VMware Cloud Community
anatanotenshi
Contributor
Contributor
‎05-29-2009 08:32 AM

About licences and portability

Hi there.

I have some questions..

First, what does it mean to have a floating licence?, second, is there any problem for porting (or just mounting) from ESXi to ESX an viceversa, do you have to make a conversion??

Thanks a lot.

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4 Replies
mehul96
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎05-29-2009 08:47 AM

In general, a 'floating' license means that license is not specifically tied to a computing resource but is served by a license server from a 'pool' when requested by a client and is returned to the pool when no longer required by the client.

Portability depends on how licensing is implemented by a vendor. For example if vendor uses a license file and matches product/release/feature at runtime, than mismatched clients cannot get a license and hence it is not portable. If you are asking specifically about VMware, ESX and ESXi license are not portable for 3.5 (ESXi uses serial number while ESX uses license file)

Mehul

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weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal
‎05-29-2009 09:01 AM

But if you are using a license server it serve licenses either to ESXi or ESX - so in the sense there is no need for conversion with a license server be used as you source -

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anatanotenshi
Contributor
Contributor
‎05-29-2009 09:43 AM

Thanks.

I ask because my VI licence server says that the licence is floating and has a date of December of 2010. So I'm afraid of it being useless on that date...

VMware licences have an expiration??

I made a mistake using the term portability, I was only trying to say changing a VM from a ESX host to ESXi or viceversa. Forgeting the licences fact, is there trouble at mounting that VM between OSs, have to convert or something?

Thanks again.

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weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal
‎05-29-2009 09:57 AM

VMware licenses do not expire - I believe it means that after that date you will no longer be eligible to upgrade the license -

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