Licensing question - Retain use of Essentials license after upgrading to vSphere Standard?

[krazowcat]

Hi,

I'm investigating the upgrade options for a customer. They currently have an Essentials license with 2 hosts that they use for their Lab and testing environment . Now they are due a hardware refresh and want to p2v all their old physical servers. They need linked mode for DR so Essentials is not an option nd they are looking at 2 vCenter licenses with 4 x vCenter standard license - new hosts.

Can they retain the use of their existing  Essentials environment connected to it's own vCenter from a licensing point of view if it is completely seperate?

Or do they also have to upgrade the Essentials hosts to a Standard license ? (or most likely scrap these if that is the case)

Thanks.

[rcporto]

Unfortunately you will need to buy vSphere Standard to your hosts since the vCenter Standard cannot manage hosts with vSphere Essentials licenses.

[krazowcat]

Thansk for the reply.

They wouldn't need the lab environment connected to the vCenter standard though; they don't need vMotion or any of the advanced features. Can the Essentials hosts continue to be connected to the essentials vCenter ? Technically I know that it would work but unclear on the licensing aspect.

[rcporto · Accepted solution]

If your old hosts will not be added to the new vCenter, you can let them managed by the old vCenter Essentials without problem.

[krazowcat]

Great, so they don't lose the use of the existing license. I wish VMware's documentation was clearer on these things!

Thanks for you help.