Licensing question for remote sites

[jguidroz]

With this current hurricane having a possible path towards my site in Louisiana, I figured I should take a look how our 28 ESX hosts are licensed in case of an outage.

Background: Back in 2005 when Katrina hit, we were without outside network connection for 6 weeks.

Currently, VirtualCenter and the License Server reside at my site in Louisiana. The VC server manages 28 hosts, spread out across my site plus 6 other sites in the continental U.S. For the 24 hosts located remotely from my site, should these be switched to host-based licensing or would it be better to set up a license server at each location to host licensing for each locations 4 servers? My concern is to have another event like in 2005, and these hosts lose connection to the License server for an extended period of time. My third option would be to move VirtualCenter and License server to another site that will not be affected by this storm.

Opinions?

[weinstein5]

I think they can remain as a server based licenses because you will have 14 days to bring up another license server - I would just make sure you keep a copy of the license file -

[kjb007]

If you want to be on the safe side, use host licensing. While there is a grace period for license server unavailability, 6 weeks would be out of that timeframe.

However, if you had a copy of your license file handy as weinstein5 pointed out, then you could stand up another license server fairly quickly.

-KjB

[azn2kew]

You can also P2V your VC server and store it on your laptop incase you have to move anywhere, just power it on with VMware server and configure IP address for it and up running again.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[malaysiavm]

Is always recommend to p2v a copy of your virtual center from time to time and save it as a template on your DR site if possible. In my case, I have 1 VM for virtual center in DR and i will keep a backup copy of my license file, in case the production site is down, we have the back out plan on that.

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[jguidroz]

I run my Virtual Center Server as a VM and take weekly image backups of it.

[azn2kew]

The only problem with VC server on a VM is if your SAN is disconnected or lost, than you have no ways failover with VC it just show blue screen on your VC server.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant