SureSkills Blog & Resources

Update to VMware’s per-CPU Pricing Model

Written by Calvin Riskowitz | Feb 11, 2020 9:38:57 AM

VMware have, in the past few days, announced a change to their licencing policy that will become effective from 02 April 2020.  As most of you will know VMware vSphere licences are a per CPU (socket) licence (If your physical server has 2 sockets, you will need 2 licences).  The announcement will have a minimal effect for the majority of us,  but, if you’re planning on investing in some new hardware within the next financial year or two,  you may need to be aware of the changes that may affect your budget allocation.

The licence change is only to do with the number of cores a socket has and will now be limited to 32 cores, so any CPU with more than 32 cores will require a second socket licence.

This new licencing will be effective across the broad spectrum of VMware products that are currently licenced per CPU socket, the two most common being vSphere (ESXi) and vSAN.

For further reference:  https://www.vmware.com/company/news/updates/cpu-pricing-model-update-feb-2020.html