vCenter Server 5 Essentials and cluster

[shans]

Hallo, does it make any sense to create clusters if you have vCenter Server 5 Essentials. As far as I know you can't use DRS with the smallest license and in this case clusters are not needed.

May be there are other reasons for using clusters.

Thank you Hans

[Anjani_Kumar]

Correct. The basic Essential license doesnt provide any features like HA, DRS, vmotion etc.

Also i am not so sure which kind off vsphere licensing is there. there are 4 different packages in essentials too. if you see any feature provides in  your license then you can create a cluster.Else no use.

VMware vSphere Essentials Kit Term

[RyanH84]

Hi,

Do you mean Essentials or Essential Plus? I'm fairly sure Essentials is just the hypervisor  and vCenter to centrally manage. You don't get any fancy bells and whistles, which is really what sets plus apart!

Looking at the feature comparison it seems that this is correct, you also get vRealize operations manager foundation.

Without all the features I'm struggling to think of a use case of having a cluster. Doesn't mean someone might not be able to though!

[shans]

I have only the Essentials Version (no plus) this means only to use vSphere Center as a central administration.

If there is no advantage of using clusters I will move my VMs to the DataCenter. Unfortunatly I have to close all my VMs, switch the host to maintenance mode before I can move the host to the DataCenter. Is there no other way?

Thanks Hans

[Anjani_Kumar]

You can move your esxi host by just drag and drop operation. no impact will be there. No hassle.

Please delete 2 comment posted on the vsphere community. will be greatful to you. Thanks.

[RyanH84]

Hi, I assume by this you mean moving your hosts out of the cluster you have created and moving them into just the top level data center.

I do not really see why you'd want to move them out, having the in the cluster is no benefit, but as is the same NOT having them in the cluster. Is there any benefit into moving them out?