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itadmin2
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Contributor

Question regarding upgrading/licencing

I am trying to find some information about upgrading our current ESX 3.5 system and which licences to purchase. Despite several e-mails to the sales department and a couple of phone calls, no one at VMWare seems to be interested in selling me anything so I turn to the guys that use the product every day. Here is my dilema. I have 1 ESX server running 3.5 Enterprise on a server with dual quad-core processors. All I need to know is what equivalent licences to purchase for ESX 4. Since they changed stuff over to vSphere at some point, I can't figure out what I need. Thanks for you time in reading this and I look forward to any help you guys can offer. Cheers.

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a_p_
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Leadership

With VI3 1 license for ESX usually was for 2 CPU's. With vSphere 4 this changed to single CPU licensing, so the equivalent for your environment would be 2 Enterprise licenses (one license per physical CPU).

If you have active SnS (or had active SnS when vSphere 4 was launched) your licenses were automatically converted to vSphere licenses in your VMware account.

If you didn't have SnS, the way to upgrade your current VI3 license is to ask a VMware reseller for an offer. Tell them which licenses you own and when SnS expired.

BTW: What features of ESX are you using / do you need? There are several different editions and depending on what you need, you could probably save a lot of money. See Compare vSphere Editions for Mid-size and Enterprise Businesses

André

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itadmin2
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The reason for the upgrade is because we are looking at adding a SAN to our network and I want to use iSCSI to connect to it for storage. I did a bunch of digging and found out that iSCSI in ESX 3.5 is limited speed wise ( see this article: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/01/a-multivendor-post-to-help-our-mutual-iscsi-cust... . In order to get around this, upgrading looks to be the best bet. Currently, all we use is VI Client and the converter with the server, so I might be able to get away without even using Enterprise.

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TomHowarth
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Moving to a more appropiate f orum

If you found this or any other answer useful please consider the use of the Helpful or correct buttons to award points

Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author on "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://www.amazon.co.uk/VMware-VSphere-Virtual-Infrastructure-Security/dp/0137158009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256146240&sr=1-1]”.

Contributing author on "[VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410|http://www.amazon.co.uk/VMware-Certified-Professional-VSphere-Study/dp/0470569611]”.

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
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HannaL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This is also a great resource to research what you need:

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/licensing.html

Hope that helps,

Hanna

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VCP2, VCP VI3, VCP vSphere

Hope that helps, Hanna --- BSCS, VCP2, VCP VI3, VCP vSphere, VCP 5 https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/vmware-support-ibm
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