vCenter and ESXi installed on VMs

[cristinelcurea]

Hello,

for a specific project I need to test some PowerCLI scripts.

For that, I can buy the Essential kit where I will be able to install one vCenter and maximum 3ESXi servers.

My question is: what happen if I will install the vCenter and on or two ESXi servers directly on Virtual Machines (all located on my workstation).

The question is related with "portability" of these VMs.

Can I start the VMs (the vCenter server and 2 ESXi servers) on different Physical machines (workstation)?

Is there any restriction from the licensing perspective?

best regards

Cristi

[scott28tt · Accepted solution]

If you ran them concurrently, you would be violating the licence agreement - 1 set at a time and I wouldn't see an issue.

[cristinelcurea]

I don't need to run simultaneously.

I need 1 vCenter and minimum 2 ESXi servers.

All VMs are stored on a mobile HDD.

I want to be sure that if I need to work on different workstations (not in the same time - but in different locations), there is no licensing implication, as long as the license key is installed on the VM(s) and not on physical machine(s) (my workstations).

[NathanosBlightc]

You can deploy your required VMs in both of mentioned methods: In the same physical system or run into the different systems and connect them without any special issue. For your cencerns about the vmware product licensing, I suggest to use all of them in the evaluation mode, complete your pilot phase and then based on your required products, decide for the Licensing. 

[cristinelcurea]

First issue on the current implementation:

if you install an ESXi on a VM, the number of cores are equal with number of sockets.

So, you can't have ESXi servers with more than 2 cores (vCPU) per ESXi (in case of Essential kit license).

thanks