I have a ESXi box, with about 5 production guests. I have a few old Dell 2650's (Not on the HCL for ESXi) that I could use as a fail over machines at a remote site. (No SAN's, just via backups).
Can I use the 60 day Trail of ESX to have a place to put my production VMs in case my ESXi fails?
You can but I will bet that will violate the EULA -
You 'bet' or you 'know'?
I read the EULA, doesn't mention limitations of what you can use the Trail for. Does mention that I would NOT receive any support from VMware though, which is fine.
If your DR site is all stand-alone machines, why not just use the free ESXi product? The only down-side is that you would not be able to use VirtualCenter to manage them, but you would certainly be license compliant.
Ken Cline
Technical Director, Virtualization
VMware Communities User Moderator
Becasue the servers at my DR site are not on the HCL for ESXi...
'bet' - previous eula I have seen for trail software limits its use only for test/proof of concept - so if it is not in eula you might be ok - but remember if you do power up the license that will start the timer on you 60 days - so you really will not be able to test - I agree with ken's seggestion about ESXi -and in regards to the HCL you would have the same problem with running ESXi in trial mode -
Thanks guys.
FYI. I never mentioned running "ESXi in trial mode" Just ESX. Does ESXi Trials even exist? It's free.
I believe they do even though you can get ESXi for free now -
Becasue the servers at my DR site are not on the HCL for ESXi...
I guess it would help if I actually read your original post, wouldn't it!
Ken Cline
Technical Director, Virtualization
VMware Communities User Moderator