cores for additional headroom as a safety net in case they were ever needed, now you have to pay for them, even if you never really use them.
Whilst many customers have seen their license renewals increase, if you are able to move to the 16 cores per socket rule, it may help claw back some of that cost. Of course, many customers will have already invested in hardware they now have to pay over the odds for, so may not able to take advantage of this guidance until their next hardware refresh!
Alternatively, and this may seem drastic, you could actually downgrade your Processors, which given the potential savings, might not seem as crazy as it first sounds. Either way, following the 16 core rule should hopefully relieve the increases that some customers are seeing.
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