Replicating one ESXi to another, do I need two standard vSphere licenses?

[davemanet]

Hi,

I'm just getting started with the free vSphere hypervisor. I want to upgrade my license to a standard license so that I can maintain a "warm spare" server using Replication. I understand that I need at least one Standard license in order to do Repliation, but do I need two licenses? One for each server?

Thanks for your help,

[npadmani]

Replicating an ESXi host??? I am not too sure if this can be done at all.

Proposed solution:

if you have two ESXi host, both with 1 or 2 CPU Sockets. vSphere Essentials Plus Kit would be helpful.

That will give you capability to manage both the host with vCenter server and through that you can configure vSphere HA.

Note:

if you physical hardware is with more then 2 CPU sockets, then you got to go for vSphere Standard edition or higher.

but these licenses are sold per CPU sockets (unlimited cores per socket).

[davemanet]

Thanks. I am using two Mac Pro's. Each has one CPU with 12 cores. So I just need to get the Essentials kit? Then install that license on vCenter which is one of the VM's on my host. And from there, I can configure mirroring to a second host? I want to replicate each of my VM's. Should I be looking at something like Veeam instead?

Thank You for your help!

Tony

[npadmani]

Looking at your requirement description, I assume that you are trying to achieve Protected - Recovery site kind of setup.

where let's say if you have your first ESXi host at site A and second ESXi host at Site B, if first host fails then you want to make sure that you can power on those VMs which were running on failed host to the other Host at your recovery site.

If this is want you want to do, you can make use of vSphere Replication. This will allow you to replicate your VMs from one location to other location where your recovery esxi host is present.

[davemanet]

Great, thanks. I got the Essentials Plus Kit. That will cover both of the servers. Do I need to completely reinstall esxi on second server? Or can I just clone my current system and update the IP addresses?

Thanks Again,

[BoneTrader]

then maybe zerto is what you are looking for... -> www.zerto.com

[npadmani]

You don't have to re-install your ESXi host.

See how to implement vSphere Replication on following link.

VMware vSphere Replication Documentation

[Ram8]

Hi,

Your Essestials plus kit will cover the license. You have to install 2 ESXi hosts, 1 for Protected and the other for Recovery site. With vSphere replication, you will be able to replicate the VMs and not the ESXi Hypervisor. Hope this answers your query.

Thanks,

Ram.