New User vSphere Hypervisor License Question.

[PaulBons]

I realize this may be a dumb question, but the free license I received for ESXi stated 5 Machine License. Is that 5 hosts? or 5 VM's on a single host?

Thank you.

[jrmunday]

Hi Paul - Which version are you referring to?

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

This doesn't seem to be a Hypervisor license. The free edition does not have such limitations. What's the exact license name/message you see?

André

[PaulBons]

VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5 License

Looking in my notes I have written 5 machines but now I'm thinking maybe I just mistaken the version 5 for meaning 5 licenses and in turn 5 machines. I don't know. So what are the limitations on the free license then? limited to 1 host machine? or can it be installed on a second host?

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

There are actually no such limitations. The current version is only limited to 32GB of  physical host memory and some lower limits for VMs (e.g. max. 8 vCPUs/VM). You will also have limited API access, which prevents from using most commercial VM based backup solutions. See Getting Started with Free VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) for some more details.

André

[PaulBons]

Thanks for your help André & jrmunday.