Storage vMotion Licensing Question - Move license between ESX 4.1 Hosts?

[Scissor]

I have a question about Storage vMotion licensing with ESX 4.1.

One of my existing ESX 3.5 environments consists of 10 ESX 3.5 Hosts -- 8 are ESX 3.5 Standard servers and 2 are ESX 3.5 Enterprise servers. I am using a centralized license server (I think that is the correct term).

I have found that I can "move" the Storage vMotion (and vMotion) capability to any two of my ten servers as long as only two of them are enabled for vMotion at a time. I do this by heading under VI Client -> Select ESX Host -> Configuration -> Networking -> Properties -> VMkernel -> Edit -> toggle the "VMotion Enabled" box -> OK. I assume that by doing this I am effectively just moving my "ESX Enterprise" licenses around between hosts.

Being able to run Storage vMotion on one or two hosts at a time is plenty for the few times a year that I need to reconfigure my backend storage.

Two Questions:

1. Is this usage technically legal from a VMware Licensing perspective?

2. Now I am looking at upgrading to ESX 4.1, and am wondering if I will be able to continue to do this? I read that ESX 4.x got rid of the centralized License Server model, so am not sure if I could "move" licenses around like this... Actually since vMotion is now included in Standard Edition, I suppose I could "get away" with only licensing one ESX Enterprise server in order to get the Storage vMotion license.

I have let my Support/Subscription lapse for so long that it is less expensive to purchase new licenses rather than pay for backdated support costs on my existing licenses. The pricing difference between Standard and Enterprise is so large (3 times the cost) that I don't think I can swing getting Enterprise licenses for all of my Hosts past the bean counters, hence the reason for this post.

Thoughts/Comments?

[DSTAVERT]

I would call VMware and speak to a licensing specialist. Any information gathered here will only be as it applied to that VMware customer. You may have other options etc. It is certainly possible to move license numbers but whether it is legal???

[Scissor]

I did speak with a Licensing specialist but they couldn't tell me if it was technically possible to move licenses, so I posted here. I will give them another call to ask about the legality of doing so.

I figured that before I do so, since I don't have a licensed vSphere environment here (only evaluation versions at the moment, my main question for the forums is if "moving" a svMotion license from one ESX 4.1 Host to another ESX 4.1 Host is as simple as it is in earlier versions.

[DSTAVERT · Accepted solution]

Each host has a license key number. You can apply a new license key to a host and it immediately becomes active. I suppose you would be technically be violating licensing for the seconds that a license number was registered to two hosts. There is a spot in the vSphere client to "assign a new license key to this host". Once a license key has been assigned it remains as a choice so you could simply choose the higher feature licensed on one and a lower one the other.

[Scissor]

Thank you for the information! That is all I need.