VMWare will charge double licensing fees for CPUs with more than 32 cores

Just when there's that moment a 64-core processor in the consumer SOHO domain gets released, VMWare decides to change its licensing model. Thanks to AMD many processors have well .. many cores with just one processor chip. VMWare is jumping onto this, and is adjusting its tariff model.

In the enterprise world, software is often licensed over a period of time on a per-core or per-socket basis, meaning software customers have to pay a set fee based on either the number of CPUs they wish to run the software on, or the number of CPU sockets. VMWare asked customers to purchase one license per processor, which, according to the company, provides clarity about the costs of the software. Now processors with more than 32 cores will need two licenses to use the software for virtual machines. This means that, for example, AMD's Epyc processors, which go over this number from the Epyc 7552 with 48 cores , require two licenses.

VMware's pricing change will you make you think twice about the benefits of sticking a core-dense processor into a server with a view to keeping software costs down.

The new business model will take effect from 2 April.

Q: What is VMware announcing?

A: VMware is more closely aligning to the industry standard of licensing software based on CPU cores as a primary licensing metric. With this change, VMware is still using the per-CPU licensing model, but we will require one license for any software offering that we license on a per-CPU basis, for up to 32 physical cores. That is, the license will cover CPUs with up to 32 physical cores. This change is effective starting on April 2, 2020.

Q: Why is VMware updating its per-CPU licensing model?

A: VMware is working to align our product offerings to industry standard licensing models and projected changes in the hardware market. We cannot continue pricing on a per-CPU basis, where CPUs could have unlimited core counts. The 32-core limit is designed to minimize customer impact given current core counts generally used in the industry, and by the majority of our customers.

A friendly word to the industry with one-word fellahs, proxmox !