Here are two new tools to help our users understand and calculate the required subscription capacity for the new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) offerings, which are licensed based on physical CPU Cores for compute and total raw physical storage (TiBs) for vSAN.
Inventory Script
The PowerCLI script provided in KB 95927 is designed to help users inventory their existing vSphere environment (read-only account is sufficient) to assess the required VCF or VVF subscription capacity for compute and/or vSAN. The script has also been enhanced to incorporate the upcoming 100GiBs of vSAN storage entitlement for each VVF core that is provisioned to a vSAN cluster as well as the latest pricing and packaging for both VCF and VVF. For more details on how to download and use the inventory script, please check out the KB for more information.
Note: Make sure you are using the latest version of the script which had a minor update on 02/14/2024
Calculator Script
The PowerShell script provided in KB 96426 is designed to help users run different simulations for calculating the required VCF or VVF subscription capacity for compute and/or vSAN, especially in planning for a new or greenfield deployment. For customers who can not run the inventory script from KB 95927 due to organizational policies, the calculator script can be a viable alternative as long as you can manually provide the required parameters via the CSV input file used by the script. For more details on how to download and use the calculator script, please check out the KB for more information.
If you still have questions or require further assistance on sizing or pricing (including all applicable discounts), please reach out to your local VMware account team and they will be more than happy to help.
Hi,
Would be great if you could have a switch that includes or excludes hosts that are in Maintenance Mode, may be useful in the near future to keep an audit of our infrastructure.
and thanks for a (another) awesome script.
Craig.
Hi Craig,
The script isn't designed for a general purpose audit but you're more than welcome to make the change, pretty trivial and also a good learning opportunity for automation
William,
All of our Aria Operations & vSphere licenses were purchased through HPE and Broadcom has yet to provide them pricing so we can budget for the cost of shifting from perpetual to VVF subscription at renewal. I've got 60 hosts & 2,220 cores (with 16-core minimum). Should I just calculate a worst case scenario of buying new at MSRP for 1 year and if so, is that actually $189/core? Thank you.
Scott
Scott - I’m not involved in pricing, so I don’t know. It’s best to work with your account/sales team, they’ll be able to give you actual numbers and any discounts you may apply for
Can NVMe drives be resized to align with the TiB numbers of the cluster, and is this supported for vSAN?
E.g. a 4 host vSAN cluster, each node with 16 cores, that's 64 TiB license included. There's no drive combination that offers exactly 64 TiB, and with 2x 7.68 TB drives only 87,5 % of the included vSAN license is used. Any bigger drives require additional vSAN licensing.
Optimally three 6,4 TB or 7,68 TB drives should be resized to 5,85 TB capacity.
Same holds true for 64 core nodes as well as other core and drive combinations.
This comment is not related to this article but just a suggestion. When opening an image, by default it rolls over to another image after certain interval. Could you make pause a default action and if user wants to check or play the next image, he/she can click the play button.
Ah yes, I've also found the auto-transition to be annoying at times (but never looked into it). I just found the settings and I've disabled the auto-play 🙂
Great ! Thank you.
I cannot execute the script, please help.
The issue was resolved.
Hi William,
I am having a problem counting vSAN Add-on licenses in VVF. My cluster two vSAN nodes has a total of 32 Cores, my vSAN has a total of 11.64 TB. If I run the script it correctly reports to me that the licenses needed are 32 VVF Cores and 12 TB vSAN.
If from vSphere Web Client I try to assign the 12TB vSAN license it gives me an error that the license is insufficient and would like 14TB. I have opened a ticket but currently have no explanation. We are on last version of vSphere 8 UP3.