VI3 General Confusion

[nomorefood]

Hello Everyone. I'm a long time VMWare Workstation user now venturing into the Virtual Infrastructure products.

I recently purchased three HP DL380 G5 servers with ESX Server Enterprise VI3 2P preinstalled (not cheap). Upon arrival, my first surprise came when installing the accompanying VI3 CD. It seems that VirtualCenter Server seems to be independently licensed. Does this seem right?

After connecting to the ESX Server from the VI Client, the ESX Server lists its license as ‘ESX Enterprise Server Standalone'. What does standalone mean in this context? Did I purchase the wrong license if I want to use technologies such as VMotion?

What additional products do I need to purchase in order to use VirtualCenter and utilize VMotion?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

- Bryan

[Jasemccarty · Accepted solution]

To get all the features of VI3 Enterprise, you licensed the servers correctly.

But you still have to shell out $$$ for the VirtualCenter server license. And also a SQL/Oracle instance to install it against, and a Windows server license for the box it runs on.

You got all the parts of the body, just not the brain.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[nomorefood]

When I installed the VirtualCenter Server (unlicensed), it appeared to install a MS SQL server for me. You mention a seperate instance of it -- is the one provided with the installation not adequate or not properly licensed?

[Jasemccarty]

It actually installs SQL 2005 Express, which will work, for minimal environments, but VMware doesn't support it in production. And SQL 2005 Express is free.

It may run ok for you for a short while, but you will want to upgrade to at least SQL 2005 Standard.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[XFoS]

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vi_brochure.pdf shows the different versions of VI that are available, and which features are licensed under each package. It says that VirtualCentre isn't included in any of the packages, it needs to be licensed seperately, but I was always under the impression that the Enterprise package did include it (it's licensed per ESX server, and I thought that each ESX Enterprise license came with a ESX server license for VirtualCentre.

Regarding VC's database, as already noted, VMware don't support using MSDE/SQL Express in a production environment - ideally you should set up a DSN on the VC server to point to a remote SQL 2000 or 2005 server. Keep the licensing server on the VC server though, as it means VC will almost never lose track of licenses (I strongly advise using the licensing server rather than host based licensing). Also be aware that some other products (Citrix IIRC) use the same licensing server software as VMware, and they cannot co-exist on the same server.

[matuscak]

FWIW, my impression is that using SQL Server 2005 Express is indeed supported for (small) production use. This is different from MSDE, which they rightly regarded as a joke.

For example, see pages 14, 19, and 65 in the "ESX Server 3 and VirtualCenter Installation Guide Update 2 Release for ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5" manual where there are statements like:

"NOTE VMware recommends Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express for small deployments only (up to 5 hosts and 50 virtual machines)."

[depping]

Matuscak is right, MS SQL Express is supported for small environments.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

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