vSphere License

[MihirP]

Hello,

We have 3 vSphere environments. i.e. 3 vSphere servers each having 3 ESXi hosts

All 3 vSphere environements are on 4.0. I will be upgrading it to 5.0 (we have license that can be upgraded to 5)

My question is;

--> Can I use same vSphere Key for all the 3 environments?

	Env 1	Env 2	Env 3
License for	vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus	vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus	vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus
License based on Physical CPUs	6 Physical CPUs	8 Physical CPUs	10 Physical CPUs
Used	6 Physical CPUs	8 Physical CPUs	6 Physical CPUs
Available	0	0	4 Physical CPUs

Thanks,

Mihir

[abhilashhb]

Hi Mihir,

When you say vSphere i guess you mean vCenter server. vCenter server is licensed per instance. You cannot use same license for many instances. You will need three keys for three vCenters.

[weinstein5]

YOu will need to update the license to vSphere 5 for vCenter as well as the ESXi hosts -

[Akopylov]

well actually you can use 1 license key for all three vcenters (i dont know how it will affect in linked mode, but i tryed same thing on 2 vcenters in different networks and it works) and 1 key for vsphere (for example on 10 ph. cpu), BUT u should not tell anyone about that definitely will break the EULA in case of using 1 key for all instances.

P.S. i guess you have tech support not on all of the licenses and u cant upgrade all of them, right?

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Using the same key is definitely a vio;ation of the EULA and is a copyright violation.

[a_p_]

>>> Can I use same vSphere Key for all the 3 environments?

I'm no lawyer, but from how I understand vSphere licensing, you can use the same keys as long as they have sufficient capacity (i.e. total # of vCenter Server instances, # of CPUs, ...) and if the usage doesn't violate other restrictions from the EULA (e.g. territorial usage, ...).

At least I don't see anything in the EULA that explicitly prohibits the usage of the same license keys in multiple environments (for the same company). Why - if this was prohibited - would VMware offer license keys with multiple vCenter Server instances, if they would not allow to use them!?

Again, this is my personal opinion and you may want to have this confirmed with a VMware representative to be "save".

André