Free Hypervisor Licensing Restrictions.

[CossyCosmas02]

Hi Guys,

I'd like to know if the free VMware hypervisor comes with any licensing restrictions on the amount of processors(cores) or memory that it is able to use.

I have a large server with 32 cores and 132GB of RAM and simply want to know if the free hypervisor is able to utilise all of the available infrastcucture thats all.

I've had a look a tthe specs and couldn't find anything.

Thanks,

Cossy 

[schepp · Accepted solution]

Hi Cossy,

take a look at http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html

at the very bottom it says

vSphere Hypervisor license provides a vRAM entitlement of 32GB per server, regardless of the number of physical processors. vSphere Hypervisor can be used on servers with maximum physical RAM capacity of 32GB.

So your server is way overpowered for the free license.

Regards

[CossyCosmas02]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for that.

Regards,

Cossy

[MartinPasquier]

Hi,

The vRAM entitlement is for one physical CPU. So if it's 32Gb and you have four physical CPU your host will recognize 128GB RAM. In your case only 4 will be "lost".

I actually run one free ESXi for testing and it's a biXeon with 48Gb and ALL of them is allowable.

Regards

Martin

[gemblev]

Hi,

I am not agree with Martin.

The FAQ tells : vSphere Hypervisor license provides a vRAM entitlement of 32GB per server, regardless of the number of physical processors. vSphere Hypervisor can be used on servers with maximum physical RAM capacity of 32GB.

So, I think that it is not 128 GB of free but only 32 GB.

[CossyCosmas02]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the info.

I'll install ESXi and see how much RAM it makes available.

We do hav 4 physical processors with 8 cores each so it should be quoite interesting.

I'Il publish the results once I've completed the installation.

I don't believe the free edition of XenServer has any such restrictions so I may play around with that too.

Thanks again.

Cossy 

[CossyCosmas02]

Thanks for the post.

Ill find out in the next few days and post my results.

Cossy 

[mwpreston]

The correct answer is you will get 32 GB of allocated vRAM, regardless of the number of processors you have (physical or logical)....

[MartinPasquier]

Oops I'm sorry I've checked another RAM entitlement for other vSphere product...

But if you install free hypervisor 4.1 you'll have access to much more RAM than version 5.0 can.... Because as I told you I've a free vSphere 4.1 running on a 48Gb RAM server and ALL OF IT can be allocated.

Regards Martin