vSphere 5’s licensing opens the door for open source

“The new pricing model further increases the price gap between
VMware and the two open source competitors, Red Hat Virtualization
and Citrix Xen.

“For example, Red Hat offers a one-year subscription for as any
as six managed sockets, regardless of cores per socket, for $4,495
per year. Red Hat’s virtualization offering also doesn’t have any
restrictions on RAM entitled for use with a licensed socket. Over a
five-year period, Red Hat’s product would cost $26,970.

“By comparison, a VMware customer would buy at least six
processor licenses of VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus with product
support and subscription over five years for $3,495 per processor
license and five years of support and subscription at $874 per year
per processor. Over a five-year period, VMware’s product would cost
at least $47,190, or 74 percent more than Red Hat.”

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