VMware vSphere Essentials Kit with Dell supplied ESXi 6.0 U3

[mnew]

Will this work? Dell will only sell me the plus version. I just want to be able to run Veeam back solution and this will not work with the free ESXi licence.

I'm happy to pay but this is a small company and £4K is a little too rich for us.

[daphnissov]

I'm not clear what it is you mean by "work" in this instance. Are you asking if Veeam will work with vSphere Essentials and not Plus?

[a_p_]

Dell will only sell me the plus version.

If the Essentials Kit is all you need (i.e. no need for the features in the Plus edition), you can purchase the Essentials Kit e.g. directly from the VMware shop site. Licenses are not vendor specific.

André

[mnew]

So as I understand it. If I go to the VMware shop, buy a copy of Essestials that will give me a licence code whic I can use to replace the free licence code on the DEll supplied ESXi? And all my backup problems will go away

[mnew]

No I want to know if the licence code from Essentials from VMWare shop will work with the pre-installed ESXi on my new Dells

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Yes, The Essentials Kits come with 1 license for vCenter Server for Essentials, and 6 CPU licenses for up to 3 hosts with a maximum of two physical processors each.

André

PS: No need to use vCenter Server, if you don't want/need it. You can assign the CPU licenses directly to a host.

[daphnissov]

Yes, as André said, license keys are not vendor specific and the Essentials key you get directly from VMware can be used on top of any hardware. Essentials as a minimum, as you've noted, is required to "unlock" the vSphere APIs for Data Protection (VADP) which are used by Veeam and other backup products.

[mnew]

Thanks for your help. Just bought  Essentials and applied the licence key and Veeam is happily now doing backups.

I can now enjoy Christmas!