Virtual Center 2.x / MSCS / Licensing Question

[pllove]

I have searched the forums and have found a couple references. One say you need 2 licenses and the other inidcates that there is a Best practices guide that says in a 2 node MSCS cluster for Virtual Center you only need 1 VC license. I am trying to find out the correct answer.

We have an Enterprise Licence for VI3.

Anyone know the definate answer for this. I was not able to find the referenced best practice guide mentioned. I was able to find the MSCS guide for setting up a cluster for Virtual Center, but it did not mention aything about licensing for virtual center.

Thanks

[Troy_Clavell]

virtual center requires a single license per VC. Meaning if you have two VC servers, you need two VC licenses.

[pllove]

We are not really running 2 VC servers. The 2nd is a passive node in a 2 node Microsoft cluster. It wold only be running if the 1st one failes. I looked in the pdf file you attached (admin guide) and also the Install guide and neither one is clear on the licensing. Neither one addresses Virtula Center Server running in a Microsoft Cluster Config.

[Troy_Clavell]

I found this as well... I haven't had a chance to read all of it, and I'm unsure if you've seen it, but here you go.

[pllove]

Yes I did find this yesterday and read thru the entire thing. It does not address licensing at all.:-( And it makes it sound like you can not chage the install path to a shared drive.:-(

Thanks anyhow!

[MiloGancarz]

I think the answer depends on whether VMware licenses installed VC software or running the installed software instances. I don't think the argument of not running installed software is normally valid for not licensing that software. MSCS requires software installation on both nodes. Also - how would VC license work? Wouldn't each inactive node go into a license grace period, and wouldn't there be need for as many licenses as there are nodes?

I'm curious as to your reasons for clustering VC - and which services will you cluster. I recall documentation from another non-VMware product that uses the same licensing software stating that clustering the license service is pointless.

Milo

[pllove]

Some of the reasons for clustering:

- Business requirement for HA/redudancy

- VMWare VI3 HA behaved differently if the Virtual Center is not available

- If virtual center is down you loose the abiltiy to vmotion guest.

Look a few post up there is a VMWare document for clustering the Virtual Center and License manager.

[cgdii]

We have VirtualCenter 2.02 running on a Veritas Cluster Server environment and it appears to only be using 1 VC license even though it has run on both nodes at one time or another. It is an Activew Passive Cluster, and we are running the MS SQL 2005 DB on the opposite Cluster Node. As far as I can tell, only one VirtualCenter license is required.

As for which Services we cluster, we cluster the License Server Service, VirtualCenter Service, and WebAccess Service with a custom script to replicate the configuration files that are in the All Users Directory. Thjis is all outlined in the VC_MSCS.pdf file linked earlier in this thread.

Hope this helps.

[cgdii]

We have VirtualCenter 2.02 running on a Veritas Cluster Server environment and it appears to only be using 1 VC license even though it has run on both nodes at one time or another. It is an Activew Passive Cluster, and we are running the MS SQL 2005 DB on the opposite Cluster Node. As far as I can tell, only one VirtualCenter license is required.

As for which Services we cluster, we cluster the License Server Service, VirtualCenter Service, and WebAccess Service with a custom script to replicate the configuration files that are in the All Users Directory. Thjis is all outlined in the VC_MSCS.pdf file linked earlier in this thread.

Hope this helps.

[eric_heilig]

I understand your concern for clusterning VirtualCenter but I do not think you need to worry about the license server. If VC loses connection to the license server, the system should roll into a 14-day grace period before anything stops working. Frankly, if you cannot reinstall your license server in 14 days then you have larger issues.

As for the license server itself, VMware uses FlexLM which is widely utilized for software with "floating licenses". I haven't ever tried it but by principle you should be able to run your licensing services from any FlexLM server.

Eric

[AndyTheo]

If you are using Active/Passive mode for clustering VC, then you only need a single VC license. The PDF does not clearly state this. Be sure to set your config files to use the VC cluster address and store in a shared location, or make copies of the file resident on both servers

[CNIX]

You only need 1 vCenter License when you setup MSCS.