Licensing

[Rhidian]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me how much licensing would cost for an ESX 3.5 license for a server with 4 quad core processors also a vCenter with vMotion, HA and Fault Tolerance features?

Regards,

P.S

Is it me or is the main VMware site horrible to navigate?

[AntonVZhbankov · Accepted solution]

You need vSphere Advanced license for VMotion, HA and FT. Do not forget that FT is not supported on 3.5.

vSphere Advanced costs about $2700 per socket with 1 year gold support, you can not buy license without support, so it's minimal price. Plus vCenter.

vCenter Foundation (manages up to 3 hosts) is about $2200, and vCenter Standard (without any limitations) is about $6300, 1 year gold support included.

So, you need to multiply price by number of sockets in all your ESX hosts and add vCenter.

You'll have VMotion and HA working only if you have 2 or more hosts and shared storage.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[Rhidian]

Thanks, do all the features I require from ESX and vCenter come in the Standard options?

[weinstein5]

For ESX no FT and vMotion is not part of the vSphere Standard License - vCentere, both versions, will do it - this document should help understanding tVMware's licensing - http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

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[AntonVZhbankov]

vCenter Standard supports all the options, but you need appropriate license for each host you want to support particular option. So, vCenter is just a centralized management server.

You need HA license must be on all hosts you want to include in HA cluster. VMotion license must be on all hosts you want to move VM between.

HA, VMotion and FT are included to vSphere Advanced. But take a look at Enterprise Plus - you might want something more, like DRS or Storage VMotion.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[Rhidian]

I can bundle the vCenter foundation is it worth the price saving?

[weinstein5]

IF the driving factor is saving money then yes it probably is worht it - Foundation does everything the standard version does but it limits the number of ESX Servers you can manage to 3 - so if you think in the near term you are will have more than 3 ESX hosts I would go with the standard license -

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