Product Confusion

[tomdavidsonjr]

I have a client who is currently using the free version of ESXi 5.5.  I want to migrate him to a fully paid version of 6.5 with vCenter.  They are a small shop - the server is a Dell PowerEdge R720XD with 192 GB RAM, one CPU with 6 cores and 12 TB of disk space.  But the server will only be running two Microsoft Server 2016 Standard VM's (one AD and one Exchange), and three (3) Linux servers.  I have been trying to figure out which VMWare product is best, and I have narrowed it down to  either VMware vSphere Standard without vCenter or VMware vSphere Essentials Kit.

My understanding of vSphere Standard is that I can run any number of virtual machines on it as it is licensed by physical CPU socket and not by cores. That  means (as I understand it) that with vSphere standard I can have 5 VMs with as many cores as the system will support (in my case, 1 physical with 6 cores plus hyper-threading gives me 12).  This is how I currently have the existing VMs running on the free version of 5.5 (the two Windows servers each have two Virtual CPUs with 2 virtual cores and the Linux servers have one virtual CPU and two virtual cores each).  But the Essentials kit says "It includes 6 CPU licenses of vSphere Essentials (for 3 servers with up to 2 processors each) ", and I can't find anywhere that says if the 3 servers are 3 physical servers or 3 virtual servers.

If I buy the Essentials Kit, can I run 5 virtuals? And how many virtual processors/cores can each have?

Thanks in advance to the community for your help!  I have been trying to get in touch with Sales by phone and I keep getting dumped into a full voicemail box.

Tom

[mutchlerr · Accepted solution]

Tom,

An Essentials Kit will give you a vCenter Server license + 6 CPUs of vSphere Essentials.  Keep in mind, Essentials does not provide vMotion, so if you added additional hosts, you would not have the ability to use vMotion to move between hosts.  The minimum level for vMotion is Essentials Plus.

Check out Server Virtualization Software | vSphere | VMware to compare editions of vSphere.

A host requires a vSphere license per CPU, so with a Kit, you can run 3 physical hosts of 2 CPUs each.  You would not have a limit on the number of VMs running on those hosts.  You would be limited by the resources in the servers - RAM, CPU utilization, disk.  Don't worry about your cores for VMs for your vSphere license.

Consider if you need to add a host in the future - if you have an Essentials Kit, you would have the ability to have more than one host.  Having a vCenter would give you centralized management for multiple hosts.  If you just get a 2 CPU license for Standard, you will have 1 host with no vCenter.  With Standard, you will have Storage vMotion, but on a single host with local storage, it won't be of much use.

My advice - If you foresee adding a host in the next couple years, get the kit.  If you think 1 host will be sufficient, then get the single host.  If you are thinking about a SAN in the future, you should go Essentials Plus and give yourself the flexibility of vMotion in the future.  Also, the list price for an Essentials Kit is about half of a Standard License.  You will save yourself some license costs by getting the kit instead of Standard. ($495 vs $995/CPU)

Take a look at the features and think about what you would need from a feature perspective.  That should direct you to the license you would need.

[tomdavidsonjr]

Thank you!  You answered all of my questions with clarity!  Since I'm new to the community, I am not sure what to do with an answered question.  Is there a way to mark it "Answered" and award you points? :smileylaugh:

Update: Found the "Mark as Correct" button!  Thanks again!