CML on bare Metal - is VMware licenses required?

[ehaparna]

HI Community,

I am running into an issue with VMware license consumption and need your input here.

The setup is an ESXI workstation with 4 CPUs with 8 cores each (old ...)

Apparently, VMware licenses are also required to operate on CML installed as OVA.

Had one license, but that allows only 8 cores which is nothing (see the side-comment about XRv)

Just as a side note building a lab with XRv9000  blows up all the resources.

This inflates the cost of the setup. 
Not only a strong CPU is required (around 10K$) but also 4 VMware licenses each relevant for 1 CPU (up to 32 cores).

So I was thinking of switching to a CML bare metal installation option with the hope that VM licenses would not be required.

Can Anyone comment based on his own experience?

>>
Side note: lack of support of XRv is inflating the cost of the simulation model significantly. 

[Ramblin Tech · Accepted solution]

I run CML 2.6 as bare metal on a refurbished Dell Precision Tower 7810 (2x 12core Xeon) that I purchased on Amazon. I upgraded RAM to 256GB and added 8T drive after initial installation of CML 2.x last year. This is a home installation using CML-Personal and I did not want to add hypervisor overhead nor hassle with HV licenses (no, you do not need VMware with bare metal).

I can run multiple instances of XRv9K and many more of XRv (I am running 6.3.1), but I do wish XRd would be provided as a CML download or on the refplat as an alternative to XRv9K.

[ehaparna]

Hi Rmblin (and also others that use bare-metal)

What is the downside that you face with that installation? Other than the flexibility to use the server for more purposes? 

[Ramblin Tech · Accepted solution]

Downside for me is that my system is dedicated solely to CML as I will not try to install any other package on its Ubuntu base for non-CML purposes.  A minor inconvenience is that it is not obvious to me how to mount a refplat ISO to copy new images using the Cockpit utility (it is probably easy to do, I just have not found it yet). What I did with the new 2.7 images images is import them manually, one at a time.

That said, I do not feel like bare-metal is a significant handicap for me, as I can use CML like a hypervisor manager and spin up virtual linux systems if I feel the need, similar to what might be done with VMware.