inquiry about SRM Licensing

[RUG201110141]

I'm looking at setting SRM up for our primary datacenter. Looking at some docs for SRM I see that you need to license each processor in the ESX host for SRM that will fail virtual machines over to a failover site. If I want those vm's to come back to the primary datacenter after the disaster has occurred and everything is back to normal do I need to license the ESX servers in the failover site for SRM also?

[Paul_de_Vries]

Russ,

A few aspects play a role for SRM licensing:

In the case where protection is bidirectional (so, both sites are continuous protecting each other), Site Recovery Manager licenses need to be purchased for the protecting :smileyalert: ESX servers at both sites.

This means, that ESX hosts running protected VMs at both sites need SRM licenses (counted per socket). Quite obvious, as both sites have protecting ESX hosts

A different situation and probably the one you describe is as follows:

If, after failover is performed from Protected Site A to Recovery Site B,

new recovery plans are created to enable failback from Site B to Site A to restore the old situation,

Site Recovery Manager licenses are required for the servers running the virtual machines at Site B that are protected by those plans.

The licenses originally used at Site A can be used at Site B for this purpose as long as the licenses are no longer in use at Site A.

Hope this helps answering your question, regards, Paul de Vries

[admin]

Hi Russ,

Paul is correct:

In order to failback from Site B to Site A, you need a license installed at Site B. You may swap Site A and Site B's license if necessary in order to stay in compliance.

Jason

[depping]

if you have active / active where you can failover from a -> b and b -> a you will need to have all hosts(both sides) licensed. if you, and this is your situation, are running active / standby in other words a -> b than rebuild SRM on b and do b -> a you don't need the additional licenses.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[edawg]

I am planning on running active/passive DR sites so that clarifies the srm cpu license question and I know I need a vcenter license at both sites but can you tell me how many srm server licenses I will need? I am assuming since I need a srm server at both sitest I will need two srm server licenses. Is that right ? Also, wondering if you have ball park numbers for the srm cpu license and srm server license costs as I am putting a high level cost proposal together to get management to buy off on srm.

Thank you in advance,

Erik

[admin]

Hi Erik,

In SRM 4.0, there is no longer a product-only license. The product is considered licensed if it has a CPU license assigned to it. I do not have ballpark numbers for the licenses.

Also, if you use "Linked" vCenter servers and your SRM servers are in the same linked group, the two SRM servers may share the same license key.

Jason

[edawg]

Thank you Jason-

Just to restate to be sure I have it right. If I plan on using 2 ESX hosts each with two physical processors and a linked SRM server I would need to buy 4 SRM single processor licenses and one SRM server license?

Sorry for the redundancy I just want to be sure I am understanding correctly.

Erik

[admin]

Hi Erik,

Everything appears to be correct, except that in SRM 4.0, there is no server license anymore. Keep in mind that if you are doing active-active, you'll need enough licenses for both sites.

Jason

[tomtom1]

I dont want to add more complexity to this - You also need to understand your cluster design.

Lets say that - You have 3 hosts in the Cluster and you want to protect only few Vms from the cluster. But still you will have to use license for all the ESX server.

So, if you have quad core processor and with 3 esx server, you will end up having 12 srm license and just few vm crotected.

Correct me all, if this is wrong.

Thanks

[edawg]

Just to clarify. When you say a quad core processor are you referring to a single processor with 4 cores? It is my understanding the SRM license is based on physical processors not cores? Doing the math 3 hosts each with a single quad core would equal 3 SRM licenses.

[tomtom1]

Sorry for the confusion, I meant a 4 sockets and each socket has 4 cores