VMware? Surprised. Oracle? Not Surprised.

There’s a rumor that VMware is backing away a bit from their vRAM (vtax) licensing. Nothing confirmed yet, but according to gabesvirtualworld.com, they’re not getting rid of vRAM licensing entirely, but are making some adjustments. They’re upping the vRAM allotments, and 96 GB is the maximum a VM can count towards vRAM allocation, If you had a VM with 256 GB of RAM, only 96 of it would count towards vRAM usage. I’d still like to see vRAM go away entirely, but it seems the new limits are less catastrophic in terms of future growth.

On a related note, it seems Oracle is one-upping VMware in the “dick move” department. A blog post on virtualizationpractice.com points out Oracle’s new Java 7 licensing: In virtualized environments, Java 7 only officially supported by an Oracle hypervisor. Knowing Larry Ellison, it’s not all the surprising. He’s a lock’em in kinda guy. I avoid Oracle at all costs.

VMware’s dick move was a surprise. That didn’t seem like the VMware we’d been working with for years. Oracle on the other hand, you’re only surprised they didn’t do it sooner.