CPU Licensing in ESX4?

[hutchingsp]

We're running ESX 3.5 U4. We purchased the "Standard HA Bundle" which gives us two hosts (four CPU's) and a vCenter foundation license.

With VI3 it used to be that whilst you could run ESX on a host with a single physical CPU, VMware officially only recognized dual CPU configurations so whilst you might have had four CPU licenses you couldn't install ESX on more than two physical hosts.

Has that changed with vSphere?

[depping]

http://vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/licensing.html

The same vSphere license key can be used on many VMware ESX hosts. Each license key encodes a CPU quantity which determines the total number of ESX hosts that can use the license key.

yes you can run 1 CPU ESX hosts although it's definitely not recommended.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[hutchingsp]

Thanks for the reply Duncan.

What I'm specifically trying to find out, is how many CPU license upgrades I would need to take advantage of the $750 per CPU offer to go from VI3 Standard to vSphere Advanced.

We run single CPU boxes because we license Windows DataCenter by the CPU and being blunt if we had to go with twin CPU boxes the additional license costs probably would have ruled out virtualiztion at the time we made the leap.

What I want to establish is whether we would need to upgrade all four CPU licenses and support (even though we'd only be consuming 2 CPU's, 1 per host, under vSphere) or if I could just choose to upgrade just 2 of the CPU licenses?

Thinking about it, if we did upgrade, until we physically moved to vSphere would we still get upgraded license keys for VI3 giving us vMotion?

[depping]

It's my understanding that you could just upgrade a single processor if you want to....But I'm no licensing expert.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[admin]

Yes, it is possible to do a partial upgrade to vSphere Advanced. You will need to speak to sales rep or contact vmware sales for assistance:

https://www.vmware.com/contact/contact_sales.html

VMware-GSS,

VMware Communities User Moderator