vSphere 4.1 to 5 upgrade and licensing questions

[sethk]

I currently have two PowerEdge 2900 servers. They each have two CPUs with 4 cores each and 24GB of RAM. Each server has a vSphere 4 Advance license for 2 physical CPUs (1-12 cores each). I also have vCenter 4 Foundation installed and licensed.

I'm looking at buying a new PowerEdge 620 with 2 CPUs, 8 cores each and 128GB of RAM.

I'd like to do the following.

1) Upgrade the vCenter 4 license to 5. Upgrade 2 CPUs worth of vSphere 4 Advance licenses to vSphere 5 Enterprise.

2) Upgrade my vCenter 4 installation to vCenter 5.

3) Install ESXi 5 on the new PowerEdge 620 server.

4) Migrate all of the VMs (guests) from one of the PowerEdge 2900 servers to the new 620 server.

5) Decomission the now empty 2900 server.

6) Keep the other 2900 server around for HA and low priority VMs. (I'm undecided as to whether I should upgrade to ESXi 5 on this one.)

The changes in licensing from 4 to 5 seems to be a maze, but by my calculations, the 2 CPUs of 4 license upgraded to 5, should give me enough for the 2 CPUs and 128GB of vRAM on the 620. This is my first time going through an upgrade like this so I was hoping someone with more experience could weigh in on this plan. Am I completely missing something and will it fail horribly? Any extra info/advice is appreciated.

Thanks

[a_p_]

Just a quick question before discussing the details. Do you have a current subscription or - to be precise - was your subscription active at the time when vSphere 5 became generally available (August 2011)? In this case you don't need to spend any money at all because the Advanced licenses are automatically upgraded to Enterprise when you upgrade the license keys in the My VMware portal to version 5. see http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/licensing.html

If you don't have subscription, you either need to pay for reinstatement or purchase new licenses. In this case you may also consider to look at e.g. an Essentials Plus Kit  if this includes the features you want/need.

André

[sethk]

My subscription was active at the time v5 became available. I've already verified that all of my licenses are eligible for upgrade through My VMware. Gotta say I was super stoked to find out I didn't need to spend another several thousand dollars on new licenses. In fact, after redoing the math, I may be able to afford to buy two PowerEdge 620 servers to replace the two 2900s since I wouldn't have to pay for additional licenses.

I guess the other part I wasn't entirely sure about was the upgrade/migration order which I laid out. It feels like a lot of shuffling machines and license around to get to the new setup. When I was checking whether the v4 license were eligible for upgrade, it says that the old licenses get deactivated after the new ones are issued. I expected that, but I wasn't sure if there was some check the host does that would prevent me from getting the VMs migrated over to the new machines given that out of neccessity, there is some period of time in which I would be using both the old v4 license and the newly upgraded v5 license.

Thanks for the help!

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

... it says that the old licenses get deactivated after the new ones are issued ...

Don't worry about this. Only the old license keys on the portal will be deactivated when you upgrade the keys to v5. There's no license check on your systems, which will deactivate the hosts or vCenter Server.

André

PS: Although there's no licence check, it's your responsibility to ensure the old and the new licenses are not used simultaneously. This would violate the EULA.