Will this licensing idea work? 18 ESXi standalone to vCenter question

[andjest]

Hi everyone,

It seems I've hit a grey area that I can't figure out via the vsphere licenseing FAQs. We currently have 18 4.1 ESXi free boxes which we're looking to centralize via a vCenter server of some sort.

From the looks of things it seems that all we need is VMware vCenter Server 4 Standard for vSphere with Basic 1year support (1 x $6,044) and then 6 x the Essentials Kits (6 x $495.00). We only need the vCenter Server Agent for our ESXi boxes, and the extra 6 licenses for the vCenter Essentials Servers wouldn't be used.

Does this work?

[a_p_]

Not sure whether this would work technically. However you would definitely violate the EULA for Essentials.

from http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/esx_esxi_eula.html

VMware licenses VMware vSphere Essentials or VMware vSphere Essentials Plus editions (collectively "Editions") to you solely for managing up to three (3) server hosts and your use of these Editions is limited to servers with up to two processors. For these Editions, the server hosts must be managed by the VMware vCenter Server that is provided with these Editions, and that same VMware vCenter Server cannot be used to manage other server hosts not included with these Editions.

André

[ericsl]

You have entered the Enterprise zone. Welcome to the bigs...

Eric

[idle-jam]

You will need to create an "island" of 1 vcenter = 3 hosts 😃

iDLE-jAM | VCP 2, VCP 3 & VCP 4

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[ezzeldin72]

instead of 6 essential better to get 18 Standard edition in addition to vCenter Standard.