confusion of vsphere 4 license

[spadesace]

Hi,

I have a little confusion on Vsphere4 licensing. we all knew that ESXi 4.0 is a free bare-metal hypervisor, in order to manage ESXi 4.0 we have to use Vsphere4 to manage.

As we all know that when we download ESXi 4.0 Vsphere4 comes together with it. But i saw in the vmware webpage is telling me that Vsphere4 is not free.

so after i applied the free license does it mean i can use the Vsphere4 to manage my ESXi 4.0 for free?

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - The vSphere Client that you downloaded from your ESXi server is free - I think what you might be confused about is vSphere vCenter which allows you to centrally manage multiple ESX/ESXi hosts -

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[spadesace]

so is there any documentation to say that the Vsphere 4 downloaded from ESXi 4.0 is free?

[jbogardus]

I don't imagine that it's explicitly documented anywhere, but trust us the vSphere Client used to connect to and manage ESX servers individually is free. It is only the vSphere Client that you get when you connect to the ESXi servers web page and have a link to download vSphere. There has never been a cost to using this management client.

It is what is called the vSphere vCenter Server that has a cost to it. That is because it offers complex coordinated management of multiple ESX servers as a group, so provides far more functionality that managing an individual host with the client.

In summary:

The management client is free

The management server is not free

[spadesace]

so is there any restriction on how many vsphere client i can install?

[jidhin · Accepted solution]

There is no restriction as such. You are allowed to install the free vsphere Client on N no fo machines.

[spadesace]

Thank you so much for the help.;\

[besson3c]

Does this mean that I can ignore the warning about the license expiring in 60 days? If the license is only for vSphere Server, why am I seeing this in the client when connecting to the free ESXi host?

This is rather confusing, but I apologize for revisiting an old thread...