Impact of Latest vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Model upon Data Center Virtualization and Virtualization Management

VMware has updated the vRAM pricing for vSphere 5 to address certain customer issues, and deserves a great deal of credit for acting this quickly and decisively to the feedback that was generated by the initial announcement. However, even with the new vSphere 5 vRAM pricing the question is now raised as to whether competing and less expensive virtualization platforms are acceptable for some entire companies, and some use cases within what used to be 100% VMware shops. VMware has created an opening for Microsoft, Citrix, and Red Hat. As this sorts itself out, the virtualization platform landscape will change – resulting in a minimum in a new focus on tools to manage multiple virtualization platforms.

VMware vShield 4.1, not for the SMB

I wonder how many of us remember when VMware bought BlueLane and their technology, good things were promised, we saw the first part with the release of vSphere when they introduced vShield Zones. This was a “Free” product for those of you that had any version above Advanced vSphere and to be fair for a 1.0 release was a nice weapon to have in your armoury when dealing with the Security during a design and implementation phase.

At VMworld 2010 San Francisco VMware announced and released the expanded and improved vShield family of products. it however now a costed product, now the good news is that vShield Zones been not been removed from the vSphere suite, and are still “Free” the the correctly licensed level of vSphere.