With the recent introduction of vCenter Operations 5.6, there are some changes in the vCenter Operations Management(vCops) Suite licensing model. vCenter Operations Management Suite consists of some good products like the vCenter Operations Manager itself, vCenter Configuration Manager, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator and vCenter Chargeback Manager.
In the previous edition of vCops Suite we had Standard, Advanced and Enterprise edition available. If you wanted to use Configuration Manager, Infrastructure Navigator and Chargeback you had to buy the Enterprise (Plus) edition. Well, things changed…
First of all we have the vCenter Operations Management Foundation Suite available, which comes with VMware vSphere for free. Are you running vSphere? Install vCops Foundation and enjoy some basic features of the product (it’s available through the My VMware portal).
Now some other changes: vCops Management Suite Standard is now what vCops Advanced used to be, and vCops Advanced now includes (most of) the Enterprise features. Enterprise includes all the features, Enterprise Plus is no longer available.
This change makes vCops Standard already a very interesting product: You have performance, health and capacity management available (the Foundation version includes performance + health, no capacity management). The advanced version now includes solutions like Config Manager, Chargeback and the Infrastructure navigator…but there’s a pitfall, all good things come with a price. VMware added new features to the available editions, but increased the price accordingly. Expect to pay around 3500 euro (list price) for a 25 VM pack vCops Management Suite standard, including 1 year basic support, vCops Suite Advanced edition will cost you a little more than 7000 euro (list price) including 1 year support.
See the table below for an exact feature comparison for the different editions.
The free vCenter Operations Management Suite Foundation will be an excellent starting point to decide if the product meets you requirements! Upgrade to a higher edition if you want to use more of the great features 🙂
More infromation of course at the VMware website of course!
