vSphere Essentials - How many VMs can we have?

[virtualit76]

Hey, I usually use Hyper V and have a question for the VMware pro's around licensing. I've read a lot but still unsure on the following

We have the following server (spec below) - how many VM's can be run using a VMware vSphere Essentials license? Is it just 6 VM's with a single core assigned?

CPU Cores: 12 x 1.95GHz

Processor Sockets: 2

Cores per socket: 6

Logical processors: 24

RAM:16GB

[scott28tt]

As many as you want up to the point where your resource contention becomes a constraint on performance.

In order words, with vSphere you can overcommit on compute resources - CPU and memory.

Get an understanding of the compute resource demands of whatever OS/apps you will run in your VMs, size the VMs appropriately (as few resources as will give you the OS/app performance you want), then you'll be able to work out the answer to your "how many VMs?" question.

[virtualit76]

Ok thanks for the quick response. Whats confused me is an external IT company have told us we need a new license because we have 6 VM's currently and want to add an additional VM. 

The RAM would be close to the limit but we could easily add more and then setup the VM, they want to move us onto a temp server whilst they switch license.

What made me think this was correct was this snippet on the License page, so I assume they think its 1 CPU per VM?

It includes 6 CPU licenses of vSphere Essentials

[a_p_]

... an external IT company have told us we need a new license ...

Not for vSphere (as already mentioned). However, additional/different guest OS licensing may be required to run more guest VMs (e.g. Windows Server).

André

[scott28tt]

What made me think this was correct was this snippet on the License page, so I assume they think its 1 CPU per VM?

It includes 6 CPU licenses of vSphere Essentials

Your vSphere licenses are for your physical servers (hosts) - have a look here: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-vsphere-vs...