Using MAC-Based Licensing with vSphere: A Necessary Evil

Should software licensing be completely based off of the hardware MAC address of the NIC and or UUID of the mother board? This process worked very well before the introduction of virtualization but now that virtualization has become more prevalent in most environments. I think software venders really need to reconsider how they are going to license their software although it seems that some companies have not bought on to the idea of virtualization and would prefer to continue to support their product type to a specific hardware platform that the vender put together and shipped out. Can software venders hope to survive and remain current without embracing virtualization? I think the answer to that question is going to be no in the long run.

VMware Capacity Planner – A Special Use Case

I have had the opportunity to perform a few VMware Capacity Planner assessments over the years and I have been, more the most part, pretty happy with the process and the results of the reports. The assessment is really pretty straight forward. We had physical servers to the project, making sure we have proper permissions to perform all the tasks and then let the process run over an extended period of time. For the most part, this way of sampling over an extended time frame will give you a very good idea what can be virtualized and the number of hosts that will be needed.