On July the 12th VMware announced VMware vSphere 5. As part of the release VMware announced changes to the vSphere licensing model. These changes caused much debate & many headaches within the VMware community. The new licensing model like VMware vSphere 4.x is licensed on a per processor basis the major change (& headache) surrounds the new vRAM licensing entitlements. Each vSphere 5 license provides a vRAM capacity entitlement, vRAM is defined as the memory configured to a virtual machine. The vRAM entitlements of VMware vSphere processor licenses are pooled across all CPU licenses managed by a VMware vCenter instance to form a total available vRAM capacity (pooled vRAM capacity) The initial vRAM entitlements released on the 12th of July were as follows:
vSphere 5 Edition | vRAM entitlement (12/07/2011) |
vSphere Enterprise+ | 48GB |
vSphere Enterprise | 32GB |
vSphere Standard | 24GB |
vSphere Essentials+ | 24GB |
vSphere Essentials | 24GB |

