Managing ESXi without vCenter

[MarcusOsb]

Hi,

I'm trying to get my head around VMware licensing, as I'm planning on purchasing two HP Proliant servers to host some production virtual machines.

I was thinking of installing ESXi 5.5 and directly connecting them for management/configuration without the use of vCenter. Will this violate any licensing with VMware? Or do I need to purchase some form of licensing to do this?

Thanks,

Mark

[admin]

Hi Mark,

You can manage two ESX hosts without using vCenter. This will not violate any licensing. However, you do need license for each host. Also, when you manage ESXi 5.5 hosts directly with vSphere Client, you can only create/manage virtual machines with hardware version 8 (and not 10 which is supported by 5.5).

[raog]

VC is not compulsory. You can connect directly to a host via the Vsphere client.

Regards

Girish

[abhilashhb]

No You always don't need vCenter to manage ESXi servers. The only good thing about having vCenter is that your Virtual infra would be complete. All the capabilities like High availabilty, vMotion, DRS, Cloning etc that make this virtualization awesome will only be available when you have a vCenter.

Also, its a pain to manage each host directly once the number of servers grow.

You have to buy a license each for both the servers and you will be good to go. But i suggest you to make sure you have all the features you need just in ESXi. You need anything more, you will have to buy vCenter license which is a separate one.

Here's a licensing comparison guide

VMware vSphere Editions and Kits Comparison | VMware United Kingdom