Few weeks ago I wrote about the new vSphere 5 licensing.  Well it appears it has changed for the better.  I think this will help some people swallow the pill to upgrade to vSphere 5.

If you're not familiar with the new vSphere 5 licensing system you can read about it Here.

VMware has decided to up the memory count for each license in the vRAM Entitlement.

Here was the original vRAM entitlement for each type of VMware license.

• Standard - 24GB
• Enterprise - 32GB
• Enterprise Plus - 48GB

Now they changed the vRAM counts to:

• Standard - 32GB
• Enterprise - 64GB
• Enterprise Plus - 96GB

VMware has released special licensing for the vSphere 5 product if you're going to use the Hypervisor for VDI environments.  The licensing is a lot easier to follow.  It's a simple $6,500 per 100 concurrent desktops.  This product is called "vSphere Desktop".  The hypervisor itself will have all the standard functionality of vSphere 5 but you're only supposed to be allowed to run desktop OSes.

The only problem I have is I suppose you'll still have to buy regular vSphere 5 licensing for your infrastructure servers.  For example, if you're running XenDesktop, you'll need to run your Citrix Provisioning Servers, XenDesktop Brokers, & Web Interfaces on normal vSphere5.

I'm guessing this whole thing is going to be an honor system, but I think VMware is making things more complicated than need be.  For more information on this "vSphere Desktop" product & licensing.  Click Here.