I get this question all of the time in one form or another, so I’m trying to determine hypervisor costs for a SMB as if I’m the owner looking to implement virtualization. This is an academic exercise, so pretend it’s your company and your money and you don’t have a particular vendor preference and you’re doing research online trying to determine apples to apples.
I usually don’t work the licensing side of the street, so I’m looking for feedback and correction if the costs are off the the mark. I’m using the vendor web sites and retail prices as if I were an SMB with no vendor connections.
Here’s the scenario:
It is a small business, one location
50 users
20 total virtual machines (once P2V’d) all running Windows Server 2003/2008
They already have 2 physical host servers. They have 2 sockets, quad core CPUs capable of running ESX(i), XenServer or Hyper-V
They have a new iSCSI storage array suitable for all of the VMs and hypervisors
They have appropriate network equipment for a redundant setup
They want a 3 year support agreement to go along with server hardware depreciation rate
They want one of the following platforms: ESX or ESXi, XenServer, or Hyper-V
Direct licensing costs is the biggest decision factor – to keep the whole ROI argument simple
From these requirements, we should have a really simple setup:
Two Hosts Connected to Shared Storage
2 host hypervisor systems connected to shared storage
Live Migration capability
High Availability if one of the host systems fail.
It said I need the Datacenter Edition because I was running more than 4 VMs per host.
Product Edition Advisor from Microsoft's Site
I worked my way through the tool and it recommended the Open Licensing with Software Assurance on the Server 2008 Datacenter version. The total was $8,094.
Not because the site really says so, but I think I need to add in the System Center with Virtual Machine Manager to be more on par with the other vendor’s management interfacesproducts.
I’m really not sure if I got all of the things included, but I bought Software Assurance with the Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, so I believe for
Systems Center it will be $744 , plus I think I can use the Workgroup edition of
Virtual Machine Manager for $505, plus I I think I’ll need CALs at $40 each of the 20 VMs for a total of $800. So for the management side of Hyper-V, I think the cost will be $2,049, plus whatever two more years will cost in maintenance.
I think I’ve met most of the requirements.
Here is the link to the Hyper-V feature grid. But I couldn’t seem to select 3 years of support with their tools, so there will be more costs each year for maintenance. For one year I think the total is $10,143.
VMware ESX or ESXi
VMware has done a good job with packaging their
products for small businesses. The Essentials Plus pack would be perfect at $4,905 except for some reason, it doesn’t include VMotion. So I guess we need to step up to the next level which is
VMware vSphere 4 Advanced with 3 years platinum support for $3,675 each, for a total of $7,350 for the servers.
But wait, it’s only for 1 CPU, so I’ll need to contact someone to see how much a second one is to add to my order.
Only 1 CPU, I'll have to add another one.
To get VMotion and centralized management, I’ll need vCenter. They have vCenter Foundations for up to 3 hosts for $3,139 for a total of $10,489 for 3 years plus whatever a second physical CPU costs per physical host for the additional two years.
Citrix XenServer
Citrix has the technical product packaged pretty cleanly.
XenServer Enterprise has the technical features
XenServer with XenMotion is free, but I need High Availability and support for 3 years, so I need XenServer Advanced, Citrix Essentials Advanced with 1 year preferred support for $8,500.
I still need 2 more years of support
I still need 2 more years of support though. If it is linear, it should be $6,000 for 2 more years for a total of $14,500 to meet all of my requirements including 3 years of support.
Summary and To Do List
I don’t think I selected an unusual set of requirements in this as far as the hardware goes. I’ve seen plenty of dual CPU servers as the standard platform for virtualization projects. The 3 year support requirement didn’t seem to be out of line, but it seems to not be a frequent enough option for 2 of the 3 vendors to be in their online check out.
Microsoft – I need 2 more years of support costs. It wasn’t broken out where I could extrapolate it over 2 more years. I also would like for someone to validate that I have the right components and licenses for SCVMM.
VMware – I need to get the costs of adding the second socket CPU into the $7,530 server price
Citrix – I need to confirm that the support costs are $6,000 for two years
SQL server – I should note that both VMware vCenter and Microsoft’s Systems Center should be running with SQL server for production. Citrix XenServer does not require SQL server for XenCenter, so the cost of SQL Server can be deducted to the total for XenServer. For this exercise, I checked with
CDW and SQL 2005 Standard was about $2,600.
I’ll have to contact each vendor’s licensing partner to get the cost of the missing pieces. Fortunately, I work for a company that is a partner to each vendor so it will be an inside job, but for the SMB owner, they’ll have to research further on the vendor’s site to locate a partner to talk over the specifics.
I invite comments from people that actually implement and license these platforms to steer me in the right direction if you see I’ve got the wrong edition of the platform.
I’m not interested in trying to sell why I should use one over the other as it appears that each vendor produces a platform that meet the requirements. If more components are required to produce a similar experience to the other two, then please let me know and I can add that in to the cost structure
It makes sense that the vendors would want to drive the larger organizations to partners to discuss pricing options. For the straightforward purchases like this scenario, it seems they might want to add just a few more options in their shopping carts for longer support warranties and more CPUs.
I'd look at the memory requirements (I'm not seeing that here?). Due to Transparent Page Sharing and ability to overbook memory on VMware, you're more likely to be able to run your 20 VM's on the (2) hosts.
Acceleration Kits - there is an Acceleration Kit that includes vMotion...gets you a fuller feature set than Hyper-V or Xen though which does make the comparison a bit harder.
I think you found the combination andriven. Thanks!
Looking at the support packages, I believe the Gold one for 3 years will be comparable to the support of the other two vendors. The link below shows 3 years would cost $16,115.
For the load of your VM's and new hardware these days you might be able to use a single Nehalem based CPU per virtual host, and maximise the ram per Host. This reduces MS Datacentre licenses per physical host and any other licensing that is per CPU based.
Also with that number of VM's you could use SQL express for virtual center atleast. No need for tha additional SQL license. The SQL Express 4GB max DB size limit is more than enough in many cases.
I think the Nehalem CPU is a great point to highlight. If they have purchased server hardware that has a Nehalem CPU, then there probably isn't a need for dual physical CPUs and that would save the extra licensing costs.
The reason I leaned toward SQL server is from personal experience with the SQL express running vCenter. With about 25-30 VMs, it was noticeably slow. It could have just been that particular setup having problems however.
I think you will find that the second CPU license is the same as the first. So price-wise VMware will definitely come out the most expensive. But as we all know - price is not the most important thing though.
I think that's a valid point to bring up. I've set up more XenServer and vSphere than Hyper-V, but from my experience it seems like the time building the actual environments were similar with XenServer being a bit faster because of no SQL server requirement for XenCenter.
What does it cost a Small Business to Implement Virtualization?
By ssnowdenI get this question all of the time in one form or another, so I’m trying to determine hypervisor costs for a SMB as if I’m the owner looking to implement virtualization. This is an academic exercise, so pretend it’s your company and your money and you don’t have a particular vendor preference and you’re doing research online trying to determine apples to apples.
I usually don’t work the licensing side of the street, so I’m looking for feedback and correction if the costs are off the the mark. I’m using the vendor web sites and retail prices as if I were an SMB with no vendor connections.
Here’s the scenario:
From these requirements, we should have a really simple setup:
Two Hosts Connected to Shared Storage
Hyper-V
I went to the Microsoft Licensing assistance site to help me determine what I would need:
It said I need the Datacenter Edition because I was running more than 4 VMs per host.
Product Edition Advisor from Microsoft's Site
I worked my way through the tool and it recommended the Open Licensing with Software Assurance on the Server 2008 Datacenter version. The total was $8,094.
Not because the site really says so, but I think I need to add in the System Center with Virtual Machine Manager to be more on par with the other vendor’s management interfacesproducts.
I’m really not sure if I got all of the things included, but I bought Software Assurance with the Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, so I believe for Systems Center it will be $744 , plus I think I can use the Workgroup edition of Virtual Machine Manager for $505, plus I I think I’ll need CALs at $40 each of the 20 VMs for a total of $800. So for the management side of Hyper-V, I think the cost will be $2,049, plus whatever two more years will cost in maintenance.
I think I’ve met most of the requirements. Here is the link to the Hyper-V feature grid. But I couldn’t seem to select 3 years of support with their tools, so there will be more costs each year for maintenance. For one year I think the total is $10,143.
VMware ESX or ESXi
VMware has done a good job with packaging their products for small businesses. The Essentials Plus pack would be perfect at $4,905 except for some reason, it doesn’t include VMotion. So I guess we need to step up to the next level which is VMware vSphere 4 Advanced with 3 years platinum support for $3,675 each, for a total of $7,350 for the servers.
But wait, it’s only for 1 CPU, so I’ll need to contact someone to see how much a second one is to add to my order.
Only 1 CPU, I'll have to add another one.
To get VMotion and centralized management, I’ll need vCenter. They have vCenter Foundations for up to 3 hosts for $3,139 for a total of $10,489 for 3 years plus whatever a second physical CPU costs per physical host for the additional two years.
Citrix XenServer
Citrix has the technical product packaged pretty cleanly.
XenServer Enterprise has the technical features
XenServer with XenMotion is free, but I need High Availability and support for 3 years, so I need XenServer Advanced, Citrix Essentials Advanced with 1 year preferred support for $8,500.
I still need 2 more years of support
I still need 2 more years of support though. If it is linear, it should be $6,000 for 2 more years for a total of $14,500 to meet all of my requirements including 3 years of support.
Summary and To Do List
I don’t think I selected an unusual set of requirements in this as far as the hardware goes. I’ve seen plenty of dual CPU servers as the standard platform for virtualization projects. The 3 year support requirement didn’t seem to be out of line, but it seems to not be a frequent enough option for 2 of the 3 vendors to be in their online check out.
Microsoft – I need 2 more years of support costs. It wasn’t broken out where I could extrapolate it over 2 more years. I also would like for someone to validate that I have the right components and licenses for SCVMM.
VMware – I need to get the costs of adding the second socket CPU into the $7,530 server price
Citrix – I need to confirm that the support costs are $6,000 for two years
SQL server – I should note that both VMware vCenter and Microsoft’s Systems Center should be running with SQL server for production. Citrix XenServer does not require SQL server for XenCenter, so the cost of SQL Server can be deducted to the total for XenServer. For this exercise, I checked with CDW and SQL 2005 Standard was about $2,600.
It makes sense that the vendors would want to drive the larger organizations to partners to discuss pricing options. For the straightforward purchases like this scenario, it seems they might want to add just a few more options in their shopping carts for longer support warranties and more CPUs.
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