What licensing do I need to buy for VMware View?

[rellis123]

Hello,

I have a specific question on View licensing. Although there is a lot of documentation and FAQ's, together with many Blogs and Articles, I have found nothing that gives a definitive, explicit answer to this question.

We have a vSphere 4.0 Standard edition DataCenter consisting of two physical servers. Each of the servers is dual-CPU. We are therefore licensed with 4 Standard Edition license keys.

We have now purchased an additional, identical server, which will become the third member of the vSphere 4 Standard edition Datacenter. My understanding is that to license this extra server, we simply need to purchase 2 more Standard Edition per-cpu license keys. No problem there.

So once that is done, we will have a fully-licensed, 3-node, 6-cpu vSphere 4.0 Standard edition DataCenter.

We want to license the Premier Edition of View for 20 virtual desktops, in such a way that we have full HA, i.e. we can move desktops between any of the three nodes within the DataCenter (albeit we have only HA not vMotion.)

What exact licensing (including VMWare Part Numbers) do we need to buy for View?

My educated guesswork is that we need only buy 2, 10-desktop View Add-On licenses, but nowhere is this explicitly stated. For example, the View Licensing Guide states that the Starter Kit represents an "End-to-End" solution, therefore implying that we do not need to buy it because we already have the Standard Edition of vSphere. But nowhere is this explicitly stated.

Any help gratefully received.

Robert

[mittim12]

If you already own existing licenses of vSphere that you want to use you only need to purchase the add on licenses.   The end to end kits and bundles that come with vSphere for desktops will allow you licenses to run the desktops on vSphere but will limit those vSphere host to desktop workloads. 

So in short you can buy those types of bundles and you are automatically covered to run as my host as it takes for your license count or you can simply just your already purchased licenses in conjunction with the add-on license.

[rellis123]

So in short you can buy those types of bundles and you are automatically covered to run as my host as it takes for your license count or you can simply just your already purchased licenses in conjunction with the add-on license.

Hi

Thank you for replying. I think that is helpful but I am not still not 100% sure what I should be buying.

There is no need for me to buy a Bundle or Kit for View, whatsoever, is there?

All I need to do is buy the "Add-On" license for View, and absolutely nothing else, even though at present I am not licensed for View whatsoever?

Is that correct?

Does anyone know exactly what Product Numbers I need?   If I can get 3 or 4 posters with a consensus on here as to exactly what I need to buy, I will be much happier. It all feels like guesswork at the moment.

thanks

Robert

[eeg3]

If you want the Premier Edition 10-Pack Add-On with Support, the codes we used were:

VU4-PR-A10-C   VMware View 4 Premier Add-On: 10 pack

VU4-PR-A10-P-SSS-C   Production Support/Subscription for VMware View 4 Premier Desktop Add-On - 10 desktop VMs for 1 year

[mittim12]

I'm sure we will have some other posters to respond so that shouldn't be a problem.   The View Add-on licenses will license you for concurrent usage of the View environment which consist of connection broker and security server.

It might be wise to find a sales representative to assist you in determing how much money could be saved by getting a bundle.  It's best practice to separate your View environment from your Server environment.   The bundle would include vCenter and the vSphere licenses.    Could potentially be money savings down the road.   

[tom_elder]

Don't forget to license your desktop OS

Microsoft wants you to pay them $100.00 per thin client / view desktop per year unless you have software assurance already