Technical Limitations of VSphere Server Essentials?

[mactechnogeek]

I am running the free VSphere hypervisor, and the vSphere Client. It looks like there are a ton of limitations in the free version. So far I've ran into:

1) Can't move a VM from one storage location to another

2) Can't set promiscuous mode on a network adapter

The documentation list things that should be available in the client, but don't exist (eg, entire tabs, or options). I'm concerned this will keep happening as I continue to set up my VM's.

I am working in a small business environment but still have needs of what is apparently offered in some of the other products (eg. VMotion, VCenter?). But I'm only running two VM's on a single server with 1 CPU and that's all that I'll likely need for a while. Is there a way I can find out what the technical limitations are? I don't want to buy the product and find out that I'm still limited. 

Thanks,

Greg

[steveb05 · Accepted solution]

A good comparison can be found here: http://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/VMware_vSphere_5_Editions_Overview

And a nice one-stop shop on all the feature names linked to thier information can be found in this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkDahcUh0bJkdElsVXdfeUNlN3d4dWRDdWRKTFNld2c&usp=sharing...

At the end of the day though, if you want to move a running VM from one datastore to another, you have to be at "Standard"...none of the Essentails levels come with that.

[mactechnogeek]

Thanks much, this is what I was looking for.

Now I'm really regretting setting up that VM on my first hard drive. (At the time, I didn't see a way to format the other drive so I could install it there). So basically I'm going to need to spend over $1000 to move it?  Yikes. The free version is really not very useful with that kind of simple limitation.