vmware vsphere standard and enterprise hosts in same cluster

[slord]

For our normal production ESXi 4.1 servers we use the Enterprise Plus licensing and do the basic many VMs to one host, DRS, distributed switches, etc.

What I am also thinking of doing is having ESXi servers using the Standard VMware licensing in the same cluster.  This is for the particular case of having only 1 VM per host where I only want the HA and vMotion features.

Now do I need to split these VMware Standard ESXi servers off into their own cluster or can they be a part of the ESXi servers cluster group that run the Enterprise Plus license but obviously only take advantage of the features they are licensed for?

[maishsk]

This is not possible they all need to be at the same license level

[slord]

I thought as much, but I could not find anything explicitly stating that.

Thanks

[slord]

Do you see any issues with Enterprise Plus and Standard licensed ESX servers in the same VMware Datacenter.  I ask because of the distributed switch.  I know the Standard licensed servers cannot use it but I want to make sure there are no issues and that even though the servers are in separate Cluster Groups they will not have issues with still being in the same Datacenter.

[maishsk]

There are no issues at all, the dvSwitch will only be installed on the Hosts that it is attached to. For those which do not have the corrent license level, it will not touch.

They live perfectly well side-by-side

[slord]

Thanks again