ESXi 6.5 Free License Question

[bgarrett696]

I installed ESXi 6.5 on a stand alone host. I had been using my evaluation license for 20 days. This evaluation license is fully featured. To back up the VMs on this host I have been using Microsoft's DPM 2012 R2. This product has support for VMware and has been working flawlessly. Yesterday i applied my free license and the backups are now failing. I did some research it it turns out the free license is missing the feature that allows the backup to take place.

This is what i found

"This is caused by a restriction based on the VMWare license you are using. The free ESXi license (also known as the vSphere Hypervisor license) only allows read-only access to the vSphere API.

You will need to work with VMWare to get the licensing straightened out, DPM is dependent on the Vsphere API for taking backups"

(ESXi 5.5 - RestrictedVersionFault - 0x80990EF0)

My question now is can i get access to this vSphere API with a free key or do i need to purchase a vCenter license to do my backups?

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

you don't necessarily need to deploy vCenter Server, but you will need to assign a paid CPU license to the ESXi host in order to unlock the API. The least expensive option is an "Essentials Kit" which contains a license for one instance of vCenter Server for Essentials, as well as 6 CPU licenses for up to 3 hosts with a maximum of 2 CPUs/sockets each.

André

[bgarrett696]

Off hand do you know the costs associated with that? I have 2 other hosts that i will be deploying. I was considering using the free 6.5 license but now will need to readjust my planning.

[a_p_]

Prices differ, depending on where you live. However, you may look for prices in the VMware Online Store

André

[qwerty22]

I've heard that HPE VM Explorer will back up free versions up to ESXi 6.0.  Not sure about 6.5 and I have not used this myself.

Virtual Machine (VM) Server Backup, Recovery & Replication for VMware and Hyper-V | Hewlett Packard ...