Licensing question

[SamWiseTx]

This weekend I finished installing our first ESX server and I am now hosting 3 new VM production servers running 1 SQL application and 2 terminal servers.

Everything is working to perfection. We are running Foundation with a 2 processor license. This project was really not planned by my team and the software vendor pretty much sold the complete hardware and software which pissed me off.

Now a new project is the plans and I would like to also deploy it on a new ESX server. My question is in regards to the licensing.

I checked several vendors and none of them could give me a straight answer in regards to the options I could get.

I was looking into purchasing a new VMware Infrastructure Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit for 4 processors (2-VI3 Standard, 1-vCenter Server Foundation) + Gold (12x5) 1 Year Support

My existing server has 2 processors and my next server is also going to come with 2 processors. My question is can I use the this kit and use the 4 processors without having to purchase an additional upgrade from my existing Foundation license?

If that occurs, that means that my foundation license will be available. Can I use this license to install a new ESx server although it would not be part of this 2 node cluster/

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated

Thanks

[rriva · Accepted solution]

IMHO definitely YES.

VMware licensing is not related to your hardware, so you could use your license wherever you want on your infrastructure, So you should use your new 4 socket license for create an HA cluster and use your foundation license for a new esx machine that will not be a part of the cluster.

Riccardo Riva

VCP,RHCE,FCNSA

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[Erik_Zandboer]

Hi,

You are now looking at a starter license with HA. That will work on a foundation environment, but why not go for foundation licenses? I suspect you have no means of shared storage between the hosts, in which case you cannot use HA anyway (shared storage is a prerequisite for HA to work).

Also look at , there you can see which license can do what.

Edit: The license you are looking at includes another vCenter foundation license. So you'll end up with two licenses for vCenter. I would not start out like that, and keep both ESX nodes managed by the same vCenter server. Also, it includes 4 socket licenses where you need only two!

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[weinstein5]

The answer is yes - you will be able to stand up a third dual processor ESX server in your environemnt -

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[SamWiseTx]

Actually I do plan to have external shared storage. I am currently getting quoted from hardware vendors to obtain a 4 TB iSCI device.

My plan is to use the 4 TB iSCSI with my 2 esx hosts and then eventually upgrade my foundation license standard and have a 3 host HA cluster.

[SamWiseTx]

Erik, thanks for your post.

If I do not go with a Acceleration kit, then I would need to purchase VCenter seperately.

If I just buy a standar license with 2 processor support, then Vcenter is not included.

[Erik_Zandboer]

Hi,

To my understanding you were already using vCenter, am I right? As far as I know you should be able to use your current vCenter license in conjunction with starter or even enterprise ESX licenses. vCenter Foundation is only limited in the number of hosts that can be managed.

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[SamWiseTx]

Erik,

No I do not have Vcenter at this moment. since we only have a foundation server we did not purchase a vcenter license.

That was why I was looking at the Standard kit which comes with Vcenter and 4 processor licenses.

My plan is to use 2 of those processor licenses on my existing esx server and 2 other for my new server.

that means that I will be left with 1 foundation license that can later be upgraded to standard to be part of this 2 node cluster.

My boss just left to talk with our execuvtive board to try to sell this and hopefully get it approved.

Wish me luck guys!!!

SAM

[Erik_Zandboer]

Best of luck!! Any which way, I think you have enough insight into VI licensing now

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