Running vShield Edge

[BobD01]

Hi,

I have ESXi 5.5 3 clusters, only one of who's hosts are licensed for Enterprise Plus, the other two are Standard.  My question is that if I want to use vShield Edge for load balancing can I upgrade the Ent Plus license to vCloud Suite but run the Edge device itself on a host in one of the standard clusters?  I think it will be OK but don't want to recommend spending out on the vCloud Suite license only to find the edge device cannot run on a standard ESXi host.  I also understand that you can no longer license vCNS separately now, it has to be part of the vCloud Suite, I also think I will need vCloud Suite Advanced to enable load balancing on the edge device.

can anyone clarify for me?

Thank you.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Yes you can do this. It is how I run my environment. VCNS Edge will run on any ESXi host, it is not ESXi that limits it, but the license inside vCenter. If you have a vCloud Suite license then VCNS Edge is available to you to use anyway you desire. However, note that there is no real integration between VCNS (vShield) Manager and the clients, you are better off using its own interface to deploy your edges, etc.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, 2010, 2011,2012,2013,2014

Author of the books 'VMWare ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2011 Pearson Education. 'VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment', Copyright 2009 Pearson Education.

Virtualization and Cloud Security Analyst: The Virtualization Practice, LLC -- vSphere Upgrade Saga -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast