Licensing - what should I purchase..?

[bushtor]

Hi,

We are an educational institution. We recently purchased two Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers with 2 quad core CPUs in each. Both also included:

VMWare ESXi v3.5 Upd.v2 2CPU license embedded

VMWare ESXi v3.5 Upd.v2 2CPU 1yr SnS

Later I have downloaded and used VMware vCenter Converter Standalone to move one server from physical to virtual. I understood that it was free to use.

Currently we have 4 VMs in each host and we manage each host with their own instance of VIC.

We would like one centralized admin console for both hosts (need VCenter?)

We would like to ability to move VMs from one host to the other in case of hw failure.

We need a possibility to backup the VMs each night so we quickly can get up and running again after a disaster.

We currently don't have any plans for cloud computing (don't need VSphere?).

Which VMWare 'features' can we download and use for free to partly solve our needs above?

Which VMWare 'features' do we need to purchase in order to get the above functionality...?

Thanks a lot for comments and tips

regards Tor

[Gerrit_Lehr]

This should answer your questions all together:

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html

ESXi is free (which you have). Everything else must be purchased. HA is the ability to power up VMs on another hst automaticly if one host goes down. VMotion is needed to move running VMs between hosts.

Kind regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[VMmatty · Accepted solution]

For your situation, I would look into the new vSphere Essentials bundles. They offer bundles that are very affordable for small businesses yet still provide you with the features you're looking for. I would look at vSphere Essentials Plus for your environment (see the link below for more info):

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/small-business/buy.html

This bundle provides you with licenses for 3 x 2 CPU hosts running either ESX or ESXi. It also provides vCenter Server for Essentials, which provides centralized management for up to three ESX hosts. It also includes VMware HA which would satisfy your requirement of needing to move VMs from one host to another in the event of a hardware failure. And finally it includes VMware's data protection backup software (backup to disk) which can provide you with virtual machine backup options. To be honest the third party solutions (like Veeam Backup or Vizioncore vRanger) are better.

I think it's really worth looking into the vSphere Essentials Plus bundle for your environment.