Windows Server 2016 Pricing
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Like in the past. If you're struggling to pay for Windows licensing you should probably consider a move to a non-windows environment.
Either way, I mentioned earlier that I agree the majority of people who are affected by this will be the people between the SMB (where they only have one or two hosts) and the Enterprise (where you negotiate your own pricing).
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From the Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Licensing FAQ (PDF Download
See also:
Instead of 2012's two socket license pack, 2016 will use a 2 core pack, with the license cost of each 2016 pack being 1/8th the price of the corresponding 2 socket pack for 2012. Each system running Windows Server 2016 must have a minimum of 8 cores (4 packs) per processor, and a minimum of 16 cores (8 packs) per system.
For systems with up to 4 processors and up to 8 cores per processor, this won't change the overall licensing cost. Above this, however, things get more expensive; although the price for a single processor 10 core system will remain the same, with two or or more sockets populated by 10 core processors, prices will go up; 2 or 4 processors with 10 cores per processor will cost 25 percent more to run Windows Server 2016 than they did 2012.
(Source: ArsTechnica)
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@JaredBusch In what respect?
The claim of more expensive in percent does not clarify that it is more expensive compared to server 2012 pricing.
Any sane person looking at that graph sees a standard linear price line per core.
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@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@JaredBusch In what respect?
The claim of more expensive in percent does not clarify that it is more expensive compared to server 2012 pricing.
Any sane person looking at that graph sees a standard linear price line per core.
That graph was taken from the linked article discussing the 2012 vs 2016 pricing. Yes, out of context the graph could seem misleading... but for the purpose of this discussion it is entirely sane and relevant.
Do you disagree with the interpretation that running more than 8 cores per pCPU will carry the indicated price increases?
ETA: Imagine another column labeled "2012 Price" , where every row said "$6,155".
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@JaredBusch In what respect?
The claim of more expensive in percent does not clarify that it is more expensive compared to server 2012 pricing.
Any sane person looking at that graph sees a standard linear price line per core.
That graph was taken from the linked article discussing the 2012 vs 2016 pricing. Yes, out of context the graph could seem misleading... but for the purpose of this discussion it is entirely sane and relevant.
Do you disagree with the interpretation that running more than 8 cores per pCPU will carry the indicated price increases?
ETA: Imagine another column labeled "2012 Price" , where every row said "$6,155".
Of course anyone running more than 2x8 core will pay more. But then no one in the SMB really needs more than that. They certainly do not generally need data center in the first place.
What workloads do you have that you need so many cores?
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Anyone know if 2x8 and 1x16 would be licensed the same on a single box?
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@scottalanmiller I 1x10 is the most that a single Datacenter license will cover... I read that somewhere but don't remember where
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@brianlittlejohn said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@scottalanmiller I 1x10 is the most that a single Datacenter license will cover... I read that somewhere but don't remember where
That sucks.
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@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Anyone know if 2x8 and 1x16 would be licensed the same on a single box?
Minimum purchase is 2x8, so no.
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@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Anyone know if 2x8 and 1x16 would be licensed the same on a single box?
Minimum purchase is 2x8, so no.
Well actually, it says 8 cores per proc and 16 per server. So the minimum purchase could in theory be 1x16, you are correct.
Barring any other randomly imposed restrictions
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Seems like they'd go for the total procs / total cores approach, otherwise there is no way to reasonably license a single proc, ever. But they are so focused on dual proc systems, maybe they really just don't want that happen.
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Wait ... so there is actually a release date? Interesting!
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@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Of course anyone running more than 2x8 core will pay more. But then no one in the SMB really needs more than that. They certainly do not generally need data center in the first place.
What workloads do you have that you need so many cores?
ESXi 6.0.2 running VSAN and quite a few VMs.
We're in the middle ground between SMB and Enterprise. I can understand a simple SMB just running a handful of VMs never needing more than 2x8. And then a full scale enterprise with many hosts who can negotiate licensing. But we're in the middle... several dozen VMs spread across a handful of hosts.
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Of course anyone running more than 2x8 core will pay more. But then no one in the SMB really needs more than that. They certainly do not generally need data center in the first place.
What workloads do you have that you need so many cores?
ESXi 6.0.2 running VSAN and quite a few VMs.
We're in the middle ground between SMB and Enterprise. I can understand a simple SMB just running a handful of VMs never needing more than 2x8. And then a full scale enterprise with many hosts who can negotiate licensing. But we're in the middle... several dozen VMs spread across a handful of hosts.
Yep, unfortunately you're in the range where this change does the most damage.
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@coliver said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Of course anyone running more than 2x8 core will pay more. But then no one in the SMB really needs more than that. They certainly do not generally need data center in the first place.
What workloads do you have that you need so many cores?
ESXi 6.0.2 running VSAN and quite a few VMs.
We're in the middle ground between SMB and Enterprise. I can understand a simple SMB just running a handful of VMs never needing more than 2x8. And then a full scale enterprise with many hosts who can negotiate licensing. But we're in the middle... several dozen VMs spread across a handful of hosts.
Yep, unfortunately you're in the range where this change does the most damage.
i thought I read somewhere that you would get grandfathered in if you are running more cores than the new licensing comes with by default. anyone else read that? Of course this only matters if you have Softwrae Assurance
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Of course anyone running more than 2x8 core will pay more. But then no one in the SMB really needs more than that. They certainly do not generally need data center in the first place.
What workloads do you have that you need so many cores?
ESXi 6.0.2 running VSAN and quite a few VMs.
We're in the middle ground between SMB and Enterprise. I can understand a simple SMB just running a handful of VMs never needing more than 2x8. And then a full scale enterprise with many hosts who can negotiate licensing. But we're in the middle... several dozen VMs spread across a handful of hosts.
Anything stopping you from changing how that is? It's not as good as having smart licensing, but can't you consolidate to one or two hosts?
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One of the thing that I think we are seeing, and this makes lots of sense, is that MS is recognizing the fact that Windows is for special case work loads and not for general purpose ones. So they need to focus on increasing the revenue for the fewer, special cases. Linux dominates the general case, sprawl of VMs. This licensing promotes that, sure, but it also recognizes it and embraces it.
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@Dashrender said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
i thought I read somewhere that you would get grandfathered in if you are running more cores than the new licensing comes with by default. anyone else read that?
This is a new host deployment, so there is NO licensing on these hosts currently. Nothing to grandfather. We're coming from OEM licensed physical servers.
@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
Anything stopping you from changing how that is? It's not as good as having smart licensing, but can't you consolidate to one or two hosts?
Well, since this is a new deployment we just sunk a whole heap of cash into these hosts
But it's not just the sunk cost fallacy at play. Our storage and compute needs are contingent on using at least 3 hosts, and since we're running VSAN, 4 is the true safe minimum, to say nothing of disk groups and future storage growth. We weren't expecting the 2016 per-core licensing cost increase when putting this project together, we assumed flat rate per-proc licensing as usual. It's really too late to change the trajectory of our ESXi deployment at this point, and if we did so just for the sake of this licensing cost we would spend more re-engineering the solution than just eating the licensing bump.
As a completely on-prem, VMware-invested environment, can anyone list any significant reasons not to just stick with 2012?
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@crustachio said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:
But it's not just the sunk cost fallacy at play. Our storage and compute needs are contingent on using at least 3 hosts, and since we're running VSAN, 4 is the true safe minimum, to say nothing of disk groups and future storage growth.
Why are they contingent on three? And the investment in VSAN might be part of the problem, why choose a product that doesn't match your licensing needs? VSAN is great, but it's a high cost option, on top of VMware ESXi another high cost option that then incurs a higher WIndows cost... it seems like the approach assumes high cost anyway, is the Windows licensing really a problem then?
I totally get that the investment was "just made", but wouldn't alternatives like Hyper-V and Starwind from the MS camp or XenServer have not just eliminated the VMware and VSAN costs, but potentially the Windows ones, too?
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@crustachio when did your project planning start? I could have swarn it's been at least 6 months since they announced the per core pricing, but didn't list many details.
