vSphere licensing - advice needed

[olliraa]

I've been trying to get in contact with the sales support without luck. Eventually I decided to ask it here, because I need the information as soon as possible.

Here are the specs:

-One physical server with the following CPU

Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10 GHz
Logical Processors16
Sockets1
Cores per socket8
Hyper Threading Enabled

-Need to run 16 vCPUs -> virtualize two 8 core setups.

What would be the vSphere license, that we need to run that setup? I'm really confused regarding the (v)CPUs/cores etc. A license configurator on the website would be of great help

Thank you in advance!

[scott28tt · Accepted solution]

Your physical server has 1 socket with less than 32 cores, so you just need 1 license.

You could use a vSphere Hypervisor license - it's free but has no support, a maximum of 8 vCPUs per VM, no management via vCenter Server, and no backup APIs.

If you want support, or to get beyond any of the other vSphere Hypervisor limitations, you need a paid-for license - the various editions are discussed in this paper.

[IRIX201110141]

Thats easy.

vSphere ESXi Hypervisor(the free one): max. limited to 8vCPU per VM. Thats fits your needs. There is no limit how much Logic CPU the Hosts have.

vSphere Essentials Bundle: no vCPU limits per VM. Its a license bundle for up to 3 Hosts with 2 Sockets each and a vCenter essentials. Main reason to buy it to unlock the APIs for Backup and Monitoring and getting a vCenter. Costs around 500,-  and a 60,-Subscription per year which give you access to patches and the latest major release. So 60 bucks per year cover all (software) upgrade costs.

Regards,
Joerg

[olliraa]

Thank you, this is the info I was looking for

[olliraa]

Thank you, this is the info I was looking for

I'd mark this also as the Correct answer, but apparently you can only select one.

[a_p_]

Although the main question has already be answerd, please allow me a comment regarding

-Need to run 16 vCPUs -> virtualize two 8 core setups.

The fact that the physical hardware which you want to virtualize has 8 cores, doesn't necessarily mean that the VMs need 8 cores too. This actually depends on the machine's workload, and I've rarely seen systems which continuously run at 100% CPU load.

ESXi schedules the CPU resources very well, so that you will be able to run more than just the two systems on the host.

André