vSAN Licensing Requirement

[zayaan]

I am in process In developing a proposal for a virtualization project centered on vSAN 7.x and vSphere 7.x, This involves establishing clusters in each branch office and a central cluster at the main location, with a specific emphasis on incorporating OEM licensing.

Throughout the data gathering phase, certain client specifications were identified: •

• vSAN serving as the primary storage solution in both primary and remote locations. Implementation of vSAN in an all-flash configuration.
• Ensuring all virtual machines are protected against host failure, with some necessitating zero-downtime protection.
• Mandatory load balancing across all nodes in the cluster for all virtual machines. Replication of virtual machines from remote offices to the primary site.
• Encryption to be applied to specific virtual machines.

My doubts is

Virtual distributed switches are included with vSAN licenses, enabling the construction of a vSAN cluster using vSphere Standard licenses or do we need Enterprise plus license for this requirement

[zchris06]

Hi,
This is the Liscensing guide for VSAN. https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vsan/vmware-vsan-licensin...

Please note that this is for V8. I’m not sure if you’re still able to purchase V7 and with the recent acquisition, these will be subscription based. 

As for some of your requirements, VDS is available in Standard but since you also require encryption, you will need Enterprise or Ent Plus licensing.

Hope this helps. 

[pcgeek2009]

You should just go ahead and plan for 8. That is the licensing that is currently being sold from Broadcom\VMware. Since the Broadcom acquisition, they have been working on changing the licensing. Based on what you are describing for your remote offices, VMware Essentials should work since you can get "HCI" bundles that will include what you need for networking, host, and VSAN licensing. If you do not have your production site operational yet, what you will need there will likely depend on the number of host, VM's, etc. Like I mentioned above though, there is a lot that is in the process of changing and pushing everyone to subscription based licensing. 

https://core.vmware.com/vmware-vsan-licensing-guide

[Kinnison]

Hello,

In my opinion it would be better to involve a VAR because both the licensing model and the product lineup have been thoroughly revised according to what is written here: https://news.vmware.com/company/vmware-by-broadcom-business-transformation
Personally, I doubt that taking documents referring to previous licensing models as a reference would be concretely useful.

Regards,
Ferdinando