ET/BWMGR v4.0 Licensing

Starting with version 4.0, ET/BWMGR is licensed with a different model. We wanted to create a model which allowed us to take advantage of the scalability of our product, while still providing a lower cost alternative for our smaller customers. At the low end of the traffic volume spectrum, most products on the market can perform adequately. So at the low end, your product choice is based on features, unless you expect to grow. At the high end, there is very little competition. If you have more than 100Mb/s of traffic, there are few choices, and certainly none at our price point. One thing we don't like to do at Emerging Technologies is copy our competition. If you do that, you'll never be better than them. The model of using bits per second as a price scaler, which requires that you artificially limit the software s capabilities, works to a point. But the difference between 100Mb/s and 500Mb/s is significant, while you also don't want to limit someone with a gigabit network to 120Mb/s. Limiting the number of connections is just plain stupid, as most customers have no concept of how many connections there are at any traffic level point, and you can't have production systems that just stop working because too many people logged in. With our v4.0 release, we've leveraged the performance gains made by our friends at Intel and AMD to produce a product with truly stellar performance. Our testing shows that a quad core processor can easily manage multiple gigabit links. Our competitors, the one or two who can actually achieve this, charge a King's Ransom for this capability.

The Licensing Scale

Version 4.0 and beyond uses a performance scale from 2 to 75 which is based on a performance rating of the hardware. At the low end, the scale is artificially limited as before, as there really is no other way to accommodate smaller customers. Above 45Mb/s, the software is sold unlimited , scaled to the performance capabilities of the hardware to which its licensed. The scale is as follows:

License Level	Throughput Limit	Cost
2	2Mb/s	$500.
3	10Mb/s	$900.
5	45Mb/s (Single Core System)	$2,000.
6	45Mb/s (MultiCore System)	$2,500.
7	Unlimited	$3,500.
8-10	Unlimited	$5,000
11-15	Unlimited	$7,500
16-20	Unlimited	$10,000
21-25	Unlimited	$12,500
26-30	Unlimited	$15,000
31-35	Unlimited	$17,500
36-40	Unlimited	$20,000
41-45	Unlimited	$22,500
46-50	Unlimited	$25,000
51-55	Unlimited	$27,500
56-60	Unlimited	$30,000
61-65	Unlimited	$32,500
66-70	Unlimited	$35,000
71-75	Unlimited	$37,500

Note: A 2Mb/s license can be used in stats-only mode to gather statistics for any sized network.

Pretty simple, eh?

What's not-so-simple is figuring out how much an unlimited license will cost for some random machine you have lying around. There's really no way to tell exactly what you need without running our software on the machine. Since you ll need to run the Demo CD before purchasing anyway, if not to try out the product but to ascertain that it runs properly on the system, this is not a big problem. We provide a utility which creates a unique serial number for the system, and also tells you what license you need. Here is an example of the output:

ETBWMGR# bwmgr bge0 serialize
System Serial# 06:9b:10:03:69:01:77:ff:89:50
License Required:
2Mb/s:     2
10Mb/s:    3
45Mb/s:    6
Unlimited: 12

This system is a dual-core 2.8 Opteron system. This implies that the cost to license this system would be $495 for 2Mb/s, $895 for 10Mb/s, $2500. for 45Mb/s and $7500. for an unlimited license.

No single core machine requires more than a 7 license, except for a Core 2 (or Core 2 Xeon) over 3Ghz, which might require an 8.

Hardware Appliance vs CD Appliance

In most cases, buying a software license is less expensive than buying hardware from us. But there are considerations beyond cost for those who understand how important such a product is to their business.

There is fallacy among even highly technical people that all computers with the same cpu are equal. This is patently false. Very few systems have exactly the same mix of CPU, chipset, ethernet NIC, memory controller and disk controller. Secondly, there is a widespread misunderstanding of Operating Systems and their relationship to hardware, particularly free operating systems like FreeBSD and LINUX. Not only is the hardware a consideration, but the implementation of the hardware drivers is a critical component. You ll hear all sorts of chatter about which NIC is the best, but its not just the NIC that matters. A good NIC with a poorly implemented driver is no good at all.

We typically spend a month or more testing the hardware we sell. The first week is usually spent getting everything to work just right. Figuring out the optimum BIOS settings, getting the NICs to probe in the proper order, making sure that all of the controllers are detected and set up properly. Then we spend a few weeks testing under load to learn all of the nuances of the systems, so we can quickly understand problems when they occur on the field.

When you buy a software license, the hardware testing is your job. Sometimes hardware isn t a good fit. We know enough about our software and the Operating Systems we use to be able to look at a spec sheet and know there might be problems. Please note that we WILL NOT help you with your own hardware. If you need some device turned on we may consider it if it won t affect other customers. But if you have some disk that keeps getting corrupted, or your machine reboots randomly with very little load, then you need to figure it out. The entire point of a hardware appliance is that everyone has the same thing, so its worth our effort to figure it out. Its not worth our effort to figure out what s wrong with one random system that we never tested. So the major consideration for buying hardware from us is support. We can support our hardware, and we can't support yours.

FreeBSD 4.9 vs FreeBSD 7.0

If you currently have a single core system, or simply don't want to pay the price for a multicore license, there is no reason to upgrade or to use FreeBSD 7. FreeBSD 4.9 is optimized for Uniprocessor use, and FreeBSD 7 is optimized for multicore. With 1 processor, FreeBSD 4.9 is quite a bit faster.

As time goes by, FreeBSD 4.9 may not run on newer hardware. Accordingly, there are systems that FreeBSD 4.9 runs just fine on which FreeBSD 7.0 doesn t work. So if you're firing up a new single core system, you may have to choose one or the other based on what actually works.

The only real advantage of FreeBSD 7 in a single core environment is true SATA support. As your database grows, this can be a factor.

Portability

Version 4.0 licenses are portable. This means that if one machine breaks or becomes unreliable, you can move your license to another machine. There is a $200. replacement charge, plus you must have current support. So if you haven't bought support for 2 years it might cost $600. additional to upgrade your support.

Replacement Licenses

The biggest conundrum of selling software licenses is differentiating between true need and the cheaters. Cheaters are those customers who claim to be buying a replacement license, but they continue to use the original system.

Because of this we have some rules. In order to get a replacement license for a license over 10Mb/s, you must use the EXACT same IP address as the original system was registered. This implies that you must re-register whenever you move a system or get a new address. We don't expect that anyone with a 45Mb/s or greater internet connection is on DHCP. So this is a minor burden. If you don't have internet access, such as an internal corporate network, then we suggest that you buy hardware from us and buy a replacement warranty. If you're on a DHCP network you ll need to get clearance from us to buy a replacement.

Another rule is that if the original system is ever detected in use after you ve registered your replacement, all licenses in the chain will be cancelled. We ll give you 2 days to cut over, but if you have problems you d best notify us promptly. Don t try to tell us that your replacement system had problems and you had to put the original system back up. You are not allowed to use the original as a backup. The best thing to do is to destroy it once your new system is up and running. Or load Windows on it.

A third rule is that you can only get 1 replacement license per year.

Upgrading

Upgrading is a bit different with v4.0. Previously, whether you used your own hardware or ours, you could just pop out your 2.0Ghz processor and pop in a 3.0Ghz processor and you had a faster system. Now that won't work, unless your license allows it. So in order to upgrade, whether its new hardware or just a new CPU, you ll have to upgrade your license as well.

If you currently have a v3.2 license, you have 3 options. The first is that you can do nothing and continue to use your current system. You can also upgrade to a v4.0 license on FreeBSD 4.9, or upgrade to FreeBSD 7.0. To upgrade to FreeBSD 7.0 you ll need to use either the Demo CD (if you have a CD appliance) or a 7.0 recovery CD (if you have a hardware appliance).

The exact procedures for upgrading will be made available shortly.