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Braumin
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Licensing questions

We are looking at moving to VMware Infrastructure 3 this fiscal year, however I have a couple questions that I would like to get answers on regarding licensing:

1. Can we have one vCenter Server manage several different versions? We have critical servers that we would like to run VI Enterprise on for HA and DRS, but many servers are not as important so we would like to run them with Foundation. I can't seem to find anything in the product literature that says either way if this is possible or not.

2. Would we need to purchase SnS for every single license that we buy? Or is this something that you pay for with VI Enterprise every year?

Thanks!

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weinstein5
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  1. Yes you can run combinations of foundation and enterprise - what determines if a host will use an HA/DRS license is if it is part of an HA/DRS cluster - and if it is going to use vmotion you will need to configure a vmkernel port for vmotion -

  2. As Jase pointed out SnS will allow you to stay up to date and it will have to be for all licenses -

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Jasemccarty
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Welcome to the forums.

  1. The current licensing model makes it difficult to specify which ESX hosts you would like which licenses applied to.
    With that, to do what you are talking about, you'd need a couple vCenter/ESX environments

  2. As far as SNS goes... You really want to keep it to make sure you are eligible for product upgrades and support.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Please consider awarding points if this post was helpful or correct

Jase McCarty - @jasemccarty
weinstein5
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  1. Yes you can run combinations of foundation and enterprise - what determines if a host will use an HA/DRS license is if it is part of an HA/DRS cluster - and if it is going to use vmotion you will need to configure a vmkernel port for vmotion -

  2. As Jase pointed out SnS will allow you to stay up to date and it will have to be for all licenses -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
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Braumin
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OK that seems to be the answer I was looking for. It can be done! We really want Enterprise but can not justify the cost for every server we have.

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Jasemccarty
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I wasn't aware of point #1.

That's good to know.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Please consider awarding points if this post was helpful or correct

Jase McCarty - @jasemccarty
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