Problem adding more than three ESXi-hosts to VCSA

[ManP3082]

Hi together

We have VMWare farm with ESXi-Hosts (vSphere Enterprise), administrated in a vCenter Standard VCSA.

Everything's fine.

We have also some branch ESXi-Hosts (vSphere Essentials), three of them administrated in a vCenter Essentials VCSA.

But now there was a fourth branch ESXi-Hosts (vSphere Essentials) installed, and when I'm trying to add it in the VCSA, it tells me that only three hosts are able to administrated in this VCSA version.

My question is: is there any option, where I'm able to administrate all branch Essential ESXi-hosts in one VCSA?

Thank you guys

[berndweyand · Accepted solution]

yes - but you have to purchase new enterprise+ licenses to manage these host in your vcenter-standard. essentials only supports up to 3 hosts

[ManP3082]

so the only way to manage four ESXi Essential Hosts is to create two Essential VCSAs for them?

[scott28tt]

This should help you: vCenter Server Licensing Options - VMware vSphere Blog

[ManP3082]

Great overview over the different versions of vCenter.

Last question: can I add my Essential hosts to my Standard VCSA (maybe in a different cluster as the Standard Hosts)?

[berndweyand]

yes - you can place these host in any organizational location you want. you must only purchase standard- or enterprise-licenses to be able to integrate these hosts in the vcsa-standard

[scott28tt]

You can only manage "Essentials" hosts with an "Essentials" vCenter Server.

As soon as you use a "Standard" vCenter Server, you have to allocate different licenses to your hosts (not "Essentials" licenses).