Two questions regarding vSphere:
1.) I am looking to get a HP DL360 G7 w/4GB SDHC internal Flash. I have the option of either 1 or 2 physical CPUs with between 4 to 6 cores each. My only other experience to date has been running ESXi/vSphere on a single CPU with 2 to 4 cores.
My first question is if I choose a dual CPU with 4 cores each, how will this affect licensing? I did find a blog post referencing this issue, and it was my understanding that for the free edition I could only have a maximum of 4 virtual CPUs per VM. At the moment there is a plan to just start off with 2 VMs. So, if I am limited to 4 virtual CPUs, could I dedicate each physical 4-core to a VM? To use a dual physical CPU do I need another version? I have seen conflicting answers to this whether the free edition can use 2 physical CPUs.
2.) Also question for HP users. I know that HP has vSphere/ESXi available to install on these Proliants. Does anyone know what requirements are needed? Do I need to purchase vSphere licensed edition through them? At this time for this server we really can't use any of the options available with the vSphere advanced/Essentials versions. So the plan was just to use the more basic free edition. But as I understand the version HP makes available has more features and support options specific to HP servers hardware. Is it even worth installing the one made available through HP?